A Minor Discourse on Race in America

Well, it's been a long time since I posted anything on this blog... I've heard many people tell me that I should re-activate this blog and start writing again... I can't guarantee that'll happen, but you can consider this a special edition of Struck Lightning, one that might turn into a regular update if I can muster up the energy and material.

Anyway, today I was tooling around on Facebook when my father told me about a discussion that was developing on his page. It was a chain of comments generated from a link he posted: England's Smartest Family is Black. A friend of my father's posted the first comment: "It is good news...But why do you think it is good news?" I, being a black man, didn't really think there was anything to think about this being good news. Racial stereotypes were being torn down by the knowledge, and it's also just refreshing to see children achieve at that rate. The comments continued on down the page, but then my father's friend posted a series of questions related to other posts made. 

When I read the questions, I wasn't quite sure what to think about them, whether they were simply devil's advocate-style, or if they were supposed to be rhetorical...regardless, I'm taking them as a fantastic opportunity to start some race-related discourse, one which our "post-racial America" could certainly stand to benefit from. So, I'll begin this post with thanks to my father's friend, and a statement that I certainly mean no malice or condescension. But I know that sometimes racially-sensitive arguments sound targeted or angry by default, and since I'm not there to clarify or vocally deliver some of these points, I'll just have to trust that you understand I'm being sincere in my words and meanings.

Question One: "@ Brenda, if America was so racist, how did Obama become elected President?"
Voter turnout doesn't necessarily measure the racial climate of America. I certainly doubt that Obama's election could have taken place in the 60s (or beforehand), but let's not forget a couple key facts in our analytical process.

1. Each person's vote is equal in an election, but the amount of power each person wields in society is not. If a physical majority of "non-racist" people (who likely each still hold their own individual opinions about race) vote for Obama, that does not imply that American society, dominated by the opinions and resources of a comparatively small group of people in charge of politics and corporations, has gone through an overwhelming racially-related change.
2. Obama is not your everyday-racist's "average black man." Many of the stereotypes that are evoked when "racists" think of black men aren't present in Barack. It seems that many racists would think that "black men" speak in "ebonics," are uneducated, and are only concerned with rap, women, and jewelry. I too often find that a faulty logic I like to call the "but my grandma's different fallacy" comes into play here. Example: Ask a child what old people are like, and they may provide the common stereotypes about the elderly: they don't move around well, they can't hear well, they're stuck in bed, and the like. When you ask that child about their own grandmother, you'll likely hear "Oh, Grandma's different!" Just because racist Americans see Obama fail to "act black" as many would describe it doesn't imply that their concepts of racism have been erased.

Please, regardless of these points, understand that I truly do think that America is COMPARATIVELY improving in terms of race relations. But your second question already points out an area where racism still seems to be prevalent: law enforcement.
Question Two: "@ Warren, I don’t know the stats, but there is an unquestionable larger amount of US prisoners, (offenders), who are AA. Why is that when they are guarantee(d) free education through High School?"
A couple erroneous assumptions in the base of this statement before we get to the law enforcement bit.

1. Education does not prevent people from committing crimes, the benefits that come from education like stable housing, money for food and other household resources, and comfortable living CAN stave off the drive to break the law. Still, people can still find incentives to commit crimes even after being educated....can we say Watergate? Wall Street money laundering? The entire classification of "white-collar" crime? The rich woman who shoves Victoria's Secret lingerie into her purse just for the "rush?"
2. The statement assumes that everyone assumes the same level of education, and that the level of education provided prevents criminal mentalities. Considering that the only "guaranteed education" in the US is provided through public schooling, we have to note that schools get their money from property taxes (at least, they do in IL). The amount of money that comes in determines the quality of teachers, administrators, and technology that come into the school. If the neighborhood around a school is poor, than the school will be, too. Can we assume that the education that is "guaranteed" at an upper-class, suburban high school is going to be of the same quality as an underfunded, inner-city school? 

(Please note that both of these assertions point to socio-economic traits as opposed to racial ones; I can point out the work of the Harlem's Children Zone; when black children are raised with comparatively similar opportunities to white children, they've been proven to receive similar test scores.)

