This post is particularly for Black people to respond to. I hope some of you are out there.
This popped up on my newsfeed and it really made me think about the predicament that America is in. From what I understand we are one of (if not the most) racially bigoted first world countries.
I wonder if people really think we're just going to sit here and take it. This ties in with another post I made about how we're going to save ourselves and our environment.
I don't want to raise children in a world filled with people who think it is acceptable for people to die, be arrested, demonized, and otherwise othered for no other reason than the color of our skin. I don't want to make it to sixty and still be afraid of having a license for a gun. I don't want humanity to still be grappling with this.
So tell me this: if black people are damned if we do stand up and damned if we don't what is white America going to do WHEN it does happen?
I'm often ashamed of America when these kinds of things happen but we're hardly the most racist first world country. Japan and Korea are so homogeneous that if you went there as a black person you'd be like a novelty. Even white people are kind of a curiosity since the population is so homogeneous. Is it racism? Pretty much but there are like no minorities to speak of in much of Asia. The Japanese are racist against Koreans and most of us here can't even tell them apart. And Europe, shit, they have anti immigrant rallies against Turks and Pakistanis. There's no group in America big enough and racist enough to hold a legitimate rally unless you count the Tea Party and they seem more preoccupied with different stupid shit for the most part. We have a lot to work on in America but we're hardly the worst. Our media is so inclusive it's an issue if something doesn't have a few brown people in it. The biggest problem is most white people here want to ignore racism like we solved that in the sixties. It's a problem, one a lot of people want to ignore but don't say we're uniquely awful because we do a whole lot better than other nations who have a much less diverse population.
First off, Jesus the amount of jpeg in that image. Second off, I'm half Mexican does that give me any sort of credibility haha? Well I have grown up around probably more blacks and latinos than whites, but I don't think that matters for my answer. I'm just going to give my personal opinion. No "being quiet" will never be the answer. Racism in this country is more than a minority of people that are just ill minded. Racism in this country is systematic. The only way for racism to be "solved" (quotations because of course racism as a whole will never fade away) is for the system that we live in to adapt. The only people capable of doing this is the government itself. And so far the government has done a pretty bad job to respond to the systematic racism they're responsible for. If there's one thing all civil rights leaders realized, is that you have to get the government to make a change. Some even saw that since the government wouldn't create change, they should make their own government, thus resulting in the Black Panthers movement. Now to the question of what to do on the part of black americans. Being quiet will not get the government to pass laws in your favor. It never has, never will. I'm not calling for riots, because I don't that ever leads to anything good. I'm just saying that the whole "blowing incidents out of proportion" that people accuse the black community of, is exactly what they should be doing. Make sure they're protesting and make sure the media is filming it. Make congressmen scared for their positions if they don't bring change. This is just my opinion, and look forward to peoples opinions that disagree!
Agreed that racism is systemic, but I'm going to have to disagree with the quoted part. The state is absolutely not the only body capable of solving racism. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the current state edifice absolutely cannot solve racism. That is a problem which must be solved by us, by society, by The People. The way I see it, when I see Jim Crow drug laws, racist policing, and discriminatory policies across the spectrum of public life, what I see is a state which stands in the way of a solution. Which upholds racism. I don't see a way to "solve racism" (or any other comparably deep social ill) without replacing the state.The only way for racism to be "solved" (quotations because of course racism as a whole will never fade away) is for the system that we live in to adapt. The only people capable of doing this is the government itself.
Could you talk about what you'd have the government do to solve the issue of racism? Did you have certain laws in mind that you'd like to be passed? I personally think the issue is well beyond what the government can do but I'd love to hear your ideas.The only people capable of doing this is the government itself.
