“That Conversation about Race” category archive

At the Bangor Daily News, a little paper with big writers, Alex Stead excoriates white racists’ “victimhood.” A snippet:

. . . and the last time I was in Boston Common after dark with my wife, a group of white teenagers threatened to beat us and to rape my wife. If, according to the “woe is me” white victim, black crime is to be viewed through the lens of race, then I should, based on my experience, see other whites as Chiksika did.

Chiksika, the elder brother of Tecumseh, said of white people, “The whole white race is a monster who is always hungry and what he eats is land.” He, of course, said this in response to what he and his tribe had seen of European settlers’ behaviors. Chiksika said to his brother, “When a white man kills an Indian in a fair fight it is called honorable, but when an Indian kills a white man in a fair fight it is called murder. When a white army battles Indians and wins it is called a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre and bigger armies are raised.” Whites have long been known for this tendency.

Read the rest and, the next time you hear a white folk whining about “those people,” have your grains of salt ready.

A Republican travels to China and discovers the reality of white privilege in America. Here’s a bit; read the rest.

Privilege isn’t necessarily undeserved superior treatment; it’s the ability to enjoy trust within the community without having to earn it. The benefit of the doubt is a powerful form of privilege that can only be noticed once it’s gone.

I recently traveled to China on business, joined by a colleague on his first visit. We are both white males, yet my travel companion stands out in the crowd. Local citizens flocked to capture a glimpse and snap pictures of his towering 6’ 5” frame, blonde hair and blue eyes. While I expected a reaction from the local crowd, I wasn’t prepared for a very new experience: the benefit of the doubt I have always enjoyed vanished.

The tape doctors:

Fox lies. It’s how they roll.

Writing at the Bangor Daily News, Sociology Professor Michael Rocque explains that, despite the denials you hear, of course it’s about race. A nugget.

It is the vehemence with which the “it’s not about race” argument is made that I wish to address here. Simply because overt racial prejudice has declined does not mean that racism itself has also declined in our society. Yet any claim that race matters is met with defensiveness and strong denials. This is understandable (and a good thing, in a sense) because it means that being overtly racist is not acceptable any longer. But we are living in an age in which racism is “ color blind” in that disparities are said to be caused by anything but race. The racism we live with is systemic and institutional. And while this form of racism is not necessarily as overt as someone using racist or disparaging remarks, it is likely more harmful. This means that our structures are built in such a way that makes life easier for certain races and more difficult for others.

Chattel slavery, justified by a mythology of racism, is America’s original sin. As with any sin, denying it does not make it go away.

Do follow the link. Granted, the man needs an editor, but what he says needs hearing.

Via Job’s Anger.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

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.