The recent arrests at a Starbucks in Philadelphia as examples of a troubling notion that is near-invisible to most white folks, even as we participate: That many (if not most) public spaces are self-evidently white – and socially “policed” as such.
“When the anonymous black person enters the white space, others there immediately try to make sense of him or her—to figure out “who that is,” or to gain a sense of the nature of the person’s business and whether they need to be concerned.” – Elijah Anderson, “The White Space” https://t.co/i3F7gg6cNC
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) April 13, 2018
You don’t have to be ideologically or casually racist to participate in this; doubtless people who are appalled by blatant hatred participate in this kind of social policing all the time. I doubt the Philly Starbucks manager thought of himself as racist. It’s not necessarily ideological; prejudices burrow deep to the amygdala, and remain invisible to those who continue to harbor them. This stuff is hard, and stubborn: Just “being right” doesn’t necessarily count for much.
Renée Graham notes with fatigue (emphasis mine):
For black people, this video has been viral forever. This is what we live with every damn day.
This isn’t a Starbucks problem. It could have been a fast food restaurant, a mall — or a street in Cambridge. Last Friday police responded to a report of a naked man on Massachusetts Avenue. A video shows Selorm Ohene, a black 21-year-old Harvard student, being struck several times after he was already pinned to the ground by three Cambridge police officers and an MBTA transit cop. Cambridge Mayor Marc C. McGovern called the incident “disturbing.”
Everything black people do is weighted by irrational white fear. It’s mentally exhausting to always be on guard, even during mundane moments like waiting in a coffee shop – or asking for directions.
Boston has made itself a “white space”, not just by blatant racism in policing, home lending, schooling, and the like; but in this more subtle but suffocating way of policing “white spaces”. And these supposed subconscious “micro-aggressions” can turn, under stress, into mega-aggressions, even leading to wrongful use of police power.
“Personally, I’ve never seen much difference between the South and the North,” comedian Dick Gregory wrote in a 1971 issue of Ebony. “Down South white folks don’t care how close I get as long as I don’t get too big. Up North white folks don’t care how big I get as long as I don’t get too close.”
Well, what if we didn’t care about how close?
My fellow white folk in MA: Let’s invert our internal conversation here. Can we tell ourselves a new, more positive story? Can we envision something more aligned with our stated values? Can we accommodate making an easier time for our black friends, neighbors, and colleagues? Doesn’t seem like too much to ask, does it?
Black people belong.
- Black people belong in the coffee shop. In your restaurant. In your store.
- Black people belong in “your” neighborhood; on the sidewalk; in their cars; in a cab; on the T.
- Black people belong in your schools, in your classroom, at your gym, at the library.
- Black people belong, dressed nicely, or shabbily, or meh. They belong in short hair, long hair, dreadlocks, or whatever. And they don’t require your approval.
- Black people belong at Fenway Park, at the Strand, at the MFA, at Symphony Hall, at the Middle East.
- Black people belong, in Milton or Mattapan; Brockton or Boxborough; Roxbury or … West Roxbury. In “nice” neighborhoods. They belong on your street. In your apartment complex. As your roommate.
- Black people belong at Harvard, and Bunker Hill. They belong at Tufts, Wellesley, and UMass. As your high school valedictorian. As not-valedictorian. They don’t have to be exceptional to deserve your respect.
- Black people belong in your family; in your church; in your circle of friends.
- Black people belong in your office; as your employee; co-worker; as your boss; in the corner office.
- Black people belong, as your doctor or lawyer; as your loan officer; as your contractor; as your handyman.
- Black people belong in your political party (and the other one); in City Hall; on the school board; in the Oval Office.
It’s not a special thing to ask; it’s the privilege of being not special, not particular. Of being anonymous in public. Of being normal.
Can we do this?
SomervilleTom says
Thank you for this.
An excellent starting point is to — again — demolish the canard that “racism” requires some intentional and explicit hostility towards a particular race, skin color, or set of features. If it were that easy to identify, racism would have been eliminated generations ago. It is not that easy, and it is still rampant today throughout Boston, throughout Massachusetts, and throughout America.
A colleague and friend lives in Winchester. She denies that she is “racist”, and even says (without pausing) “Some of my best friends are black”. She is fearful to walk through the neighborhoods of Central Square in Cambridge in the middle of a workday. She says that she feels “uncomfortable”. She is not a bigot. She IS racist.
This is a pervasive oppression that is all around us and is literally invisible to some of us.
We MUST change this reality. That change MUST start within ourselves. It is not enough to casually ask ourselves if we dislike black people, equally casually (and honestly answer “No”, and move on to the next topic. We must be willing to actually LISTEN to the experiences of our black brothers and sisters. We must find time and space to sit down and ask them about their experiences and even about their experiences of us. We must then be willing to sit and LISTEN — without argument, without anger, without defense — to their response. It is painful and hard.