Ok there's a lot of things that need to be done, but I'll give what I think are the four most important. 1) End the war on drugs 2) Invest money into the ghettos (housing, schooling, welfare programs, etc.) 3) Solve the black unemployment problem
The war on drugs is an obvious one. It's motive is an entirely racist one. 60% of american prison population is black, and the war on drugs is one of the main reasons. If you haven't heard of it, you should look up the book The New Jim Crow. 1/3 of black males will be in prison cell at some point in their life. You cannot vote in prison, and in many states you cannot vote if you've ever been convicted of a felony even after release. For the issue of the ghettos, since they were entirely the creation of the government, here's a good read/listen on it, it should also be its responsibility to fix the ghettos. I could make a whole post on how we should be doing this, but you get the general idea. Put more money into inner city schools, not less, etc. Lastly there is a huge unemployment crisis in the ghettos. This is where me being a bit more of authoritarian socialist plays in. I believe in the private sector isn't giving these people jobs, it should be the role of the public sector to step in and provide jobs for these people. That's just an overview of some of the things I believe the government needs to do in order to handle racism in America.
We've invested almost 15 trillion dollars into the "ghettos", and they are worse off today than when they began in 1965. That is not the answer; that is treating a symptom. Like many government programs, well-intentioned as they may be, they usually deny the root cause and treat symptoms. Then, the “government agencies” begat programs to treat the symptoms of the symptoms. The "investments" need to be redesigned to stop encouraging the breakup of the family unit. Statistics from all sides of the political spectrum bear this out. The black unemployment issue needs a lot of work, and policies that encourage investment and business growth (to supply jobs) need to be established. As we have seen, to the current "socialist" administration's embarrasement, the "shovel ready jobs" never were and were a bunch of lying political hyperbole". We also need a welfare system that encourages education, in the scholastic sense, and the expansion of skilled trades development (there is an extreme dearth of these in our country). The details of this one are for another discussion.
I don't live in America, but to provide insight from another Western country: this is absolutely terrifying. Why is everyone so... passive? The US been a key figure in social change, civil rights, and is a tad nosy when it comes to the affairs of other countries... but its people are willing to accept such a horrible and tragic conflict on their own soil? I wouldn't want to raise children there either. I feel like this ignorance only prevails because of a strongly nationalistic and individual-focused culture. The "It's not happening to me, so I don't care" attitude is getting out of control. In the day and age of globalization, you would think such an attitude would diminish.
I think part of it is this ambivalence to attempt to make change out of fear that in the end nothing will change. I'm a Political Science major at my university, and one of the biggest issues with getting people involved in any cause is most believe that getting involved in a cause or movement will not actually change anything. I can't say for sure this is something that plagues the rest of the U.S., but I know there is this deep sense of powerlessness in the face of the government these days.
Also, I think these days a lot of people are just trying to survive. For most people, The American Lifestyle is pretty much work, work, and work because you need to keep your home or your apartment. You need to put food on the table for your family. You need to make sure your children have the necessities to get a good education or make sure an elderly parent is being taken care of. You need to pay your electric bill, your gas bill, your car bills and etc and etc. When you have so much on your mind, fighting for social change can seem like a daunting task. When you're living from paycheck to paycheck and see all these politicians going around in circle after circle after circle getting nothing done, what can you do but fight for yourself?
That sort of goes along with another trend. Most people won't join a cause for change out of fear that change will destabilize an already tough system. People already have it hard, and they don't want it to be harder. Even though it would only be hard short term whereas long term most would benefit from a more tolerant and active government.
I don't think violence is a realistic solution to the problem. The best that can be hoped for is self defense against white supremacists, as Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and other black leaders advocated a few decades ago. This is feasible as long as the killers are people like the KKK, or Dylan Roof. Perhaps some of the church bombings can be prevented by neighborhood patrols if they are properly organized and watchful, as a substitute for police protection. But insofar as the police themselves are the people murdering black people under cover of law, this is not realistic, because self defense will be interpreted an act of rebellion against a legitimate state by the vast majority of Americans (and even the majority of middle class black Americans such as myself). They will not interpret these actions as self defense against predatory police, rather as the threatening actions of criminals that need to be put down. Nonviolence in the sense of Martin Luther King seems unlikely to produce the requisite change as well, as police killings take place dispersed across the country in a hazy continuum of "justifiaibility," rather than all in one place at once. TV footage of the mass killings and beatings of peaceful protesters trying to vote is more dramatic than TV footage of one case of police brutality, which apologists for police and police unions can insist was justified to protect the lives of officers because of unseen threats posed to the officer. I think new tactics are needed, and are in the process of invention. Cameras are a good first step that brings media attention to the most egregious shootings, but obviously not sufficient in light of the Eric Garner acquittal, among others. If I knew the next step of the answer I would be out demonstrating and trying to guide things in that direction, but I think that America is too segregated, both by race and by class, for people to really understand the issue. There is not yet a powerful enough impetus for the kinds of political changes that will be necessary to solve the problem, though things are moving in the direction of at least some form of criminal justice reform, which is a positive sign.
