FB Note originally written on July 13, 2011
In any forum where I express my thoughts, opinions and experiences
regarding being an African American woman, there are plenty of Caucasian
folks who like to assign a chip upon my shoulder. The usual defenses
come up: let's get passed this race 'thing'; Why don't you 'people' let
it go already; I'm tired of hearing about race, etc. Well, I'm tired of
dealing with race myself. So are other folks of color. Yet, there are
conditions in this society that make it impossible for us to do so. Why
should Caucasians be exempt from having to deal with the issues of
people of color? The thing is, there are so many privileges that
Caucasians take for granted on a daily. Therefore, I'd like to state,
for the record, that I don't intend to be a good 'Negro' or a 'safe'
Black. I never was. Now I will tell you why: I know who I am and what my
experiences have been. I have been to enough places and have had this
Physical Experience for enough time, to understand that my experiences
are shared by other people of color: African American, Caribbean, S.
American, Latino, Asian and Indigenous (American, African, Australian
& New Zealand).
I am rational enough to understand
what happens to me when I interact with people and society at-large; I
am intelligent enough to interpret these experiences; I am intuitive
enough to see the underlying dynamic contained in those experiences; My
heart is open enough to learn from experience; I have understanding
enough to know that experience is Knowledge; I am untamed enough to
express my thoughts and opinions regarding these experiences openly.
I
will get passed race when it is no longer a behavior that creates
perceptions and conditions in this society that are harmful to the
existence of others. I have talked to enough people of color and had
enough of my own experiences to know without doubt that racism and
xenophobia are alive and kicking throughout Western cultures. It is
engrained even more deeply in US veins. It taints every corporate entity
and every institution from education to law enforcement. And, it
permeates our political environment. Welfare, Social Security, Medicaid
-- any so called entitlement program are pariahs. In fact, using the
word 'entitlement' implies that the recipient is getting something for
nothing and therefore, does not deserve it; or has to jump through hoops
to prove such 'entitlement'. All one has to do is equate a program or
service with a brown or black face to entice Caucasians to deride it.
Why
such diligent and vigilant indignation towards Mr. Obama? I am no fan
of politicians, yet I have NEVER seen so much vitriol placed at the feet
of an American president. Even Clinton didn't experience the same level
of ignorant, petty, nit-picking and he was in the midst of a sexual
nightmare. Hillary had her mud slung too but no where near the
disrespectful things I have seen throughout the media regarding Mrs.
Obama -- a president's wife has never been so derided and cheapened as a
human being. I saw a cartoon of her depicted a a Hottentot!! Bent over
Uncle Sam's lap as he whips her with the American flag. That metaphor
represents the epitome of sexual looseness and animal baseness. And
basically says, 'Your place, Missy, is as the White master's slut not in
the White House, you uppity b!tch.' It took a while but after much
outrage by the NAACP, it has since been removed. The search I did on
Obama images gave me a large amount of negative images compared to
positive for both of them. I understand that all politicians get
roasted but when you do the same kind of search for other polls, well,
yo - even Ms. Palin doesn't have the same ratio of poz to neg. I did
not see anything that over-masculinized her or made her resemble jungle
animals. And, of the few that sexualized her, she was portrayed like a
pin-up girl not a 'hoe' or 'chicken head'. The amount of racist images
were disturbing. I have several in a photo album called 'Ms. Obama'.
S.
American, Caribbean and African 'illegal' immigrants are treated like
animals and spoken of as if they do not have a right to seek a better
economic situation for themselves. Yet, many Caucasians are here today
enjoying the privilege of being White in America because their Italian,
Irish, Polish, Greek, Russian, French or British ancestors fled the
jacked up circumstances at home and arrived at these shores smuggled in
the bottom of boats. Let's keep it real: A very LARGE many did NOT come
through Ellis Island, my friends. And what about the ones that came
before the good old Statue of Liberty. Matter of fact, did you know she
has chains around her feet hidden under her dress? The original design
had them in the open to speak to the fact that people of African descent
were still not afforded the same freedoms as those who were not born
here. After much argument, they decided to conceal them. You can only
see them if you're in a helicopter. This is not included in the
Ellis/Liberty tour. A professor with knowledge of this brought it
forward during a round and was rebuffed until she pressed the issue.
