“That Conversation about Race” category archive

Richard G. Carlson tells one such tale in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Excerpt or summary won’t do it justice. Just read it.

Justin Perry muses over the contrast between “Never forget” and “Get over it.” A snippet:

Never forget! These powerful two words will be highlighted, yelled, and displayed ubiquitously throughout the country as we remember Sept. 11. Never forget the terror that was inflicted on this country. Never forget the day America was changed forever. Never forget the day that America’s innocence was lost. Never forget!

One thing you won’t hear is “Get over it!” And yet, that is what black Americans have heard repeatedly and casually over and over in regard to our home-grown terrors . . . .

urpme –auto-orphans<--How did that get in there? That’s a Mageia command for managing Magiea rpm packages. I was running Mageia updates earlier today, but, oh, well. I’m going to leave it in just for grins and giggles.

Follow the link for the rest.

A life-long Seattle resident tells the story of what happened when she pulled over (good on her, by the way) to answer a message on her cell phone. A nugget:

The driver left her car idling in the middle of the street and approached my window.

“Am I in your way? What’s going on?” I asked.

“Yes, you are. I live here.”

“I thought this was a public street? I could be waiting for my child.”

“Well, I have children, too. And I pay a shit ton of money to live here. You need to leave.”

I was shaken. I, too, live in this neighborhood. I lived on this very street. I learned to ride a bike here. My daughter plays at this playground. And yet, because I was a black woman, the other driver assumed I didn’t belong, and ordered me to leave.

Read it.

Still rising again frolics.

One more time, “I am not a racist, but . . . ” always translates to “I am a racist, and . . . .”

In a thoughtful piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Jennifer Nelson muses on how she has benefited from white privilege throughout her life. Here’s a bit:

In 1975, when I was a teenager coping with undiagnosed mental illness, I took to alcohol. During three months that summer, I was picked up by police officers no less than four times for underage consumption and public intoxication. Each time, I was returned to an empty house in my white, middle-class suburban neighborhood and let off with a warning about the consequences of continued “bad” behavior. Would that have happened if my family had been black and lived in an urban neighborhood?

The deceptive thing about privilege is this: If you have it, you are unlikely to notice it, because it just is.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports on a project to locate and expunge segregationist covenants that linger in the legal language of residential deeds. The covenants no longer have force of law, but, as property transfers have taken place, they continue to exist in the fine print. Here’s a bit:

Jade Holman was stunned to learn that buried in the fine print of the deed to the two-story stucco house he bought nearly a year ago is a clause stating that his home cannot be “transferred or leased to a colored person.”

It’s long been rendered unenforceable by state legislation and federal law, but it’s jarring nonetheless for Holman, a construction attorney, who said he’ll try to get a court to nullify it.

(snip)

So far, members of the Mapping Prejudice project have discovered some 5,000 deeds with racist restrictions. The covenants appear to be concentrated in the whitest Minneapolis neighborhoods, illustrating the long historical reach that racial restrictions have had on the city’s residential housing, while helping to explain the de facto segregation housing patterns that exist today.

If you are foolish enough to think that the past does not live into the present (or even if you are not), read the whole thing.