Excellent points. For reference, I'm a white person and have pretty limited intimate exposure to the black community. How do you think that we can police our police force, so to speak, so that we have less incidents (I don't know if incidents is the right word, I feel it isn't strong enough) like the murder of Eric Garner? Do you believe that the current generation of police officers are influenced by the older, more racist officers or by racist upbringings? How do you believe the black community's actions and beliefs contribute to the problem or solution? Is there anything that you think that anyone could do to lead to an actionable solution? Anything else that you feel people need to know? I know you touched on some of these points in your post, but I'm curious as to your perspective. I'm getting tired of our fellow Americans being mistreated and killed because somebody can't come to grips with the fact that not everyone looks like them.
Well, before I touch on any of those points I should say that I cannot speak for a "black community" in any way. I am half black, half white, and raised by my white mother in a majority white community. In our society this makes me black, but my experience is not necessarily the same as other black people who grew up in different circumstances. In fact I am not sure there is a monolithic "black community" which acts or believes in a fixed way, as your question implies. My situation is different from a new immigrant from Ethiopia, whose situation is different from that of the people rioting in Baltimore or from Michelle Obama. I also have no real standing to talk about the police authoritatively, as I know very little about police work. With that said, yes I believe that many of the police are influenced by a culture of racism within their departments, as well as by the subtle (or not so subtle) racist messages that pervade society at large. I don't think that this works in a uniform way across all police departments. It manifests itself most intensely in the way that policing is done in poor black neighborhoods in large cities, but is present in varying degrees in other places as well. I believe that many police see their job as to protect "the rest of us" from the people living in the segregated urban ghettos that American housing and zoning policies to contain the refugees from slavery and Jim Crow. In that sense the police behave more normally outside of these zones, but act more like an occupying army in those places. This is true regardless of the racial composition of the officers, or the communities they view themselves as protecting. My impression is that this attitude and the problems faced by black people in the areas where poverty is the most rampant are related to each other intimately. People living in poor black communities experience the police as predators who attempt to nab them on whatever charges they can, no matter how minor, rather than protecting them from crime. As a result there is very weak "law and order" despite the intense policing in these communities. Gangs arise to fill up the space vacated by the absent state and resolve disputes between people, often violently. You are automatically assigned a gang that controls the area that you live in, just as you are automatically assigned a state based on what geographic area you are born in. This results in high amounts of crime and vigilantism, as disputes are settled on the street between gangs rather than through courts or other intermediaries. It also creates a paranoid culture where you have to react disproportionately to any slight, lest other gangs in the area see you as targets for predation. The number of conflicts increases, because you need to show you are not afraid to fight in order to deter this. That's a recipe for lots of violent crime, which is a recipe for more police attention. But that means more police predation, a more declines in the legitimacy of the state, etc. So we have a vicious circle. There's more going on than just that of course, but I think that's a big part of it. The conditions are ripe for this cycle to go on unimpeded when there's high unemployment rates (black America's unemployment rate during "good times" is about the same as the unemployment rate for the US as a whole during the great recession, and worse in poor neighborhoods), poor / underfunded education systems, hopelessness, etc. The real solutions to make this sort of problem go away would be if large numbers of high paying jobs that don't require much education could suddenly appear for everyone, and the legitimacy of the state was somehow restored. Then there would be less hopelessness about advancement through normal channels in the economy and more trust in police to protect people, therefore less crimes, lower share of the population in prison meaning more stable families, and jobs available meaning more wealth which then returns to the schools and other institutions via more taxable money available, therefore less political fear and demands to police that community harshly, etc. Barring a magic wand that makes the economy better, I think the first step at least