This is a great example of the systematic exclusion of significant
cultural aspects of others who are not White that goes on in every
institution of education and culture in the US. The Metropolitan Museum
of Art's 1999 Egyptian exhibition overlooked and belittled the African
nature of that ancient land and its people. And, a significant Tibetan
collection was relegated to the Newark Museum back in 1994 because it
was too much of a 'problem'.
The educational system, in
particular, has perpetuated this climate of disparaging treatment.
History consistently leaves out everything but European exploits. It
either belittles, negatively distorts or omits the contributions of
people of color entirely. Religion has its input too: the sons of
'Ham', etc. And, 400 years of combined oppression in the form of chattel
slavery, Reformation, Jim Crow, 'Black Laws', indentured servitude
(Blacks, Chinese, Native Americans), internment (Blacks, Japanese,
Native Americans), and the supposed Civil Rights Amendments. There is a
saying in the South, "There is no amount of respect that is due a Black
man that a White man will give him." These actions and behaviors form
perceptions and those perceptions are embedded in this society. Carried
from parents, teachers and religious 'leaders' to children. Those
children grow into adults that me and other people of color have to
traverse every day. We have to be subjected to and yet expected to
accept and get around these behaviors and limitations. Pull up our own
bootstraps. Yet those strings are a set up: old, ratty and dried out.
Ready to snap at any moment. So, we're left right back where we started
and then, blamed for not having the proper boot straps.
The
vestiges of economic and socio-political games abound to this day. The
late Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" details how the CIA in tandem with the
DEA flooded inner city neighborhoods with crack cocaine to fund
clandestine activities in S. America. Ongoing economic oppression and
exclusion of people, resulting in declined living conditions in their
communities, breeds escapist behavior. They knew the drug would spread
like wild fire. Mr. Reagan then instituted a 'War On Drugs'. It was well
understood that Whites overwhelmingly used coke as folks of color did
crack and getting busted with powder cocaine did not carry the same
level of charges as crack. Thus began the outrageous disparities in the
social justice system, that still continues unchecked today, with
African Americans making up 80%+ of the incarcerated when they only
comprise 12% of the general population. Latino's and Asians are right
behind, respectively. Mandatory Minimum sentences (leveling up to 20ys
for 1st offenses) and the Rockefeller Drug Laws (just recently got
amended after 30 ys) resulted in motherless children and fatherless
households. The foster care system is flooded with children of color.
Those constructs create representational and voting disparities as well.
And, job viability is compromised when one has been in jail. All this
adds up to a community-wide economic and socio-political disaster that
repeated itself in every inner city in the US. People's lives were
deliberately destroyed yet what did Olly North get? Appearances on talk,
and news shows and his own cable TV program and Reagan got reelected to
four more years of his foot on the neck of poor people. Bogus boot
straps, indeed.
Police presence in communities of color
is completely out of control. Especially in gentrified neighborhoods
like mine. Stop and Frisk, breaking down doors, consistent ticketing for
Class C misdemeanors (riding bike on sidewalk, smoking, drinking in the
park, jay-walking, standing on a corner or in front of a store). Here
in Harlem we have seen a large influx of Caucasian residents and for the
past two years, between the hours of 4pm and 7:30pm there are police
couples and/or quads on every other corner of the the main avenues. This
has never happened before. Seniors playing cards or chess in the park
are being frisked and put up against walls and fences. Many of them are
veterans who risked their lives so those police officers can have jobs.
They are trying to enjoy an afternoon of game with a bottle of wine or
beer (which they keep concealed in a bag and out of view). Yet, they are
continually profiled and being ticketed. This does not happen in the
Italian community, a quarter mile away, on the upper east side where old
men playing dominoes are doing the exact same thing. Actually, they
have coolers of beer and wine next to their tables but somehow don't get
the business from popo. Young White students smoking a joint in Central
Park also get over while a young brother walking down 145th street with
his doob in his wallet gets stopped and frisked and lo -- a joint.
Then, off he goes to the precinct.
