Saturday, July 17, 2010

Oh Hell, I'm Talking About Race Again!

"There are two kinds of white people, John Brown's and all the rest of them are clowns." -Malcom X


A Facebook friend posted the above observation from Malcolm on her wall and it generated quite a few comments. Many of them were along these lines: "Malcolm X owed an apology to every white Union Soldier that died in the Civil War." The topic of reparations was brought up and a friend queried, "do I get "reparations" for my ancestor from the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment who was killed by the Confederate Army?"


Then there was the following observation from a white male whom I don't know: "I get frustrated as well with every white person being blamed... slavery was due just as much to black Africans as white Americans... and not all white Americans past or present accepted or believed/supported slavery/racism... my family and self being one of those... don't slap those who are supporting you."

I have some empathy for the frustration and confusion expressed by people regarding Malcolm's words. Most people have never engaged in any honest dialogue about race and race relations in this country. We avoid the topic as much as possible even though the history of race permeates all aspects of American culture. It's why we have a president born of a white mother and a black father who is identified as black. Trust me, I'm happy to claim Obama as black, but he is no more black than he is white, but in these United States of America, the one-drop rule still holds true. Every time I write about race in America, I promise myself it will be the last time. I never keep that promise. I am so weary of trying to explain what seems perfectly clear to me; yet, I cannot simply let the moment pass when maybe there will be a moment of pure communication where someone nods their head in understanding and we make a meaningful connection. So here I go again.

Slavery was an abominaton but it may be argued that it was based on a system of economics; however, after the Civil War, there was the Jim Crow era (link to detailed PBS historical overview of Jim Crow). That takes a lot more explaining. The intense discrimination that followed slavery is the real shame of America. I don't blame every white person as having individual responsibility for slavery but in my opinion, white America benefited as a whole from the institution of slavery. The subsequent spread of Jim Crow, the legalized, systemic oppression of black people based solely on skin color was not supported by every white person either, but again the benefit of such a system accrued to white people, not blacks (examples of Jim Crow laws).The concept is called "white privilege" and until white people understand and acknowledge the very real benefits of white privilege in a society that made discrimination based on race not just a practice but the law of the land, then I don't think that an honest dialogue about race is possible.


One Facebook comment dwelled on the unfairness of affirmative action to white males. He asserted that he has worked hard for all that he has achieved. I don't doubt that he has. So have I. So have most people, regardless of race, but there are obstacles on that "level playing field" for people of color that aren't there for whites.  


Affirmative action does not negate white privilege; it affirms it. (What Is White Privilege?) If not for the legalized discrimination of Jim Crow, there would have been no need for affirmative action. If the playing field had been meaningfully and permanently leveled post Civil War, then the freed slaves would have been able to fully participate in the society and eventually compete with white America. Instead, after a brief period of Reconstruction when blacks were becoming educated (remember, it was a crime punishable by death to teach slaves to read), being elected to public office, developing businesses and integrating themselves into the larger society, white America began to implement laws to take away the newly realized rights of blacks. Not just in the South, the North had its own issues of legalized discrimination as well.


Here's an analogy: imagine that you have worn a chain attached to a heavy weight around your ankles all of your life. Finally someone removes the chain and the weight and tells you can now participate in a 10K race and if you win, you get a prize. All of the other runners have been racing for years and have never worn the weight. Some of them participated in placing the weight around your ankles in the past but some of them did not. You have never run before, your muscles have atrophied, but hell, they are letting you run so it's an allegedly fair race. Affirmative action was the scooter provided to black people after generations of being denied the right to even particpate in the race. Those who didn't actively oppress black people, nonetheless benefitted from being allowed to freely participate in the race without the encumbrances that were imposed on black people. If there had never been the chains of oppression, then affirmative action would have never been a necessity.