would be setting up an independent group of people to investigate police cases, and lowering the intense legal protections on police that make it almost impossible to prosecute them for wrongdoing. Police should stop spending so much energy trying to score drug convictions and meet quotas / make ticket revenue for the city, but instead focus on serious crimes such as murder, robbery, assault, etc. so that people don't feel like they need extralegal protection. Police shouldn't do "stop and frisk" type activities, or constantly pull people over for minor "broken windows" style crimes when the murder clearance rate in the city is sitting around less than 40%. Police who are called about a crime shouldn't accuse the caller of committing crimes or search the house for drugs when they are let in to discuss it. Ideally police should have more funding so that they can have more officers walking the beat and talking to residents of the community they are supposed to protect, rather than impersonally driving around in police cars. Ideally as many officers as possible should be recruited from the community that they are expected to police in order to increase trust, although in communities where trust has already broken down this is often difficult to achieve. Police should also be trained not to shoot except as a last resort, and every gunshot fired should be documented and subjected to review by an independent civilian commission as to whether it is justified or not. Statistics on police shootings and the circumstances in which they occur should be federally mandated for collection. I don't think all of these will solve the issue overnight, but over the long term I think it would cause a significant improvement.
From what I can tell people are essentially saying, "Cause this has been the way for so long" and, "It's complicated" when in fact neither of those are excuses.
"What is white America going to do WHEN it does happen?" White America legally owns millions of firearms. I'm not advocating racism but helter-skelter is just a ridiculous position to advocate.
I think one of the main issues surrounding the whole "racism in America" topic is that people forget that the big push for civil rights happened only ~50 years ago. We've gone from segregated schools, bathrooms, bus seats, etc. to accepting that there are differences that need to be worked out and separating each other like Skittles isn't the best way to form a congruous society. Does that mean that the integration has gone smoothly? No, absolutely not.
You're asking people who weren't globally connected via Internet to change their way of thinking, when everyone around them thinks exactly the same as they do/did. The old crotchety white man who grew up being taught that blacks are scum isn't going to change his mindset because a law was passed, just like some folks aren't going to accept that gays aren't out to create a sex-cult that is going to topple the world just because the law says they can be married. They were taught by their parents to think a certain way, just like some people were taught to actually use their brains and perhaps treat other human beings like human beings.
The other issue is within the black community. In many ways, they have the same problems as the old white guy. Their ancestors were beaten, lynched and made to feel worthless, so parents are going to share their experiences with the kids. It's not necessarily malevolent - you have to remember that 50+ years ago. a black guy walking down the streets of Birmingham alone wasn't going to have a good time. A parent wants to protect their child, so the child learns to fear the white man because that's what dad said to do. Racist cops certainly aren't doing anything to break that perception, so the cycle continues. Black communities aren't doing themselves any favors by pressuring each other into certain lifestyles and decrying those who try and better themselves through higher education. Add race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who like to throw salt on the wound to remind everyone to continue to hate each other, and you end up with the current state of affairs.
I know it has to suck to be constantly profiled in a negative way. Shop owners keeping an extra eye on you or cops pulling you over for driving while black. Dave Chappelle has a bit on this, but in reverse. The idea is still there. However, if, as a community, blacks didn't have illegal things on them when they got pulled over, eventually that kind of behavior is going to die down. Is it a perfect solution? No, of course not. I feel it's a realistic one, however. You have to prove that the stereotype is bullshit. That's part of what made MLK so successful during the big push for civil rights. He's just a guy that wants people to be treated like people.
Alright, I think I've rambled enough. I honestly got a bit side tracked when I pulled up the Dave Chappelle video. Hopefully the thoughts make some sense. Please feel free to refute any and all points I made, as they, of course, are just one guy's opinion.
Edits for markup. I really need to learn how to make things prettier.