A Sista Making It Crystal Clear

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.