Conversational red herrings (four): "You're just playing the race card"

To be clear race is not a card. Race may be the first thing you see when you see me; it may be a significant part of who I am; it may even have informed how I was raised and how I move through the world, but it is not some lever (or 'card') that we use to ease our way in the world. That shouldn't need to be said but there, I said it.  

The question must be asked, when a claim is made that a POC is 'playing the race card' what is it that is actually meant? What is it that you think I/we am/are doing? Is it that we're not sufficiently self-effacing about our race and your awareness of our difference is somehow our fault? Perhaps it means that we are shining the light of truth into the darkness of your understanding, and your discomfort with that is our fault? 

Here's the thing with the race card, history will attest to the fact that it is not POC who typically play it. Rather, it is the majority who wield it with alarming regularity. The majority has been wielding the race of the minority as a weapon for 21 generations. Native land theft? The Trail of Tears? Wounded Knee? Native genocide? Buffalo slaughter of the 1800s? Enslavement? Jim Crow? Lynching? Redlining? COINTELPRO? The War on Drugs? Mass incarceration? Police brutality? And on, and on the list goes. Yeah, somebody's been playing the race card alright, but it ain't who you've been taught to think it is. 

In an online conversation not too long ago, a gentleman offered that Obama had divided this nation by suggesting that racism was everywhere. (Because apparently before Obama the nation was whole.  Apparently. ) Obama had, in effect, played the race card. Repeatedly and jin so doing, HE had divided the nation. 

Loosely translated, what he was saying was that calling Whiteness out on its documented history of using race as a weapon to destroy Black and brown communities is playing the race card.  [Subtext: actually writing legislation or encouraging behaviors that harm POC isn't.] Er, OK. Got it. 

So when Carolyn Donham Bryant lied and claimed that Emmett Till had sexually assaulted her, whistled at her, said sexually explicit things to her, what was that? Wasn't that her using the race card (and tapping into ugly racist tropes) to cause fatal harm to a fourteen year old child? 

Bryant's use of the presumptions of virtuous White womanhood as a sledgehammer was a particularly deft use of the race card. And it worked, as she knew it would. Young Master Till didn't see the end of his fourteenth summer and she has seen eighty of them.

Bryant's husband's and brother-in-law's immediate application of violent White manhood and righteous anger to deliver swift 'justice', and the jury's eventual acceptance of same, was absolutely the playing of the race card.

When the all-White jury, despite evidence, found Milam and Bryant innocent of all charges, the jurors participated gleefully in a game of White Guys Always Get The Trump Cards.  

When 2017's Carolyn Bryant Briana Brochu used her bodily fluids to infect her roommate Chennel Rowe, Brochu started a new game of I'm White, I Win. 

When the 45th resident of these United States (the pee is in St. PEEtersburg) can use an event commemorating the contributions of Native American code talkers to cast aspersions on a woman who claims Native heritage, who is it exactly that's playing the race card?

It's comforting to think that calling white people out is playing the race card I suppose, but - to use a very British idiom - that argument holds no water. As the childrens' song says, "There's a hole in the bucket dear Liza, dear Liza, a hole." Neither Liza's bucket nor that argument is holding any  water.  

There's an easy (to me) explanation for the 'race card' evaluation of a comment. I suspect that when folk hear shades of things they've done, they recoil in horror.....not at themselves, oh no!, but rather at the speaker for holding a mirror up to their faces. But is it my fault if you ain't like what you see in the mirror? I'm just holding the mirror. This has been America's way for 500 years: when called out on its bad behavior, the majority has blamed those who would do the calling (cf the responses to the men losing their jobs for being pr*cks at work) rather than look at itself and its ugly ways. 

The problem doesn't lie in the truth that POC tell, the problem lies in who is shamed by that telling. The anger at Obama and others like him, is at their tearing the veil of plausible deniability to shreds. White America has too long chosen to live behind an Emperor's clothes-esque veil of post-raciality. Sweetie, you're nekkid. Deal with it. 

In typical White fragilismus style, rather than OWN the truth, White America would rather blame the teller than face the truth; folk would rather blame the doctor than face the disease and the difficult course of treatment that lies ahead. 

There's too much information out there to excuse the level of ignorance it takes to proffer "You're playing the race card" as a response to a real criticism of this supremacist society. Read a book, preferably one written by someone non-White. Read an essay. I've written plenty myself and I'm late to the writing game. I'm confident that reading can and will cure you of any need to toss this particular red herring into the middle of a discussion. 

At this point, ignorance is a choice. 

Conversational red herrings (three): stop living in the past

Coming in third in the race of the conversational red herrings is "Stop living in the past!".

