Anyway, the following article from Leonard Pitts pretty much sums up how I feel about this subject.
"To my white fellow citizens:
I invite you to consider this scene from Saturday’s riot in Charlottesville. As reported by The Washington Post, a group of counterprotesters assembled at a rally of white supremacists in that Virginia college town and took up a chant, “No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!”
To which one of the white supremacists yelled back, “Too late, f------!” While it is too soon to know much about this with certainty, this much is clear. What happened Saturday in Virginia is the bitter and inevitable fruit of our habit of intellectual dishonesty where race is concerned. The first, such, of course, lay in writing slavery and racial inferiority into a constitution that supposedly enshrined the equality of all people before the law. From that day until this one, we have never quite weaned ourselves of lying to ourselves where race is concerned. Indeed, as the moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement recedes deeper into memory, as cable news and social media offer new platforms and broad reach to voices of acrimony and hate and as facts become “facts” become untruths become lies and too few of us seem to notice or care, the intellectual dishonesty surrounding race has become starker, more brazen and more creative than we have seen in years.
Like when people say that talking about racism is racism. Or when they babble pious inanities like “racism goes both ways” and “all lives matter.”
Nor have news media always brought clarity. It was pundits, after all, who kept ascribing Donald Trump’s rise to “economic anxiety” even as his followers were yelling racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs with unbridled glee. And leave us not forget how media have allowed the folks who brought such chaos to Charlottesville to brand themselves under a banal-sounding new euphemism — the “alt-right” — as if they were not the same bunch of mouth-breathing, lowlife racists they always were.
Where race is concerned, intellectual honesty, the willingness to see and say what is right in front of us, has long been in short supply. And too many of you — not all, no, but far too many — readily embrace these implicit lies because you fear the places to which the truth will push you. But the racial riot and terrorism that just visited Charlottesville and the emboldened brazenness of the white supremacist movement now that one of their own has taken the White House, suggest that you no longer have the luxury of avoidance, at least not if the future of this country matters to you. I am not unmindful of the young white students who protested the hate that arrived on their campus Saturday. For that matter, I am not unmindful of the white people who marched through Charleston after the church massacre there. I remember James Zwerg, who had his face kicked in, and Viola Liuozzo and Elijah Lovejoy, who were shot to death for African-American freedom.
But I am likewise not unmindful that too many of you have watched with complicit silence and quiet terror of demographic change as voting rights were abridged, murderous policemen went free, Fox “News” turned your resentment into ratings and politicians turned your rancor into power.
The result of which erupted Saturday for all the world to see. Meaning not just the violence and not just the terrorism, but the sense of victory and vindication embodied in the smug rejoinder of a white supremacist to a group of people who had come to chant in support of something higher than bigotry and rage. “Too late f------!”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe it is.
That’s a decision you’ll have to make."
http://field-negro.blogspot.ca/
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7 comments:
I generally agree with field in most respects when I read his posts. The one area where I tend to disagree with him, and most black commentators on race relations, is in their refusal to even consider that racism in the African-American community is itself part of the problem. Let me be clear: That in NO WAY justifies white racism and white supremacy. But if you want to understand how we got here, you have to at least acknowledge it or we will NEVER move forward. There was a great article in Philadelphia magazine a few years ago about how we can never have a real conversation on race in America because white people are afraid to talk about it honestly without fear of being attacked or branded a racist for questioning some of the commonly held assumptions of the debate -- for example, that it's okay for black people to engage in angry, hateful rhetoric towards whites simply on street corners because their anger is "justified." But that is the very type of stereotyping and race-based attacks that fuels the fire of racism. We will never move forward with this discussion until we stop looking at each other as "different." Anyway, do you know what the reaction to that very much needed to be heeded article was? Condemnation from the African-American mayor on down -- proving he was right.
Stop with the generalities that set people apart and distract from the real issues. Not all cops are murderers and some of those thugs brought what happened on themselves. But not all. Focus on the cases of REAL injustice instead of going off EVERY TIME and you'll find your message less diluted. STOP BURNING BUILDINGS AND DESTROYING PROPERTY just because your angry. Protest - loud and long - but have some respect for others if you want their respect. Otherwise, your message is lost in the thuggery that ensues. And finally, stop assuming all white people are racists at heart. We're not. Most of us are just as sickened by what we saw in Charlottesville and Charleston as you are. Most of us condemn the supremecists and speak out against the crimes of the current Administration against minorities every day. It's offensive to label us as racists simply because of the color of our skin. You wouldn't and shouldn't tolerate that, so why should we be required to? It is this type of blind ignorance that ignites Trump's base and leads to his election. And only as soon as everyone realizes that we all should be treated with dignity and respect regardless of our pigmentation, the sooner we can get to work on the task of stomping out racism -- all forms of racism -- forever.