It’s worth mentioning that all of this is equally true for sexism, and requires the same difficult learning.
Christopher says
Of course we can. I dare say the majority of us do.
Charley on the MTA says
If it were that easy, then this discussion wouldn’t be necessary. 😐
Christopher says
Well, I DO think this is a lot easier than we sometimes make it out to be – just treat everyone how you would like to be treated without regard for such superficial traits as skin color. Your Black People Belong litany above get’s a huge DUH! from me.
SomervilleTom says
Hmm. Here’s one of those “duh” bullets:
For years, you have steadfastly and adamantly rejected the obvious implication of this: that when your office is lily-white, and the pool of qualified applicants is diverse, then your employer is practicing racial discrimination.
In previous commentary here, you restrict the definition of racism so that it requires conscious and explicit intent to discriminate.
When you do that, you negate pretty much everything being asserted by this “duh” litany.
Christopher says
NO! You continue to misunderstand me. I can and do simultaneously believe that it is perfectly fine for black people to be in these contexts, but if they happen not to be in a particular circumstance that it is not prima facie evidence of discrimination, Your penultimate paragraph is absolutely correct and I stand by it, but I reject in the strongest terms the conclusions you draw from it. Skin color does not matter in either direction – period!
SomervilleTom says
I understand you, Christopher. I simply disagree with you. In my view, your stated position is self-contradictory and is at odds with observed facts.
I understand that you feel that it’s “perfectly fine for black people to be in these contexts”. Our difference is in the conclusion we draw when black people want to be in these contexts and are excluded.
My argument is that when an employer has an applicant pool of qualified minorities, and yet hires only whites, that employer is (illegally) discriminating. You reject this argument, claiming that racism requires conscious and explicit intent.
Your argument contradicts your final sentence. It is obvious, from the disparity between the qualified applicant pool and the workplace, that skin color in fact DOES matter for that employer.
Christopher says
It’s not at all obvious to me that skin color matters to the employer. I would have to see the CVs of all the prospects myself before second guessing hiring decisions, with the possible exception of instances where the specific employer has a documented history of intentionally discriminating.
SomervilleTom says
Christopher, what I am describing IS the “documented history” of discrimination. Intent is not relevant to these facts.
The key point that you flatly deny is that discrimination based on skin color matters to the victims of the discrimination. Whether or not a particular hiring manager intends to discriminate is irrelevant to the damage done by the decision.
Your second sentence demonstrates the utter futility of the approach you demand. If I have patent application that claims to provide a perpetual motion machine, I do not need to review the details of the application to identify the specific claim that is in error.
The problem at hand is that minorities are discriminated against in hiring (and elsewhere). The question of whether or not that discrimination is intentional is irrelevant.
Christopher says
We of course fundamentally disagree on intent. I refuse to settle this based on stats alone.
petr says
Lack of ‘prima facie evidence’ is not a reason, however, to defend such circumstances as definitively not racist. There are, likely, particular instances where such circumstances really are happenstance. But if the problem is truly pervasive, then such happenstance is likely to be relatively rare.
As long as we’re tossing about legal terms like ‘prima facie’ with such abandon, the very best that can be said of such circumstances as described is that they provide ‘probable cause’ to believe discrimination exists.
Skin color may not matter to you. But we’re talking about situations in which it may matter to the person in charge of hiring and firing.
SomervilleTom says
Many, even most, of these situations involve implicit “systemic” racism, where no specific individual is knowingly racist.
An example of such a practice is in setting minimum requirements for a particular role. A company would say “this position requires a relevant 4-year degree and 3 years of relevant experience.” Nothing overtly racist about that statement. In practice, investigators would find that these “requirements” were routinely waived for white male applicants (usually because those applicants came to the employer through “trusted” contacts) and enforced for minority candidates and women.
The net result is a hiring policy that discriminates in favor of white men and against minorities and women.
It is supposed to be illegal, and such requirements were rigorously opposed by government regulators in the late 1970s. We have, sadly, largely relaxed such regulation today.
johntmay says
Reminds me of how so many companies hide their age discrimination by requiring 5-10 years experience because it would be illegal to say “must be between the ages of 25-35.
Christopher says
Well, you introduced another variable, which is in fact affirmative action in a different form. If the employer is not adhering to its own policies that’s an issue that may also need addressing, though I’m not sure we ever will (or even should) completely get rid of “who you know”.
SomervilleTom says
@ Christopher and affirmative action:
It is all the same thing. “Affirmative action” is one example of how the government attempts to address this issue.
Every corporate policy EVERYWHERE includes “weasel wording” that allows at least executives to exercise discretion in applying that policy.
The point is not to get rid of “who you know”. The point is to enforce the law against discrimination, whether or not somebody knows somebody.