This red herring, typically lobbed when the arguer runs out of fact-based arguments to add to the conversation, seeks to suggest that at some point in time racism ended; that there was a hard stop somewhere along the way. If there was, I missed it. Me and the rest of POC America.

The only reasonable response to "Stop living in the past" is................

but sometimes more than that is required. Here's my "more".

History casts a long shadow. Even when particular events come to an end, the consequences follow. Hurricane Sandy occurred in 2012. Five years later, the impacts are still being felt. Folk can't just turn the page and go on. Enslavement likewise ended in 1862, but the long term impacts continue. Jim Crow? Segregation? The Civil Rights movement? Each of these was a time-bound and time delimited event. Impacts of each continue long after the era formally ended. This is true of all parts of US history. History's events cast a shadow and history's shadows, some of them mighty long, prevent sunlight from penetrating certain dark corners of this nation. So when you say to me, "Stop living in the past!" it becomes immediately clear to me that either (i) you don't really know the history, or (ii) you haven't done the juxtaposing of that history with contemporary acts. Let me help you with that.

Here's a brief history lesson for your edification.

Example 1
History
1703: Connecticut assigns punishment of whipping to any slaves who disturb the peace.

History's shadow
2016: Black teens at pool party terrorized by Texas police officer. Someone called the police cuz, you guessed it, Negroes disturbing the peace.

2013: Michael Dunn shoots at a retreating vehicle carrying several teens, including Jordan Davis. The cause? Loud music. Negroes disturbing the peace of a nice White male. The end result? Jordan Davis, Black child is dead. He's 17.

While Dunn was eventually sentenced to 90 years for his crime, it took two tries to see him convicted of the murder of young Jordan Davis. Dunn's first trial ended with guilty verdicts on four charges, including three of attempted second-degree murder, but for inexplicable reasons, the jury was unable to agree on a first-degree murder charge arising out of the very same incident.

It is useful (and important) to remember that young Mr. Davis didn't die because of something he did (unless you count his mouthing off to a White man, how familiar is that?), but rather he died because of what he represented in Dunn's mind. That right there is very much a part of history's long shadow in America.

Example 2
History
1703: Rhode Island makes it illegal for Blacks and Native Americans to walk at night without a pass.

History's long shadow
2012: Trayvon Martin is killed by a neighborhood watch 'officer', while walking - at night - in his father's neighborhood. Young Mr. Martin was unfamiliar and therefore dangerous.

In the 1700s Rhode Island didn't make this 'crime' one punishable by death, but America in the 2000s sure has. We've determined that any number of offences committed by POC are reasonably punishable by death. On the street. Where we will leave your exposed remains for instructional purposes. Walking while Black is one of those offences, as is selling CDs, cigarettes, standing at a bus stop, and leaving parties early.

Example 3
History
1712: New York prohibits free Blacks, Native Americans, and mulattoes from owning real estate and holding property.

History's long shadow
1933: FHA is routinely subsidizing builders who are mass producing entire subdivisions for Whites only.

Through the FHA's support of discriminatory builder behavior, ghettos and Whites-only middle class enclaves were created. These situations didn't arise accidentally. The FHA had a significant hand in creating these environments and it is no stretch to draw a straight line from housing policy to disparate educational funding for communities of color in these United States.

It would not be unreasonable to charge the FHA with responsibility for the disparity between Black and White wealth. Whites currently have thirteen times the household wealth of Blacks. Thir-facking-teen. That ain't no accident. Discriminatory lending hampered the growth of Black wealth and limited community wealth (on which school funding is based) thereby inflicting lasting harm on the educational, professional and economic prospects of POC for three or four generations and likely into perpetuity. That ain't no damn accident, so don't tell me no sh*t about living in the past the past ain't passed us yet.

History's even longer shadow
2008: In the run up to the mortgage crisis of 2009, who do you think was targeted with sub-prime mortgage loans? I'll give you two guesses to be generous but you really only need one. Minorities.

It may no longer be legal to simply exclude people of color from one's lending policies. That sh*t is seriously frowned upon these days, but fleecing them? We ain't got no trouble with that! So organizations have gone from not letting POC access capital to letting us access over-priced capital and then putting us out on the streets when our entire financial house of cards comes tumbling down because other areas of economic fragility give way under the weight of White supremacy.

Example 4
History
1730: New York state regulates meetings of slaves

History's shadow

2015: Straight Outta Compton debuts in theaters, to heightened security concerns, because Negroes.
Wherever two or more Negroes are gathered together, sh*t's bound to pop off right? I mean, it's been thus since the 1700s! We all know Black people are bad seeds. The lot of 'em.

Example 5
History
1740: South Carolina passes a comprehensive Negro Act making it illegal to move abroad, assemble in groups, raise food, earn money or learn to read.