In addition, it's a self-serving lie that makes some white folks comfortable to believe that affirmative action has placed unqualified black people ahead of qualified white people in jobs, promotions, and admissions to schools. It is just another variation on racism to assume that black people are less qualified than their white counterparts. As for preference, it's an American thing. When I attended the University of NC at Chapel Hill, I was the first person in my family to do so. My parents didn't have the option; no colored were allowed. Plenty of my classmates were "legacy" admissions. Their parents, grandparents, great grandparents had all attended UNC. I don't hear a lot of concern about that variation of affirmative action.


Some of the comments on FB have accused black people of dwelling in the past. First of all, racism isn't dead. Secondly, although the 1960s brought some end to Jim Crow laws, we were still fighting for equal rights in the 1970s. I went to segregated schools until 1971. It's easy to dismiss the past when it isn't yours. If I or any black person actually dwelled on the past then we would become obsessed not with reparations but retribution.


Slavery was well before my time but I grew up under Jim Crow. I try to be a reasonable person, but legal discrimination is not ancient history; it is my life. Where I could shop, where I could sit down and have a meal, where I could receive medical care, where I could attend school, and where I could live was all dictated based on my skin color. The jobs available to my parents were restricted because there were some jobs that black people were not allowed to do.

Personally, I'm not much interested in reparations, although I respect those who consider reparations to be appropriate. However, I think that the failure of this nation to acknowledge and apologize for the subjugation of a race of people is long overdue and that true healing cannot begin without it. I don't expect that white people should shoulder any guilt for having benefitted from white privilege but I do expect that you acknowledge its existence and that you have benefitted from it. Then we can talk.





14 comments:

  1. Sheria
    I'll try to be half as eloquent as you in my commentary. I'd like to suggest to you to get a second wind under your sails. What you wrote should be mandatory reading for everyone as soon as they are able to understand the written word. Never In all my life have I heard anyone express American life as you have.
    I know your tired having to teach the rest of us,but your needed.
    Thanks so much for this post. I shared it with my wife. Have you written any Books?

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  2. All those great things I said back at Examined Life--m'kay?

    No, seriously, thank you for the time and effort to continue to educate me!

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  3. Amen, Sharia. I have argued from this point of view forever. And have had fellow whites tell me I'm a racist.

    I have never experienced the discrimination that my African-American brothers and sisters have. But as a descendant of southern Italians, I have to say that for many years, our culture was just one rung above the plight of southern blacks.

    Sicilian immigrants were considered "black." And 13 of them were unjustly dragged from a New Orleans jail and hanged for a crime they did not commit. The largest single lynching in American history. This was a single case, to be sure, but we remember, and can fully empathize with our fellow Americans who have suffered longer and more brutally from hatred because of the color of their skin.

    We Americans do not like to look inward at our egregious behaviors toward other cultures and races. It clashes with their idea that America is an exceptional nation.

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  4. Sheria, your analogy (being allowed to run a race after wearing a heavy ankle chain throughout one's whole life) is excellent.

    I'm perplexed by those who do not seem to get it, and even more so by those who bang on about "reverse racism" (or sexism) whenever the subject of equality and affirmative action comes up.

    What they call "reverse" discrimination is fear that their privileged position may be threatened by admission of "the others" to their exclusive club (= humanity).

    Shameful.

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  5. Thanks for the positive feedback.

    Tim, I've been working on a memoir about growing up black and southern for some time now. If I can apply a bit more discipline, I may actually finish it. The working title is The Southern Belle in Black.

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  6. Sheria, from as early as I can remember, I always felt myself to be on the ‘right side’ of the cause. The civil rights and anti-war movements preoccupied my generation, and I played my part … by occupying an empty seat in the Mississippi delegation at the 1964 DNC Convention and hitching a ride to the March on Washington. Afterwards, however, I could always return to the comforts of home or a college dorm. There were others of my generation who never returned. Although I also lived in Black communities as a college student, I was always a part-timer … knowing life would take me to other places.

    Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara once said, “All revolutions degenerate into governments.” Similarly, all white college student activists degenerate into white middle class suburbanites with careers and families and a home mortgage.

