Sometimes, I let down my guard and forget how deeply entrenched the distorted story of African Americans is in this country. As Chimamanda Adichie says in her TED talk, a single story about anything is dangerous.
And the election of our first black president hasn't altered that single story a bit for many Americans, even those who voted for President Obama. Twice. I got an unexpected reminder of that yesterday which disturbed me and my sleep last night.
A sweet, friendly, older white woman (I'll call her Ingrid), whom I run into periodically and we occasionally chat, stopped me yesterday. She had bought a copy of my essay collection, Not All Poor People, Are Black and read it! She wanted to talk about my book. Then this woman whom I don't know well, but do know that she's a fan of President Obama and is supportive of him and many of his policies, reminded me of that pervasive single story about blacks.
Ingrid is a pleasant, seemingly intelligent woman; I've never felt a whiff of condescension from her. She appears to be healthy and happy with her life. So when she wanted to talk about my book, I anticipated an interesting discussion.
Ingrid wanted me to know how sad the book made her. This startled me a bit because I've received several comments about the book, but had never heard that one. However, the book includes a variety of essays and, of course, each person brings her/his own experiences to what they read.
Then she told me a bit about herself: she grew up without knowing or ever seeing a black person. She first laid eyes on one of us when she was 17. Ingrid further explained that she's lived in several cities in different parts of the country, and she named them for me. The ones I remember are Austin, TX; Madison, WI; Ann Arbor, MI and she now lives in Bloomington, IN. (I believe all the places she named were college towns.) And she said, indicating that suddenly things have gotten worse, not once in any of these places did she ever hear of any racial upheavals.
I sighed and responded, "Because you didn't hear of them doesn't mean they didn't happen." She nodded her head, but I doubt that she "heard" what I said. Ingrid also wanted to know why blacks are so angry and react "so violently" when something happens. (I thought I had spelled that out several times and in a variety of ways in my book.) The thought of trying to explain what was wrong with her question so thoroughly exhausted me that I simply reminded her that the violence usually begins with the police killing a black person. I also pointed out that after hundreds of years of being enslaved and oppressed, people reach a point of not being able to take any more without fighting back as best they can.
Then she asked, "But don't you think that the Africans who came here are better off...aren't you better off than you would be if you were still in Africa where things are so bad?"
Somehow, I remained calm. First I reminded her that we did not come here like her ancestors had. (I thought this was common knowledge, but decided not to let it go uncorrected.) I reminded her that we were captured and brought over in chains, except for those whose bones are now scattered at the bottom of the Atlantic.
I also needed to refute her single story about Africa. I asked her, "Who knows what the continent of Africa would be like today if 60 million people and much of their natural resources had not been drained off to build and enrich Europe and America?"
"Sixty million? Really? I had no idea it was that many."
"Nobody knows the exact number, but the Slave Trade went on for about 500 years, and scholars have estimated that 12 million Africans were removed each year."
Ingrid would never wave a Confederate flag, or be less
than polite to any person, no matter their color. She undoubtedly would
adamantly deny that she's ever had a racist thought. Yet she thinks that I should be grateful my ancestors were captured and enslaved; otherwise I would still (horror of horrors) be in AFRICA!
I was restless as I tried to sleep last night because I realized how absolutely weary I am of trying to get American whites not to accept the story they are told repeatedly about Africa and African Americans. It feels like a Sisyphean punishment. Why would whites (and many blacks) believe me when throughout their lives everything they read, see on television and are taught keeps telling them the opposite of what I have to say? Besides, how could I possibly be "objective"?
And yes, I recognize that not all whites subscribe to the single story, but more of them do than not. For examples, see David Brooks on Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, Between the World and Me. See an Iraq War veteran killed by jail guards in Texas. Also see people waving Confederate flags--a historic symbol of treason and a recent symbol of hatred for blacks--to greet the President of the United States.
I'm trying to cling to my optimism and keep my heart open, but when will it end? I am really tired of this.
Showing posts with label President Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President Obama. Show all posts
Monday, July 20, 2015
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Here's What I Think...
What I've observed and experienced is that many people have an opportunity (or perhaps more than one) in that decade between age 40 and age 50 to make life-changing decisions. These decisions may be triggered by a feeling of restlessness, a loss of some kind, by a health or financial challenge, or perhaps all of the above. Sometimes it takes a trauma to get our attention when we are headed in the wrong direction; otherwise we keep rolling along in our little groove until it becomes a rut, then a grave.
I believe President Barack Obama, who will be 49 this year, is being presented with his opportunity to change as he presides over the U.S. government. It appears that in his thirteen months in office, he has been unable to please anyone. Progressives are deeply disappointed and Republicans are orgasmic about their ability to sabotage everything Obama wants to accomplish. The problems he is grappling with, and that the U.S. Congress is diddling over, have been 30 years or longer in the making. However we live in a society with a 24 hour news cycle that relies on signifying, sensationalism, and provoking outrage. Americans have come to feel entitled to INSTANT solutions to everything, no matter how complex the issue.