History's shadows
2010: Raising food.......
Black farmers, long frustrated in their dealings with the Department of Agriculture, win a massive lawsuit against the agency. Whether they will ever receive owed payment is yet to be seen, but history's shadow is clear.

2017: Assembling in groups...........
Jefferson Beauregard Se(ce)ssions' DOJ comes up with the term Black Identity Extremists to describe assemblages of Black folk who have the temerity to agitate for the recognition of their rights and equal treatment & protection under the law.

This move is quintessentially American. This move is the typical pro-status quo anti-Black schtick of every preceding era in American history. The act contains shades of the FBI vs MLK Jr.; shades of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation; shades of the FBI vs the Black Panther Party. "The purpose of this new [sic] endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize". Their words, not mine.  I'm going to guess that that language will appear forty years from now in the newly (at the time) released documents about the FBI's Black Identity Extremist work.

From the FBI vault doc on COINTELPRO

Don't tell me to stop living in the past. There is no past. There's never been a hard stop to the ugliness America has to mete out to POC. 

It is said that past is prologue. Well, that's a nice idea but it suggests that we have a past. In America there is no past, there is only present continuous and it is really only people who are not likely to be directly affected by that continuous  present who can offer up this particular red herring without an iota of shame. 

Giving thanks!

It's that time of year when we start writing odes and epodes to the universe for the things she has bestowed upon us. Here's my list, in no particular order, of ten things for which I'm grateful. Feel free to let me know if you're grateful for the same things!

1. Kakistocrats

First of all, how great a word is kakistocracy and its derivative kakistocrat? As a word lover just the word excites me, its meaning not so much but the word itself? Major points! Wonder how it would score in scrabble? 

A kakistocracy is a government of the worst people. Well, this year, I'm thankful that 45 promised us that he had access to all the best people (his words). He sure does! If he doesn't have the very best worst people my name is John Brown! I am eternally thankful. What would we do without a Betsy deVos and a Ben Carson? Where would we be without a Steve Mnuchin (and the bonus of his delightful Marie Antoinette-esque bride)?

2. Jefferson Beauregard Se(ce)ssions

This man (and his name) are the gift that keep on giving. What has he done today? Nothing really, but when I reflect on his smirking mien and his White supremacist leanings, I can only offer up my gratitude to the universe that he is the chief law enforcement officer in the land.

He will protect us from Black Identity Extremists many of whom, I'm sure, he can name. Sadly though,  he will not be protecting us from White identity (Tiki torch-bearing) extremists because he's not entirely certain that they exist. They are, as we have been told, good people, these White identity extremists. So please ignore the images you may have seen on your teevee. #FakeNews

Jefferson B. is just an entire smorgasbord of bullshit for which I think we should all be deeply grateful. 

As a side note, I'm also profoundly grateful to his momma for naming him Jefferson Beauregard, and to his father for the Se(ce)ssions. No one has ever been more aptly named. No one. The man's name alone tells me everything I need to know. Jeffie's name is his destiny, and ours too apparently. 

3. The (p)Resident of the House of White (Supremacy) aka 45 aka the Viper-in-Chief

What you need me to say more? Yeah no,  I gots nothin'.

Oh no wait, I do got something. I'm grateful that DJT is the Resident (the pee really is silent). He daily proves the ridiculousness of White supremacy. Thankful! Sweatergawd, if this is supreme I shudder to think what the opposite might look like. 

4. I'm grateful for Roy Moore 

Mr. I-Really-Wanna-Be-The-First-Senator-Who-Dated-Teen-Girls-As-A-Grown-Ass-Man stands proudly at the intersection of public proselytizing and pedophilia. I am very grateful for all he represents and all those who stand with him without shame. I'm taking copious notes. 

I'm only marginally less grateful for the evangelical ~ian voters (the absence of the 'Christ' is self-evident) who would rather affirmatively support Moore and give his behavior a pass than be represented by a gawdless Demon-crat. Did I get that right? The explanation for this being that Mary (the one in the Bible, not one of Moore's accusers) was a pre-teen so this kind of arrangement is clearly A-OK with G-d. (I thought the story was that Mary was also a virgin but hey, what do I know? My translation could be wrong.).

And the fact that our (p)Resident of the House of White (supremacy) and Viper-in-Chief stands behind Moore's candidacy? Icing on this sh*t cake of an administration. Eat up! There's plenty to go around!

5. Institutions

I'm grateful for America's great institutions of democracy like the three co-equal branches, and a system of checks and balances that will ensure the safety and best interests of the people........oooh, ooh, I just got struck by lightning. Dammit.

