I’m interested in the narratives that emerge from events that involve race, recently Rachel Dolezal and the Charleston shootings. It becomes apparent that many, many people have a lot invested in not giving a damn about black people at all. And they will engage in all manner of contortions to avoid doing so.
Rick Santorum (I know, fish in a barrel) says Charleston was an “attack on religious freedom”, as if the attacker targeted these folks because they were at church. Jeb Bush can barely drag himself to acknowledge that the attack was racially motivated. These are not fringe attitudes. They’re mainstream.
This pattern of avoidance and denial exists even in a case where the victims, the assailant’s acquaintances, and the assailant’s own words are crystal clear about his motivations.
What does this tell us? Why is it so important to deny the continued existence and potency of racism?
It’s denial. If you looked at the plain reality in front of your face, you’d be morally obligated to do something about it, and you’d know it. You’d have to change your mind. You’d have to part with your cultural/ideological tribe, and maybe endorse policies that cut against the grain of your “philosophy” (habit of mind, prejudice) of government. This is simply impossible for many people to do (and not just for those “over there” on the right).
If you acknowledged the existence of murderous, bloody racism in your midst, you’d have to accept that the plight of African-Americans has been and still is inflicted from outside. You’d have to accept that African-Americans do not suffer these indignities because of some inherent defect. You’d have to not blame victims. You’d have to take their side.
- You’d have to call for equality in criminal justice;
- You’d call for reparations — at least in the form of affirmative action, robust investment in communities affected by the legacy and continued reality of racism; and yes, a strong social safety net;
- You’d have to call for an end to the “devil take the hindmost” economic ideology, that of course leaves behind those who have been actively and passively prevented from taking part and advancing for 400 years.
- You would understand that our gun culture results in vast carnage, and does not make any of us safer, least of all African-Americans;
- You’d have to acknowledge that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
- You would have to acknowledge the full humanity of African-Americans. You would have to look at a black face and see some trace of yourself, in all your own glory, value, vulnerability and frailty.
It’s a lot to swallow. It’s not good news. And I dare say most white people, even those of “good” will and “good” intention, just can’t get there. The hole is deep. And every once in a while, we dig a little deeper.
Mark L. Bail says
And guns. And the people don’t want to see it. And the people who don’t want to do anything about it.
We live in a country where racism is alive and well, and the toxic brew of intolerance peddled by the right-wing and its GOP lackeys float through society like a disease, striking where immunity is low. As Charlie Pierce says, what’s amazing is how many Republicans are willing to deny, ignore, or gloss over Dylann Roof’s own words:
Christopher says
I don’t know about in the South, but I wonder how closely my experience matches others. When I was growing up, and to some extent I still see this as a substitute teacher, there would be lessons on the Civil Rights Movement in January to coincide with MLK Day. With details appropriate for grade level we were taught that this man rose to leadership with the bus boycott triggered by Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat. From there he led marches, gave speeches (I Have a Dream in particular) and lobbied leaders. Ultimately, he was assassinated by someone who intensely disagreed with him.
We were also given background. We learned about legal battles such as Brown or Loving. We learned about Jim Crow laws that explicitly enforced second-class citizenship in ways that can only be described as silly and childish (separate bubblers – really? Do you think you’ll catch cooties from a black person or something?) Then we learned how things changed. Back when Congress actually knew how to govern we got such things as the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, other laws banning discrimination in housing and employment. That was 50 years ago and while we may not have been specifically told this we were left with the impression I think that racism was part of our past, but not our present (and for us Yankees equally left with the impression that it was a Southern problem; somehow the Boston busing crisis never came up.) Somewhere along the way we were also taught that racism was wrong for the same reason we shouldn’t harass our classmates for any other differences they might have. In that context, even though kids could give each other a hard time as we grow up we would lose our habits of harassing each other for any of our differences including race. In my experience kids who learn about Jim Crow understand that such a system violates their innate sense of fairness.