SomervilleTom says
Another example of subtle yet pervasive systemic racism happens in blue-collar roles, where layoffs and promotions typically factor in seniority.
As an employer addresses a pre-existing issue with discrimination, the members of the affected group have little nor seniority. They are therefore the first to be laid off and the last to be promoted.
Seniority causes layoffs to hit minorities much harder than white males, and keeps management and executive ranks lily-white long after (decades, in some companies) lower-level mitigation efforts are “complete”.
The result is to perpetuate and extend the de facto segregation that the employer initially attempts to correct.
As has been observed elsewhere in this thread, if these problems were easy to address, they would have been resolved generations ago.
johntmay says
Seems to me that eventually, we’re all going to look alike and race will not be that identifiable on the surface, that’s the good news. The bad news is that we’ll figure our a different way to divide ourselves and hate each other for not being one of us.
edgarthearmenian says
Yes, you are correct, John. Having lived two years in Niger, French West Africa, I saw that the hatred between the Djerma and the Hausa peoples, let alone the contempt for both groups by the Tuaregs is enough for me to agree with you that it is really about suspicion and hatred between and among groups that takes precedence in the hierarchy of biases. Prejudice and racism exists worldwide, always has. And virtue signaling by Charlie and Tom will only make it worse here.
SomervilleTom says
What the heck is “virtue signaling”?
I think you’re waving you hands in attempt to rationalize and excuse racism.
johntmay says
vir·tue sig·nal·ing
noun
the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.
SomervilleTom says
Thanks for explanation. If the complaint is that I express my contempt for racism in order to express the moral correctness of my position, I plead “Guilty as charged”. Racism is immoral.
I stand by my comment.
johntmay says
I think edgarthearmenian is trying to convey the notion that when one expresses their contempt for such things in an environment such as BMG, it is used to elevate one above the rest where such a distinction ought not be made. It seems to be a given that all the participants on BMG have contempt for racism, none more or less than others.
It reminds me of a particularly annoying person I used to work with who, when attending a meeting regarding the possible loss of a major client due to a particular problem, would proclaim loudly, “I don’t want us to lose this client!”
Yeah, as if any of us in the meeting wanted to lose the client.
petr says
I think edgarthearmenian is trying to minimize the virtues signaled by Tom and Charley by making the issues about Tom and Charley’s ego and not about the virtues. Convenient for him, it is, since that way he doesn’t have to confront what about the virtues signalled that make him uncomfortable.
SomervilleTom says
Societies across the world today rape women and girls and mutilate their genitalia. We do not and should not allow such practices in America because of that tragic reality.
The demographic that squawks the loudest about making racism legally, socially, and culturally unacceptable is the group of people who for whatever reason still defend those who practice it or who practice it themselves.
petr says
IF:
I am from Boston
AND:
Boston has a reputation for being racist.
THEN:
I share in that reputation unless I SIGNAL otherwise.
The only reason not to signal virtue, in such instance, is if your virtue accords with the status quo.
Charley on the MTA says
“Virtue signaling” will not make racism worse.
Racism will make racism worse.
Christopher says
There is absolutely no reason the burden should be on you to defy a stereotype like that. That’s like insisting that mainstream Muslims condemn Islamist-motivated terrorism louder than the rest of us do. Am I seriously the only person around here who thinks that racism is an accusation leveled against someone which should be evaluated as innocent until proven guilty?!
SomervilleTom says
@ Christopher: You seem to be the only person who attempts to narrow the definition of “racism” to become the personal accusation you object to.
Once again, your own comment illustrates the internal inconsistency of your argument.
I agree that if a personal accusation of racism were being leveled against an individual, then that individual should of course be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
That’s NOT what we’re talking about here. We are talking about “white spaces” and UNINTENTIONAL and UNCONSCIOUS racial discrimination. This is not about men and women who hate black people. It is about men and women who are uncomfortable in minority neighborhoods. It is not about explicitly racist hiring policies, it is about workplaces where there are NO blacks even though dozens or hundreds of qualified blacks apply for openings.
The standard of “innocent until proven guilty” is a legal standard applied to persons accused of criminal acts. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
Christopher says
I believe it should be the ethical standard. If people are simply uncomfortable in minority neighborhoods on that basis alone that too is a problem IMO. You cannot discriminate in a way that actually matters without being deliberate or conscious about it.
SomervilleTom says
You persist, in your very language, in focusing on individual acts.
Systemic discrimination is done by groups of people or companies. It emerges from unintended consequences of policies and procedures.
Attempting to define away a problem does not solve it, and often makes it worse.
Christopher says
But we ARE talking about individual acts! If you complain that there are not enough black people in a company you are accusing the hiring manager of being a racist.
SomervilleTom says
Here are your words (emphasis mine):
An individual who hires somebody he knows is not being deliberately or consciously racist. In a field where minorities are few and far between, everyone he knows will be white. His individual act is not deliberate, conscious or even racist.
