Barack and a Hard Place
Something I had to listen to for Sociology class, and I think a lot of people can benefit from listening to this, too. Here are my notes on it, just for my own personal use.
Barack and a Hard Place
http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=5690
-Obama's been elected, Now I guess Racism and White priviledge are over... *sarcasm*
-it's pretty absurd to think that, there are a lot of people who don't see the absurdity, for example:
Wall Street Journal: "Promise of his victory Perhaps we can put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to acheivement in this splendid country."
Washington Post: "Not just that Obama is post-racial, so is the nation that he is generationally primed to lead... We have overcome."
Rudy Giuliani: "If the trend this evening (election night) holds up, we've moved beyond the whole idea of race and racial separation and unfairness."
"Post-racial America" euphemism
Guess this must have all suddenly changed: Black and Latinos have poverty rates 3x the whites, 2x unemployment, Asian and Pacific Islanders 30% higher poverty rate than whites but more likely to have a college degree. Now all black men with a college degree will be earning same as white man w/ degree, rather than the 1/3rd as much, and now all black/ latino families have equal net worth as white families, rather than the 12x whites have on blacks and 8x whites have on latinos.
White neighborhoods just as likely for hazardous waste dumps as black and latino neighborhoods. Border patrol on Canada too, eh? (not)
What does Obama election really mean, then?
This one colored man had 18mos-2yrs to prove to US that he is capable, wise enough to get the job done. Only usually, most job interviews don't last that long for all colored people (anyone).
"Individual accomplishment says nothing about the end of an institutional form of oppression aimed, in that case gender, at half the population of those countries, and the same goes for race. Individual triumph says little about the systemic transformation as we've known for a long time."
Miss CJ Walker became a millionaire selling black beauty products that other cosmetic companies saw no need to produce-- 1911. Doesn't mean the end of racism.
White people want the conversation to cease, they just don't want to talk about the whole racial thing anymore, so they want it to be done with and end racism, make it go away. Consistently not wanted to hear the truth about racism.
"We believe racism against people of color is still a big deal"- 11% of white people believe this, but 12% of people still think Elvis is alive. That is denial quite profound.
It's the age of Obama and Oprah (she can buy and sell us all and pass us out as parting gifts to her audience), how can racism still be, and things still be wrong?
It's so easy to admit that there was oppression back in 1963, it was 45 years ago and any white person can say that, it's no sweat off their back. "Was there inequality in 63?" "Oh things were terrible back then. We were a system of formal white supremacy, we were an apartheid nation." The problem is what white people in 1963 thought about 1963, so same can go for 2009. Back then, 2/3 of white folks said that blacks all had equality housing, education, everything opportunities. 87% of white people believed that all colored children were getting the same education opportunities, even when Brown vs. Board of Education hadn't been fully establish throughout schools. In the I Have a Dream speech, 2/3rds of white people were saying "What, why have a dream?"
To be white in America is never at any point to have to have known what people of color experience. It is to have the luxury, the priviledge, the benefit of obliviousness. "I don't need to know black or brown truth, because if I do not know it, what will happen to me? A whole lot of nothing will happen to me. It's not going to be on the test. I can get into college, grad school, law school, med school, and not know nothing about nobody who isn't white." But now if I'm a person of color and I don't know white truth, if I don't know what white people think is important, all hell breaks loose because that is what's going to be on the test.
Even compassionate people can not think about the stuff they don't have to pay attention to. You miss things, even when you don't intend to.
Brown and black men are 2 to 3 times more likely to get their cars stopped and searched for illegal contraband, but white men when actually searched were 4 times more likely to actually have drugs. Racial profiling is not only racist, but also pretty dumb policework. Different threshhold of suspicion there.
Obama election: Shapeshifting of racism, from Racism 1.0 to Racism 2.0, it's incidious: allows white folks to vote for the black guy but still harbor any preset negative feelings for the rest of brown/black people. Only suggests that people of color will only succeed on white terms, who has power the that situation? Not the black guy. "He transcends race." <~ That in itself is a racist notion, you like fact that "he gets beyond his blackness". It implies that there's something wrong with blackness to graduate from, "Don't get stuck there. Don't let that hold you back." Never has a white politician had to transcend their race, because whiteness is not something to transcend, it's something to which we aspire. So much so that if you are white and you don't live up to it, you're "White trash", you're not REALLY white, you need to work harder.