Seriously though, as I had cause to point out to someone this morning, if we're standing around waiting on "institutions" to save us, lemme just remind y'all that slavery was an institution and that shit ain't saved a single Negro. It sure as hell saved America though. I'm grateful for history to tell me just how this shit is gonna turn out. I'm also grateful for international travel and large suitcases. Just in case nuh. Just in case. 

6. Evangelicalism's showing its entire erm, behind

Truly, what more could one want than a church that would rather stand up with a politician who is an alleged pedophile than one who believes in the right to equal protection under the law?

What more could one want than a pastorate that doesn't have to mumble when it stands shoulder to shoulder with sexual predators like the Viper-in-Chief? I appreciate the transparency.

What more could one want than a clergy that believes it has the moral standing to judge my bedroom habits while at precisely the same moment finding it possible to support a man who at thirty-facking-two was chasing teenage girls? Allegedly. Gotta say 'allegedly'. Question: did Jesus ever refer to a sinner as 'alleged'? Asking for a friend.

What more could one ask of one's moral leaders? What? Frankly, I can think of not one other thing that I'd need to ask of them. Not. One. Thing.

I am grateful for evangelicalism's naked posturing which they've been passing off as family values, when clearly, what they value is White supremacy and female invisibility and silence. Message received. Thank you. For my money, I'd say #EmptyTheDamnPews but I know that ain't gonna happen. Folks are gonna keep looking to their 'pastors' for 'leadership' but ain't these the same pastors who are on the teevee talkin' 'bout how Moore's trolling the Mall only meant he was looking for innocence? Listen, the ick factor here is off the damn charts. But carry on. Don't mind me. I'm a po sinner. 

7. The even-handedness and overall decency of our political class

You don't need me to outline the details here. I'm sure you can supply your own. Lawd knows I'm coming up empty. 

8. The careful and entirely appropriate use of power by (mostly) White men in all spheres of public life

From Charlie Rose to Harvey Weinstein, I find myself oddly grateful for my lack of success and opportunity. Being a slow starter protects you from predation. Who knew?

9. DAPL spill, rapidly followed by approval of the pipeline by North Dakota politicians

Gosh, what to say? North Dakotans are grateful for the jobs. Too bad about the water though. But hey, if folks have jobs, they'll be able to buy bottled water so yay! Winning!

Grateful too that the entire DAPL scenario proves once more that environmental racism is in fact a thing. Thank you. 

Thanksgiving 2016

Thanksgiving 2016, Native Americans were facing water cannons and dogs. Thanksgiving 2017, DAPL has spilled 200,000 gallons of oil. Gratitude that it wasn't 2 million gallons is reasonable.

10. Clarity 

Most of all, I'm grateful for clarity. Thank you America for removing every vestige of doubt.

Stories will be told in the future of how in 2017, the scales fell from folks' eyes and we could all see quite clearly what America stood for....and for whom America stood.

So that's my list of things for which I'm thankful. Now, pass the gravy, this turkey  is a little dry.  

Conversational Red Herrings (Deux): I don't see color

Up next in our everlasting game of Bullsh*t Bingo is "I don't see color!". This particular red herring is close kin to "I don't care if you're red, yellow, green or purple!" and about exactly as meaningless.

My first response to the I-don't-see-colorers is, "Congratulations! Tell me though, how do you manage that? I mean really, how? Do you actually not see color or is it that you'd rather I not be a color? There is a difference."

The great challenge of the "I don't see color" response is that it claims a level of diversity awareness that simply does not yet exist. If you were born and raised on this planet, you see color. I hate to break it to you, but you do. There is no part of planetary history that isn't bathed in noxious notions and judgments about race. Unless someone has deliberately taken the time to teach you a history not written by conquerors and brutes, you've imbibed anti-otherness with mother's milk. To suggest different to is lie to yourself which is fine, and to lie to others which ain't. 

Consider also that if you are actively trying to be sensitive to the issues born of racial and other forms of diversity, sometimes referred to as being politically correct a decent human being, you have to see those differences to resist stereotyping. Resistance begins with unpacking the ways difference is portrayed - particularly in mass media - and resistance continues with processing how those portrayals seep into our social practice in dangerous ways. None of that occurs under the flag of the "I don't see color" nation. That is not how this works. 

As a couple of friends of mine succinctly put it the other day, "I don't see color" isn't about not seeing color, it's about not seeing pain, not seeing oppression, not seeing injustice. It isn't that you don't see color, sure you do, you just want colored people to shut up about how color affects their lives, so you can go on blindly (and callously) enjoying the privileges your lack of color brings you and yours, disclaiming all culpability. Like Shaggy, your belief is that it wasn't you. You ain't got nothin' to do with it! You just outchear trying to sing Kumbaya or somethin'. 