Regardless of these points, let's get something straight right off of the bat: whether or not a person is arrested for a crime has nothing to do with their level of education. For a minute, close your eyes and imagine that you're a police officer having a cup of coffee outside in a rather well-to-do area. Across the street a man in a business suit is standing outside of the driver's door of a BMW, jiggling something around that's not quite in your view. He's working at whatever it is, then suddenly is able to open the door. He gets in. 2 questions follow:

1. Tell me what you think just transpired at the car. Was he having key trouble, or was he breaking in? Sure, because I'm proposing this situation to you in a theoretical debate, you can already see what point I'm driving at. But go ahead and replace the businessman with a man in a backwards, flat-billed baseball cap, a baggy jacket, and baggy jeans anyway. Do you think you'd be just as tempted to say the two situations have the exact same story?
2. What race was the businessman, and what race was the man in the baggy clothes? Did you assume that the businessman was white, or that the man in the baggy clothing was black? Even though I posited those points in a racial debate, I never specifically stated that either man was a member of ANY particular race.

The point of these questions? To prove that racial overtones pervade law enforcement, and not necessarily because cops are "racist" in the sense that they fly Confederate flags on their lawns at home and hunt for innocent black men to arrest. But racism, boiled down, is essentially is what happens when we let the skin-tone of an individual influence our conduct in a situation, and WE ALL DO IT. ALL THE TIME. Acting on unconscious racism that flies through our subconscious causes conflicts between groups, regardless of what group is giving preference (or a lack thereof) to what other group.

The overall point? We can already draw tons of correlations between the lack of opportunity provided in low-income areas (which are often dominantly minority (or "AA" in many cases) and increased crime rates because, as my dad put it, "Unfortunately, when people don't have any employable skills or hope for a job, some people think the only way to survive is to steal or beat people up." But, all of those socio-economic, non race-related findings aside, this question boils down to one of my original points: regardless of how "non-racist" a group of people may be, the biases of the people who wield power are the ones that have effects on a society. Should an individual member of a police force more frequently transpose images of crime on top of images of minority groups, they're more likely to try to discover crimes being committed by those minority groups, regardless of whether or not they're ACTUALLY committing offenses. 

Question Three: "@ Janice, Do you think Obama is getting “lambasted” because of his race? Do you think the “far right” would be happier if Obama was white?"
Ah, now here's a fun one. My answer: I think Obama is getting "lambasted" for his performance, just like any other president. Politicians act in their own best interests, just like everyone else, so if Obama's actions don't fall in line with the things they want, they'll issue criticism. Do I think that a white president in the same situation would take as much heat? I would say yes, if not even moreso.

Oh, weren't expecting that one, were you? Well, that's because politicians can't afford to be publicly negatively racist. That's a sure-fire way to keep yourself from getting elected in today's national political sphere. Even if they could get away with race-related accusations, most politicians are white anyway, so those types of arguments alone wouldn't be enough to conduct any sort of political discourse. But that's okay, because politicians don't need racism. They've got their own -ism to conduct their work with: Party-ism.

That's right, modern American politicians throw accusations across the aisle like..well, like something that people throw across aisles all the time. A Democrat's always going to take crap for being too liberal from the Republicans, and Republicans are going to get grief from Republicans for being too conservative. Both parties take flak from their individual parties for being too fiscally tight or loose, too much like the opposition party or not enough...it's a mess. But if a white president made the social changes that Obama has made, particularly the white presidential option that we were given last election in John McCain...Fox News Radio has already done a pretty solid job of tearing McCain apart for being "too liberal" in his suggestions to do things like close down Gitmo and provide rights to foreign people awaiting trial in the US for crimes. 

Regardless of anyone's personal stance on these issues, I'm reasonably certain that the Republican party would have hung McCain for pushing policies like reformed health care and increased government spending. In the meantime, a white Democratic president would have just as much to get blasted for in the news based on Obama's policies, though maybe we wouldn't have heard about the "terrorist fist bump..."








Anyway, let me close by commenting on your closing paragraph (at least, the last one I saw before making this post):

"We must look at each other with the eyes of Dr. Kings dream speech, “based on the content of their character”. I do feel disturbed when some parts of our society expect me to respect persons who purposely act and talk ignorant and use their race to make me feel that I am a racist. I am not a racist; I simply do not respect ignorance. Yes, this problem does cut across racial lines." (copied verbatim)

In contrast to the rest of this post, this piece may feel a little more tense than the rest, and that's because I feel that many of my friends may fall into the blanket statement you cast. My fear is that the base of your statement may rely on an incorrect assumption an incorrect assumption that lies in the hearts of many people, both white and the "non-ghetto" black: the idea that you can somehow ascertain a person's intellect or "ignorance" based on how they speak. 

