Credit: Rachel Fergus/RiverTown Multimedia
Disclaimer - while this is normally a business blog (eg last blog on Biz Metrics) in the wake of George Floyd's death I can't stay silent on how we got to this point.
Protests rock the nation as many discover the motivation to stand up and fight for civil liberties and equality for blacks after George Floyd was racially killed by officer Derek Chauvin.
Now white people are scared of being labeled racist and wonder what to do.
There were decades of police brutality against African-Americans before now, but with the advent of smart phones, suddenly the nation is captivated by the tragedy unfolding before them.
Speaking with a Crisis Intervention specialist on the phone, who is black, I learned that he is bombarded with calls from his white friends and clients asking how they should be reacting to Floyd's death.
Questions like this frustrate me. Growing up in an all black and Mexican neighborhood as a child, many social constructs of race and class were de-codified quickly when our common language was mutual poverty.
I saw how my dad was racist and how false his ideas about blacks and Mexicans were.
In middle school, due to federal race quotas at white west side schools my whole neighborhood was bussed out of our hood to a rich white school we weren't comfortable at.
I was the only white kid on the bus. With four people to a seat, being bussed from the east side, before gentrification brought white people to poor neighborhoods I quickly saw how I was perceived to represent oppression, lost job opportunities and systemic racism.
It was a trial by fire. I got into a lot of fights. The first week my glasses got thrown out the window. Crypts and Bloods gang signs were being thrown left and right by these middle schoolers.
I learned early on, real recognize real. I was the son of a construction worker, we were broke as well. After a lot of conflict, I slowly gained acceptance and with this acceptance I saw clearly how we have-nots were perceived by the rest of the world.
I had an advantage, being white, because it was assumed that I was headed places other than drug dealing. But the incredible amount of entire life times planned out in the single look of eyes by someone white in a position of authority shook me.
I saw why even young kids were cynical. If they were a POC, they were expected to fail more than to succeed, and this kind of thinking got into their heads. Sometimes it was a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Many times it was straight up wrong and prejudiced. This came from school administrators, employers, police, bank tellers, homeowner associations, middle to upper class suburbanites and more.
I had good friends who were white, some no longer friends now, who showed me their beliefs about blacks and other nonwhite races through subtle comments I picked up on. The nuances were clear to me now due to my non-trust-fund up bringing.
I couldn't believe this shit was so pervasive. I talked with my friends who were black like,
"Do you actually see this? You deal with this daily?"
"Yup."
And yet, black people continued to give whites revealing their prejudices, passed down from parental figures, free passes. Infinite amounts despite white people's ignorance at how they came off.
Yet...white people get to be defensive, as if they are the victim, if there needs to be a sincere discussion about race, class and social constructs? WTF.
The Myth of White Fragility
I hear many convos about "white fragility" and white people not knowing how to talk about racism. Dictionary.com defines white fragility as:
"The tendency among members of the dominant white cultural group to have a defensive, wounded, angry, or dismissive response to evidence of racism."
It's mind boggling to me to hear these types of conversations because the only people afraid to talk about racism are people who are racist to some extent.
When you are the only white person for more than a 15 mile radius in your neighborhood, growing up, you learn pretty quickly about white people who often unintentionally insult black people with assumed predictions of black people's lack of ambition, success and intelligence.
Systemic Racism Comes From Passed Down Beliefs
The over policing of black neighborhoods leading to more blacks in prison is a known issue for those growing up beneath the poverty line.
The threat of life or death being in every encounter between the police and black people versus the innate security white people have with the police is a large dissonance in basic comprehension of the issues at stake.
Then there is the over compensating actions of white people who, unable to have honest conversations with themselves about inner ingrained prejudices, want to festish-ize black people.
But I Have Black Friends...
How many conversations have you seen on Facebook where an "all lives matter" white person defensively claims, "But I have black friends!"?
It isn't about 'having' black friends buddy. It's understanding how you marginalize another race's struggle against the unequal treatment they receive in job opportunities, education, and systemic racism in local police, state legislation and even the office of the president (after 2016 especially).
The especially frustrating part of this is almost every person I've seen post about all lives matter or how they, as whites, feel marginalized and not allowed to talk about things is that these people are just whining about themselves.
There is no understanding of a greater issue here other than their personal butt-hurt feelings that perhaps others perceive their prejudices more than they do.
Instead of posting on Facebook, about how you as a white woman, or man, are the 'victim' of censorship, take a good long hard look in the mirror and ask,
"What are my assumptions about black people?"
That's a good place to start. And realize just like Aspergers syndrome you can unlearn bad habits and learn how to improve your self-awareness. Don't defensively try to overcompensate.
The Winners Write the Textbooks
This defensive overcompensating doesn't help anything at all. Making black people into some sort of boyscout badge you collect and pin to your lapels doesn't make you less of a racist. It does the opposite.