But let's say I take you at your word. Let's say you really don't see color. What does that mean for me? Does that change my life in some significant and lasting way? Does that make me less prone to targeted financial predation? Will it save me as I traverse the highways and byways of this great nation, or will I still be one pretext stop away from an untimely death and a hashtag memorial?

When I wrote about White fauxgility, I pointed out that fragile responses were a means of emotional manipulation. Pearl clutching, demands for trust and acknowledgement of self-proclaimed allyship are efforts to avoid any culpability for the sins of your forebears. What I didn't mention in that discussion, was the notion that conversational gambits such as "I don't see color" and "I don't care if you're red, yellow or green!" suggest that you believe that your goodness eclipses other folks' not-so-goodness. Seriously? What about the guy next to you named Dylan, the one with the gun? Or the guy named Ditka? Or the men and women on Capitol Hill or in capitols planet-wide? Even if you're the best man/woman on the planet, your goodness and mercy can't follow me all the days of my life or into all the places in my life where ungoodness and no mercy will be surely reside. Tell me how your not seeing color translates into anything meaningful in the larger world in which people like me live, breathe, and have our being. I'm all ears. 

Probably the single most dangerous thing about the whole "I don't see color" mindset, is that it wholly disregards the lived experience of POC supplanting our lived experience (not to mention hundreds of years of actual history) with your Polly-Annaish pretense. It pretends that your self-proclaimed colorblindness has actual consequences for POC beyond our interactions with you. You know it doesn't and we certainly know it doesn't, but you want us to play with you any way. Nope. Not happenin'. And  you want to pretend that your colorblindness extends to POC whom you don't know as well as you think you know us. That's a lot of games to be playing. I'm tired just thinking about it, especially since only you know the rules of this game and you always win. So nah, I'm not playing today, and tomorrow ain't looking too good either. 

Polly Anna will not save us or ours from an all White jury neither will she save us from over-punishment in the school room, the court room or the Board room. 

Polly Anna will not save us when we're looking for a job with our Black sounding names nor will she come to our aid when we're at work. 

Polly won't show up for duty when we're minding our business doing our jobs and strange men try to make reference to our Muslim heritage to suggest we too could be sketchy. 

"I don't see color" is the conversational equivalent of whistling past the graveyard. It may cover your fear of the realities of racism, but the bones of racism are still in there my friend, the bones are still there. And they still rattle in the dark.

Whistle on.

American myths and conversational red herrings

In every online discussion thread about oppression, there are conversational gambits used (by concern trolls and real under-the-internet-bridge trolls) with an intent to frustrate discussion rather than foster deeper understanding. I refer to those as conversational red herrings. There are some that are in regular rotation like "Stop playing the race card!" and "I don't see color", but there are other more obscure ones like "Elevate your thinking! Love is all we need!" and other such bullshiggety. 

Over the next several weeks, I'm going to be writing some shorter pieces treating with a few of these conversational gambits. I'll be offering my take on how we might respond to them. 

Given the number of red herrings there are, this could easily turn out to be my magnum opus and a literary masterpiece. LOL. A girl can dream. Anyhow, onward!

First up on my list of favorite American myths and conversational red herrings is the tried and true, "What about Black on Black crime?"

This is the kindergartenest of kindergarten responses. It's a puerile response that deflectors typically deploy when POC have the temerity to talk about the oppressions of state and local actors.

My simple response is this: we love or hate; comfort or afflict those with whom we share space and since the US government has done a masterful job of creating segregated neighborhoods and 'ghettos', Black crime will necessarily mostly impact other Black folk. The apparently invisible flip side to that is that for the same reasons - segregated neighborhoods - White crime (*gasp* yes, it exists) will mostly impact White people.  So let's just set that whole notion aside shall we? Instead, I say we should contemplate this whole other thing of which we never speak: White terrorism, White malice, White men and women, acting out against Black people. Is that not a thing equally worthy of consideration? Or does it not gain consideration because it doesn't comport with long-held notions of rampant Black criminality?

Trolls are quick to ask about Black-on-Black crime, but what about White terrorism whether physical, economic, financial or environmental? What about gentrification? What about targeted sub-prime lending? What about tagging Black borrowers with higher-priced car loans? What about all White juries convicting even where there is no compelling evidence (and acquitting when there is)? Is that not White-on-Black crime? Is that not a thing equally worthy of consideration?

If we want to talk about crime let's do that, but let's not cherry pick what kinds of crimes we're going to discuss. If we gon' talk crime, then we best be talking about all of it. Black-on-Black crime tends to be property and personal. White-on-Black crime tends to be property, personal, psychological, economic and multi-generational in impact. Surely that's something we should want to talk about?

