Jump to content

Dear White Facebook Friends


Jamie_B

Recommended Posts

Was gonna put this in the other thread but since it got locked...

 

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/29/dear_white_facebook_friends_i_need_you_to_respect_what_black_america_is_feeling_right_now/

 
Dear white Facebook friends: I need you to respect what Black America is feeling right now To those rushing to judgment about what's happening in Baltimore: Please stop and listen before you say any more

 

Dear White America,

It is somewhat strange to address this to you, given that I strongly identify with many aspects of your culture and am half-white myself. Yet, today is another day you have forced me to decide what race I am — and, as always when you force me — I fall decidedly into “Person of Color.”

 

Every comment or post I have read today voicing some version of disdain for the people of Baltimore — “I can’t understand” or “They’re destroying their own community” or “Destruction of Property!” or “Thugs” — tells me that many of you are not listening. I am not asking you to condone or agree with violence. I just need you to listen. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but instead of forming an opinion or drawing a conclusion, please let me tell you what I hear:

 

I hear hopelessness
I hear oppression
I hear pain
I hear internalized oppression
I hear despair
I hear anger
I hear poverty

 

If you are not listening, not exposing yourself to unfamiliar perspectives, not watching videos, not engaging in conversation, then you are perpetuating white privilege and white supremacy. It is exactly your ability to not hear, to ignore the situation, that is a mark of your privilege. People of color cannot turn away. Race affects our lives every day. We must consider it all the time, not just when it is convenient.

As a person of color, even if you are privileged your whole life, as I have been, you cannot escape from the shade of your skin. Being a woman defines me; coming from a relatively affluent background defines me; my sexual orientation, my education, my family and my job define me. Other than being a woman, every single one of those distinctions gives me privilege in our society. Yet, even with all that privilege, people still treat me differently.

 

For most of my childhood, I refused to allow race to be my most defining feature. I actually chose for most of my childhood to refuse race as my most defining feature. But I found that a very hard position to maintain, given the way the world interacts with me and the people I love. Because I have to worry about my brother and my cousins getting stopped by the police. Because people react to my wonderful, kind, intelligent father differently, depending on whether he’s wearing a suit or sweat pants. Race has defined the way I see the world like no other characteristic has.

 

This can be hard to understand, if you never experienced it firsthand. So again, for just one more moment, reserve your judgments and listen. This is what you might come to realize, if you spent your days in my skin.cleardot.gif

 

In childhood: People regularly ask “What are you” instead of “Who are you?” This will not end, either. In high school, one kid even asks if you are “Mulatto,” which, according to some scholars, originally meant “little mule.”

 

A few years later: Go on a road trip with your mom. Refuse to get out of the car at a gas station in the boondocks, because you are sure the person with the Confederate flag bumper sticker is going to realize your white mother married a black man and hurt her (and you too, being the byproduct of said union). He’s carrying a rifle on a gun rack. Now even more terrifying.

 

As a teenager: Be the only person of color in the majority of your Advanced Placement classes, even though there are a decent number of brown and black people at your school. For years following 9/11, get “randomly” selected for the additional screening at the airport.

 

In college: People assume you got into Princeton because of affirmative action. They refuse to believe it could be because you are smart.

 

In adulthood: Your younger brother has been stopped in his own neighborhood — the neighborhood he has lived in all his life – and asked what he could possibly be doing there.

 

At your workplace: For two years in a row the NYPD shows up randomly at the school you work at, which has a 100 percent minority student body. The first time the police don’t even tell the school beforehand. The cops just show up early in the morning, set up a metal detector and X-ray scanner, and fill the cafeteria with dozens of policemen. As your young students file in in the morning, the NYPD scans them like they’re going through airport security right after 9/11. They confiscate cellphones, and pat some of students down, particularly the older-looking boys. As you watch this, you feel anger welling up in your chest and almost start to cry. You think, “Why are you treating my kids like criminals?!” Children are in tears. The screenings are not due to any specific threat, but rather as part of a “random screening program” — but one that never seems to make its way to the Upper East Side. White America’s children are told they can go to college, be anything. These students are treated like suspects. And that is exactly what society will tell your children one day, unless something changes.

 

Today, tomorrow, every day: White people around you refuse to talk about what is happening in this country. The silence is painful to experience.

 

These are my experiences. They have deeply affected who I am. And I am SO PRIVILEGED. Mine has been a decidedly easy life for a person of color in America. I try to conceptualize what it is like for my students who got wanded by the NYPD, my students who have been stopped and frisked, my students whose parents work multiple jobs, my students on free and reduced-price lunch, my students whom white adults move away from because they look “scary.”

 

I try, when I can, to listen to them, because only by validating their feelings can we begin to find a way to overcome the challenges they face. That doesn’t mean I let them off easy when they do something wrong. But I try to understand the why.