People in my
communities have long been tired of the BS. That's what Hip-Hop was
originally about. They spoke of the sh!t we have to contend with in the
'hood and at our jobs and in society as a whole. But Hip-Hop was
confiscated by the recording industry, homogenized and commercialized
just like the other music forms contributed by Blacks. Blues into Rock,
Soul into Pop and R&B and Jazz into 'Smooth' Jazz. They have
systematically whittled out the serious messages that rappers were
discussing, back in the late 70s through mid 90s, and now will entertain
only those who submit caricatures of our lives: pimps, hoes, thugs,
gangstas -- even Eminem couldn't get off his trailer park aesthetic
because it spoke too loudly of and resonated with his comrades who lived
in inner city Detroit. And in early 2000, it came out, through 2 women
who were journalists for the LA Times, that NY and LA had set up task
forces that routinely profiled rappers and their crews. They shared info
and warned each other when certain artists were coming into their
respective cities. As if these young people are terrorists!. They denied
for years their menacing of various artists with surveillance, trumped
arrests and out right violence against them. Oops, there goes some more
snapped bootstraps!
So, society keeps claiming that we
have everything we need, we just gotta pull up those bootstraps they
give us. Yet, the bootstraps just keep breaking.
The
current generation isn't really interested in being included in anything
'American'. America has served to do nothing but diss at every turn so
why bother. What they want is to just be left alone to survive the best
way they can. Without the socio-political games, the police
intervention, the trumped up legislation and whack education. Many folks
I know teach their own children and the number of people of color doing
this in NY State has increased. Interestingly enough, and
coincidentally (?), the legislature has made some amendments making it
more complicated and, therefore difficult, to meet the curriculum
requirements for homeschooling. Here go the games again. Snap goes the
bootstraps!!
The unemployment rate for Black men is 52%
in NY state with Latinos on their tails. The 2009 regency exam results
put Black youth in their Junior year of High School in NY public schools
at 3rd grade levels in mathematics, yet Joel Klein was still employed
as Commissioner of Education until recently. The new prospect has no
former experience in education. A kid swiping a bag of potato chips
gets hauled away in cuffs and a rap sheet is started on them. How would
Caucasians feel if that routinely happened to children in their
communities? Kids in my community can't be kids and do stupid, right of
passage-type stuff like that without being branded criminals. There are
people living, teaching and policing in my community that feel like
Black and Latino kids ARE criminals, out the gate, because of the color
of their skin. Caucasian folks who reside here are clutching their
purses when walking past me or a group of folks that look like me. Or
taking a wide birth around us, like we've got the plague, lol. I want to
ask them, 'Why did you choose to live here if you are afraid to walk
about in the neighborhood?' Rents up here can't be that cheap -- I know
mine isn't.
People should not have to experience Life
under these unequal, oppressive, exclusionary, biased and trumped
conditions set forth by the US according to skin color.
Now,
still wanna say I have a chip? Go ahead, of course, you have a right to
your own thoughts. Yet, consider that you will only be revealing your
own rigidness. Why so angry about me reminding you of the violence,
oppression, exclusion and down right wrongness of what happens to people
of color 24/7--365 in every inner city and rural area of this country?
Why so avid about denying what's going on in this society? In the Third
World? In Europe? In the Middle East? Why so unwilling to open your
Heart and listen?
Only open discussion will change this environment.
I am dedicated to this and again, I will tell you why:
On
Being A Divine Entity Having a 'Black' Experience: My physical
experiences here, although illusion, are non the less palpable. The
Dalia Lama says we are not to deny our experiences in our physical forms
but embrace and learn from them. My Life as a woman of color is not
separate from my Spiritual development but intrinsically connected. I
cannot deny what happens to me and others in my community in lieu of
Soul; that is a perverse form of denial that will only result in
unwholeness and block my Road to Compassion. I work with children of
color on a regular basis and I see what living in this society does to
them. I cannot be inactive with regard to this. These children are our
future.
So there you have it.
I am a
Sista and I'm making it perfectly clear what is up with me talking about
this fake-ass construct called Race. Yet, be it ever so b^llsh!t, it
has established perceptions in people that are very destructive to the
lives of too many innocent people: Children - ALL children of all
creeds, cultures, religions and sexual orientations.