When White people set out, with malice aforethought, to either destroy what people of color have built (Rosewood Massacre and Tulsa Race Riot (property, personal, psychological, economic and multi-generational in impact)) or to destroy Black life itself (Briana Brochu and Dylan Roof (personal, psychological)), what do we call that? We call every one of those events an aberration. We pretend that there's no pattern. I, however, have decided to frame these things differently and to call them what they are: supremacy in action; White-on-Black crime. I have also decided to see the pattern, and to call it out.

When White women and men conjure up and/or falsely accuse Black men, resulting in the (further) demonization of random Black men (see Susan Smith; Ofc. Sherry Hall; or this guy), it's White-on-Black crime.

When White women like Carolyn Donham Bryant act out and boys/men like Emmett Till end up dead or under suspicion, that's White-on-Black crime of the worst sort. When Briana Brochu puts her roommate's toothbrush into her rectum and her roommate ends up with aggressive bacteria in her throat, that's White-on-Black terrorism, but we never talk about it that way. Neither do we see a pattern. We adamantly refuse to see a pattern. We're quick to see a pattern in Black-on-Black crime, but every act of White terrorism is a single event, an aberration. We live in a nation with a history of hundreds of years of aberrations: thousands of lynchings, every one an aberration; thousands of toxic mortgages targeting minorities, every one an aberration; millions of higher-priced car loans, every one an aberration.

You want to talk about crime? Let's talk about the kind of White-on-Black crime that's been going on for 500 years.

You want to talk about crime? Let's talk about the kind of White-on-Black crime that has stolen land, wealth, health and security from people of color going back to 1492.

You want to talk about crime? Let's talk about the routine environmental racism that leaves poor (mostly Black and brown) children with lead poisoning, intellectually challenged and entirely unsupported by the private enterprise or the public purse which either caused or allowed their poisoning in the first place (hint: I'm talking about places like Flint, MI but not just Flint) or destroys their thriving neighborhoods to build highways.

And I ain't talk about mass murderers yet, 99.9% of whom are White men.

Black-on-Black crime my hindparts.

When Emancipation Comes

When Emancipation comes,
I'll be free.
When Emancipation comes,
No man's gon' spit on me.

When Emancipation comes,
I won't my fear neighbor.
When Emancipation comes
Boss'll pay me for my labor.....

When Emancipation comes.
Elle Esse (c) 2017

I've been feeling recently like someone waiting for Emancipation. Every day, there's another story that seems to suggest that freedom (such as it is for people of color) is being hog tied and readied for the market.

Every day there's a new reason to doubt that the Founders' promise of a fair and just America will ever come to be. Every day there's another reason to think about my Second Amendment rights, my First Amendment rights, my RIGHTS. All of them and the extent to which they are recognized here.

This is America. In 2017.

Onward, but to where? I know not.

Briana Brochu: Made in America

In my previous life as a student of business, I was exposed to, and became quite a fan of, the Andrew S. Grove notion of a strategic inflection point (SIP). Grove, the late co-founder of Intel, defined an SIP as “[an event or circumstance] which causes you to make a fundamental change in business strategy. Nothing less is sufficient." To continue as you were, to maintain the status quo, is to write the organization's death certificate. Recently, I've taken to wondering, “Has the United States had the requisite sociological inflection points to effect change in its way of dealing with matters of race?” And if yes, how come so little has changed?

Life is full of SIPs. SIPs visit individuals, communities, organizations, and nations with equal regularity. And when a strategic inflection point occurs, folk really just gotta lean in; change or perish. That’s how it usually works, but somehow, it hasn't worked that way with America. Here, we've faced inflection after inflection on the matter of race, and managed to change not one whit. And we haven't perished..............yet. Soon come tho? I'm starting to wonder how much longer we can hold out cuz the tides, they are a-risin'.

Here's today's $64,000 question: why hasn’t America had a post-inflection change of direction? Simply  put: change comes only if you want it bad. America does not want it at all, far less for wanting it bad.

For change to result from an inflecting experience there must be crisis (like the secession of the slave-owning states for example); we must acknowledge that we are in crisis (like declaring war against those seceding states for example); and we must recognize that our current thinking and behavior are detrimental to our welfare (er, um, lemme come back to this) and finally, we must endeavor to do and be different (LOL, not happenin'). 

As a nation, these United States started this journey in 1492. It’s  2017 and we are still not there yet. We’re not even trying to figure out where *there* is! 

For this society to change, we’d need to make major internal shifts: we’d need to understand (i) the ubiquity of racial animus and the power of White supremacy and racism; (ii) we’d need to own that all of us carry negative stereotypes of Blackness, Native-ness, and Brown-ness with us wherever we go and (iii) we'd need to address same if there was to be change. Mostly, we would each need to own our part in creating the cesspool of ugliness in which we live. 

We’re not there yet.

How do I know? Well, there's this little lovely, Briana Brochu. (She's the one in the mug shot.)