This is why I for one have been shocked in more recent years to discover how pervasive racism still is in some regions and among some people. I knew we still had the KKK, but was comfortable knowing them to be a fringe group whose rallies would be reliably and greatly outnumbered by counterprotesters. For so long I wanted to see opposition to our current President rooted in something other than his race. There are no doubt plenty of good people who legitimately oppose this or that policy, but the evidence in some cases for a racial aspect is too great to ignore. Why do too many cops seem to react viscerally to black suspects and why is there not either better training or more careful screening out to prevent these attitudes? Why do dogwhistles work among talk radio or worse elected officials themselves, or on occasion why do they in the words of Jon Stewart about one such person “skip the dogwhistle and go right to regular whistle” and get away with it? Simply put, I cannot wrap my head around the idea that 150 years after emancipation and 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement we STILL have to address this nonsense.
marcus-graly says
that I learned about the Boston bussing riots growing up in California, but people that grew up here, but are too young to remember it, generally know nothing about it.
Christopher says
…and his birthday was generally the impetus for studying the Civil Rights Movement. It was one of those let’s teach the reason behind getting a random Monday in January off from school things. I was equally surprised to learn within the past couple of years that Boston still busses. I thought that was so 1970s and figured there would be a more permanent solution by now.
Mark L. Bail says
taught. It’s not that direct. It’s more like a disease that’s caught. It’s hovers in the social air, and given the right circumstances, people catch it to varying degrees. Some individuals are transformed by it, other barely touched. It lives in our political and social systems and was built by our history. To some extent, we can and do prevent our kids from learning it, but we can only go so far to counteract family and society. There are plenty of communities and schools that don’t try or even subtly encourage racism. Almost everyone has learned that racism is wrong, even if they are racist. They know that they don’t want to be called or perceived as racist. But we know that people easily hang on to beliefs that are important to them, even if reality contradicts them time and again.
Jasiu says
What I think Christopher meant is that the public schools teach about the history of racism, but they do not then connect the dots from 50 years ago up to today so that it becomes general knowledge that the problem wasn’t “solved”. So it is easy for someone with distance from the day-to-day negative effects of today’s racism to get the idea that it isn’t a problem anymore.
Christopher says
I can see that my title could have been construed the other way (sorry Mark). We were left with the impression that MLK waved his wand (non-violently of course), was unjustly jailed, persuaded everyone with his fiery oratory, died for our sins, and just like that – no more racism. There was also a focus on the laws rather than attitudes from which it was easy to infer that changes in the latter immediately followed changes in the former.
Mark L. Bail says
the racism. We don’t want to be racists. Collectively, we’ll do anything do avoid the fact.
When I get into the discussion with kids, who used to think that MLK died so black people could be free, I say he died for white people too, so we didn’t have to continue to live with our society’s sin of discrimination.
scott12mass says
I think humans (like wolves) have instinctual pack like mentalities which need to be examined and as we become more civilized we hopefully drop arbitrary traits (skin color, disabilities) as the cement which binds us in favor of common values (fiscal conservatism, etc). We have come a long way, but obviously have further to go. If you go to a Patriots game I’ve witnessed members of one tribe (Jets fans) attacking poor Patriots fans for having the wrong jersey on, so it is always simmering beneath the surface. Personally playing sports was always a great initiator for integration and that is why it’s so important in the school system. Grandsons in North Carolina have a far greater integration experience than a grandson and nieces and nephews up north here, so the south isn’t all bad. And considering how much worse things were 100 yrs ago, you could argue the south has come farther along than we have up here.
Mark L. Bail says
the South has come farther along than we have, but why would you? We have our problems. We have had our own problems. We are less integrated as many Southerners will tell you. On the other hand, we disapprove of racism at a much greater level. Our politicians don’t belong to racist organizations.