    There was much I didn’t know … until I read your post and the links you provided. I learned how white privilege benefited me without my conscious awareness. Too many things I took for granted, such as allowing myself to be impatient or testy with people. Without doubt, there would have been consequences had I been Black. Yes, I had advantages, but I also lost someone along the way.

    I shared this story at ABCinE’s weblog several months ago. About a professor who taught at one of NYC’s leading art schools. We met and dated for a while. When you start imaging your life possibilities with a person to whom you have drawn close, eventually you meet her parents; and they did not approve of our mixed race relationship. It saddens me when I think back.

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  7. It's hard to say anything useful in response to something that lends itself more to stunned silence, really. I can't dare and wouldn't care to sound condescending by saying I'm part of any solution.

    Proving one is not a racist has become a hollow but annoyingly perpetual thing, I think; a social convention and little more for most Americans. A pose with little meaning and as you say - or as I think you say, it may be beside the point. It's the banality and extent of social inequality that makes it hard to discuss -- the smell in the room that's been there so long you don't notice it.

    Complacency, comfort, contentment, inertia -- even insecurity: all those human things that make us perpetuate the attitudes and perpetuate the unfairness do more harm, I think, than the guys with the white sheets trying to defend "the white race."

    What can you or I do but lament? I wish I knew. Our lives are too short to expect to see much change, much reconciliation or any improvement in the honesty or social awareness of humanity.

    My grandchildren will be adults in an America with a non-white majority. I may yet still have not entirely Euro grandchildren. My great grandchildren may well not be as European looking as I am. It may be different one day, but no one will be any smarter and the stupid, the complacent, the fearful will always be as an anchor dragged behind us. Can we change it? Can we do more than try always to treat each other with respect and compassion? I don't know. I won't insult you by saying I'm on the side of righteousness, but I do try.

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  8. Sheria,

    I could write a book in response to your eloquent post. I don't know where to begin.

    When I was young my mom told me that calling Adam Clayton Powell a Negro was ridiculous and only a result of racism in America. How lucky I was to hear stories in my white home.

    Memories of "Colored" and "White" signs in bathrooms on our trip to the south in the 1950's to visit my cousins in Forida will never be erased from my memory. When I questioned them in public, my mother hushed me up and I felt fearful in my own country. She explained segregation in the privacy of our own car.

    For years now I and others in my church have sought to help our church be more understanding. This fall we will host a group of churches in the Delaware Valley area. If you are near PA, please feel free to join us.

    UUCDC to Host JPD Racial Justice Conference in October

    On October 16, 2010 UUCDC will host the Joseph Priestley District Racial Justice Conference between 9:30am and 4:30pm. This event is designed to raise awareness about racism and promote transformational, spiritual growth with the aim of building a denomination that is truly welcoming, multi-racial, and multi-cultural.


    Last year we had a speaker, John Jackson, Jr. from the University of Pennsylvania speak about his book, Racial Paranoia, the unintended consequences of political correctness. He was wonderful.
    For more information, see
    (Basic Civitas Books, March 2008). www.racialparanoia.com

    Anyway, thanks so much.

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  9. Sheria,

    Fine post as always!

    Alas, there doesn't seem to be enough political maturity in this country to sustain an honest discussion about race for above two minutes. I suspect that any talk about "reparations" is bound to trigger the usual crudities on the part of ahistorical-as-a-baby-squirrel white folk who are incapable of appreciating arguments in terms leading beyond the individual and the tribal. Barack Obama has made the biggest move towards eventual parity by getting himself elected president, even though his success alone can't make the problems of ordinary people of any ethnicity go away anytime soon.

    Sure, millions of white voters will never give President Obama any credit no matter what he does – he has already shepherded an impressive number of major bills through the House and Senate, but of course none of that counts because he's failed to dive to the bottom of the Gulf and stick his own finger in the oil leak, and he hasn't waved his Kenyan Communo-Fascist Magic Wand™ at the economy. So he's accomplished nothing, to hear the puling Pseudo-Left and the Rugged-Rock, Ragged-Rascal Republicans tell it. Nope – he's just out there taking his family on vacations and playing lots of golf.

