Which one puts you instinctively on alert?
It's not about race, Keith. It's about culture.
Posted on 07/24/2013 12:09:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Next week I will participate in a racial discrimination hearing against a Manhattan night club that frisked and searched me when I attended on a "Black night" but does not search patrons on mostly white nights.
Last week, I was accused of stealing an iPhone by a white woman in Miami who came up to me and asked if she could search my pockets to find it. It was not a joke or a pickup line.
And just last month, I had to pull out my own iPhone to photograph and report the license plate and medallion number of a taxicab driver in New York's Union Square who refused to pick me up and then drove across the street to pick up a white customer seconds later.
For many African-Americans, I suspect these stories aren't entirely surprising. As President Obama said last week, racism is a daily part of our lives. Like air and water, it's part of the environment in which we live. Yet far too many white Americans still live in denial about its persistence.
That's the conclusion to be drawn not just from anecdotal experience but from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out Wednesday that showed a vast disparity between white and Black perceptions on race relations. The poll, conducted after George Zimmerman was acquitted for shooting unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, found that 52 percent of whites think race relations are "good" in America while 58 percent of Blacks describe race relations as "bad."
The new poll numbers follow similar results from a Washington Post-ABC News poll two days earlier. In that poll, 86 percent of Blacks disapproved of the Zimmerman verdict while only 31 percent of whites felt that way. Even more disappointing is that 86 percent of African-Americans say Blacks and other minorities do not get equal treatment under the law, while only 41 percent of whites think that's true.
So what explains the disconnect?
Years ago, I heard a law professor explain what I call the "magnet analogy." Remember those big red and silver horseshoe magnets from high school? Now imagine you had to walk around the world with a huge horseshoe magnet on your neck. Aside from the heavy burden of carrying the extra weight, you'd quickly see the world a lot differently from those without the magnet.
The first thing you'd notice – there's a lot of metal in the world. Keys, coins, cell phones, even appliances would suddenly get a lot more of your attention. Why? Because the magnet attracts them. But those without the magnet would continue to remain oblivious to the metal assault on your body.
That's the experience for African-Americans every day. We're surrounding and inundated by the metal of racism while those who do not carry the magnet of Blackness remain oblivious to our experience. To them, racism is a thing of the past.
The problem is we need to recognize how new and subtle forms of race bias have replaced the old overt acts of racial discrimination. Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion explains how brain science has identified subconscious racial bias taking place in "nanoseconds" at subliminal levels. "There's something that police officers and college students and George Zimmerman all have in common," she told MSNBC's Melissa Harris Perry recently. "And that is that they're more likely to shoot a black man with a wallet than they are to shoot a white man with a gun." They call it "shooter bias."
Unfortunately, our laws and our public discourse haven't kept up with the changes in racism. Many whites are still stuck in the 1960s image of overt bigotry, of Klansmen burning crosses and segregationist governors blocking schoolhouse doors. They may know a parent or a grandparent who still uses the N-word, but as long as they refrain from using it themselves then they can't possibly be racist, they think.
But Paula Deen aside, modern racism isn't really about the N-word. New code words like Detroit, Chicago, "Stand Your Ground," voter ID, food stamps and welfare now carry the same impact with dog whistle messages too subtle to be reported by many in the media. This seemingly race-neutral language allows the majority to engage in public discourse under the mantle of innocence and thus dismiss the vestiges and effects of hundreds of years of legally sanctioned white supremacy. The only racists in this vision are the people who complain about racism.
That's why the U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act last month and argued it had outlived its utility. And that's why George Zimmerman's defense attorney Mark O'Mara last week told Fox News's Sean Hannity that his client, a known killer with a long arrest record, was just a "meek, mild guy without a racist bone in his body."
If you kill an unarmed Black boy or fan the flames of white resentment on talk radio, you're a "patriot." But if you help the family of the young Black boy who was killed, you're a "race hustler." To be white in America allows you the freedom to remain oblivious to these distinctions.
Yes, this dialogue must be a two-way conversation. But until white Americans examine their own racial privilege and open their eyes to the experience of Black Americans, they'll never notice the magnet we carry every day.
