Skin Color Should Not Matter, But it Does (Part 2)
10 Points to Think About
1. The United States practiced human slavery across significant parts of the country until the end of the Civil War in 1865. At the expense of millions of African-Americans, their labor and lives were exploited to create wealth for many U.S. citizens, primarily white people. Thus, millions of white Americans benefited from the illegal or immoral labors of the blacks, setting up wealthy legacies for many whites that blacks never had. Many whites did not directly own African-American slaves, but white people enjoyed the enhanced economies that the Southern states' slavery provided for many generations and populations of white American citizens.
2. The generations of newly freed African-American slaves post-bellum did not have much to begin with, as far as owning things or being trained or educated to do things to get ahead economically. Worse yet, most black people in the United States, the majority of them who were enslaved short years before, dealt with the travails of poverty, discrimination, lack of resources, in short: societal racism. This was a problem that the government had that did not allow the common black people to get ahead and create wealth, as most white Americans had opportunities to do. This did not mean that there were not poor white people. It meant that whites had better chances to create and sustain wealth.
The wars of the United States allowed blacks to have opportunities that they had never had to that measure before, with authority, leadership, even the rudiments of education. Each successive war permitted more equality to the African-American soldiers, seamen, marines, and eventually airmen. The Spanish American War allowed more cavalry science to be learned; valuable skills in the world of the horses. Then came the car, and the truck. And the plane.
Each innovation in transportation and technology allowed more African-Americans chances to succeed. But wealth and inheritance, opportunity to grow financially was still stacked against them.
World Wars I and II gave more worldliness to the African-Americans, followed by South Korea, Vietnam, up till our current wars in the Middle-East and Afghanistan.
While there were many valid complaints that the brunt of the fighting were disproportionately fought and died by the poorer troops, especially in Vietnam, which inarguably meant more blacks than the regular population, these wars still gave African-America men, and later women, more and more upward mobility. The military services offered a modicum of equality to all races.
3. Meanwhile the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s moved the thermometer of racial tolerance and acceptance, and integration and true equal rights to the fore, or to the real place where people of all color should have been at in the first place. The integration of the American national past-time of baseball was huge in 1947. Other black athletes and people of color had broken down the unfairness barriers in track and boxing.
Sports became the new way for many African-Americans to leave the poverty of their backgrounds, while music and entertainment also provided a tantalizing public and acclaimed way to reach success and financial success. Education for the general masses lacked, compared to non-blacks, and worse yet the criminal and judicial system seemed to take much heavier tolls on the black populations, based on rates of arrests and especially illegal drug dealing and use.
4. By the 1970s and 1980s many good things were happening in the United States in general, for African-Americans as well, and there were feelings (much of it witnessed by me personally in the way of television, movies, sports, literature, and my own interactions with friendships and associations with African-Americans.) In my native Indiana there were pockets of racism that I observed, but by and large the white people of my native state seemed to accept and love people of color, particularly in sports, where we all seemed to be happy brothers and sisters.
My second state of most observance was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where to my knowledge race relations, as we can call it, seemed to be advanced as well. Perhaps even better than my native Hoosier State?
On television Bill Cosby was king, Eddie Murphy revered, sports figures in all venues honored and cherished. Black men and women seemed to be thriving. Michael Jackson and hundreds of other black artists were celebrated and adored, as well as more and more actors and even directors and producers. Rap and hip-hop became popular modes of communication and culture, beyond the traditional black ascribed genres of jazz, the blues, gospel and soul.
We had serious presidential candidates in the likes of Jesse Jackson and soon after Colin Powell.
African-Americans seemed to have arrived, or so we (again, the white majority) thought.
We were a country of freedom, free enterprise, prosperity and equality, right? We had moved past the racism of the past, correct?
5. Entering into the 1990s, things became more evident that disparities in the black populations were still not right: movies like Boyz in the Hood and New Jack City appeared to be cinema verite; true to life, and not flattering or healthy. It seemed whole generations of African-American youth were growing up surrounded by violence, drugs, intimidation, imprisonment, and overall malaise.
What went wrong? How could this be fixed? Were all the politicians on the left correct to the arguments of those conservatives on the right? Did we need more robust social programs like free health care beyond Medicaid, food stamps, and public and section 8 housing? What about scholarships for thousands of gifted youth? Did not the military still offer the same upward mobility of the 1940s and 50s for millions of returned G.I.s?
Was bussing (sending whites to black neighborhoods and vice versa) not the answer, or more money pushed into the public school systems? Why could we not fix these urban and not-so urban ghettos of millions of black youth? Why were the drug gangs the ruling force of so many across the streets, leading to the perpetual life of jail and recidivism for millions? Did we need socialism or communism to fix the ills of our minority societies?