A couple of problems: 1) you’re describe things ahistorically 2) you fail to acknowledge the power differential. In every society, tribalism is a problem. In our society, tribalism is the motivating and organizational factor of GOP. Racism could be looked at as tribalism directed at an underprivileged race, but so what?
American racism was a product of the class of British Royalists who settled the American South, and the slavery that let them fully reimagine feudalism in the New World. American racism was continued after slavery by Jim Crow. Up North, American racism was less odious, but no less insidious with redlining that made it difficult for black folks to live in white neighborhoods. Black veterans were largely deprived of accessing the GI Bill. Reparations would not be practical, but our country has materially deprived an entire race. That’s not tribalism, and it won’t be fixed by people playing sports together.
Charley on the MTA says
Not sure I understand the downrating. Unless we in MA can explain away Louise Day Hicks, Tom Yawkey, and a whole nasty history of racism, I’m not sure we should consider ourselves better than other places. Take the plank out of your own eye, etc. Also I think there’s something to the idea of innate tribalism as an evolutionary adaptation. Who the hell knows? What racism *is* seems like a damn good and pertinent question if we’re going to defeat it.
petr says
…?
The appeals to any authority stemming from a reductive anthropology are nonsense. They poster simply doesn’t understand either authority or anthropology. ‘Tribalism’ doesn’t explain anything here because ‘tribalism’ doesn’t contain an autonomic and/or instinctual hatred of the ‘other’. That’s not what tribalism, either as an anthropological construct or as a lived experience is. And, amongst real anthropologists very few think of “innate tribalism as an evolutionary adaptation” anymore. That’s an idea that is a relic of European imperialism: the original “White Mans Burden”…
Use of the term ‘tribalism’ here is simply more elision: it’s a feckless attempt to excuse behavior as inviolable and unavoidable. It’s not true. Racism isn’t a refined or rarified tribalism because tribalism isn’t about knee-jerk antipathy or innate hostility.
That’s the primary reason for the downrate.
Secondarily, the comparision is invidious: the fact that Louise Day Hicks was fighting against the establishment sanctioned, court ordered and federally mandated desegregation program does not excuse the existence of the decidedly racist establishment that still holds sway in SC, today. You forget that it was a fight, and many of the good guys were from here. The fact that not all were good doesn’t elide those who were… Down south, the fight didn’t really take off until the majority of the good guys were imported from the north. James Reeb was a Unitarian Minister from Boston who died on ‘bloody sunday’ beaten to death by a gang of whites after an abortive attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery. Later, after the successful march, three klansman and an FBI informant drew down on a car driven by Viola Liuzzo, a housewife from Detroit. She died. Two of the three civil rights workers in the now famous “Mississippi Burning” case were from New York.
If all you can claim for racism in the north is private citizens like Yawkey or the lone holdout on the Boston City Council like Day-Hicks, spitting their venom then you’ve lost perspective on what’s a valid comparison. From where I sit, a couple of lone crusaders against the establishment and the law remains better than the south, where the establishment itself remains the primary impediment to progress.
And if Tom Yawkey is emblematic of racism in the North, how do you explain Red Auerbach? You remember Auerbach, I’m sure… He’s the one who not only drafted the first African American player in basketball, he created the first all African-American starting five in the game and went on to name Bill Russell the first African-American head coach… the first African American coach of any professional sport in the United States. If Yawkey means something, the Auerbach does also…
scott12mass says
Didn’t want to get into big discussion about roots of tribalism, wanted to show that if people fight and kill (in San Fransisco) over team logos, or colors like the Crips and Bloods, beneath the thin surface of our skin there lurks a quick rush to judgement about whether a person is “worthy” to join our group. So I guess there is a learned “instinctual” hatred of the other.
