Why White People Don't See Racism: Explaining the disconnect between Black and white Americans

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.

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.

I think you have offered some intelligent insights which I for one would do well to keep in mind in my personal relationships.

The problem confronting conservatives is that the game is legislation and the goal is power. It has now come to the place in America in which we are utterly dominated by identity politics. That is why I repeat ad nausea Nathan Bedford's first Maxim of American politics: all politics in America is not local but ultimately racial.

The Zimmerman affair proves to a moral certainty that at least one side of the black/white game for legislation and power has utterly abandoned reason and resorted to emotionalism, victimology, histrionics, stereotypes, racism, and demagoguery. All of these were evidenced in abundance in the George Zimmerman affair.

One can analogize the psychology of the African-American "community" in reaction to the George Zimmerman affair to the pathology of the Arab street. Both have shown themselves to be immune to reason.

The problem is further compounded by a media which operates on an agenda and has concluded that its role as journalists charges them with shaping the American society as regards race. One can only presume that the media is a child of the Academy and the grandchild of the media's role in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Whatever the genetic cause, the media has totally given itself over to The Critical Theory, or Political Correctness, in which truth and reality are wantonly sacrificed to the agenda.

If blacks are going to vote their race 96% of the time, and the media is going to distort the issues on behalf of that race, we have an unequal playing field in the game of political power. One need only read the posts on this thread to realize that a minority at least of white America is waking up to this game and is declining to continue play victim.

Identity politics by its very nature forces people of the out of favor identity to vote their race. This is inevitably going to happen in America if this trend continues. Worse, the real meaning of the Zimmerman case, (limiting its meaning as a criminal case rather than as a social phenomenon), is that the country is in danger of letting Identity Politics force us into a world of Identity Justice. When the test of guilt or innocence becomes the color of skin, the grand game of democracy in America is clearly over. For the African-American community, the only test and Zimmerman case has been the color of skin.

It is wrong to legislate based on subjective feelings of a group. It does not matter whether Travon Martin had a cultural instinct to take umbrage at being profiled, he had no right to commit a vicious, atrocious, deadly, unprovoked, assault. It is equally wrong to adjudicate on the basis of skin color. And it is fundamentally wrong to legislate the cultural mores of a race in a misguided concern to spare subjective feelings. It is wrong to socially engineer society to require the innocent half by law to accommodate the crime and pathology of the other half.

This is appeasement and it will lead us as a nation to disaster just as appeasement to sharia will lead to disaster. It is all well and good, even noble and recommended, for us to comport ourselves in our personal relationships according to the standards you lay down, but when it comes to exercising power over me and my family and compromising our constitutional rights, I decline to take a knife to a gun fight.

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.
If you don't like how they treat you at the place, stop going to the place. Open up your own place where you can firsk Whites. When you get held up because Blacks are packing heat and the Whites aren't, don't call us.

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.
Hang out in better establishments. Don't come to us with your problems if you're going to slum it with folks that aren't sober enough to keep track of thier iPhone.

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.
You know, I'm sorry this happened to you. Perhaps the cab driver has had a bad experience. Depending on how the White looked, I'll bet some Whites get the same treatment. Life goes on for them.

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. For every story you can tell, I can tell you one in reverse. We hired in a person who found that the work performed by people of other races was just too hard for them to do. They worked several days and didn't come back. They claimed the work was just too hard. Should I now go around telling that story over and over and over and over to any sap willing to listen?

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." Well gee, I wonder why Blacks might think they were being unfairly treated. I'm sure it couldn't be related to Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, a multitude of other pulbic figures including the President of the United States refusing to accept that banging someone's head against the cement is not acceptable. You want to talk racism, let's talk racism. Do you think it would be okay for a White guy to hold Trayvon Martin down and bash his head into the cement over and over? Hell no you don't. However if it's Trayvon Martin doing it to a Hispanic ever refers to as White, you're perfectly fine with it. Project much?

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. Okay. Great. There it is in black and white. 86% of Blacks thought it was okay for Martin to bash Zimmerman's head into the cement over and over and over again. And this means that 86% of those Blacks questioned thought Zimmerman was wrong to intercede on his own behalf to save his own life. Brilliant. This is what you bring me to prove that Whites are prejudiced against Blacks.

So what explains the disconnect? Well, this is at least an improvement. It expresses the fact that you admit you're clueless here. You... don't... know!   I'm sure you're about to play like you do, but for the briefest of moments, you had it right. You don' thave a fricken clue!

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. You just amitted you were lost here, and this isn't what I'd call a change for the better...

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. Okay, we're circling the drain here. Can we wrap this up?

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. Istead of coming up with moronic tedious stories, why not do something novel for a change. Let's stick with the issue at hand, the Zimmerman/Martin incident. Zimmerman called the police on Martin. Martin was acting suspicious. He was loitering behind homes in the dark. He wasn't on a beeline back to his dad's home. That much is certain. The kid (Martin) is played off as being innocent. He just went to the store for some candy. He's simply walking back home. No problem. He's a good kid. Okay, enough of the B. S. He was behind homes in the dark off the sidewalks. He was carrying candy that is known to be used to get hi. In moments he has broken another man's nose and is beating his head into the cement. This is your innocent little 17 year old Black kid. Racism? WTF are you talking about? Zimmerman didn't draw his gun until his nose was broken, his head lacerated, him admittedly having his head bashed into the concrete. If you have no problem with someone bashing another person's head into the concrete, lets meet and you land down, I'll straddle you and beat your head into the concrete four or five times. Then you can get up, we'll shake hands and go our merry little ways. Black magnets? Really? You're one obtuse person.