Enough said. Let the incendiary responses begin.
Well put jester.
Black culture and THEIR racism is a point I understand but it's a distraction from the real point and that is that there is a right way of thinking and a wrong way of thinking based on history and how these hateful ideas get spun out of control and give disenfranchised people motivation and permission to vent THEIR rage and values on others because they need the control and power they think this gives them. In truth they are sacrificing their power to a philosophy that makes such distinction between people and races and classes. A philosophy that has yet to deliver on it's promise that everything will be great if those 'coloreds' would just know their 'place'. I don't buy that balloon juice for a second and I will fight any way I can against their view of the world becoming a reality.
And it's about time we white people got used to a little outrage directed at us by the people of color. We have had it coming for a long time and I can handle my part of the white guilt I feel for a system of oppression that unfortunately the white man perfected. But I do see the other side and I don't like it but right now I am not feeling very 'oppressed' to complain about it. I know the comfort white privilege gives me.
And as a BIG FAN of cops shows I KNOW that many people of color DO deserve what they get because they are riding dirty. It makes for good tv but it must weigh down cops who live it everyday. That's the only kind of people they meet. They don't make a show about all the people NOT having an encounter with the police because that is not interesting. But seeing it or living it does form ones belief about all people of a certain race or color because those are the only people they see for the most part in their day. I don't have to live in such a world. That is not my reality. So maybe I am not qualified to comment.
I agree with you. Black racists, White racists, Muslim racist, Indigenous racists, poodle owning racists, beet eating racists (luckily both of those are relatively rare) all have to go. The whole THOUGHT SYSTEM has to be rewired in their brain somehow in a way other than bashing their heada in with a pipe.
I agree with everything you say, Brother Cal. My point is just that the key to ending this is to engage, not alienate. The sooner everyone embraces that concept the better. As the song says: "If you hate something, don't ya do it too." We need to form a Breakfast Club on a national or global scale. Stop making assumptions about others and how they live and how "easy" they have it (y'know, "white people are all rich and they don't have to really work for what they have because of their white privilege"; "black people are all lazy and don't have to work at all because they just get everything handed to them by the government or because of Affirmative Action, even though they are less qualified, and if you try to make them do their jobs they just cream discrimination so they can't be fired".) It's all Bullshit. There are white people living in the same or even more deplorable conditions than many blacks; similarly, I work every day with African-American professionals, many of whom are doing much better than I am. Both have opportunities and have either taken advantage of them or squandered them. They questions are WHY and WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT and HOW DO WE MAKE OPPORTUNITIES MORE ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE.
And the answer in my mind is that we have to LISTEN to each other. There is a LOT of talking and shouting and yelling and cursing and talking over each other when the hot button gets pushed. But very little LISTENING. Very little UNDERSTANDING each other. I know there is a lot of bias in the system and that it's getting worse. But factionalism does nothing to solve that problem because it increases alienation, and thereby strengthens the idea that we are different and feeds the "us vs. them" mentality that is at the heart of both conscious and unconscious bias.
I spend much of my day every day in dispute resolution of one form or another. The most common key to doing so is getting people to understand that neither criticism or complaint is an attack on the other. People need to be made aware of their deficiencies to become better. Concerns need to be raised or they can't be addressed and prevented from festering. But the process goes nowhere when one or both sides refuse to admit the other may have a valid point, and it may be less about what they are saying than understanding why they are saying it.
Finally, I want to be clear that my comments are directed towards the majority of our population who live in fear, mistrust or just blatant ignorance of what it is like to grow up and live on "the other side of the tracks." I have no tolerance for extremists of any stripe. They are a cancer that needs to be excised. They seek only to feed the fires of division and widens the gaps between us. But racism will not be cured just by eliminating extremism. We all need to look within ourselves and understand where our individual biases come from and once we understand ourselves better, make an effort to do the same for others. A little empathy goes a long way.
OK, I'm getting off the soapbox now, I promise.
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