 

I don’t need you to validate anyone’s actions, but I need you to validate what black America is feeling. If you cannot understand how experiences like mine or my students’ would lead to hopelessness, pain, anger, and internalized oppression, you are still not listening. So listen. Listen with your heart.

 

If you got this far, thank you. By reading this, you have shown you are trying. Continue the conversation, ask questions, learn as much as you can, and choose to engage. Only by listening and engaging can we move forward.

 

Black is Beautiful and Black Lives Matter,

Julia

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

because you are sure the person with the Confederate flag bumper sticker is going to realize your white mother married a black man and hurt her

 

 

 

Confederate flag is a terrorist flag. Though, in a twisted sort of way, I kind of appreciate people flying them because it makes it easier to identify stupid racist shitbags.  So that's helpful.

 

 

What really confuses me is when I see people flying them in Ohio.  Not only a Northern state but one that contributed a great many troops to the Union army.

 

 

Though again, that flag doesn't mean anything historic it's just a lightly-coded way of saying "Hello there, I am a stupid racist shitbag and proud of it!"  And I also assume that the states that have incorporated it into their flag are advertising themselves as bastions for, you guessed it, stupid racist shitbags.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Confederate flag is a terrorist flag. Though, in a twisted sort of way, I kind of appreciate people flying them because it makes it easier to identify stupid racist shitbags.  So that's helpful.

 

 

What really confuses me is when I see people flying them in Ohio.  Not only a Northern state but one that contributed a great many troops to the Union army.

 

 

Though again, that flag doesn't mean anything historic it's just a lightly-coded way of saying "Hello there, I am a stupid racist shitbag and proud of it!"  And I also assume that the states that have incorporated it into their flag are advertising themselves as bastions for, you guessed it, stupid racist shitbags.

 

Don't be so quick to judge. My late father-in-law grew up in Berea Kentucky. When I knew him, he and I lived in the ghetto in Dayton that was about 75% black. About 75% of his friends who visited him daily were black. He was the kind who would give anyone the shirt off his back. He would fix people's cars, (he could weld and had a setup in his garage), he would give people rides to the store, loan them money and share his meals. Whatever anyone needed, black or white, if he could help, he did. He didn't have a racist bone in his body. I went over to visit him one day (he lived across the street) and one of his friends who knew he was a country boy from Kentucky had given him a hat with a confederate flag on it. He was sitting on the porch, wearing it proudly. To him it was nothing more than a symbol of pride for where he was from, the south. I told him that a lot of people think that flag is racist and stands for basically support of slavery. He had no idea, and he threw it away immediately. I think a lot of people who have a confederate flag see it the same way. Not all, but more than you probably think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think a lot of people who have a confederate flag see it the same way.

 

 

 

Then I'm afraid they're ignorant.  Your friend there tossed his cap when informed.  You think "a lot of people" would?

 

I think a lot of people know exactly what it stands for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

a lot of poeple over 60, perhaps..

 

then again almost everyone i know over 60 is racist... like my grandma... which i find hilarious..

 

no offense to people over 60....

 

old racist people are hilarious.... young racist people are ridiculous...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My cousin in law wrote a blog, I think it fits here: http://www.driven2drink.com/?p=413

 

Also, who generally runs around claiming to be, “white?” Fucking who?! Perhaps this is different in different parts of the country, but generally what I hear from people is, “I’m Irish and German,” or “I’m full-blooded French,” or any number of actual cultural, linguistic, historical, country-based ethnic backgrounds. Not “white.” Furthermore, anyone I have met who self-identifies as “white” has also walked the earth informed by every common phobia and -ism available.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The OP letter seems intent on dividing the races and promoting placing blacks on a pedestal.

 

We are all African if you go back far enough...

 

In addition, as many slave owners had sex with their slaves, like Michelle Obama says occurred to her ancestor, then they are part slave owner as well.

 

Never been big on the idea of preaching diversity, but rather unity. Unity, teamwork, building a brotherhood draw people togtheras we see in the military and in sports. It works, yet few promote such an educations route outside those institutions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The OP letter seems intent on dividing the races and promoting placing blacks on a pedestal.

 

We are all African if you go back far enough...

 

In addition, as many slave owners had sex with their slaves, like Michelle Obama says occurred to her ancestor, then they are part slave owner as well.

 

Never been big on the idea of preaching diversity, but rather unity. Unity, teamwork, building a brotherhood draw people togtheras we see in the military and in sports. It works, yet few promote such an educations route outside those institutions.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_hx30zOi9I

 

That's my reply to this nonsense

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_hx30zOi9I

 

That's my reply to this nonsense

 

Should I respond with a longer video that nobody will watch and call it my response?

 

I'm new here and am unfamiliar with how this game is played.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Of course I never expected you to watch it to begin with, I mean why would one want to actually have an intellectual conversation about these things when they can just lob "ignorance bombs" over the wall?

 

Okay, so after I post the video, I follow it up with the Strawman Logical fallacy.

 

Then what?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...