I have never seen a quicker demonstration of a meritocracy than a one-on-one blocking drill. When my grandsons address their coaches “yes sir” (who all happen to be black) out of respect (not required, but learned deference from upperclassmen) it embeds the idea to judge by the value to the team, nothing else. There are few other areas where where wealth and privilege are immediately dispelled like they are on the field. And from having watched quite a few games I’m not so sure things are better up north. And if we disapprove of racism so much more up “here” why aren’t things better. I have no idea but I bet the income disparity is as bad up here as it is down south, and I guess income is one way we keep score in society.
Mark L. Bail says
Orange is the New Black last night. Piper was told to sit with the white women. One of them says, “tribalism, not racism.” There’s no question tribalism comes from deep psychological roots, but on a societal level, something has to activate it and encourage it.
I see how race plays out in my largely white suburban school where I see interracial couples and biracial children. These things are not an issue in school. This was not always the case, and yet it’s still unpopular in many parts of the country.
The difference here is, most of my students are middle-class. The black kids who grow up in East Longmeadow have it easier than some of our METCO kids who come from Springfield and what’s termed the “ghetto.” The METCO kids live in one culture and go to school in another. Some of them are poor. Sometimes they have more issues fitting in. We have less of a problem with race itself and more of a problem with class. The two merge–no doubt about it–but we have less old-fashioned racism. In the South, there are plenty of poor white people.
I don’t know where your grandson lives, Scott, but I’m guessing it’s one of the more cosmopolitan areas. The research triangle perhaps? Western North Carolina might be a different story.
History comes into play with the fact that different policies have increased and preserved segregation. No Politician frequently mentions the iniquities of housing, and the fact that towns like East Longmeadow, where I teach, have no affordable housing. We have de facto segregation. Meanwhile, the burden of poverty, which is more closely linked to race in Massachusetts, is borne by our cities where housing is cheapest, and property tax rate can’t keep up with the costs.
Christopher says
…about my own views of race and why I don’t see it as an issue and am baffled why others do. My circles have always been pretty white, but the African Americans I do encounter and interact with have been like me in every other way. Therefore I don’t automatically assume they are disadvantaged. I think you have it right when you talk about class. That’s where some real work needs to be done.
nopolitician says
Thanks for the shout-out. As a white person living in Springfield, it is very easy to see casual racism because I interact with people who do not live in Springfield and who assume that I must think the same way they do – so they let it all hang out.
I was in a discussion a few years ago with people who stated that Springfield’s largest park, Forest Park, was a place to avoid. Specifically because of “the people there”. What did that consist of? Mostly black families having barbecues. No trouble whatsoever, but the presence of a majority of black people scares the hell out of a lot of white people, and the park gets a reputation among some as a place to avoid.
I hear the same thing all the time regarding Springfield itself. People state that they can actually see people who are on welfare or are on Section 8, and then say that they just don’t want to be around those people. I doubt anyone has super powers to see whether someone is on welfare, so the obvious visual cue is that the people they see aren’t white. Although it is factually true that people who are not white are statistically more likely to be poor and receive social services, people cannot stop their train of thought assume that any people who are not white are poor.
I also get people telling me how they avoid the city and specific places because they are “dangerous” – but these are places like grocery stores, malls, restaurants – places where there is no past record of violence and places where violence is not likely to happen (since violence almost always surrounds drug dealing, domestic incidents and gang activity). I mean, people have a higher chance of being injured on their drive to the mall than being a victim of violence at the mall, but no one focuses on that. The common thread is that these places have a preponderance of black people, and when white people from the suburbs walk in, their immediate reaction is “scary and dangerous”.
As you know, most communities surrounding Springfield are white by a huge majority – upwards of 80%, and there are some schools in some suburbs which are over 90% white (and most of the non-whites are Hispanic or Asian). This is not coincidental. This is engineered by state and local policies which are largely disguised (though sometimes the veneer wears off). Housing is the biggest factor – rental units are scarce in the suburbs, as is cheaper housing that isn’t age-restricted. I still remember watching an anti-casino video which explained that if certain businesses were allowed into some community, it would mean that this would attract undesirable people into the community who would work at the businesses. The implication I took away was that it was race-based.
