ending racism

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WHAT STANDS BETWEEN US – Lee Mun Wah

 

James Baldwin once said that “America is one tough town.” Those words came back to me as I thought of what is going on these past few weeks in Ferguson, Missouri. So much of the focus has been on the issue of a white police officer killing a young black man, Michael Brown, but almost nothing is said about the environment that creates these types of scenarios that are becoming all too familiar in describing the state of racial relations in the United States, particularly how they negatively impact African Americans.  Often, when the issue of a racial divide arises or is even intimated, denial and shock quickly fills the room, as was evidenced in the past two days when an all white male Fox News panel showed disdain for Capt. Ron Johnson (who is Black) for sympathizing with the African American community over the killing of Michael Brown. Bo Dietl, immediately said, “We’re dividing black and white again. America has no color, it’s all one color.” So often times I have wondered…so, what is that ‘one color’ and what would it mean if we did see color?

Soon afterwards, the mayor of Ferguson declared that “There’s not a racial divide in Ferguson.” One of the great myths in this country is that if we say that ‘everything is fine’ loud and long enough, the problem will go away. This is perhaps because as someone once said, “When the truth becomes too hard to bear, we create another.”

 

So what kinds of environments, attitudes, and behaviors ‘create’ a racial divide?  First of all, having an almost all white police force creates an ‘ethnic vacuum’ that shields the white officers from ever having to see outside their ‘white bubble’ or to get feedback on their actions and attitudes from someone who is non-white. Another is never interviewing officers prior to hire to see if they possess any racial prejudices towards any particular group of people and how that might heighten their perceptions and feelings of distrust and fearing for their safety. This may explain why so many blacks are shot repeatedly, sometimes over twenty times.

 

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Source: www.stirfryseminars.com

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Black Angst: Outside The Quite Visible Black Backpack

 

A professor at Seattle Pacific University recently told me that she requires her students to read Peggy McIntosh’s essay, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

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educating students cannot simply stop with an acknowledgment about the unearned advantages that Whites have, but educators must also provide a narrative from  the opposite viewpoint and a history about what had to happen in order to allow for hierarchies and such privileges. -Angela Tucker

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“My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture.I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.” -Ms. McIntosh
 
Ordinary privileges cannot be had for Blacks, without a fight as this country is founded upon a widespread enslavement and systemic genocidal dispossession of my entire race. -Angela Tucker

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Source: theadoptedlife.com

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Toward a Truly Multiracial Democracy

 

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:

  1. Ideological: The white racial frame (white racism).
  2. Economic: Huge racial inequalities in wealth, income and education.


Therefore you need:

  1. Ideological: The liberty-and-justice frame of the Founding Fathers along with an understanding of stereotyping and institutional racism.
  2. Economic: Reparations, especially for Black and Native Americans.

 

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Source: abagond.wordpress.com

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What White Children Need to Know About Race

 

Silence is a racial message and a “tool of whiteness.” In order to support the goals of their diversity mission statements and work toward a “racially just America,” schools need to take a more proactive approach to teaching white students about race and racial identity.
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Students must develop a sense of how systemic racism works on an individual, community, and institutional level.

 

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Source: www.nais.org

 

Many white people do not have an urgency about racial injustice.

 

Many white people live in segregated communities where they do not see racial injustice. Unless people tune into the right media channels, they are not going to have a feeling for the insidiousness of racial injustice.

 

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Walker’s “Appeal”

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““Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in particular, and very expressly, to those of the United States of America”(1829) by David Walker, a free Black American, was a forceful condemnation of slavery and racism. In America it was a guiding light for Blacks. It radicalized Whites. It was banned in the South.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

I grew up going to majority White churches.

 

I never heard a mumbling word about racism or oppression.

 

@getgln

See on abagond.wordpress.com

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The Effects of Ignoring Systemic Racism | The Nation

 

“Individual racism may be hurtful, but the systemic carries much more ruthless consequences.

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Ignoring the reality of racism only makes us more racist.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Part of the responsibility of living in the U.S. is to fight it’s own oppressive systems. Systems of imperialist white supremacist racist patriarchal vulture capitalism.

 

See on www.thenation.com

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On post-intential racism – ‘More Beautiful and More Terrible’: Imani Perry

 

“For a nation that often optimistically claims to be post-racial, we are still mired in the practices of racial inequality that plays out in law, policy, and in our local communities.

 

One of two explanations is often given for this persistent phenomenon: On the one hand, we might be hypocritical saying one thing, and doing or believing another; on the other, it might have little to do with us individually but rather be inherent to the structure of American society.

 

More Beautiful and More Terrible compels us to think beyond this insufficient dichotomy in order to see how racial inequality is perpetuated. Imani Perry asserts that the U.S. is in a new and distinct phase of racism that is post-intentional neither based on the intentional discrimination of the past, nor drawing upon biological concepts of race.

 

Drawing upon the insights and tools of critical race theory social policy, law, sociology and cultural studies, she demonstrates how post intentional racism works and maintains that it cannot be addressed solely through the kinds of structural solutions of the Left or the values arguments of the Right. Rather, the author identifies a place in the middle space of righteous hope and articulates a notion of ethics and human agency that will allow us to expand and amplify that hope.

 

To paraphrase James Baldwin, when talking about race, it is both more terrible than most think, but also more beautiful than most can imagine, with limitless and open-ended possibility. Perry leads readers down the path of imagining the possible and points to the way forward.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Tim Wise worked with this author (Professor Imani Perry Ph.D.,J.D.) in his movie ‘White Like Me‘

 

‘More Beautiful and More Terrible’ has 5 out of 5 stars and glowing reviews.

I’m looking forward to this breakdown of “post-intentional’ racism.

 

It seems like the idea goes in conjunction with Michelle Alexander’s book ‘The New Jim Crow’. Where Alexander explains that even though the laws behind the war on drugs do not mention race, the effects are that with limited budgets and resources (and subconscious racism?), police forces primarily focus their war on Black and Brown communities, even through white people use illegal drugs as much or more than Black and Brown communities.

 

And because you can’t have a war on an inanimate object, the war is waged on Black and Brown people and on Black and Brown communities.

 

@getgln

See on www.amazon.com