General rules I currently try to follow (click on links for further discussion):
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This article sheds light on why many are nervous to talk about race.
They are scared they may say something offensive.
Learning from this post can provide a lot of help to not be offensive.
Avoiding the topic of race, culture and ethnicity does not help move the country toward racial justice, dignity and respect.
Avoiding the topic of oppression keeps the oppression firmly in place.
Schools in the US teach a White or Anglo American history of the country. Because of White guilt it is full of lies, half-truths and stuff left out. There is much to learn and unlearn:
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Here is a list of unarmed Blacks killed by police in the US. It is extremely incomplete. A complete list for just 2005 to 2012 would have at least 760 killings. I have only 6% of those. This list is just the tip of the iceberg.
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Darren Wilson has raised nearly $400,000 so far on GoFundMe.com. Compare that to Michael Brown’s family’s $250,000 – or George Zimmerman’s $200,000. Wilson is the White American police officer who gunned down Michael Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.
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“Some of what public figures in the US have tweeted about Michael Brown and Ferguson (from August 9th to 22nd 2014), here listed in order of Twitter fame:”
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Apostles: Booker T. Washington, Don Lemon, Bill Cosby, Barack Obama, Chris Rock in “Niggas vs Black People”.
Glory days: 1895 to 1955, from Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise to the murder of Emmett Till. Its low point was from 1965 to 1984, from Carmichael to Cosby. It seems to be a reaction to racial nadirs, periods of White racist backlash against anti-racist reforms.
In the US, Whites dehumanize Blacks, partly through stereotypes. Blacks are seen as lazy, unintelligent, violent, criminal, oversexed, etc. Most Whites think the stereotypes are true. They inform not only “realistic” television dramas, but even news reporting, policing, court cases and government policy.
Therefore, says respectability politics, the main thing wrong with Black people is their behaviour. Change the behaviour and Whites will see Black people as human and worthy and therefore do right by them. Stuff like police brutality and high unemployment will melt away.
There are two things wrong with that:
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Operation Protective Edge (2014) is the current military operation the Israeli government is carrying out against Gaza, the third in the last six years. It began on July 8th.
To review:
Meanwhile, since 2006 Gaza has been under siege by Israel. It is almost completely cut off from the outside world. That is itself an act of war, making Operation Protective Edge merely the latest stage of a long Gazan War. Some call it a genocide.
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Note: This is another in my continuing series on Possible Racial Futures for the US. This one is based on the last chapter of “The White Racial Frame” (2010) by Joe R. Feagin, a White American sociologist.
The US is capable of becoming less racist and more democratic, as shown by Reconstruction in the 1800s, which freed slaves and made them citizens, and Civil Rights reforms in the 1900s, which overthrew Jim Crow.
But both Reconstruction and Civil Rights were later seriously weakened because they left two things in place:
Therefore you need:
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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in the US based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. It also outlawed segregation, keeping races separate, at schools, public places and most businesses. It, and the Voting Rights Act a year later, overthrew Jim Crow.
School busing and affirmative action grew out of it as policies designed to meet its demands
It was one of the main civil rights reforms of the 1960s:
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