This lack of racial interaction makes it very convenient for people in this state to ignore race. Yes, people living in the suburbs have some interaction with nonwhite people, but the interaction is so rare that they can easily mentally classify those people as either “white like me” or if the interaction is negative, they’re “from Springfield”. This is a very common slur around here, and its meaning is very clear. I remember reading an article about a woman who opposed age-restricted housing in Longmeadow because it would attract “people from Springfield”. There was even a priest in a church in Agawam who used this slur as a proxy for “violent people”, and the police chief in Northampton uses it to describe non-whites who go to the bars there.
Racial segregation is prevalent across the entire state, and if people really want to do something about racism, I would suggest that working to break down housing barriers is the best place to start.
People can say that they are comfortable living next door to a black person all they want, but if they hold the position that they only want to live in a community with no rental housing and houses that are $450k and upward, the odds of you living next to a black person are miniscule. Why? Because when most black people – who make up just 8% of our population – are lumped into communities with badly funded schools, communities in which is is very hard to “pull yourself by your bootstraps” (try opening a business in a neighborhood that is impoverished – no customers to buy your goods/services) – they do not have the same opportunities as a suburban family and most will not do as well. Because of that, there just aren’t enough successful black people in Massachusetts to make up more than a handful of families in each wealthy community.
jconway says
In some respects, the people of Beaumont, TX have more intellectual honesty when they openly state that ‘you people stay on your side of the town’ in discussions on open housing. The Helen Lovejoy’s of Amherst are screaming ‘won’t somebody please think of the property values and curb appeal sightlines’ when they really mean the same damn thing. Time for housing barriers to end, affordable housing should be a right others can’t vote against and it should be integrated into every community in this state.
nopolitician says
Zoning is a massive distortion in the so-called “free market”. A community like Winchester wants to create an exclusionary socialist-for-just-residents utopia by only allowing rich people to join in their club; the way to break that down is to allow someone satisfy the demand in a cheaper way, for example, by putting up an apartment block for those who want to take advantage of Winchester’s schools. At some point Winchester’s schools (and property values) would equalize with other communities.
Our system of housing is stifling this state. We have communities in which many want to live but can’t afford, and we have communities which can afford but few want to live – and this is all fueled by exclusion.
scott12mass says
Without getting the govt all involved here’s a quick way everyone on here can make things better. Next time you go out to buy a car seek out the first non-traditional salesman you can find (black, hispanic, female, etc) and deal with them.
petr says
… not because the north is worse than the south, but because the north has more millionaires and billionaires. the poor in Mississippi are much poorer than the poor in Massachusetts, and the rich in Mississippi are much poorer than the rich in Massachusetts. That’s what income disparity means.
Once again, the comparisons are invidious
Mark L. Bail says
Massachusetts has one of the highest variances in income.
The South has the highest percentage of poor, as measured by poverty rate.
paulsimmons says
Christopher, Juneteenth, post-Charleston, is not the best time for any sanctimonious nonsense from you, particularly when it’s not supported by the facts.
First point Rosa Parks did not spontaneously decide to give up her seat; she was recruited for the task by the Montgomery Women’s Political Council. Parks was an even greater hero than per conventional wisdom, because she knew the risks and acted anyway.
Second point: Martin Luther King was not the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott; E’.D. Nixon, the head of the local NAACP chapter organized and led the action in collaboration with the W.P.C. King originally tried to avoid association with the boycott, but was pressured into the role of spokesman.
The March on Washington was in fact a sophisticated protest against the racism of the Kennedy Administration, and resulted from a 1962 meeting between Robert Kennedy and various black leaders at James Baldwin’s apartment; the consensus of which was that the President and Attorney General were irredeemable racists. The operating premises of the March were twofold: that Kennedy’s election in 1960 was due to last-minute switches among black voters, and that an alliance existed between the civil rights movement and the liberal wing of the labor movement, in particular, the United Auto Workers.