Barack and a Hard Place
http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=5690
-Obama's been elected, Now I guess Racism and White priviledge are over... *sarcasm*
-it's pretty absurd to think that, there are a lot of people who don't see the absurdity, for example:
Wall Street Journal: "Promise of his victory Perhaps we can put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to acheivement in this splendid country."
Washington Post: "Not just that Obama is post-racial, so is the nation that he is generationally primed to lead... We have overcome."
Rudy Giuliani: "If the trend this evening (election night) holds up, we've moved beyond the whole idea of race and racial separation and unfairness."
"Post-racial America" euphemism
Guess this must have all suddenly changed: Black and Latinos have poverty rates 3x the whites, 2x unemployment, Asian and Pacific Islanders 30% higher poverty rate than whites but more likely to have a college degree. Now all black men with a college degree will be earning same as white man w/ degree, rather than the 1/3rd as much, and now all black/ latino families have equal net worth as white families, rather than the 12x whites have on blacks and 8x whites have on latinos.
White neighborhoods just as likely for hazardous waste dumps as black and latino neighborhoods. Border patrol on Canada too, eh? (not)
What does Obama election really mean, then?
This one colored man had 18mos-2yrs to prove to US that he is capable, wise enough to get the job done. Only usually, most job interviews don't last that long for all colored people (anyone).
"Individual accomplishment says nothing about the end of an institutional form of oppression aimed, in that case gender, at half the population of those countries, and the same goes for race. Individual triumph says little about the systemic transformation as we've known for a long time."
Miss CJ Walker became a millionaire selling black beauty products that other cosmetic companies saw no need to produce-- 1911. Doesn't mean the end of racism.
White people want the conversation to cease, they just don't want to talk about the whole racial thing anymore, so they want it to be done with and end racism, make it go away. Consistently not wanted to hear the truth about racism.
"We believe racism against people of color is still a big deal"- 11% of white people believe this, but 12% of people still think Elvis is alive. That is denial quite profound.
It's the age of Obama and Oprah (she can buy and sell us all and pass us out as parting gifts to her audience), how can racism still be, and things still be wrong?
It's so easy to admit that there was oppression back in 1963, it was 45 years ago and any white person can say that, it's no sweat off their back. "Was there inequality in 63?" "Oh things were terrible back then. We were a system of formal white supremacy, we were an apartheid nation." The problem is what white people in 1963 thought about 1963, so same can go for 2009. Back then, 2/3 of white folks said that blacks all had equality housing, education, everything opportunities. 87% of white people believed that all colored children were getting the same education opportunities, even when Brown vs. Board of Education hadn't been fully establish throughout schools. In the I Have a Dream speech, 2/3rds of white people were saying "What, why have a dream?"
To be white in America is never at any point to have to have known what people of color experience. It is to have the luxury, the priviledge, the benefit of obliviousness. "I don't need to know black or brown truth, because if I do not know it, what will happen to me? A whole lot of nothing will happen to me. It's not going to be on the test. I can get into college, grad school, law school, med school, and not know nothing about nobody who isn't white." But now if I'm a person of color and I don't know white truth, if I don't know what white people think is important, all hell breaks loose because that is what's going to be on the test.
Even compassionate people can not think about the stuff they don't have to pay attention to. You miss things, even when you don't intend to.
Brown and black men are 2 to 3 times more likely to get their cars stopped and searched for illegal contraband, but white men when actually searched were 4 times more likely to actually have drugs. Racial profiling is not only racist, but also pretty dumb policework. Different threshhold of suspicion there.
Obama election: Shapeshifting of racism, from Racism 1.0 to Racism 2.0, it's incidious: allows white folks to vote for the black guy but still harbor any preset negative feelings for the rest of brown/black people. Only suggests that people of color will only succeed on white terms, who has power the that situation? Not the black guy. "He transcends race." <~ That in itself is a racist notion, you like fact that "he gets beyond his blackness". It implies that there's something wrong with blackness to graduate from, "Don't get stuck there. Don't let that hold you back." Never has a white politician had to transcend their race, because whiteness is not something to transcend, it's something to which we aspire. So much so that if you are white and you don't live up to it, you're "White trash", you're not REALLY white, you need to work harder.