For one, when you say that "people purposely talk and act ignorant," it seems that you're suggesting people choose to communicate in a particular manner or dialect to purposely antagonize another branch of society. Generally that's not how communication works; people learn a style of language manipulation in order to facilitate communication with the people around them. If people often communicate with people in their neighborhood, and those people use a dialect, then people will adopt that dialect. Just like American English is different from British English, varying ways of speaking DO NOT imply intelligence (or a lack thereof). It's not frequently that people will learn a language or dialect simply to antagonize a group or set themselves apart from another group; the benefits wouldn't outweigh the effort.

But bounding out of the theory and into the fact, there's absolutely NO WAY to figure out whether or not a person is "ignorant" based on the way they talk, or the way that you perceive their actions. Now, if by "talk and act ignorant" you don't mean "talk and act stereotypically black/urban/'ghetto'," I apologize and ask you to clarify so that I may better address your statement. But some of the smartest, most open-minded and progressive people I met during my 4-year career at Eastern spoke with slang, wore baggy clothes and backwards caps...one of them even had a child already. I'll make a point to say that the particular man I just mentioned not only has always made a point of taking care of his family and gorgeous baby daughter, but he also graduated on time with a Bachelor's degree in Communications and is working for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. He's always been one of the most studious people I've known in college, and has set a fantastic example for many men to come. He's also black, if you wanted to know.

As a whole, I can EASILY count off numbers of black men who may be roped into your visual/auditory test for "ignorance" that would talk circles around any number of white men that would pass this supposed test, white men who would prove to be ACTUALLY IGNORANT, which is to say that they were intellectually lacking, unable to create any sort of logical discourse based on their ungrounded, untested beliefs, and didn't care to do anything about it. The idea that you can somehow figure out a person's mental capacity or lack of "ignorance" simply based on how they look or how they talk undercuts the very portion of Dr. King's speech that you cited. 

Nobody wears "the content of their character" on the bill of their cap or on the waistline of their pants. Nobody broadcasts the content of their character when they're talking in whatever form of speech you're not familiar with, whether it happens to be "ebonics," or perhaps just the broken English of immigrants who haven't fully absorbed the language. You see, in order to understand the content of someone's character, you have to actually get to know that person. That involves much more than a peripheral assessment based on speech or any other facet you can gather information about in a few seconds. You have to spend time with that person, learn about who they are, where they come from, how they became the person they are. When that happens, both people grow from the situation, learning both about themselves and the world around them. And until people take the time to do that, Dr. King's "dream" is going to stay just that.

-Josh


*EDIT*


I've received a comment on my Facebook page that I'd like to briefly address here. Emily writes:


I couldn't comment on your blog 'cause I don't have a "profile", but I wanted to say something:

On your last point, I agree 1/2 way. I don't think you can guess a man's character based on dress, but speech is different. A person can talk with a "Ghetto" dialect and still say relevant and intelligent things. If someone has nothing to say but offensive arrogant, "street-speak", I AM going to assume that they are ignorant- though not necessarily stupid. Of course, one must judge each case independently, but as a general rule, if that's the first thing I see out of a person, I'm going to count them out. The same applies to Hilbillies, though, and believe me, I've known enough people who fit into that category.
Nice arguments, though.


I think that we're both essentially making the same point, but I still stand by the idea that you need to actually converse with someone to glean whether or not they're "ignorant," or what exactly it is they're ignorant of (this will be the topic of my next post). My hope is that you don't assume that someone is ignorant simply because of an excerpt of a conversation you overhear, or because of an action you witness when walking by. I feel that these are the situations people often use to rule whether or not someone is ignorant, but I also feel like you can be quite surprised by what people can tell you if you just give them a fair chance.


Regardless, I feel like you pegged a great point at the end of your comment, a point I certainly meant to address at the end of my post, but forgot about somewhere around 2 in the morning. Ignorance knows no racial/cultural bounds, but neither does intellect. The content of a person's character is also not displayed on the front of a worn-out "wife-beater" t-shirt or on an over-sized belt buckle. It also doesn't show up on a sombrero, yamaka, or other clothing of that nature. (I could start talking about Confederate flags, but that would work in the opposite direction and make this a really, really long post.)


In summary: I feel that you do yourself a favor (as well as the person you're talking to) when you don't rule them as "ignorant" until you've actually talked with that person. Your definition of "offensive arrogance" may just have to do with the way a person interacts with their friends, and perhaps a conversation with you could change a person's perspective on life, changing them for the better. In the end, you may be right and a person may be just as ignorant as you expected, or maybe even more. But you may be wrong. And the world certainly is full of surprises worth finding.