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." My expert is Ron Doughty. He's from the Center for Stomping Out Race Baiting B. S. Right Now. That's C/SORB/BS/RN Doughty says that skin color doesn't matter. "It's what people are engaged in that matters.", says Doughty. He says that if a White person were on top of a Black person beating his head into the cement, he would back the Black person taking out a gun and shooting the White guy. White guys shouldn't be able to do lethal damage to another person whether they are Black or White. It's just not accepted by society to do this.

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. I don't know a single White person who is stuck in the 1960s, as described here. I'm not in the habbit of going out and looking them up. I have a life of my own. I live a good life. I respect others. I don't focus my entire existence on whether someone got their feeling hurt or not. I can tell you that as a White man I have had my feelings hurt viciously and almost fatally by people of other races. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have treated someone of their own race in the same manner. I just don't view life like you do. Every slight in life isn't attributable to your skin or my skin. People clam up at work. It's not because I'm Black because I'm not. I go to the department store and get crappy service. It's not because I'm Black. I don't always get perks. I don't always get smiled at. There are times when a cashier will urge me to go to another line. I may not get the last baggle for they're all gone. I may not get the greatest service at a restaurant. I many not always get my food cooked to my specifications. Guess what! I'm NOT Black! I get cut off on the road. I'm not Black. I get flipped off. I'm not Black. Some women detest me. I'm not Black. Do us all a favor, and get yourself an attitude adjustment. I'm sick and tired of listening to you tell me that what I experince every day doesn't matter, because when it's done to you it's racists, and when it's done to me it's done to a person of privilige. F--k you!

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. Have you ever heard the term "Inside Baseball"? It's a term used to explain why some people understand what just happened, and some people don't, when watching a game. The avid fan will know what just took place, because they have an inside baseball vantage point. They see the play in it's full detail. Here you seem to be begging for a term that would be something like "Inside racism." Only in your term, it would have to mean that you wouldn't just know racism by the rules like the person who knew baseball. Unlike him, you would actually get to make up new rules as you went along. You would get to redefine racism, always putting the cure just a little out of everyone's reach so you can still claim you're not treated fairly. This diatribe above is evidence of a mind that is desperately seeking to justify a continually redefining of racsim, a remedy for which there will never be a resolution. We're supposed to change the goal moment by moment, as you redefine your ass off. I and a lot of other people are damned tired of this dog and pony show. I want you trated fairly. You know what, it's about time Whites are too. Yeah, I've been in the big city and have missed plenty of cabs. Tough!

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." At what point do you think it would be okay to bring Blacks back under the rules everyone else lives under? Please point out for us the Blacks that are being denied the right to vote. The "Voting Rights Act" is no longer needed. You, I, all other citizens have a right to vote. And if we are prevented from doing it, there are legal means to address it. We don't have special rules to protect our rights, more than you. Why must you have special rules to protect your rights more than mine. What Zimmerman's arrest record is like, has nothing to do with him not being meek, not being a nice kid, and certainly not whether he is a racist. He had a concealed carry permit for his weapon. Are you charging the leaders of a municipality in Florida with felonious actions because they gave him a gun permit? Is there a conspiracy here? If he could get a concealed carry permit, then he's not quite the animal you have just tried to paint him as. And frankly, it confirms something I've been thinking more and more as I've read your diatribe here. You're not particularly discerning or honest.

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. Dense doesn't begin to cover your defficiency here. Why shouldn't a person be able to point out that a young Hispanic man was having his head pounded into the cement and express an objection to it? That young unarmed Black kid was utilizing the cement as a lethal weapon. He wasn't just hitting Zimmerman's head against the dirt or some such. What the hell is wrong with you, that you can't grasp what was taking place and extrapolate some meaning from it. What unarmed 17 year old kid? Does this mean he should be able to push Zimmermans' head through a window, then slide his neck along the broken glass thereby cutting his neck so bad that it killed him? I mean after all, he could be unarmed. You know what's freightening about all this, seriously, it's that you folks are willing to accept anything that Trayvon did, without the faintest of an objection. "Pounding Zimmerman's head into the cement? Well, I don't see anything wrong with that. He WAS unarmed you know." Buy a fricken clue folks. It's not okay to kill someone because you can claim you are unarmed. It's sad I even have to say this. And you're going to get upset the next time you have something to say, because I'm going to remembrer this and think you haven't got to brain cells to rub together. Some of this is elemetal stuff, and you show no ability to grasp it. Again, just sad... And you think it's great for Black leaders to stand up, ignore what Trayvon was doing, and try to drumb up sympathy as if he was cont nothing wrong at all. It's just plain sick mentality...

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. Take your magnet and cram it. I do some self-examination of some sort every single day, and a fair amount of it does involve race. You sanctimonious ass, get your own house in order before you dare come after other folks to fix. Where's your outrage at Black youth groups beating up people in Chicago? Go fix them dipstick! How would you like me to go on television every single day and trash your race for not doing the right thing by me? I have had it. When it gets to the point a 17 year old kid can do what Trayvon was doing, and you see no problem with it, the gig is up. There's no pretense between us. You hate us. Well I can live with it. Some people of your color have no idea what racists they are. Self-Examine that pinhead.

*******

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.
Keith Boykin is a moron from New York. If this is an example of what he bussies himself with, I can see why racial relations are bad. He's fanning the flames of racial hatred. Some of us are damned tired of it. It confirms the worst suspicions about Clinton, Obama, and BET.

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