“That Conversation about Race” category archive

When I was very young, maybe eight or nine or ten I’m not quite sure when, my mother, my brother, and I took the bus to visit my grandmother in South Carolina. My father was to join us later.

During a layover, I walked into the wrong waiting room–the “colored” waiting room, as the sign said–in the bus station in Raleigh, North Carolina. Conversation stopped and all eyes looked at me, the little white kid in the doorway.

I have never felt more alone.

I would never wish what I felt then–the loneliness, the isolation, the other-ness–on anyone.

It’s time to make it stop, to make it stop for everyone.

Also, read Der Spiegel’s obituary for “post-racial” America.

Image via Kos.

It’s all in their heads, and nowhere else. Let Notre Dame professor Augustin Fuentes explain. A snippet:

We know that Race is a real thing and that aspects of one’s life and experience are different based on whether one is Black, or White, or Latino and Asian or Native American. We also know that these differences are not because the race categories themselves are actual biological groupings—they aren’t. Races are social and historical creations—they are real for our society but they are neither static nor inevitable nor biological.

Race is a dynamic social category that has changed over time in the USA. For example, in the late 1800s, many groups currently placed in the category “White” (like the Irish or Italian) were not in that category the way they are today. . . . .

At The Guardian, Matthew Pratt Guterl argues that there are lessons to be learned from the statements of the cop who gunned down Michael Brown for being. A snippet:

The difficult work now is making sense of how Darren Wilson understands the phantasmagorical qualities of the black body – how all of our Darren Wilsons do. In the transfixing grand-jury transcript, Wilson suggests that Brown was “bulking up” with the impact of each bullet, as if “Big Mike” were gaining in size and strength, not weakening and, inevitably, slowly dying. Wilson felt, in the moment of struggle over the gun, as if he was a five-year-old battling Hulk Hogan, who would theatrically erupt into a berserker’s rage, and become physically unstoppable, in the late minutes of every wrestling match. Wilson described Brown as a “demon” – as an “it” – as a monstrous creature, stomping and huffing, and building up momentum for a final assault, like the Incredible Hulk – all comic-book id and no superego. This is the familiar grammar of racial sight, through which a wallet becomes a gun or a Harvard professor becomes a burglar.

Do follow the link.

Afterthought:

The attribution of super-human qualities to “the other” ipso facto dehumanizes the other; it characterizes bigotry in all its manifestations. This says nothing about the bigot’s target and everything about the bigot’s need to make his own fear and hatred appear rational, not just to other persons, but also to himself.

The baddest bad guy will never admit that he’s a bad guy. Oh, he may boast that “I’m bad” before the bar fight starts, but, down inside, he always believes that he’s in the right.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., explains the concept of “burden of proof” in black and white. A nugget:

. . . my point is that the bar of proof is set higher when white people – police officers in particular – kill black ones. My point is that rules change and assumptions are different when black people seek justice.

Knowing that, who can be surprised at what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, Monday night? Who can be surprised that a prosecutor who didn’t seem to want an indictment did not convince a grand jury to return one in the August shooting of Michael Brown?

Read it.

Chauncey Devega takes a long and intense look at what recent events in and related to the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, say about racism in America. A nugget:

America is a society structured around maintaining white privilege and white supremacy. One of the ways that this is accomplished is by socializing the white public to believe that America is a meritocracy whose social and political institutions treat all people the same way–regardless of skin color. In turn, a belief in this lie nurtures resentment, hostility, and anger towards people of color because the latter’s lived experiences battling white supremacy are translated by the White Gaze into complaining, belly aching, “reverse racism”, and not being “patriotic” towards the “greatest country on Earth”.

When institutional racism is exposed–only the willfully ignorant and those who have cultivated their own stupidity are surprised by these glaring inequalities–there is a hostile reaction by many white folks because they are wedded to the lies of American meritocracy and “colorblindness”.

Follow the link. Read the whole thing.

Elon James White remembers “the talk” and what it says about blue on black crime. Here’s a snippet:

I received The Talk™ when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I remember it because of the context that I received it in. I’ve always been forgetful and for a long time I wore both my bus pass holder and home key around my neck underneath my clothing. I remember my Mom telling me that if I was stopped by a police officer and he asked for some sort of proof of identification, like my bus pass, that I should never reach for it myself. Tell the officer where the identification he requested was located on my person and keep my hands in clear view. This seemed silly to me but my mom was so serious that my normal 9 year old pushback was immediately silenced. Mommy seems scared and if she’s scared then I’m scared.

Now go read the whole thing.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

James Causey remembers his parents’ advice about being while black. A snippet:

I still remember how they would tell me that if I was ever stopped by a police officer to make sure I kept my hands in plain view so that I wouldn’t get shot because police might mistake my wallet for a gun.

They also told me to avoid getting into verbal confrontations with officers, even if the officers were dead wrong, because they feared these situations could escalate to me being shot. Call these rules of survival.

Although I have undergraduate and MBA degrees, I have been harassed by police and stopped for no reason other than being black while driving.

Read it.

Steven M. wonders whether Americans cannot seem to shake racial hatred because of race or because of class. He thinks it may be a some of both. A nugget:

. . . blacks were excluded from full participation in the larger economy for a century after the Civil War. When did the door opened a crack? Just before the economic turmoil of the 1970s — which was the beginning of a period when overall inequality began to increase. The wealth of the middle class hasn’t expanded much since the Nixon years, so white America feels it has no extra pie to go around. The rich, as Abdul-Jabbar says, just keep baking more and more pie. But they’re not sharing — and they’re taking more and more pie from middle-class whites. Therefore, middle-class whites resent demands for pie from anyone else.

My money’s on a symbiotic relationship between the two: race is used to bolster class; feelings of class are influenced by race. I’ll quote Lyndon Johnson again:

If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.

As long as the less-privileged fight amongst themselves, the privileged and the plutocrats are safe in their catbird seats.

There is a difference between the cause of a situation and the tactics employed as the situation develops.

In Ferguson, Mo., Michael Brown was not murdered by an MRAP or a grenade launcher. He was murdered by a uniformed man with a gun for the crime of being while black.

Steven M. suggests that the discussion of events in Ferguson is devolving into a discussion of the (admittedly outrageously over-the-top) police tactics after Michael Brown’s death, thereby taking attention away from what caused it. He notes that

Conservatives are starting to frame the debate on policing, and racism is being deemed irrelevant.

Racism informed the tactics, as well as the original crime. Does anyone seriously think that a crowd of white folks protesting the killing of a white kid by that same cop would have been met with a mob of cops with armored vehicles and machine-guns?

The whole shebang is infused with white racism.

Jasiri X raps Ferguson. I used to think that they left the “c” off of “rap,” but he has convinced me otherwise. (Warning: Language.)

From the website:

I never really wanted the role of Hip-Hop artist that speaks when something tragic happens in our community, but I guess it is what it is. I got so many calls, tweets, and texts from folks asking me to say something so here it is. It’s raw and angry because that’s how I feel about more Black death unjustly at the hands of the police. For Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford, and Ezell Ford, I hope your lives are not in vain, and God brings your families peace. For my community, this won’t stop until we stop it, and the first step is unity. I called this song 212 degrees because that’s the boiling point. The lid is about to blow off this whole masquerade.

Full lyrics at the link.

Just listen.

Once again, the language gets emotional. I cannot take exception to the emotion.

Next, read this.

It would appear this his only crime was being while black.

Chauncey Devega’s post on the killing and its aftermath is excellent. It defies summary or excerpting. Just read it.