Precious...
Posted on 04/07/2016 6:12:47 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
“Don’t make this about race.”
I’ve heard this sentence a lot recently, read it a lot online. Saw its use launch a Facebook flame war while I waited for my plane to board at the end of spring break. It’s the easiest way for white people to invalidate experiences of oppression and avoid fraught debates about justice in America.
But of course it’s about race—everything is. Our country was built on oppression, and race is everywhere, at every moment on my standard trip back to Harvard.
The view from my airplane window is about race. Colonizers killed Indigenous people for those tidy plots of farmland. We profited from those fields by exploiting and terrorizing slaves. We rejected demands for land return and reparations, compounding racist domination based on the pretext of “free market” capitalism, and we devised new ways to produce and preserve systemic injustice. It is impossible to separate the wealth that paid for my plane ticket from structural oppression. When I land at Logan, it’s about race.
Sometimes, my uncle picks me up at the airport, and we drive into Cambridge on the Central Artery. The Central Artery is also about race. Its construction tore Chinatown apart in the 1950s and ‘60s. Land that was home to generations of low-income Chinese immigrants—who lived there because they were unwelcome in more desirable parts of Boston—was seized through eminent domain. Blocks of affordable homes were demolished, and more than a thousand residents were forced from the neighborhood. The Central Artery also severed present-day Chinatown from those who lived east of Interstate 93, dividing a whole community. Then, when the Massachusetts Turnpike followed in the 1960s and ‘70s, it further isolated the neighborhood from immigrants living to the south.
In combination with luxury high-rise developments, these infrastructure projects slashed away at affordable housing. This is not race-neutral. City officials knew these incursions would do irreparable damage, but the marginalized people of Chinatown had little political power. Today, low-income Chinese immigrants can no longer afford to pay rent in Chinatown. They represent less than half of present-day residents. A neighborhood that was built many years ago by people like them, for people like them, isn’t theirs anymore. That’s about race.
If my uncle can’t get off work, I take the Silver Line to South Station, then the Red Line to Harvard Square. The Silver Line’s about race, too. In the 1960’s, protests broke out in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and the South End when Boston started razing homes for another highway project. The people of color who inhabited these neighborhoods, primarily Black and Latino, knew their livelihoods and communities would never have come under such existential threat if they were rich and white. They forced the city to halt construction, but the deal stripped majority-Black Roxbury of its Orange Line access to the MBTA. The city promised to replace it, but residents are still relegated to the inefficient and unreliable buses of the Silver Line. Whether it’s retribution or negligence, that’s about race.
Right off the T station in Harvard Square, the benches on Mass. Ave are partitioned. Handrails also divide the benches at Trinity Church and Jamaica Pond, and solar panels segment flashy new seats in Central Square. This is hostile architecture. These narrowly spaced partitions—like concrete spikes on highway medians and iron studs on sidewalks—exist to keep people from lying down when they have no place else to sleep. Hostile architecture is designed to repel the homeless and others who “loiter” in public spaces. The majority of America’s homeless are people of color, the denial of economic opportunity is a function of structural oppression, and the fear that justifies hostile architecture is predicated on highly racialized stereotypes. These benches are also about race.
America’s wealth and power is derived from the violence of genocide and human bondage. We reify white supremacy through exclusion, eviction, and eminent domain, and we reinforce white supremacy by denying it. We say, “Not everything is a race issue. Don’t make this about race.” But Harvard exists on this land because of race, I pay for plane tickets because of race, and I get here on the Silver Line or by the Central Artery because of race.
Because in a country built on oppression, everything is about race. Including the benches.
If this is what passes for deep thoughts at one of America’s premier colleges, Lord help us. There will literally be no intelligent life left on this planet in about 20 years.
The indigenous people slaughtered quite a lot of other indigenous people, plus colonists. So whoever wins is the racist because they did it better and won?
I don’t kow how to post Teddy’s photo (it’s at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedwaechter), but it tells you all you need to know about the pampered and very confused baby boy.
“The female finalist on American Idol had better win tonight.
Just sayin’...”
She didn’t, lol. I was so glad to see Trent win. He’s really talented and overcame being sick with Mono back in Hollywood week.
I also admit to be a little biased though. His hometown, Amory, Ms. is not far from my hometown in NW Alabama.
Is that the little snowflake? He looks about 12 years old.
Unfortunately, he’s almost as emotionally mature as a 12 year old.
Almost.
He’s queer. No wonder he’s so brainwashed by the Left.
Precious...
If you view that racism is the cause of everything, then you will see racism everywhere. It is all about projecting your perspective.
Looks like America is racist and the privileged White dude won it.....
The comments following the article are heartwarming. :) This libtard SJW isn’t getting any love from the readers.
The only problem is that their replies will only increase his feelings of martyrdom and increase his cred with the other LGBT crowd.
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