Why did the upward mobility of the immigrants like Latinos and Asians continue to surge while African-Americans apparently were left behind?
Was institutional racism still at play? What could be done, or were things eventually turning for the better despite all the negative statistics?
6. The late 1990s brought to light more dichotomies between the so-called "white" and "black" communities, to many known as the "haves" and "have-nots". No definition of population of cohorts is that cut and dry, easy to delineate. The reason why I qualify these descriptors in quotations is because by the 1990s many communities across the width and breadth of the United States were a mix of all people: not all black, not all white, certainly not all brown (Latino or other). Sure, enclaves still exist twenty years later (presently) deep into the 21st century, but by the late 90s of the twentieth century there were many mixed families. Barach Obama himself was a product from a mixed couple, and he was raised in a highly multi-diverse environment between Hawai'i and Indonesia. As an adult he became more immersed in the African-American community writ large, after a very advanced educational tour through the Ivy Leagues.
The O.J. Simpson tragedy may have been the cultural cross point for many of us, as a Americans, at least; I venture to say for the majority of the country it was a waking up point to illustrate that progress under Clinton or Bush or Reagan or Carter was not as good as hoped. I think it was safe to say for my father well into his fifties and me halfway through my twenties, this was a moment of clarity and rueful hope. Guilty or innocent, the emotional responses were curious (somewhat comical for a while with respect to a bloody mess) in the media and entertainment shows, particularly Leno's Tonight Show, and then befuddling, especially at the much ballyhooed acquittal.
Mostly black audiences cheered his declared innocence of killing two people in cold blood.
"Finally! One of of ours is released!" Like a reverse lynching, of sorts.
Another part of the story was the black lawyer Jonny Cochran, a smart legalist and the best money could be. A seeming victory for the African-American community as a whole.
What a way to be judged victorious... This after other racially charged public trials on nightly television like Kennedy's nephew, who was white and set free, the black boxer Mike Tyson, accused of rape and sentenced to years at the penitentiary, the four police officers filmed beating the black victim Rodney King, all acquitted, which provoked the heinous riots of '92 in Los Angeles.
It seemed still obvious that the "black" community and the "white" communities saw things vastly differently.
7. The era of George Bush, number 41, I think, ushered in among the disputes of fairness of the vote, questioning our democratic process itself, then brought the shocking tragedies and perfidies of the radical terrorists of mostly Arab persuasion from that fateful September, the 11th, a Tuesday. as most of us recall. This then introduced a new epoch of racial or prejudicial bias, always translated as hatred or antipathy: foreign and/or Islamic haters needed to find Allah the hard way. Justice was going to be served by blood.
Perhaps all communities of the United States, for once, felt the same. We were all victimized that bleak day, as the sun shone down on all God's creatures.
White, Catholic or WASP, black, Christian or Muslim, Latino, legal or without documentation, Asian, of whatever background, we all felt American-- even the Europeans, normally sceptics of U.S. hegemony and power, Chinese, South Americans, and other would-be peaceful nations empathized and aligned with us.
The U.S. military, now in the 21st century as fully integrated racially as it should ever be, took care if its business, and U.S. citizens were one color. Green (in the Army case). Or three: red, white, and blue.
Nothing unites a nation and an otherwise disparate people like a common enemy.
8. Into the 2000s, as the threats from Afghanistan dissipated and Iraq ramped up, and later after the momentous triumphal entry of Mr. Obama, middle named Hussein, no less, and Afghanistan again took our attention with its own surge up in Helmand and Qandahar provinces, with drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan, and the ever famous targeting of Mr. Bin Laden himself, the domestic tranquilities masked by foreign conflicts continued on...
Case by case, incident by incident, the law enforcement grievances piled up. Every city with a major black community had a famous case of "police brutality" and lives lost or forever damaged. Usually blue on black. This is a phrasing derived from what I knew of in Afghanistan as "green-on-blue", meaning a green local Afghan troop turned on blue troops, ISAF, or international forces from around the world.
Blue on black means that an African-American, typically, is killed by means of law enforcement officers. Case after case is cited by many as modern day lynchings, which has its own awful history in the United States.
When I moved to San Bernardino, California, in 1999, my close associates recounted to me the bad death in nearby Moreno Valley, in Riverside County. Was it an episode of another egregious and unnecessary police brutality victim of racism? A lady alone in her vehicle winds up shot to death? Could this not have been avoided? Was it because she was black? People had protested her unfortunate death, and yes, it was considered a racist blight on law enforcement. If I recall correctly the police of Moreno Valley were not sanctioned or punished.
Others saw her as a crazy threat to the public good that should not have been found in those extreme circumstances. Look up the case, I am sure the Google has some stories to tell, each way you would like.