I, too, have been less than pleased about several of President Obama's choices--escalating the war in Afghanistan, bailing out the banks, reluctance to wholeheartedly support the constitutional rights of lesbians and gays. However, I knew when I voted for him that he did not have a magic wand with which to wave away our problems.
But more than that I knew that his well-intentioned efforts to pull all sides together so that the government could actually accomplish something in a bipartisan fashion would likely not work. I applaud him for the sentiment, because it is a good one. And it may actually happen when the condition of the country is desperate enough for masses of people to storm Congress and insist on concrete, viable results. And that day will come. The recent price hikes by the health care industry are simply the tip of the iceberg. The plutocracy ain't done with us yet.
However, I doubt that Obama will still be president when our politicians begin working together. The big lesson that Obama is learning (although I imagine Michelle tried to tell him), is that racism is a cherished tradition in the United States of America. For many whites the only power they have is their imagined superiority to blacks. That's who they are. To recognize and respect Barack Obama as their president would be an evisceration of their identity. And as usual, politicians exploit the racist feelings of their constituents (and their own racism) as cover for their self-aggrandizing power plays.
We Americans of African descent who inherited the lessons of how to cope with racism from our parents and grandparents, anticipated that a segment of whites in this country simply would not, could not, bring themselves to respect a black man in a position of authority. The most obvious example of that disrespect was the S.C. congressman shouting out "liar" as the President addressed congress.
I've seen this same lack of respect for black authority so many times I can't list them all. It happens among coaches (except in the NBA), where blacks are allowed less time to build a team before they are fired, but it has also happened with the election of black mayors (the council wars in Chicago when Harold Washington was elected), black university presidents (Adam Herbert at Indiana University in 2003), and with black managers and supervisors in the corporate world.
Those of us who were schooled in the minutia of racism have some preparation for maneuvering around this internalized skepticism about our abilities that many whites, and some blacks, have. What we know for sure is that it takes impenetrable firmness and rock-solid confidence. Obama obviously has the confidence, otherwise he never would have sought the presidency, but he still has some lessons to learn about how to deal with racists who are known to mistake kindness for weakness.
I believe President Barack Obama, who will be 49 this year, is being presented with his opportunity to change as he presides over the U.S. government. It appears that in his thirteen months in office, he has been unable to please anyone. Progressives are deeply disappointed and Republicans are orgasmic about their ability to sabotage everything Obama wants to accomplish. The problems he is grappling with, and that the U.S. Congress is diddling over, have been 30 years or longer in the making. However we live in a society with a 24 hour news cycle that relies on signifying, sensationalism, and provoking outrage. Americans have come to feel entitled to INSTANT solutions to everything, no matter how complex the issue.
I, too, have been less than pleased about several of President Obama's choices--escalating the war in Afghanistan, bailing out the banks, reluctance to wholeheartedly support the constitutional rights of lesbians and gays. However, I knew when I voted for him that he did not have a magic wand with which to wave away our problems.
But more than that I knew that his well-intentioned efforts to pull all sides together so that the government could actually accomplish something in a bipartisan fashion would likely not work. I applaud him for the sentiment, because it is a good one. And it may actually happen when the condition of the country is desperate enough for masses of people to storm Congress and insist on concrete, viable results. And that day will come. The recent price hikes by the health care industry are simply the tip of the iceberg. The plutocracy ain't done with us yet.
However, I doubt that Obama will still be president when our politicians begin working together. The big lesson that Obama is learning (although I imagine Michelle tried to tell him), is that racism is a cherished tradition in the United States of America. For many whites the only power they have is their imagined superiority to blacks. That's who they are. To recognize and respect Barack Obama as their president would be an evisceration of their identity. And as usual, politicians exploit the racist feelings of their constituents (and their own racism) as cover for their self-aggrandizing power plays.
We Americans of African descent who inherited the lessons of how to cope with racism from our parents and grandparents, anticipated that a segment of whites in this country simply would not, could not, bring themselves to respect a black man in a position of authority. The most obvious example of that disrespect was the S.C. congressman shouting out "liar" as the President addressed congress.
I've seen this same lack of respect for black authority so many times I can't list them all. It happens among coaches (except in the NBA), where blacks are allowed less time to build a team before they are fired, but it has also happened with the election of black mayors (the council wars in Chicago when Harold Washington was elected), black university presidents (Adam Herbert at Indiana University in 2003), and with black managers and supervisors in the corporate world.
Those of us who were schooled in the minutia of racism have some preparation for maneuvering around this internalized skepticism about our abilities that many whites, and some blacks, have. What we know for sure is that it takes impenetrable firmness and rock-solid confidence. Obama obviously has the confidence, otherwise he never would have sought the presidency, but he still has some lessons to learn about how to deal with racists who are known to mistake kindness for weakness.
Friday, August 28, 2009
SO, THIS IS WHAT THE "POST-RACIAL" SOCIETY LOOKS LIKE
I recently returned from a week in New York City at their Fringe Theater Festival. I was there specifically to watch my son's performances of The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour. It's a marvelous show that talks bluntly about America's tradition of racism and eschews euphemisms like "minority," "the N-word," "diversity," and the other circumventions we use to avoid honest discussions of our racial divisions. I hope this show will help get this country talking about this issue that we obviously hope will go away by being ignored, except for those few occasions that capture the media's attention.