One of the reasons why blacks have struggled to gain equal footing in America is because America was the only country to make slavery inherited from mother to child. Even Greek slaves had rights.
That level of labeling blacks as less than human continues post reconstruction era with vagrancy laws that rounded up freed slaves and charged them debts they could only repay by going back to work on the plantation.
These same plantation owner confederate types who never thought black people deserved the same rights as whites taught their sons and daughters for generations their racism.
So in-spite of progress, technology, Emancipation Proclamation (made mainly to keep Europe out of the war) and even the internet we have generations of people growing up with money, entitlements and racism running for public office.
They become legislators with these passed down beliefs that defied basic common sense that ended up manifesting in white-washing history text books and gerrymandering to invalidate minority votes.
When I spoke at the Teacher's Union in Austin Texas about the debate legislators were having to take out all mentions of slavery from Texas textbooks I asked Texas legislators a simple question:
"How is less information about our history, and black history, going to empower students?"
The winners write the textbooks. It's from the top down that the discussion of race and equality has been suppressed as Noam Chomsky famously said:
“Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic & military states.The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business…the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products.”
From School to Jail Pipeline
The pipeline from school to jail for blacks especially, is just another attempt to re-establish the free labor system of the plantation days as prisoners make products at jails that are sold for profits they don't get a share of.
Part of the pipe line from school to jail is established by teaching only how to pass standardized tests instead of social skills, critical thinking and conflict-resolution training.
More contributors to this are permission parenting, being too afraid to establish consistent boundaries at schools (as well as defunding schools in minority neighborhoods and funding rich white schools with even more money).
When I was a substitute teacher at Austin Independent School District, I saw real life examples of this.I was working on my Bachelor's at UT and substitute teaching on days I didn't have class and saw some horrible things at Fulmore Middle School.
At Fulmore there was a whole grade level of kids who had behavior issues and were previously kicked out of regular ed to the Alternative Learning Center(ALC) for students who couldn't socialize without disrupting class.
These kids were 99% minorities, with very few white kids among them. The ALC said, "We give up," and kicked this same group of kids, who cursed out teachers and started fights back to Fulmore Middle School.
Due to group testing, the teachers just passed them on from grade level to grade level without any real intervention done. Same social problems, same lack of consistent boundaries being enforced, it was clear that jail was in the future for many of these kids.
Stop Assuming the Worst in POC Students
I talked to one of these "problem students" who was causing trouble and avoiding doing his math assignments in class. He was a young black kid about 9 or 10 years old.
I didn't talk down to him or just assume he was deliberately slacking off to make the teacher mad or make it about myself at all like I've seen some teachers do. I simply asked him,
"Do you like math? What obstacles are you facing with it?
He really opened up to me and talked about troubles at home and stated that he was actually good at math but was self conscious of "appearing too smart" around his friends.
We had a conversation about the future and the kind of opportunities available for those gifted in math and science. I shared that having a skill in math can lead to higher paying careers and opportunities.
And not just that. But how to make it real to him, the kind of lifestyle you can benefit from when you aren't broke.
It got through to him and he became very diligent at getting even better at math than when he started the semester.
Just a change of tone, from expecting the worst from kids who faced other problems besides school, and giving a real world context made all the difference.
This student succeeded because he wasn't labeled as any different than his white classmates, or expected to fail because he was black.
Just having a real conversation and being acknowledged isn't an impossible thing to do yet we don't see it happening at the frequency needed to change the world for the better.
Ron Clark has demonstrated without hesitation that being real with students improves their academic performance and commitment to education. Veiled racist assumptions doesn't so let's change this.
Separate Has Never Been Equal
So when there are white people who now want to sooth their fears of being perceived as racist by segregating black people into a box to be checked off to include their social circles, or that having black friends is somehow part of 'a list of accomplishments'
-- that's wack af. And low key prejudiced.
This kind of thinking misses the entire point that it is by segregating black people as less than or needing a special category from whites, you just come off as racist.
White people worried about being labeled racist - do less talking, more listening. Start actually paying attention to the social structures you benefit from that not everyone has access to.
Stop worrying about your public image and have some honest reflection about what your real thoughts and opinions are about black people. Examine where these beliefs come from:
*Experiences?
*Assumptions?
*Things you read in a magazine or heard from a friend?
*Beliefs from comments your parents made?
*Religion or the desire to fit in to your white social groups?
Unless you take the time to f-ing be honest and learn how your perception was formed, you will probably continue to feel overly sensitive talking about race.
Race isn't something to be afraid of talking about unless you're hiding something from yourself.
Stop hiding.
Recognize you may have innate prejudices by just how you were brought up, identify these and see how they conflict with reality to move beyond them
. . .
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