Image: West Hartford Police/Facebook

The story of Ms. Brochu is here. I will not re-tell it. It is too vile. 

Let's pause for a moment to observe that Ms. Brochu is 18 years old. One. Eight. She's part of what is arguably the most diverse generation of teenagers America has ever seen. Her high school cohort is majority minority........

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Department of Education

...and yet here she is, as nasty and vile as a slave master's wife who heaps abuse on the enslaved woman her husband has taken to raping; as vile and disgusting as Dylan Roof and Richard Spencer, who bring nothing to the table but the brutality of the conquistador (with about just as much ability to tolerate cognitive dissonance). Yes, I said that. 

Brochu is not some 80 year old who grew up in Depression Era America with its week-a-day lynchings, who either attended same (and took her children) or turned a blind eye to them. She's not some Carolyn Donham Bryant (responsible for the death of Emmett Till). Or maybe she is?

She's not some 60 year old who grew up in Jim Crow America with segregated schools and water fountains who believes in the Divine Right of Whiteness. Or maybe she is?

She's not some 50 year old who grew up in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement and feels that the acknowledgement of Black rights means the abrogation of her own. Or maybe she is?

Instead, Brochu grew up in the Age of Obama. She was ten when he was elected. She's known two terms of Barack and Michelle Obama. She's come of age right alongside Malia and Sasha. And this is how she turns out? Clearly she's not Donham Bryant, she's Donham Bryant on f--king steroids.

America’s failure to accede to the demands of an inflection point has resulted (and will continue to result) in creatures (I really want to use the word miscreants eh, but that would be impolite) like Briana Brochu and Dylan Roof being allowed to wage perpetual war on Blackness; creatures like Dolt cuarenta y cinco landing atop the political heap, with oxygen bandits like Bannon, Se(ce)ssions and Miller standing beside him.

America's unwillingness to lean in to change results in Betty Shelbys (Terrence Crutcher's killer); Timothy Loehmans (Tamir Rice's murderer); Brian Enciniases (Sandra Bland's harasser); Milam & Bryants (Emmett Till's killers) and so very many others, being encouraged (yes, encouraged) to rain down terror of various levels on Blackness, Native-ness, and Brown-ness without challenge and generally without remorse.

The United States of America has seen several strategic inflection points in its history, but the U.S has also managed to half-ass every single change opportunity. Agitation may have made for civil rights legislation, but plenty folk (see list above and that's a very abbreviated list) ain't really wanna be any different. Agitation may have led to gay rights, but there's still a sh*tload of folk who don't actually want equality for non-cishet folk. Agitation may yield rights for transpeople, but they'll still be at dangerously high risk of death for being who they are. 

God must be shedding hella grace on these shores. The nation's history of perfunctory attempts at change really ought to have run this ship aground by now. I swear, if this joint were a business, the stock would be selling for a halfpenny. Instead, peace & prosperity shine forth like a beacon to the world's huddled masses, or some other such. Isn't that what the brochure says?

What have been the USA’s inflection points? Well, in no particular order, we have: The Civil War; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the Civil Rights Act of 1968; the Stonewall Riots of 1969; Native law suits against the federal government (all of them); DOMA and Gay Marriage victories; the recognition of transgender rights. Even Roe v. Wade was a possible inflection point and still, nada. Every advance of equality results in a brutal backlash (see Election 2016 if you don't believe me). And why? Briana Brochu and others of that ilk.

For all America's inflection points y’all are still here, stuck on ugly; here in this place where a young Black man who learned the names and allergies of 500 children so that he could better serve their needs, is dead and his killer is acquitted. 

Y'all still at a place where a young Black man kneeling to protest injustice is more offensive than an officer killing a man with his hands in the air; or running away; or selling loosies; or selling CDs; or crying out for help. 

Y'all still at a place where kneeling to highlight injustice is more egregious than talking about the neo-Nazis as "good people".

Y'all still at a place where a football team's name is a racial slur and the controversy isn't the name but that folk want it changed.

Y'all still at a place where ignoramuses can be handed material to read and they won't even open it  because FACTS are propaganda and the bullshit in their heads is da troof. And then we pretend that Briana is some kind of aberration? Briana is a feature not a flaw of this system. Feature. 

Strategic inflection points, my ass. Y’all have zero interest in *inflecting*. Briana Brochu and the parents and community who taught her everything she knows are the proof. Oh wait, you thought she spontaneously combusted? Nuh uh. Somebody raised her so. 

And because someone raised her thus, people like me have to worry about when and where the next one like her is gonna show up, because show up she will. That's just how it goes. 

Entitlement + anger = anomie and mass murder

Tim Wise wrote something the other day that seems relevant today in light of yet another mass shooting. His insight was this: White supremacy has long put a target on the backs of POC, but today White supremacy is killing White folk too. 