    Even so, no more "Invisible Man" – there's something undeniable about getting oneself elected president. While I believe America will probably re-elect Barack in 2012, it's fair to say that unless the economic downturn, the Gulf devastation, and other problem areas suddenly vanish on their own, come election time we will have to face the issue Wanda Sykes frames so well in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm: to paraphrase, "You can either fix the problem or fire the black man. Whatever works, Larry."

    As for calling a mixed-race person "black," yes, I know. The racist one-drop assumption (grounded in the insane notion that white means superior and black inferior) is so deeply embedded that it seems impossible to get rid of it. A long, troubling history (with the strong counter-drive towards erasure that such a history entails) has lent a deceptively primal quality to this categorizing: one doesn't see a person of Latino descent and say, "there goes a brown" or an Asian and say, "there goes a yellow." Only white and black come in for such stark adjective-as-noun labeling. Perhaps the only way to deal with it is to keep recycling and inflecting "black" in the manner that GLBT people have inflected the word "queer" so that it isn't exclusively a put-down but instead an ambivalent term that requires interpretation. In 2010, I can't read "black" in anything but this ambivalent way; it's true enough to Du Bois' theme of doubleness as enunciated in The Souls of Black Folk.

    All this talk makes me a bit nostalgic for the days when I used to teach courses in C19 American lit. as well as the Civil Rights Era – not really my areas, but I found engaging with Douglass, Ellison, Wright, MLK Jr. and Malcolm X fascinating. Working with students also taught me that for a lot of young people, the whole issue of race relations in America is practically a blank slate: they know almost nothing about the Civil War or the Civil Rights Era, and just don't understand what all the fuss is about. Such ignorance is, of course -- like almost everything about racial discourse -- both promising and disturbing at the same time.

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  10. I suspect the people accusing blacks of living in the past are the same people still fighting the Civil War.

    I grew up in Nashville in a home dominated by my grandmother who was born in Athens, AL. If anyone - my mother, grandfather, brother or aunt - used the N- word, we got our mouths washed out with soap! We just didn't say it and the first time I was called a "Nigger Lover" I didn't know what the heck they were talking about.

    This was a fabulous article - very perceptive and I don't care how many you write about racism. I eat 'em up and then bookmark them.

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  11. Terrific post. And thanks for the link to 'What Is White Privilege?'. Interesting reading though not as interesting as the comments. Scary and revealing in the denouncement black 'entitlement'.

    I was born middle-class caucasian Protestant in Seattle Washington. White collar father. Stay at home Mother. One sibling. Nit wealthy. Comfortable. Healthy. No disasters economically, medically or otherwise.

    If the entire world and all the people in it were, for the sake of discussion, participants in a 100 meter dash then the accident of my birth would put me about five yards from the finish with the other 90+% of the world gathered at the starting line 95 meters behind.

    White privilege is as real as the air we breathe.

    And the loss of such privilege is the real issue driving politics in this country now as it has since the days of the founding fathers.

    Two things. Tea Party Politics and its exploitation and encouragement by the GOP/Conservative movement is about a lot of things. Some are even valid. But the thing it is most about is the population of white middle-class Americans loosing their grip on the privilege the color of their skin and the resultant economic head start has allowed them generation after generation. Those days are winding down and it frightens the bejabbers out of a an awful lot of people.

    Secondly this relates to the parallel discussion we're having about the 2nd Amendment. While it's certainly true that in very basic terms the NRA functions as the de-facto marketing arm of the weapons industry their job is made really easy by the fear of an aging and shrinking demographic.

    People with most of the advantages life offers a caucasian middle-class American are the ones mewling loudest for their 2nd Amendment rights. And they're the ones whining about 'tyranny' and 'losing' their 'liberty'. In a time of decreasing crime rates too many of us feel insecure and threatened.

