Note: This is prompted by this post here.
Last week I wrote this about my intellectual development, and what I had been taught, at a remove, by Franz Fanon and James Cone, about the possibilities of thinking differently; about thinking from another perspective, another history, another social station. That is all well and good from an intellectual standpoint - a bit remote, but nonetheless crucial - but I want to give an example of what that means in life. After all, I should be able to show that I can actually think differently than would be expected from my background, my social class, my education, and my racial and ethnic heritage.
My turtle-loving neighbors to the north would want us to believe, in the post linked above in the italics, that, by reporting the fact of racism, CNN is somehow responsible for it. While I am hardly one to trust any news outlet, and am grateful for any skepticism any one, left, right, or center, employs when encountering a news report, this is something that strains credulity. CNN is not promoting a racial divide; it was reporting that Americans feel there is in fact a racial divide, and are aware of those who hold bigoted views.
So much for the first part, some general comments.
In the comments section of the post, I noted that recetnly attorneys representing the Dallas, TX school board argued for separate-but-equal school systems, based on the claim that funding for these separate school systems would remain the same. Apart from the obvious questions, including whether or not this attorney had heard of this little court case known as Brown, et. al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka, KS, this case prompted me to state that the school district did not make this argument because it is liberal (Dallas, TX?) CNN, with Ted Turner and his fellow jet-setting cosmopolite George Soros setting the agenda, did not force the attorney to make this stupid (that word is popping up a lot lately) argument. The argument was made because the school district believes that racial segregation is preferable to the the hard work of integration - and all the risks that entails, socially, culturally, and economically. In other words, the current status quo is preferable. By arguing in favor of segregation, the school board is, by definition, RACIST.
Similarly, three young black men were followed by a police squad car after they left a New York club. They were followed for a block and a half. Details are sketchy, but the police opened fire on the three young men, who were (as far as I know) unarmed. One of those men is dead. Now consider this act from the perspective of an African-American. There is the whole history of near-genocidal violence against Americans of African descent - cultural destruction, rape, enforced religious conversion, the denial of even the most basic status as a human being (put most succinctly by Chief Justice of the United States in his horrendous Dred Scott decision: "No Negro has any rights which a white man is entitled to respect."). After "emancipation", the granting of "full citizenship", of "voting rights", of "equality before the law" came the imposition of legal segregation, enforced peonage, the terrorism of the Night Rider, the burning cross, the legal revocation of the right to vote, of access to education, of the status as an equal human being worthy of respect and having dignity simply because that person was, period (I am speaking of the social practice common in the south of whites referring to blacks as "boy", "girl", or perhaps "Uncle", or "Aunt", as in Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemimah).
Of course, the context to best understand what happened on that dark New York City street most clearly is the lynching. How many hundreds, or even thousands, of African-American men, women, boys, and girls, were tortured and murdered by cheering crowds who photographed themselves around the corpse? Since such murder was common, and unpunishable by law - quite often performed by the very people who were sworn to uphold the law (police, judges) - how should we expect the NYC African-American community to react? Does the passage of a few laws here and there wipe out the communal memory of racial violence and hatred; of the shackle and whip, the hangman's noose and the burning brand?
More to the point, why should any American, black or white, take seriously our government's commitment to equality when attorneys for municipalities make arguments as morally specious as the one offered by attorneys for the Dallas school district? Why should African-Americans trust any white person who claims to be one of good faith? How effective have those earnest, starry-eyed whites been in fighting off those who would enforce our national code of racial intolerance and white supremacy at the cost of thousands of lives? How many young black men have to die at the hands of police officers who claim they felt threatened? How many African-Americans have to suffer the indignities, large and small, heaped upon them by a society so entrenched in racism, so steeped in white supremacy, that advocates for racial justice are derided as ambulance chasing race-baiters, while the killers of black boys and girls and men and women are heralded as heroes? How long until someone says "ENOUGH!"?
I suppose, however, that as a liberal, I am just fanning those old racial flames. As Billy Joel sang, though, we didn't start the fire.
Virtual Tin Cup