In order to be politically effective, the pressure had to be both tangible and subtle; hence the aspirational rhetoric on the Mall, backed up by 300,000 marchers.
In fairness, King grew into the role of leadership, and Robert Kennedy evolved to anti-racism, but the sentimental bullshit you were taught cannot be furtherest from the historical facts.
paulsimmons says
n/t
Christopher says
I know now at least some of what you mention, but there is really no reason to be upset with ME about it! Few people probably cringe harder than I do when history is oversimplified.
thebaker says
And the Christopher Columbus story, and Cowboys and Indians . . .
SomervilleTom says
In your summary, I don’t see the most important part: hatred.
Separate bubblers weren’t about cooties, they were about visceral race-based revulsion. Hatred.
Many white people hate black people. Many more white people believe themselves superior to black people, even if they don’t admit to explicit hatred. This isn’t about teaching or policy or philosophy or politics. It simply IS.
I’m writing from Prague on my phone, I can’t write more now. Discussing racism without talking about emotion is pointless.
Christopher says
WHY are they revulsed? What do they think will happen if they drink from the same bubbler as someone of another race? Then again, maybe the fact that there is so much emotion behind it is what makes it pointless. Like I said – childish.
SomervilleTom says
The “why” has deep roots that have everything to do with emotion and passion and little to do with rationality. I think “childish” is too simple and too easily excuses ourselves.
Among other things, whites bred blacks as slaves for generations, the way horses are bred today. White men had sex with female slaves whenever they felt like it, while mercilessly beating, selling, or even killing male slaves who dared to do the same with white women. The same qualities that made slaves powerful — fecundity, strength, endurance — made them “dangerous” as well.
The resulting mix of passions, fears, and violence is better learned by reading Faulkner than by erudite philosophical dialogue. “Light in August” is a great starting point.
SomervilleTom says
n/m
jconway says
From Charleston to Beaumont. And clearly Cleveland, Baltimore, Ferguson, Chicago and yes, Boston too. There should no ghettos in America, no cities that are majority minority surrounded by suburbs that are 90% white. De jure segregation is alive and well and ensures these problems won’t go away. I am no longer convinced white America is ready to face this harsh fact or endorse a real solution.
petr says
… More of sin, and Horror the soul of the plot.
According to reports I’ve read the killer spent at least an hour with the victims attending a small, publicly advertised, regular Bible study. It wasn’t until some discussion got heated that the killer drew down on them and, even then, the victims attempted to talk him down. Once he started firing, however, he ended up reloading the gun at least five times. (I don’t know what kind of gun, so the number of bullets fired could be between 20 and 100… or more) That suggests a complexity of motivations, reactions and control not explained simply. I really don’t know how to explain it.
I don’t know that racism is the killers direct motivation as much as, perhaps, the killers excuse. Blind rage in the service of racism usually doesn’t stop to chat with the victims first. I’m thinking of previous shootings whereupon the killer simply walked in and opened fire. It’s a difficult thing, even for the mentally ill, to kill someone and some distances is usually kept to prevent a humanizing effect that would make it even harder. Bombings are an even more distant method of killing. This was different. The killer seemed to engage them, and then turn on them. It seems to split the difference between hesitancy and cold blooded killing in a way I can’t quite contend with…
This is not to say racism isn’t in it. It clearly is. It’s just not simply racism, as far I can see. Racism might be the push that put him over the edge, but — just guessing from his actions– absent the racism this killer would still be looking for an excuse to kill. And, in many ways, that’s not very different from Senator Anal Leakage claiming this is about ‘Religious Freedom’. It’s also an excuse — a mental construct — that makes it easier for him to say something he couldn’t plausibly say with a straight face otherwise. That’s what we’re fighting here. That’s the real problem. That an invalid excuse can take on heinous motivations — whether it be to kill or to elide killing — without people standing up and saying no…
This paragraph is a truth. It is concise and precise in both description and prescription. What follows, also, is spot on. It is clear that the killer here chose a side. I suspect he chose sides as a reason to kill, rather than kill in defense of his side. The desire, also, to ‘start a race war’ speaks to delusions of great consequence. But the very existence of a side to choose, whatever his baseline mental state, remains a deep problem in our country.