Lately, despite the media's trumpeting the "post-racial society" because we elected a president of African descent, racism is, in fact, more open and vicious than it's been since the 1950s. I've often heard nostalgic longing for those "good old days." Apparently, we are now privileged to re-live those days, with higher prices this time around.
In addition to the widely covered New York Post cartoon, Oscar Grant and Professor Gates incidents, there is and has been a steady stream of equally heinous indications of the endemism of American racism. Here are a few examples:
The alarmingly disproportionate number of innocent blacks and Latinos who are incarcerated of which Texas is the leading perpetrator.
Brandon McClelland another black man dragged to death by white men in Paris, Texas.
The "Hidden Race War" in post-Katrina New Orleans.
U.S. Representative Lynn Jenkins pining for a "great white hope."
Rush Limbaugh still flogging President Obama's place of birth.
Glenn Beck
Less vicious, but equally insidious are these examples from the genteel world of book publishing where the novel Liar by Justine Larbalestier, which has an African American protagonist used a white on the cover .
And the Canadian title The Book of Negroes, a novel by Lawrence Hill was "toned down" to Someone Knows My Name for the American market. The original title was taken from an historic document of the same name that listed the Negroes who were loyal to the British during America's Revolutionary War. The original Book of Negroes lists the names of these Loyalists as they were evacuated after the war.
I vividly recall that whenever Louis Farrakhan or any other black did anything that whites considered offensive, white leaders would call on black leaders to "condemn" the black person's behavior. During President Obama's campaign for the presidency, he was pressed to condemn his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and ultimately did so.
Where are the white leaders condemning their bad actors? Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Jon Stewart do a magnificent job of calling them out, but I want to hear political leaders condemn these outrageous examples of blatent racism.
Lately, despite the media's trumpeting the "post-racial society" because we elected a president of African descent, racism is, in fact, more open and vicious than it's been since the 1950s. I've often heard nostalgic longing for those "good old days." Apparently, we are now privileged to re-live those days, with higher prices this time around.
In addition to the widely covered New York Post cartoon, Oscar Grant and Professor Gates incidents, there is and has been a steady stream of equally heinous indications of the endemism of American racism. Here are a few examples:
The alarmingly disproportionate number of innocent blacks and Latinos who are incarcerated of which Texas is the leading perpetrator.
Brandon McClelland another black man dragged to death by white men in Paris, Texas.
The "Hidden Race War" in post-Katrina New Orleans.
U.S. Representative Lynn Jenkins pining for a "great white hope."
Rush Limbaugh still flogging President Obama's place of birth.
Glenn Beck
Less vicious, but equally insidious are these examples from the genteel world of book publishing where the novel Liar by Justine Larbalestier, which has an African American protagonist used a white on the cover .
And the Canadian title The Book of Negroes, a novel by Lawrence Hill was "toned down" to Someone Knows My Name for the American market. The original title was taken from an historic document of the same name that listed the Negroes who were loyal to the British during America's Revolutionary War. The original Book of Negroes lists the names of these Loyalists as they were evacuated after the war.
I vividly recall that whenever Louis Farrakhan or any other black did anything that whites considered offensive, white leaders would call on black leaders to "condemn" the black person's behavior. During President Obama's campaign for the presidency, he was pressed to condemn his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and ultimately did so.
Where are the white leaders condemning their bad actors? Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Jon Stewart do a magnificent job of calling them out, but I want to hear political leaders condemn these outrageous examples of blatent racism.
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Iranian Election
What short memories we have, or is it that protested elections in the U.S. are somehow different than such protests elsewhere? Remember our 2000 presidential election? It was disputed and people took to the streets to vociferously express their disagreement with what many still consider a rigged outcome. Did we call on the leaders of other democratic countries to express their opinions of our electoral process? And when they did weigh in on our messy election, we paid no attention at all to what they had to say.
Here in the U.S. we have become so full of ourselves that we feel obligated to tell other countries (particularly non European countries) how we feel about what they do. Many politicians and elected officials are vigorously urging President Obama to be more forcefully involved in Iran's disputed election. So far the president has correctly preferred a muted response. I hope he continues to emphasize that this is a matter strictly for the Iranians. It is not our concern. Haven't we learned anything from our precipitous invasion of Iraq? Obviously, our new president has, but congress is apparently a slow learner.
Here in the U.S. we have become so full of ourselves that we feel obligated to tell other countries (particularly non European countries) how we feel about what they do. Many politicians and elected officials are vigorously urging President Obama to be more forcefully involved in Iran's disputed election. So far the president has correctly preferred a muted response. I hope he continues to emphasize that this is a matter strictly for the Iranians. It is not our concern. Haven't we learned anything from our precipitous invasion of Iraq? Obviously, our new president has, but congress is apparently a slow learner.
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