Every White person should have an expectation of success. This is what White supremacy teaches. They don't need to have much more than a high school diploma to have ready and almost automatic access to the middle class, but the logic of that is flawed; it always has been. And while the problems with that thinking have long been evident to those interested enough to look deeply; they don't seem to have been evident to White people. That lack of awareness is killing us all. 

Where I come from, you better have some serious skills, or a "papers" (a degree), if you want to see the inside of the middle class. But that ain't how y'all been doing it here. Here, a good paying job in a factory used to be sufficient to secure access to the middle class.  But that was before folk started voting for politicians who were happy to undermine the power of unions.  Today, after fifty plus years of declining union membership and years of weakening of union power, wages are stagnant, economic inequality is at an all time high and with it frustration. Add to all that, there is obvious evidence that those of us who are not considered supreme are rising. Everywhere you turn, BIPOC are on the move. We are finding ways to thrive despite all the hurdles put in our way. For those unwilling to take responsibility for their frustrations, the rising tide of BIPOC is easily identified as the cause of their distress. 

Rather than be honest about what's really going on around them - the consequences of union busting; the impact of corporate greed; the lack of economic and educational opportunities at home - entitled White men would rather blame BIPOC and White women. The under-skilled are easily replaced by the skilled and the skilled feel the hot breath of well-educated and trained POC on their necks. The result is that neither group is happy. A BIPOC's opportunity is a White man's hardship, or so they believe. Given this frame of reference, anger at the so-called political correctness that gives POC more equal access to opportunities is inevitable. Their rage is not at the fact that they can't call me a n*gger to my face, it's at the fact that they can't rely on me and others like me being automatically excluded just be-damn-cuz. Their rage is not at the fact that they have to, under the law, compete with me, it's at the fact that sometimes, I or others like me are better than they. 

At the same time that While supremacy was teaching White people one thing, it was teaching POC the exact opposite. While supremacy taught Whiteness that success was guaranteed, it taught us that it was not. We've learned to work twice as hard just in case that was what we needed to be considered acceptable. But our willingness to make that extra effort has meant that sometimes we cross the finish line ahead of White people, much to their chagrin. That chagrin, those White expectations of perpetually coming in first, built largely on 400+ years of blocking everyone else out, means that folk don't quite know how to respond to competition. But nature abhors a vacuum and into that emotional vacuum has flowed rage. 

Today's economic realities are complicated by several factors: political; social; demographic. It is no longer enough to expect a factory job to allow one to break into and hold a place in the middle class. With union rights severely eroded and corporate greed undermining wages there aren't that many good factory jobs out there any more. The world keeps changing but generations of unearned access and ill-gotten gains have taught far too many White people habits that do not fit our present realities. 

People like me, history's usual losers, know how precarious our economic gains are, so many of us are very busy going to school weeknights and all day Saturday just to stay afloat. Every weekend I go to a class at an area Community College. Saturday after Saturday, that joint is popping. Cars as far as the eye can see, grown men and women in classrooms for 3 plus hours on a Saturday morning. Why? Because we have long known that nothing comes to us freely or easily. We know that effort is required, that nothing is assured. While folks who look like me are in class struggling to improve our resumes, many others are nursing their rage at frustrated expectations with guns and Tiki torch marches screaming about blood and soil while rejecting job training because Don the Con says he'll bring coal back (from the dead) and resurrect Jim Crow.  

White supremacy is a great teacher, the question is: who's the better off for the tutelage? 

Those on the winning side of the color divide have not had to learn how to roll with unexpected punches. Those on the winning side have not had to build economic resilience, and so here we are, at a place where rage and anomie have set in. 

While some of us have had to learn to be resilient and grab opportunities as they come, American Whiteness has learned that whatever the challenge, violent acting out against "the other" is the answer.

Resilience isn't shooting at the 50 people next to you in church or the 400 at the outdoor concert or children and their teachers in the school, or the 9 who have prayed with your evil ass. That's not resilience. It is the opposite. It is proof positive that you have much to learn. 

The problem we face here - apart from the easy access to guns and cheap bullets, and the cheapening of life itself - is that Whiteness expects success for the merest show of effort, while the rest of us know that we could be as bright as a million watt bulb, success still isn't a given. Whiteness, after 400 years of having its path smoothed by public policy, has limited ability to deal with such realities. 

Until supremacy stops teaching that its people are guaranteed success, these shootings and the general brokenness of White America - as evidenced by shortened life spans - will continue unabated. The best I can do to help anybody is to call a thing a thing. And the current thing, is that the lie of White supremacy creates a rage that only death seems to quell and that is bad news for all of us.