It is the consequence of an entire company or field doing the same that produces discrimination.
Christopher says
So don’t call it racist – call it cronyism.
SomervilleTom says
I don’t understand why you so desperately hang onto this.
It isn’t “cronyism” for hiring managers to turn to qualified people they know. The problem isn’t that the people being hired are cronies. The problem is that minorities are unable to break into closed cultures like this.
The problem is SYSTEMIC racism. No one individual behaves in an improper way. The SYSTEM as a whole discriminates. No “intent”, nothing “deliberate” (because systems do not have intent or motive).
Racist nevertheless.
scout says
You certainly can in way that actually matters to the people being discriminated against.. It happens all the time.
jconway says
Sorry John Roberts, this is categorically and empirically wrong. There is a wealth of data showing how systematic racism is the result of centuries of implicit bias and unconcious training to define whiteness as something pure and superior to blackness and browness as defined as something impure, hostile, and inferior to whiteness. Race is a powerful social construct. I agree with you it is not a real thing but a social construct. Where we disagree is I believe only a strong effort to systematically untangle ourselves from racism will ultimately defeat it.
That matters a lot more than white people quoting the easy parts of Dr. King and ignoring all the real ways he called out American society for its centuries long systematic violence toward non-white people at home and abroad. A major component of his Riverside speech denouncing Vietnam linked napalming brown civilians in South Vietnam to the very real genocides our government comitted against indingenous people and the genocide against African Americans commited under slavery. We have not reconciled or reparated with our genocidal past the way the Germans have with their far more recent genocide or the South Africans did with their apartheid.
Christopher says
Some people really do not have those biases, implicit or otherwise, and I prefer to assume the positive unless the negative can be demonstrated. To quote the musical South Pacific, I am firmly in the “You’ve got to be carefully taught” to hate or see yourself as superior camp.
SomervilleTom says
There is a wealth of data that compellingly demonstrates how incorrect you are.
In practice, there is a continuum between “free of racism, implicit or otherwise” on the left hand extreme and “deliberately and intentionally hateful of blacks” on the right. The actual distribution is likely to be something approaching a curve, with most people in the middle and with relatively smaller “tails” at each extreme.
The behavior we are discussing here is emergent. A video camera capturing the behavior of an ant colony shows clear “signals” moving through the colony when a worker ant finds a piece of food. The workers congregate around the find, and collectively move it towards the center.
No single ant demonstrates this behavior, and the actual concrete fact of the macroscopic signaling cannot be discovered by examination of individual ants. Such signals are emergent behavior that result from the colony as a whole.
Similar phenomena are seen in bacterial colonies. The bacterial colony as a whole demonstrates hard, factual, observable and predictable behavior that is not found in any specific bacterium.
The systemic racism that we discuss here is another example of such behavior. It does not result from the extremes of the distribution, it instead emerges from the collective behavior of all those in the middle.
Your own self-serving definition of”racism” and corollary confirmation bias excludes all but the two extremes of reality.
The result is that your conclusions are utterly divorced from the actual reality that the rest of the world has observed for decades.
Christopher says
I’d like to think the homo sapiens species is a lot more advanced than ants and individual members thereof can think for themselves.
SomervilleTom says
Come on, Christopher.
The point is that collections of things — ants, bacteria, chemicals, automobiles, and homo sapiens — exhibit behavior that is not apparent by examining individuals in the collection.
petr says
Christopher, we live in a world built by those who have come before us.
We can’t have the world we wish to live in. We can only hope to build that world for those who come after us.
Those who came before us were racist and encoded that racism deeply in our laws and in our society. To the extent that any individual ‘can think for themselves’ any such thinking that was done by any and all who’ve come before us was either fervently in favor of the laws and the societal edicts or in silent acquiescence to the same. In this, we can see, that the ability to think for oneself is insufficient in the face of the problem.
We have taken the first steps towards dismantling and reversing the legalities of racism that was built by those who came before. But we are opposed in this effort. Likewise we have taken steps to remake the society, but are equally opposed in these efforts.
Your naive insistence that it all comes down to individual intent assists those who are opposed to change and impedes those who are fighting for the change. It really really is true: if you’re not part of the solution you are part of the problem.
petr says
I think that may happen. I do not think such is required to happen. Indeed, I don’t see how the human race could have survived even this long, never mind much longer, if this was a core function of human interaction.