*******
Keith Boykin is a New York Times best-selling author and former White House aide to President Clinton. He attended Harvard Law School with President Barack Obama and currently serves as a TV political commentator. He writes political commentary for BET.com each week.
There!! Dang, it's not rocket science... LOL! Thank you!
At this point, most white people don’t care about racism be it real or imagined...we are over it.
There was a white dyke at the library the other night talking with the librarian about her PHD thesis about the racist roots of the children’s book “Benjamin Bunny”. The librarian was pretty confused as the racism couldn’t be readily discerned, but the big dyke insisted it was there.
I ALMOST chimed in that I was researching the racist roots of the word “the”, but I stifled myself.
They did, it was called Detroit.
Yeah, that was pretty funny...
Many blacks are into the whole black identity thing and how blacks feel about alleged racism X and Y and Z. Whites are not interested in this except for some self hating liberal types. Whites just want to work and live their lives without constant complaints about racism. Gays are also a pain in the butt, always going on assaulting societies institutions and gay this and gay that
Blacks could care less that they are only 13% of the population and that we now have other large minority groups such as Asians and Hispanics. Blacks are living in the past when the USA racial breakdown was just about black and white with whites being 90% and blacks at 9%. This was the situation when I grew up. Hispanics already outnumber blacks. Though only at 13% the constant drumbeat of racial accusations turns whites off. American blacks are the richest blacks by far. Only via their ancestors slavery are they not in Africa living in grass huts and poverty.
This book is written by a black Washington Post writer who visited Africa and was overjoyed when he got back home to America>>>
Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa: Keith B. Richburg ...
Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa [Keith B. Richburg] on Amazon. com. *FREE* super saver shipping on qualifying offers. Nothing in Keith Richburg's ...Out of America, reviewed by Wolf Roder
www.unc.edu/~ottotwo/Roderreview.htmlOn the other hand, African leaders confide in Richburg because he is black. Zaire's communications minister allows how the disintegration of his nationÕs ...Keith Richburg: Zimbabwe shows Africa is still in the despots' grip ...
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/22/zimbabwe.usaJun 21, 2008 - Keith Richburg: Despite talk about an African renaissance of democracy, by almost any measure repression remains widespread.WashingtonPost.com: Continental Divide: American in Africa
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/richburg/richbrg1.htmIn 1995 Keith Richburg wrote this piece for The Post Magazine on his experiences as The Post's Africa bureau chief from 1991 to 1994, during which he covered ...
No, I think it's "feeeeeel." ;^)
I do not believe that Blacks care very much that Trayvon Martin died. After all, they seem to ignore more black on black violent deaths every day. I think what Blacks care about is that some “white” guy had the temerity and the means to defend himself from a beat down.
That is really what this is about, cow white people so that the black hoodlums can rob, steal and kill more of them with impunity. The Obama administration panders to this approach, because it buys black votes, just like Obama phones.
Which one puts you instinctively on alert?
It's not about race, Keith. It's about culture.
Amazing isn’t it? A black person thinking there is racism using racism.
And that’s why George Zimmerman’s defense attorney Mark O’Mara last week told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that his client, a known killer with a long arrest record, was just a “meek, mild guy without a racist bone in his body.”
**********
GZ is a known killer with a long arrest record?
Why?
Because whites are racist!
Didn’t you get the training? Or the memo?
Honestly...
IF you’re not profiling...... YOU BE A MORON!!!..
ANY intelligent person profiles..
NOT profiling can get you KILLED!...
or raped, robbed, beat up, car jacked, maybe even bitch slapped.. <<- which you would deserve..
I gave her a nice racist, snarky reply, “You’re black so I wasn’t sure.”
This is a racist statement.
Dude, no white woman is going to come up to you demanding to check inside your pockets for an iPhone she thinks you stole. Its a FALSE PRETENSE and she’s obviously just trying to determine if “The Legend” is true or not.
Yep. I've pointed out before that if you hear a rapist is on the loose, you'll tend to think it's a male, and why is that... boy do people get mad when we make comments like that...
"Oh, it's twue. It's twue. It's twue, it's twue!"
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