Driving while black became the new mantra of institutional racism and fear among the black communities.
I saw a sticker at my workplace a couple years ago, smartly stuck in the passenger side window: "I know: I keep my hands on the steering wheel and I will present my license slowly." Or something to that affect.
Getting pulled over for some people, simply a routine traffic stop, can be a trying experience for many, especially minorities, even to the point of death when things are misinterpreted.
It happens too often, especially to African-Americans.
9. Enter the 2010s, which just wrapped up a little over a month ago, and we had some of the most famous cases of blue on black deaths.
Trayvon Martin in Florida was about a wanna-be cop, George Zimmerman. That got people pretty riled up, understandably. I will not replay the whole scene, but Trayvon was considered the young victim of a guy's zealousness to be the neighborhood watch, and it turned out tragic. Martin died, and then Zimmerman was acquitted based on the case and ruling.
A young black man dies again, through no fault of his own.
Then we had the choke out case of the coolie seller in New York, then the cigar stealer in Ferguson, Missouri, then the mishandled or poorly transported victim in Baltimore.
And while these more famous cases went on, many African-Americans continued to feel unlawfully and unreasonably targeted, and killed.
Most of these people, these innocent or certainly ill treated people were filmed. And most of the law enforcement professionals were let off, with little enough repercussions or censure. Hence, the public ire gathers and erupts.
The mantras were shouted and published repeatedly:
"I can't breathe."
"Hand's up, don't shoot!"
Before that a popular cry was: "Don't taze me, bro." Less lethal, usually a tazer shock, but hitting the same sentiment of unnecessary reactions to alleged misbehavior by offenders, usually of color.
By 2019, we had been through the new decade of race riots and pillaging. New racial offenses and accusations. Far from over, our black persecution complex. Police forces re-worked their numbers to provide more minority representation, like in Ferguson, where the numbers were far from representative of the overwhelming black neighborhoods versus the number of African-American police officers.
Ultimately, poverty is the culprit. Some accuse the U.S. government federally, and then state by state or locally, of malfeasance or indifference, apathy by the underlying racism that has existed since the 1800s or before. There are the statistics that show that blacks have too many problems purchasing homes, getting loans, saving money, getting proper educations, receiving too much punishment for misbehavior in the schools, being judged too harshly and unfairly accused and locked up too much. Others accuse the African-American communities of not doing enough to keep themselves free of these problems, taking advantage of government hand outs to their own detriment, smoking too much illegal substance or taking part in too much crime, petty or more serious. Or, the claims of the African-American break down of the nuclear family and sons and daughters without enough parents, let alone parental control.
Sometimes the very art of rap and hip-hop can be the source of the reasons of the downfall of the greater "thug"community, celebrating or glorifying violence, sex, drugs, and unwelcomed proper values to a more decent society.
Perhaps.
As stated before, there are more mixed and diverse communities than ever before in the United States.
There are white and Asian rappers, black and Latino country singers. We are not as we once were, not as segregated on the surface as 30 or 50 years ago.
Will things change?
10. We have entered the dubious age of Donald Trump. Charges of racism run rampant, violent protests tinged with racial messages of hate have been tossed around, plenty.
Some have died, some have marched, some have killed as homeland white extremists. We mourn at the senselessness, the cruelty and awful juxtaposition of it all. In the land of plenty, we have the horror houses and terror halls.
Racism and its detritus and hubris and ugly history is alive and well (not well, of course), in our new decade of 2020.
I don't have the answers, my children are largely grown and are thinking well for themselves. I am adding my points, nothing definitive, nothing authoritative, but as a man of almost 50, white, black, brown, or otherwise, I do know and declare that racism is bad. It is evil and we need to rid ourselves of its effects and causes.
We need to clean up our language, black and white and brown and other.
We do not need to rehash the words and language of false empowerment and hate. Start there.
My white boy was called a "f-in' n*gg*r during a basketball game last year by an opposing player. It upset him greatly. We talked about it. It doesn't matter what the race of the other player was or is, it is not right.
Stop the racism, NOW.
Stop the speech of ignorance and hate.
Stop the words and ideologies of some kind of supremacy.
We are one human race. Can we slow down on the white/black jokes? I know some people make a lot of money doing those, but...
This thing has to end sometime.
Skin color does not matter, but it does. 2020.
Skin color does not matter, but it does. 2030?
Skin color does not matter, but it does. 2040?
Skin color does not matter, but it does. 2050?
I might live to be 80, who knows? Will I always be known as a white guy? A gringo? A gaijin? A howlie?
Sure, I am all those things. I should not enjoy privilege over others because of it.
Will white farmers of Zimbawe be kicked off their lands forever?
Will law enforcement always be perceived enemies of the African-Americans in the U.S. and elsewhere?