No doubt the overtly racist amongst us are emboldened by the racist-in-chief in the White House… and the fact of Trump as lowlife-in-chief was a clear reaction to the chastening presence of the previous occupant of the White House… a man who was, simultaneously, black and competent, as well as possessing a remarkable degree of quiet integrity, even in the face of calumny. All of which is to say, the character of leadership counts and the lack of character in leadership hurts. What we do and how we decide to divide, or not divide, ourselves, is very often a function of character in command. Ulysses S. Grant made an affirmative case for the vote of freedmen in his relentless pursuit of the first iteration of the Klan and a robust reconstruction. All that fell apart after he left office and the northerners compromised it away… unto the era of Jim Crow along with the second – much more pervasive – iteration of the Klan and their ‘monuments’ to rebels. Roosevelt quietly left many African Americans out of the New Deal. Truman integrated the military and Eisenhower integrated the schools. Reagan made a lot of ‘states rights’ noises and Bush senior thought Clarence Thomas represented the best of African-Americans. Character in leadership, counts, and when we do come to this place where we’ll be in a position to ‘figure out a different way to divide ourselves’ who’ll be in charge will be very important.
Charley on the MTA says
Yes, everyone should know that I deleted a comment by our friend seascraper, which followed the classic model “The problem isn’t racism! It’s [insert racist garbage rant].” It’s useful, I suppose, when someone so distills your point for you.
I will endeavor to prevent this comments section from becoming … too much of a comments section.
jconway says
I think we should also ask ourselves why BMG and the typical grassroots progressive meeting in Massachusetts also resembles a white space. Why too much of Beacon Hill resembles a white space. Why a diverse city like Boston continues to have such starkly segregated schools or how formerly diverse places like Cambridge and Somerville are becoming wealthier and whiter spaces because of gentrification.
It’s real easy to criticize the overt racism of Southie during the busing riots, Charlottesville, or the typical Trump rally without also looking at the covert racism of housing segregation patterns in the Boston area, our local criminal justice and policing systems, our segregated schools and our segregated communities. I always chuckle at the “hate has no home here” signs I see throughout some of the whitest suburbs in the state. Particularly the ones that go out of their way to pride themselves on being progressive, while having next to no people of color in their community at all. Nobody ther seems to ask why or wonders what to do to make it better.
Moving from Cambridge to the South Side of Chicago was jarring since I had never seen segregation in the North on that scale before. It is also because I had barely spent anytime in Boston proper during my childhood here. There is no such thing as an unsafe neighborhood, and the sooner we realize that the places and people we write off have value too, the better off we will be. Dudley Square is an awesome community. Chelsea has some of the best restaurants in the GBA. So does Grove Hall. So does Mattapan. It is time we celebrate those parts of Boston and New England as much as we generate the clapboard church on the town green. And we should make those traditional New England towns truly accessible to everyone as well.
tedf says
I have no economic dog in this fight: my neighborhood, Roslindale, is majority-minority. But I think your comment points to the real issue. In our part of the world, families tend to have a larger-than-usual percentage of their wealth in their homes. And so when we say that the de facto segregation you observe in some towns or neighborhoods is racist, we are in effect demanding that families sacrifice some percentage of their wealth to accomplish the social goal of eradicating racism. (I am sure there are non-economic reasons why non-whites either cannot or do not purchase homes in expensive “white spaces,” but I think the main barrier is cost; because you mention “wealthier and whiter spaces,” I take it you agree).
That’s a tough sell, and I think it is probably unwise tactically, and maybe wrong in principle, to attribute opposition to measures that lower residential property values to racism.
Along similar lines, I would point out that property values are not just a matter of each homeowner’s wealth; they are also a matter of public services, which of course we finance with property taxes. So calls to take steps to lower property values are also calls to shrink the tax base.
SomervilleTom says
Horsefeathers.
I agree with nearly all of your comment, and certainly agree with the thrust of your argument.
The above is an over-reach, though.
Any person of color who walked through Southie of the 1960s or 1970s literally took their life in their hands. The same is true for whites walking through through SouthEast DC in the same period. I am confident that every major US city and most urban areas in America had such unsafe neighborhoods then and still has them today.
The plain fact is that there certainly ARE neighborhoods where minorities are at risk, and there are neighborhoods where whites are similarly at risk.
jconway says
You make an excellent point Tom and let my own comment be a teaching moment for all of us as an example of my own white framing bias and white privilege at work.
I would go as far as to say that there are few neighbrohoods where minorities are not at risk. Ferguson shows us that the suburbs are not safe, maybe even less safe, since minorities have to face racist policing. Similarly, majority non-white neighborhoods were designed to concentrate poverty and crime in easy to police spaces and are thus unsafe to their inhabitants. My frame of reference was the idea that a white person either taking the risk TedF discusses above and actually moving into a neighborhood of color or a white person choosing to work or play in such a neighorbood would be subjected to crime or other risks.
I actually strongly disagree with that, as someone who has campaigned door to door in some of the ‘roughest’ areas in the GBA and Chicago, and as someone who has also taught in some of the ‘roughest’ schools. I disagree with the notion of labeling an area unsafe and making the people of those places ought to be the reason for its struggles. Framing you obviously were not engaging in your fair critique, but you also made a powerful point that downtown Philly Starbucks can be just as dangerous to a non-white person as Southie was in the 70s or a sundown town in the segregated South.
