societal ostracism is directly proportional to cultural dysfunction
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.
No white woman is going to go up to a random black man and ask to search his pockets without something else going on.
This from a black man: If what he said was the least bit true, trust me - that was NOTHING BUT a pick-up line.
societal ostracism is directly proportional to cultural dysfunction
“Readin’ b actin’ white”.
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This is in line with...
- It's always wrong to profile; but white people are racist.
- It was OK for Trayvon to attack Zimmerman with force because Trayvon felt threatened; but it was not OK for Zimmerman to defend himself with force when Zimmerman felt threatened.
- Zimmerman has to be held responsible and deserved to be physically attacked because he disobeyed "police" orders; but even if Rodney King disobeyed police orders he did not deserve to be physically attacked.
Feel free to add to the list of hypocrisies coming from black agitators.
Keith Richburg is awesome. I’ll never forget the first time I read the excerpt about him standing on the bridge and watching the bodies float down the river... every so often I look up that essay and read it again... and it’s not even about race. I mean, in my teens and early 20s, I walked around talking about how I was Irish. Then I went to Ireland. EYES. OPENED. I’m American.
Correct, glad you have it straight :)
Just like it *must* have been racism when George Zimmerman thought Trayvon looked “suspicous”. So the only conclusion you can draw is that somebody can only look suspicious if their white, otherwise it’s racism.
How many blacks have ever heard of Booker T. Washington? How many Americans of any background have ever heard of Booker T. Washington?
The NAACP was founded by his (black) opponents, and he has largely been dropped down the memory hole.
Why black people do see racism: allows them to play on white guilt, manipulate for special benefits they’d never earn on their own merits, cover up their own inadequacies by blaming them on others - and on and on........
I think O’Mara just meant that he’d swallowed the hype. Zimmerman got arrested at 21 for shoving a plain-clothes cop who was trying to arrest his under-21 buddy for drinking (not smart but hardly psycho material). Also, Zimmerman and his girlfriend filed restraining orders against each other in 2005. That’s all that I know of. (And I can’t say much because a cousin of mine did that too, when she and her husband were going through a nasty divorce.)
I have many black friends who consider this man’s opinions racist and sickening.
Because it pays.
We all look alike to them. No, seriously. I'm really beginning to think that, for some blacks, there are only two colors: black and not-black.
If blacks want to be treated better, they have to behave better. It is cause and effect. They need to stop committing so many crimes and learn to become more productive.
Bingo.
If they were surrounded by other blacks, say in Africa, would that alleviate the problem?
“white Americans” - lowercase ‘w’.
“Black Americans” - uppercase ‘B’.
Who is the racist? Tell me again, Keith!
OOooo... I'll have to remember this one. This is a good point.
Them: You a raciss!
Me: What are you going to do about it? Tell my mom?
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