Does Canada have the answers?
Can we learn to get along, in the immortal words of Rodney King, a black man beaten in the streets of L.A. by four policemen?
Can we stop using the "N" word?
All of us?
I have heard it used too much, by people of all races. It was used sometimes as brother, or chum, or buddy, or friend, or pal. Dude. For a while I ran with a crowd that made me accustomed to use the word "negro", but even that is not appropriate. But it, the harsher "N' word, carries so much more negative weight, this "N" word. It is abusive, an epithet of hate and violence. There is no more room for it in modern parlance.
Some think that it gives the user some type of empowerment, this overused word in hip hop. That black people can use it with impunity, because they "own" it. No. It is in fact empowerment of ignorance and hate. I have had that lecture with my students at Pacific High School: Anthony Bradley, Charles Clark, Andrew Palomino, Darnell Easley, and the one who I know that died by bullet at the local mall a few years later...
Robinson. Latrell. Pernell. Andre. Dante. No, none of those, but we know the ones taken...
I will remember your name. You are not just a black guy to me. You are a son, a man, a student, an athlete. You were my student. A person that I knew and I respected as much as I could.
I am sure he used this hateful, ignorant word. He didn't need to, and I am confident that it did not lead to his death. But why do we use these words of hate? Because of the color of our skin, how we have been branded, like cattle?
Stop it.
Stop the hate, let's all move beyond skin color.
Please.
Skin Color Should Not Matter, But it Does Part 2.
Ahh, your name came to me in the middle of the night, and I woke and I felt I had to write this, dedicate this, to you and perhaps a thousand, I mean a million other young men cut down in their prime.
The Million Man march to oblivion, as it were.
Donnell Jury. I saw you play football, I saw you play basketball, I saw you do your best in my class. You gave me your respect, I thank you.
I recall talking with your special education teacher, the one with a doctorate named Ross, also from Indiana like me, but a big golfer who lived in Redlands, paid big money to play the links. Many teachers at Pacific lived in posher, safer Redlands across the wash (arroyo) where less ghetto crime and violence occurred.
You, Donnell, played at Chafee Junior College after Pacific High School, but I believe that is where your sports career ended. I heard about your demise 6 years later after our class, from a basketball teammate of yours who excelled more at baseball. Details like being at that mall at 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning...
I wrote about you in my old blog on Foxpsorts.com, and it was erased and sent to the vapor by those pinheads around 2009. Of all the blog posts that I composed on my two Fox accounts, created free at the end of 2005, that is one that I wish I had access to the most.
They lied about not erasing/deleting it. I would have backed them up if they had been truthful about only "adjusting" the URLs, our shared websites. Guys like you get erased and forgotten in the ghetto where you hail from. I lived in the neighborhood next over, in the San Gorgonio High School zone. Things were not too bad by day, but places like "Little Africa" always seemed sketchy... Police helicopters at night with their strobe lights a common occurrence.
I miss the memories that I put in the post about you, Donnell. You deserve my memories, my salutations, your presence in the world of black men, women, children, and other minorities cut down in mindless ways. Live on, my brother and student. Once you have poured a part of yourself into a student, you feel a kinship and responsibility toward them, a bit like a parent.
I would have like to have considered myself a mentor, in some small way, a ray of hope, providing an ounce of momentum toward future successes and achievements. But like too many , your life was taken. Have other former students of mine been shot to death, too?
"Black on black violence." "Street killing." "Gang banging". It never ends in our lifetime. Check the newspaper obits.
So bad that we have to put our finger on it somehow, wrap our minds around it and fix it.
You are still there, you still have family that remember you, maybe someday I can visit your gravesite or your church where your family weeps and prays for you, Donnell, the basketball and football star. They have your pictures, your obituary, probably talk to the girlfriend you took to the prom or were planning on marrying, or possibly had your child. You should be featured in the 2000 year book, prominently.
You are still there, Donnell. RIP, like Kobe and Gianna.
edclinch'sit.com
papaclinch'sit.com
RIP to my old blogs blogicided, but dedicated to the unwanton violence and victims and survivors of San Berdu, the Inland Empire (like that boy had the IE tattooed on his forearm at UCLA...), and the rough and shady urban streets across the United States and the world.
And oh yeah, it doesn't have to be a ghetto to be deadly, and it doesn't have to be primarily African-American folks to be poor. But the combination lends a pretty high chance of it being a tough mix for stats. Like reports from the war zone where I lived, the daily numbers add up to fratricide. Brothers killing brothers.
Like the Vietnam Memorial bulging up in 1969, name after name, Donnell is among the thousands, hundreds of thousands?, that did not make it to age thirty.
The lists go on.
Skin Color Should Not Matter, But it Does (Part 2)
