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.
LOL! Well, I only read the posted article and I didn't click through to see the photo of the 'ahem' subject. I suppose I should have picked up some indicators from the text, but I didn't....
MOM didn’t say that, the author did...
Oh, just saw the photo. Yeah, um... wasn’t even picked last at the local b-ball court. Now I see why the cabbie dissed him as well... lol
I once came upon a white security guard outside Target. He had collapsed with a massive heart attack. He was surrounded by a crowd of young black men and women who were laughing at him, taking pictures and taunting him. No one had called 911. They tried to stop me from calling.
The man was dead when the ambulance arrived.
I’ve never seen the reverse side of this.
Why White People Don’t See Racism: Explaining the disconnect between Black and white Americans
By: Keith Boykin
Every morning I get up and place this heavy chip on my shoulder. White people just don’t understand what it is like to walk around with a chip on your shoulder every day. I walk the streets and see whites smiling and walking without a lean to the left and I am reminded of my chip. The clothes manufacturers are racist because they make white jackets with extra padding for hunting but no black clothes with extra padding for the chip on my shoulder. My shirts wear out sooner than whites without a chip on their shoulder that is racist.
With this heavy chip on my shoulder I notice whites giving me a wide berth when passing to my left, it is because they are racist. Sometimes I hear racist jokes about chip off the old block. Just because I am black taxi cabs want to charge me for my chip as luggage when I ride in them.
Yes whites just don’t understand what it is to be black and spend their life with a chip on their shoulder.
This is how Jackson et al stay in power. You only read my post because you think I’m white.
Thank you. I think anyone who honestly watches the video, listens to the calls, and learns a little about the backgrounds of both Zimmerman and Travyon really has to come to the conclusion that this was simply one of the few times that a thug attacked someone smaller, and the victim had a gun.
I'm not saying there aren't real racists in America (that Spooner guy sounds like a real piece of work), I just don't see any evidence that Zimmerman deserves that title.
Oh, I get you. I guess I skipped a few steps, because I was remembering a remark that O’Mara made at one point that he thought very differently about Zimmerman, too, before he got to know him.
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