Roslindale is an excellent example, along with both Hyde Parks (Chicago and Boston), of a neighborhood that is actually diverse and has different people living together rather successfully. Roxbury I fear, is gentrifying at a pace that will make it more diverse on paper but in a manner that displaces the non-white at the expense of the white. That is certainly the sentiment I encounter.
TedF the solution I would propose has been widely successful where it is piloted. Very generous housing vouchers to encourage integration by moving more minorities into non-white communities. Gentrification is the inverse of this, but the vouchers could be done in a way to stabilize communities encountering gentrification while also incentivizing suburbs to diversify. There is a great Atlantic piece on how they work (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/chicago-regional-housing-section-eight/398798/). People mislabel Section 8 merely as a public housing program when it is actually a radical and quite successful experiment in housing integration.
tedf says
I wouldn’t call moving to Roslindale a risk. To the contrary, it’s a great neighborhood, very safe, and property values have gone up substantially. I just mentioned it as a way of saying that when I write about this stuff I’m not living in Wellesley or somewhere.
Christopher says
It’s not the fault of the people with those signs you mention that their neighbors aren’t black, and I’m not sure what they individually can do to change that.. They are saying in fact that such people ARE welcome in their community and that is a message we should be applauding. I assume I speak for all BMGers when I say more people of diverse backgrounds would be more than welcome on this site too.
jconway says
It actually is their fault when they refuse to support inclusionary zoning, Section 8, meaningful school integration beyond the window dressing of METCO (which is always hanging by a thread in host communities, even Brookline), and when they voted with their dollars to abandon diverse communities. It is their fault when black children in this state are 5 times less likely to be adopted as white children (an issue that touches me personally as the uncle of two beautiful adopted children of color). I married a non-white spouse, so did my sister, and my brother adopted non-white children. We are three very different people, but the one thing we have in common is we attended one of the most diverse school districts in the country and lived in a diverse neighborhood.
The very ‘color blindness’ you always preach about and hope to see can only happen when we intentionally create policies that foster racial reconciliation and racial justice, and when we refuse to be blind to injustice. Housing injustice and housing segregation are very real issues in Boston, there is a 10 part series in the Globe examining this. I suggest you take your blinders off and become woke if you truly wish to be the change you seek in our community.
Christopher says
No, it is only their fault if they object to a non-white family moving in to town, attending their schools, etc. Wanting to keep a town wealthy does not automatically mean wanting to keep it white. You seem to assume too much correlation between race and class, and while there is no doubt more than there should be it is not automatic. The way to equalize education funding is to equalize education funding, not to make it look good by deliberate integration based on a superficial trait like skin color. If a particular family who displays a hate has no home sign then starts complaining about a non-white child in their child’s school only then do you have a case for both racism and hypocrisy.
SomervilleTom says
This is, literally, the definition of “separate but equal”.
Christopher says
For crying out loud no it’s not! Separate but equal implies DELIBERATE (and yes I know you hate that term) effort to keep people separate. When you show me an instance where an upper middle class black family moves into an upper middle class town and they are still made to feel unwelcome based on skin color alone then we will have a case. The town I grew up and sub in has some non-white families in every elementary school, districted only by geography and capacity and no cross-town bussing. There is neither deliberate segregation nor integration – it CAN be done! The happenstance of disproportionate racial student bodies would matter a lot less if all schools were excellent anyway.
jconway says
I just linked to a Boston Globe article that list several examples of how this continues to the present. The landmark case on housing segregation was a clear example of what you cited. A doctor named Hansberry moved into an upper middle class white neighborhood and was threatened with violence. This happened repeatedly through Chicagoland well into the 1980s. Dr. King faced the greatest physical danger prior to his assasination during his efforts to integrate Chicago, when he had a brick thrown at him in the Bungalow Belt, a Northern Democratic white ethnic enclave.
There is a reason zero black professionals I know accepted good job offers to relocate to Boston from Chicago, New York, DC or Philadelphia. All northern cities with their own shady racist past and present. We have a huge problem and if we continue to sweep it under the rug of color blind kumbayas than we will never resolve it.
As for busing, Dr. King endorsed forced busing as a remedy. I might add my own district of Cambridge successfully implemented busing through a controlled choice model (https://www.cpsd.us/departments/frc/making_your_choices/about_controlled_choice) that was also successful in Detroit (until voters killed it in a backlash election) and continues to be successful in Lexington, KY. Integration solves several problems at once. It ensures that upper middle class parents remain invested in public schools, it spreads the property tax pool around, and it actually improves the educational outcomes of white and black students alike. It also is our best means of destroying racism once and for all.
Christopher says
OK, stipulated that some people still have a problem with race, but probably not those same people who post hate has no home signs which you cited above. That was the part I was reacting to.
