racism again
In an attempt to do more thorough research on possible places to live, I came across this article when I entered the search string "black people" and "name of town in upstate New York." I looked through the school district's online newsletters for brown faces and come up with none. After scrolling through a couple pages' worth of hits, I was dismayed to learn the town I was considering is considered a little bit of the South up North.
There was a recent episode of Boston Legal that gnawed at for a while, though I couldn't put my finger on what about it bothered me. It's the one in which the firm takes a stand against the death penalty in Texas, undoubtedly a necessary, noble fight and an informative show for the general public. But... Texas is looked upon with contempt by those outside the South, it seems, when the truth is it's no worse than anywhere else. (Even New Orleans; I can easily see how appealing a majority black city is, despite its faults, and why some people with familial ties here may never even develop a desire to leave.) How quick we are to assign blame when, for instance, Boston has its own problems with its racially segregated school system, much like New Orleans (which I didn't discover until I moved here). Got me thinking about how easy it is for us to point fingers at each other across state or regional lines, when the fact is the States just suck for many of us wherever we go. The constant othering gets old. For example, since I've been here I've been informed, with surprise on the face of the teller, that I didn't have an accent. Being Black and from Texas, I can't tell if it's a slight to the former (that old "aren't you articulate?" line), or the latter. And that I live on the wrong side of the tracks; I missed the cut-off for the 'right side' by a block and a half. Well, so what? So what parts of the solution are the yuppies just starting out who avoid black areas at all costs and wedge an even greater socioeconomic divide between the races, and the artsy, "creative class" of white people who buy cheap houses in them and eventually drive the poor black and brown people who've lived there for decades out?
The above article accurately captures how I've been feeling since moving here (not just due to race issues, but class issues loom large in my reality, too). It makes the excellent point that ghettoes continue to exist for reasons that have little to do with poverty. Although pre-Dubya we were a fiercely Democratic state, that doesn't count for shit now. Texas is no utopia, but neither is anywhere else. Don't get me wrong. I think the death penalty is just as fucked as anyone, but I see it in a different light, too, the continued fragmentation of the Black family, choices which I keenly feel some guilt and anguish for as the mother of a biracial child. I agonize over how the Black marriage rate has declined since the 1970s and wonder if the continuing criminalization of young black men (by a society that has no place for and doesn't care for them) isn't a large part of the problem. For this reason, I don't think white feminists can even begin to understand why I don't see anything wrong with sites like marriageworksusa.com. The fact is whatever's fucked up about America is fucked up in its ghettoes twenty times worse. The clamor to shut down the campaign on the Hipmama blogs is just another example of well-intentioned but misguided liberal activism. Your politics are nice to sit around in coffeehouses and talk about, but reality is, pardon my French, a bitch. Who cares about your politics when, from where I'm sitting, there won't be another generation around to contemplate, vote against or tell you what's wrong with them? When entire communities throughout the Western hemisphere have replicated and inverted the problem of racism by what looks to me like breeding the black out? I'm worried that we're reaching a critical point when what all the years of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, the Civil Rights movement, etc. couldn't do will soon be done, and I advocate any means necessary of stemming the tide, regardless of the source.
Living in America I suppose there will always be trade-offs. It seems the best you can do is try to minimize the damage and make the most of where you're at. Students Organized Against Racism (SOAR) will be having a forum on April 12th on the history of racism and racial identity in New Orleans which will hopefully answer some of the questions I want answered, and if you live here, you should come out. My favoritest professor and (secret! she doesn't know it yet!) mentor will be speaking.
There was a recent episode of Boston Legal that gnawed at for a while, though I couldn't put my finger on what about it bothered me. It's the one in which the firm takes a stand against the death penalty in Texas, undoubtedly a necessary, noble fight and an informative show for the general public. But... Texas is looked upon with contempt by those outside the South, it seems, when the truth is it's no worse than anywhere else. (Even New Orleans; I can easily see how appealing a majority black city is, despite its faults, and why some people with familial ties here may never even develop a desire to leave.) How quick we are to assign blame when, for instance, Boston has its own problems with its racially segregated school system, much like New Orleans (which I didn't discover until I moved here). Got me thinking about how easy it is for us to point fingers at each other across state or regional lines, when the fact is the States just suck for many of us wherever we go. The constant othering gets old. For example, since I've been here I've been informed, with surprise on the face of the teller, that I didn't have an accent. Being Black and from Texas, I can't tell if it's a slight to the former (that old "aren't you articulate?" line), or the latter. And that I live on the wrong side of the tracks; I missed the cut-off for the 'right side' by a block and a half. Well, so what? So what parts of the solution are the yuppies just starting out who avoid black areas at all costs and wedge an even greater socioeconomic divide between the races, and the artsy, "creative class" of white people who buy cheap houses in them and eventually drive the poor black and brown people who've lived there for decades out?
The above article accurately captures how I've been feeling since moving here (not just due to race issues, but class issues loom large in my reality, too). It makes the excellent point that ghettoes continue to exist for reasons that have little to do with poverty. Although pre-Dubya we were a fiercely Democratic state, that doesn't count for shit now. Texas is no utopia, but neither is anywhere else. Don't get me wrong. I think the death penalty is just as fucked as anyone, but I see it in a different light, too, the continued fragmentation of the Black family, choices which I keenly feel some guilt and anguish for as the mother of a biracial child. I agonize over how the Black marriage rate has declined since the 1970s and wonder if the continuing criminalization of young black men (by a society that has no place for and doesn't care for them) isn't a large part of the problem. For this reason, I don't think white feminists can even begin to understand why I don't see anything wrong with sites like marriageworksusa.com. The fact is whatever's fucked up about America is fucked up in its ghettoes twenty times worse. The clamor to shut down the campaign on the Hipmama blogs is just another example of well-intentioned but misguided liberal activism. Your politics are nice to sit around in coffeehouses and talk about, but reality is, pardon my French, a bitch. Who cares about your politics when, from where I'm sitting, there won't be another generation around to contemplate, vote against or tell you what's wrong with them? When entire communities throughout the Western hemisphere have replicated and inverted the problem of racism by what looks to me like breeding the black out? I'm worried that we're reaching a critical point when what all the years of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, the Civil Rights movement, etc. couldn't do will soon be done, and I advocate any means necessary of stemming the tide, regardless of the source.
Living in America I suppose there will always be trade-offs. It seems the best you can do is try to minimize the damage and make the most of where you're at. Students Organized Against Racism (SOAR) will be having a forum on April 12th on the history of racism and racial identity in New Orleans which will hopefully answer some of the questions I want answered, and if you live here, you should come out. My favoritest professor and (secret! she doesn't know it yet!) mentor will be speaking.