Posted on 07/10/2012 3:26:06 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It was Thanksgiving. A very cold November afternoon. I must have been 19 or 20 years old...home for the holiday from UCLA, where I was studying theater. My bube (grandmother) was still alive. My entire family sat around the dinner table, doing what the Skolniks love to do...talk politics. Of course we ate turkey. cranberry sauce. mashed potatoes. the usual. a little tofurkey for the vegetarians in the crew. The tone was light. Soft jabs. No heavy punching, since we all come from the same political cloth. But when the conversation turned to race, the tone got a little bit more serious. My memory is not good enough to remember what was said, but I remember the line that made the conversation come to an end. Stung like a bee. Definitely didn't float like a butterfly. The guy who had just married my aunt, her second marriage, looked straight at me and said "you talk like you're black."
Frederick Douglass. Gwendolyn Brooks. Colin Powell. Maya Angelou. Malcolm X. Paul Robeson. Shirley Chisolm. Martin Luther King, Jr. I didn't know who Barack was at the time...this was the late 90's. You see, I was in speech class until I was 10 years old. Couldn't say the letter r. These names. These heroes. I saw images of them. The sting was intense, but I closed my eyes in silence and remembered that as a kid, I dreamed I could talk like them. I wished I had their oratory skills. I dreamt of dreams and mountaintops, caged birds, presidential campaigns, Harlem in the 60's and the abolition of slavery. I opened my eyes and just kept eating my turkey. cranberry sauce. mashed potatoes. just kept eating in silence.
Silence. silence is an American tradition when it comes to race. A tradition as traditional as Thanksgiving. Unfortunately after I learned how to say the letter r, I wasn't too good at silence. Still not very good at it. And I'm definitely not very silent about what I have to be thankful for...on Thanksgiving or any other day of the year. But, it seems when I publicly talk about how good many of us white people have it, some of my white friends are not very good at being silent either. Many of them telling me that I shouldn't point out facts like white Americans have 22 times more wealth than blacks, while the median household net worth for whites was $110,729 in 2010 versus $4,995 for blacks. Or that today in America, there are more black people in prison, jail or on parole than there were black slaves before the Civil War. Or that breakdown of food stamp recipients is: 33% (13.4m) are white, 22% (8.9m) are black, 16.7% (6.6m) are Latino & 2.8% (1.1m) are Asian. Or that Trayvon Martin was shot while walking black.
Many of my good white friends just wish I was silent. Wish I went back to eating my turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. Wish I didn't make fill up their twitter timelines or their facebook newsfeeds. Wish I agreed with them that there is no longer racism in America. Wish that I agreed with them that it is now really about economics. Wish I agreed with them that all it takes is hard work to make it in America...you can question my sources for these facts all you want. you can question why i send these tweets out. you can question why these facts make you so angry. you can even question my ethnicity and race, cause in your mind it is hard to believe i am white like you. But, just ask yourself this question, for my non-black friends..if you were black, do think your circumstances would be the same as they are now?
If you are honest with yourself, you know the answer to this question. And with this answer, you know it is not acceptable that 50% of children who are born black in middle income families today in America will fall into poverty during their lifetime versus 16% of white children. And if you are honest with yourself, then you will do everything you possible can to bridge the racial divide. I am comfortable pointing out the racial inequalities in this country, cause I am also comfortable about giving thanks for what I have and honest about what I have been given. I recognize that my hard work has contributed to the little success I have in life, but I damn well know that a lot was also handed to me, like a door prize for just showing up. And for those who don't get door prizes, I promise to fight everyday for their pursuit of happiness as much as I fight for mine. So, I will continue to show up and speak out when inequality is so blatant. Like what happened in Sanford, Florida on February 26th, 2012 when a young man was shot in the chest while holding a bag of skittles and a can of ice tea. Remember him?
Am I not suppose to support Trayvon Martin because I'm white?
Hoodies Up! Our work is not done...
No BUT, you aren’t supposed to condemn GZ just because TM is black. That’s what a bigot would do.
Good for you, George Zimmerman used to do that too before February 26, 2012.
Like what happened in Sanford, Florida on February 26th, 2012 when a young man was shot in the chest while holding a bag of skittles and a can of ice tea. Remember him?
Yeh -- that was the thug who assaulted and beat George Zimmerman who until then used to show up and speak out for people like his assailant.
Am I not suppose to support Trayvon Martin because I'm white?
Support him how??? Holding his Skittles and ice tea while he beats another man to death??? Well he's dead now so you can have his Skittles and ice tea now.
Hoodies Up! Our work is not done...
Right on, bros!!!
There are more ghettos to terrorize, more riots to start, more laws to break, more marijuana to smoke, more 7-Elevens to rob, more bus drivers to punch, more heads to smash, more neighborhood watchmen to beat, more blood to spill, more coffins to fill, more lies to tell, more testimony to perjure, and more Zimmermans to accuse and imprison....... So get to work.
it is not acceptable that 50% of children who are born black in middle income families today in America will fall into poverty during their lifetime versus 16% of white children.
If these percentages ae even true, if it wasn't acceptable, it wouldn't be happening. It's like saying, "It's unacceptable that the rose has thorns." This person is insane.
“The people from Nigeria feel like they won the lottery by being in this country.”
I Know. They’re always sending me emails offering to share their inheritance with me if I’ll just give them the money to pay the legal fees.
“Up until the mid-1960s, American blacks, as an ethnic group, were progressing economically faster than any other immigrant ethnic group in U.S. history. Certainly much faster than the Irish, which was one the slowest due to an over-reliance on government jobs. All that came to a screaming halt due to Johnson’s War on Poverty and the largely successful attempt to wean the group from self-reliance and to hook them on government reliance.”
Hear! Hear!
I suggest FReepers make pads of the above three lines and post them in black areas.
A bit of education couldn’t hurt. Unless you are spotted putting the data up, that is.
Supporting Trayvon because he is black is racist.
I thought Zimmerman said there was a conversation between the two. Was this before or after the conversation?
I would have thought that at least one of his heroes might have been white.
“...Or that Trayvon Martin was shot while walking black.”
Why are jerks like this author still spouting this myth?
Trayvon Martin was shot because he was bashing George Zimmerman’s skull against the pavement. The shooting was justified self defense.
did anyone else find themselv (grammar, I know) visited
by stray thoughts about the inavisablitiy of theater
departments in academia while trying to read this?
The percentages are close to true. The real issues though are that (1) middle income black families are far more likely to be headed by a single parent or to experience divorce than middle income white families, and (2) middle income black families save a lot less than middle income white families, taking on far more debt to buy useless stuff than whites with comparable incomes. When you control for behavior, single and divorced whites who don't save are just as likely to fall into poverty as single and divorced blacks who don't save. The trick is to measure the right statistics. I believe I am answering the right questions to reach the meaningful truth, and they are answering the right questions to get a shocking statistic that can be quoted as a weapon.
I stopped at “UCLA...studying theater”.At that point I knew what was coming next and I just ate.
Read further and you'll see Saul Alinsky and Eugene Debbs mentioned.
I wonder if the author is going to rise to the occasion and defend this 17 year old thug, coincidentally named Trayon:
I don,t happen to be on that guilt trip, when i was 12 years old i lived in the black part of town which was on the west side of town, we lived on the very west part of town, on the last street.
The black kids, just being kids would eat candy and ice cream
and tease me and my little brother because we could not have these things, we were called white trash which caused a few fights.
Mostly we ended up friends.
So my advice to this person would be just to be who you are and do what God tells you to do and leave every one else to do the same.
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