SomervilleTom says
Sorry, but your own words present pretty much word-for-word the basis for the LA Jim Crow laws.
We’ve already spent a century trying to undo the consequences of the premise you put forward.
jconway says
Setting aside for a moment the idea that wanting to keep a town wealthy is also an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and anti-American value in my judgment, this desire also has the intended or unintended effect, as the Boston Globe has outlined repeatedly, of enforcing an unspoken color line across the Greater Boston Area.
Your insistence that keeping a town wealthy is not an example of systematic racism is an example of your total ignorance of the subject. Like John Robert,s you keep insisting that ‘the way we stop discriminating against race is to stop discriminating against race’. One does not need a No Blacks Need Apply sign for a home loan to recognize that red lining, with the help of New Deal agencies like the FHA, kept mortgages out of the hands of blacks for generations. That intergenerational black wealth is a fifth of white wealth. That economic equality and racial equality are inextricably linked. There is a reason there are fewer black families eligible for home loans and school slots at Concord Carlisle, and that reason is sytematic racism. Opening every town in the Commonwealth to black families is precisely a policy that will alleviate racism and create the racist free society you claim to crave. Why you continue to insist, as the so called moderates did in the 1950s, that we just need to wait and people naturally want to assocaite with their own kind, is beyond me.
Christopher says
We of course need to ban discriminatory practices you describe, and I thought we had. We should never force people to live somewhere just because we want a superficial trait like skin color is proportionally distributed (unless of course you want to make sure every community has it’s share of redheads or any number of other physical traits too).
jconway says
Please respond to my arguments Christopher.
I made no such argument. That said, there has never been chattel slavery, de facto or de jure segregation, or campaigns of vigilante terrorism backed by state violence into the present day directed against superficial traits other than race. I think this is where your own analysis of the American racial condition and remedies to ameliorate it is rather superficial.
You already think society has arrived at a place where being black matters as much as being a red head, eg. not at all. Yet we have not arrived at that place. The election of an openly racist President should confirm that we are not living in the color blind society you continue to insist we live in.
You also forget the history that many policies of racal segregation were once defended in terms similar to the ones you use. Instead of pushing for integration, we should push to back the black schools truly equal. That was a counterargument made by the majority in Plessy and continued by the more covert defenders of white supremacy including Richard Russell. Russell would always argue that he was not personally a racist, he was just committed to upholding the popular will of his state to continue it’s ‘traditions’ of ‘natural’ racial separation and that black schools were truly equal to whites.
The finding of the Brown majority also was quite clear that separate but equal was an impossible standard to achieve and only through active efforts at forcing integration would actual equality be achieved. Equality cannot happen without integration, and integration cannot happen naturally. If a panel of old dead white men could recognize this in the 1950s, if a similar panel could recognize this with the Kerner Commission in the 1960s, why can’t you recognize it in the 2010s?
Keeping this in mind, you should ask yourselves why most urban school districts continue to be segregated and why the majority non-white schools in those districts continue to be understaffed, underresourced, and underperform majority white schools on state assessments. You should ask why only five municipalities in this state are able to attract 95% of black home loan applicants. You should ask Bill Russell how receptive 1970’s Reading was to an upper middle class black resident trying to move in, and wonder why no amount of Hate Has No Home Here signs can make up for the fact that this same community remains 95% white, as do most communities just outside of Boston.
Or why the white population is declining in places like Randolph, Brockton, Chelsea, Lynn, Salem, Fitchburg, Lawrence and other communities that have seen an influx of black and hispanic population increases. Even as the rate of white population moving back to cities is increasing at a historic rate. They are not moving back to cities percieved to be governed by and for minorities, and some whites are actively fleeing them as white flight has never truly abated.
We need an activist government committed to recognizing systematic racism and committed to ending it. It continues to disappoint me that someone I consider an online friend, a fellow Christian, and a longtime DSC member fails to grasp this. I am not angered by it, just deeply saddened and resigned.
scott12mass says
I think when we examine “white spaces” we also need to give credit to men such as Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell who understand what it is to exist in “white spaces” far better than the overwhelming number of posters on this blog. They don’t tow the liberal line and play the injured disadvantaged existence they certainly would be entitled to. Clarence Thomas was the only Black kid in his high school, tell me he doesn’t understand “white spaces”.
SomervilleTom says
I think Clarence Thomas is a terrible example to cite in this discussion, among the worst I can think of. He is arguably among the worst Supreme Court justices to ever serve. His thankfully rare opinions are generally viewed with disdain verging on contempt.
I’ll leave it to others to opine about the extent to which BMG is a “white space”. I’ll be surprised if anybody here joins you in giving credit to Mr. Thomas for just about anything other than perhaps introducing the world to Anita Hill.
petr says
Wow. I can’t figure out if you are un-repentantly naive or just a troll who’s got some giant stones on you.