    To a point they're right. The middle-class is being squeezed but most of our wounds are self-inflicted.

    I get out of bed in the morning and am free to come and go as I wish. I can travel. I can sit at my keyboard and criticize my representatives I can do pretty much anything I wish. My limitations are economic for the most part. I am burdened with a mortgage, loan payments, desires, wants and even the occasional need.

    And I'm not unique. There are a lot of people like me and collectively we seem to have lost touch with the reality of our situation. We remain the most privileged population on the planet and all the guns we can amass won't insure that continues forever. Blaming Mexicans, Muslims, African Americans and everyone else in our nation and around the world seeking a slice of the pie and arming to defend ourselves against those who 'hate us for our freedoms' is delusional.

    We need to smarten up a little. Consume a little less. Share a little more. Elect reasonable representatives and start being a little more neighborly in our civil discourse and politics.

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  12. If we never have a conversation, no matter how uncomfortable, about being black in America and about white privilege, we are never going to be able to move on and evolve into the kind of human beings we COULD be.
    We do have the potential to move forward but not until we all acknowledge the bad stuff (ie slavery, Jim Crow, housing projects) and look for the kind of solutions that will garner REAL equality.
    Nothing pisses me off more than someone telling me that blacks have an equal footing just because of the Civil Rights Act. Really?
    Just ask most any black professional how much harder they have had to work to prove their abilities.
    We do not learn even from our own history. The native nations were not only decimated but those who have survived into modern times live on dismal reservations in abject poverty. There are a few tribes who have gotten reparations and casinos but drive just around the corner from the glitz and glamour and you will see the signs of poverty and oppression that exists to this day.
    The mindset of this nation is what needs to change. People of other ethnic groups/ color don't need a handout, they need a hand up so that we all stand side by side - as equals.
    Great wrongs have been done and although I am not directly responsible for those wrongs, I still have a responsibility to act to right those wrongs.
    We all do.

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  13. The quality of the comments at Swash Zone still amazeds me. There's a level of thoughfulness and honesty that is very rare in most of the commentary posted on the Internet.

    One thing that I want to make clear is that I don't believe that anyone has to prove that he or she is not a racist. It would be like expecting people to prove that they are not a child molester or a rapist. I assume that an individual is not a racist until he or she acts in a way that persuades me otherwise. I also don't think that being critical of black people makes anyone a racist. I'm critical of black folks and other folks quite often because I'm just generally amazed and annoyed at the foibles of human nature. People do stupid things and behave in atrocious ways regardless of skin color. The problem arises when you start attributing the negative qualities as being endemic to the skin color.

    Inducing guilt in white people is not my idea of fun. The concept of white privilege isn't about guilt. As many of you have so eloquently and honestly recognized, it simply exists. I think that's a huge step in engaging in meaningful dialogue about race. If my arm was broken and hanging at some odd angle, I'd really be pissed if you kept telling me, "It's not broken. It's all in you head." That's what it feels like when white America denies white privilege, as if we just made it up. Admit my arm is really broken and then we can talk about getting a splint on it.

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  14. "I don't believe that anyone has to prove that he or she is not a racist"

    Of course, but to a certain generation - the one my kids are part of, it's almost a witch hunt. If I say I don't like the right-wing government of Japan, their eyes narrow in suspicion. When I remarked that putting tiny wheels on cars is no longer the fashion in the local hispanic population, I'm a racist. If I comment on the irony of white middle class suburban kids dressing and talking and shuffling their unlaced shoes around upscale shopping malls like they had grown up in 1980's Harlem -- I'm a racist. I don't speak the code, I must be a racist, despite my obvious distaste for such nastiness.

    It's as though, being anti-racist in the post Jim Crow era is getting so hard, they have to invent racists to be against. Of course, they're "liberals" by the current definition. Conservatives don't give s shit and the more racist they are, the more they join in the witch hunt.

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