The thing is to say, right out, what it is. To not allow room for excuse or elision. Charley has done a good job of it here. There is racism in this country. There is madness in this country. Santorum wants to say anything but. We have to name it and, where appropriate, own it. I can say that with relatively little sin (of this kind) of my own, and perhaps that’s a cheap grace to be had. Santorum, however, perhaps with very little personal racism of his own (I have no idea), commits a perpetuating sin, perhaps even a compounding one, where the virulence that is out there is not only not confronted but avoidance is sanctioned, when he tries to name other motives.
The thing of it is, however, is that Santorum is an idiot and it is counterproductive to generate any amount of anger or spite at a moron. Avoidance and short term mood reparation are distinct American habits of mind and this is perhaps our new iteration of the ‘peculiar institution.’ This deliberation on excuses however, does display an underlying, unspoken, awareness of the horror in our past: perhaps only as looming shadow, but present. Santorum, frankly, isn’t smart enough to grasp this and I condescend to him. And this is not much different for the stone racists: usually under-educated and spoon-fed their thoughts from an early rage the racist underclass (and I use that term deliberately) bristles at the common condescension that is (not entirely unfairly) directed at them. And I separate the underclass from the educated, but amoral, powers that be who take advantage of the underclasses prejudices for their own ends. And anger and a frustration at the frankly backwards thinking of some people, on the part of those who consider themselves enlightened seethes and a cycle of stupidity and anger are endured and returned to over and over again. And the problem reveals itself as a lack of compassion in all directions. There is, to be sure, a great deal of difference between condescension and compassion, but try to tell that to someone on the receiving end of either…
And then I see the relatives of the victims stand up in court and profess forgiveness and a steadfast desire to return, not just to a church, but to the church that was the scene of the crime, and say prayers for the killer. And I have hope. Whatever else happens, I’m on their side.
fredrichlariccia says
” If they can get you to believe absurdities, they can get you to commit atrocities.”
Fred Rich LaRiccia
joeltpatterson says
to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Case for Reparations. You may not end up agreeing with Coates that some sort of reparations are owed, but I would wager that most people have no idea of the true history of America contained in this article. Jim Crow was not merely arbitrary laws about drinking fountains but kleptocracy, a reign of thieves, who stole the votes, the property, the labor, and the lives of black people (and Hispanic people too, when you look past east Texas into the Rio Grande valley, New Mexico, Arizona and California). And if you look north into Chicago, you see more kleptocracy in how African Americans had to buy homes “on contract” which made them twice as expensive as homes in white neighborhoods. The ghetto was made by policy and institutional decisions:
And after you read that article, check out Coates’ reflections on how he came to write it.
jconway says
And it fundamentally altered my thinking on racial issues, which were already altered by close friends and their experience at U Chicago and dealing with the UCPD and CPD. I think it should be required reading in public classrooms across America, full black history should be directly embedded throughout the year in history education, not some silly month long exercise in pedantic sophistry. I came into college thinking affirmative action should be based around class, not race, and came out of it recognizing how essential it is and how much more is needed to level the playing field.
I rolled my eyes whenever TNC mentioned ‘white supremacy’ in prior articles, not after reading that one. Now it makes sense. Now I get how white supremacy is not just the KKK guy in the South in the 60s but the modern criminal justice system, the modern housing loan market, and persistent federal neglect of our cities. It exists systemically and it exists today. It’s never too late to join the struggle against racism, but the time too many well meaning white liberals stayed stuck in neutral should end.