Either way, to cite either of these men, no less both, who preach and live a cultural deference, bordering on subservience, in a diary that goes on the offensive against such thinking, takes some gall.
scott12mass says
I think Blacks belong anywhere they want to be on the spectrum of political thought.
Just because they don’t kowtow to the Democratic party doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
SomervilleTom says
The objection to Clarence Thomas is not that he doesn’t “kowtow to the Democratic Party”. There have always been black men (and to a lesser extent women) who chose to be explicitly subservient to the racism that was all around them — publicly and privately.
I invite you to consider this 1963 piece by Malcolm X (editors, the language is original):
In my view, Clarence Thomas epitomizes what Malcolm X wrote about more than 60 years ago. The terrible taste Mr. Thomas leaves in the mouth has nothing at all to do with kowtowing to Democrats. It is instead a visceral reaction to his eagerness to please the white men who appointed him to his office.
Clarence Thomas is one of Malcolm X’s “big guns” the white man uses against the black revolution.
scott12mass says
Colin Powell? All the hard working Black cops? How many big city police commissioners are Black?
jconway says
^this is a troll not worth responding to
Christopher says
I suspect Clarence Thomas himself would take quite a bit of offense to how you describe him above.
SomervilleTom says
I don’t care how Mr. Thomas reacts.
His decisions and opinions empower racism and racists, and enfeeble those of us who fight it.
It’s not just Clarence Thomas, by the way. This is the same party that put forward Sarah Palin as their Vice Presidential nominee.
johntmay says
Thomas Sowell lived a few streets over from where my wife’s family lived. Definitely a “white space” – Berwyn PA.
What he and Clarence Thomas do not understand is how lucky they were and that most blacks in the USA are not as lucky.
Thomas and Sowell, like so many Republicans (and far too many Democrats) see their life’s accomplishments as the product of their own doing, with no luck or good fortune involved.
scott12mass says
Maybe you can add a plank to the Democratic platform and give everyone a rabbit’s foot. Tell Oprah she was lucky and not hard working. I worked overtime and invested in Latin American stocks, my gamble, that luck/intuition worked out.
johntmay says
If we are in a good place, we all want to believe that we got there by our own merit. You were lucky that you were in a position to work overtime. You lucked out on that stock thing. It happens.
What scares the crap out of us it that chance plays a larger role that our actual acts. So we deny it.
We do not need a rabbit’s foot at part of the platform, we need the honesty that humility that wealth is by chance and ought to be shared.
scott12mass says
Here’s an experiment. I have been reading about a company that’s losing money and has for the last 5 years. I like their business ideas and see a bright future for their product. The stock is very cheap now and I’m buying. In 5 years when my 5 grand is worth ten times that who should get to keep that? Watch CPST on the ticker.
In no way am I suggesting anyone on here buy some, I have no affiliation with any brokerage and or company. As I said it is currently losing money.
johntmay says
I’m not aware of what the tax laws are regarding this but I will assume there is some sort of capital gains that you would pay if you sold it in five years. I think the capital gains tax rate ought to be raised, by the way.
You are lucky that you have five thousand dollars to speculate with when so many citizens in the nation are living from paycheck to paycheck.
SomervilleTom says
This thread is about white spaces in Boston and systemic racism.
What on earth does that have to do with your stock speculation?
SomervilleTom says
Oh, and by the way, before considering “who should get to keep” your hypothetical 50 grand five years from now, I’d like you to answer what you think should happen if your investment is utterly worthless in six months.
Do you, for example, feel that you should be able claim a loss to apply against any other short- or long-term capital gains?
I’m just wondering if you join so many other right-wing sympathizers in expecting the public (you and me) to cover your losses while ignoring your gains.
SomervilleTom says
You would have us turn to a Lottery winner for advice on financial planning.
Nobody said that anybody wasn’t “hard working”. The people on the bottom that I know are among the hardest working people I’ve ever met. The immigrants who put new roofs on houses in Somerville work harder than you, me, or anybody in Congress or the Donald Trump administration.
Our cemeteries are chock full of people who spent long difficult lives working their butts off and died dirt poor nevertheless.
You’re trolling.
johntmay says
I’ll say it. Donald Trump was never a hard working individual, nor are any of his children., His father may have been but because of our tax laws, great wealth is now passed from generation to generation without the requirement for work of any kind by the recipients.
Republicans love to say that getting “free things without working for them” creates a dependent society and does not allow the individual to experience the dignity that working for ones wealth provides…..unless one is the offspring of wealthy parents in which case, none of that matters.
SomervilleTom says
Indeed, I forgot to mention the “IOKIYAR” (It’s OK If You Are Republican) exception.
This entire line of commentary from scott12mass is entirely disconnected from reality (except the reality of right-wing GOP/Fox prejudice).