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.
Actually, I think more and more white people are seeing racism. They’re seeing that, AS A GROUP, black U.S. citizens are some of the most racist people on the planet. (I exclude actual Africans, because based on the real Africans I’ve personally met in the U.S., I don’t see any racism at all.)
That’s a racist statement right there. Imagine a white Conservative writing that.
He’s right. White people generally refuse to see black racism practiced against whites. I’ve never seen a white TV anchor talk about it.
Whites are not trained from birth to see racism.
If a white person does not get the apartment, it’s not because they are white, but a black will automatically assume that the reason is, they are black.
Didn’t get a job? Because you are black, but a white person just revamps the resume and keeps going, it’s not because they are white.
If I get on an elevator and the woman already there looks nervous, it’s because I’m a stranger. She’s gonna be all alone with me and I’m bigger than her. Unless I’m black, then that’s the reason.
Look up “microaggression”, this is sort of advanced training in detecting tiny little racist insults. Seeing racism is a basic part of black culture. Everything that happens to a black person is because they are black.
White people should try that mindset for a week or a month or so, it’s illuminating.
I don't believe this story for a second. Pure BS.
And most blacks would see it exactly the same way.
Stereotypes do contain some truth or else they would not be recognizable. So, why are blacks avoided due to a stereotype of thuggery? Hmmmmm?
Because we are not racists that see racism by everyone not black or brown for everything anyone says or does to us.
I actually held open a door for a black woman only for her to proclaim, “Wazza matta? U don think I can do dat?”
I had a black colleague that I thought wasn’t racist proclaim to a Subway sammich maker when he was cutting the tomato and gave him the last two slices, “Sh*t spic! Is that how you treat a brother? Give him the end slice like he was garbage??!! Cut me another tomato and you’d better be giving me the middle slices! Damn, fool!”
I’ve had lots of racists comments by non-whites, seeing racial injustice where it didn’t exist.
Sorry Slick. White people do see your racism. We saw a racist jury allow Simpson to go free after he murdered two white people. Oh yeah. We see your racism.
Fact of the matter is there are about 42,000,000 blacks in the nation and about 75% are in the working and middle class, already living in the suburbs
While race may be an artifact culture is not. Anyone who lives in a so-called suburban area with a heavy black population such as much of Prince George’s county Maryland will quickly tell you the prevailing culture is distinctly un-white bread . Gang activity is common as are drive by shootings and various types of mayhem. A tip off is noting all the vehicles that have DC or Va plates parked on what are quiet suburban streets at 7 AM. The same only worse in Royal Oak Michigan or much of the West bank towns such as Harvey in the New Orleans area. The thug lifestyle and a wide range of criminal enterprises flourish in these so-called suburbs. The residents may live what appears to be a normal life but many are involved either in some criminal enterprise or in enabling some family member or relative in some sort of illegal activity. Black America has become deeply infected with a maladaptive and dysfunctional set of attitudes. The endless alibi of slavery and Jim Crow will be employed by the rapacious leadership of this group and the followers will eagerly embrace a perpetual moral and ethical get -out-of-jail free card.
because whites took dr king’s advice about judging on character and not the color of one’s skin.
Blacks did not.
The friends I have that were born in Africa, cannot stand the “African-Americans”, they think they’re lazy and ungrateful.
This tells me the author is a grievance merchant.
For my part, I can tell him that the only people I've caught in the act and chased out while burglarizing my apartment were black.
The media tells me not to smoke. Not everyone who smokes gets cancer, you know. But, I play the probabilities, and I don't smoke. When blacks are around I'm extra careful. Playing the probabilities. You bet I profile.
Leave it to a BET egg head to lecture whites on racism.
We are reaching (have reached?) the point where simple truth is “racist”. Truth vs. White Guilt. Even if it could be proven that every whitey is a KKK member, that still wouldn’t account for the crime rate in the black community. Racism is almost useless as an explanatory tool, yet entire academic departments exist based solely on the premise that it explains everything. This is all just repackaged Marxism.
And look how they treat Bill Cosby (who has also said some pretty inflammatory things against Whites), when he dares criticize what goes on in the Black community.
My God! My advice to the black community: Study, work hard, pay your bills, support your children, don’t commit crime, pull you pants up, turn your hat around, mentor your young men to grow up and respect women and perform an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage, leave the drugs and alcohol alone, embrace academic achievement and support academic achievement in your community and encourage, support, and demand that your young men and young women excel at school, strive for a 100% high school graduation rate with honors and encourage at least 50% to continue towards a college degree in something meaningful. There, there is the recipe. If you want what the white community has, do what the white community does...jeeezus is it really that difficult. Or, continue you doing what you are doing and b$#&@ about it...choices...we all have them.
You want Keith to think? He would rather “feel”
Poor Boykin. Creepy Ass Crackers just repress him all the time. Or so he wants to believe.
But where are his real day to day examples of black on black racism? Where are the stories of being the victim of crime by another black?
Let him whine and moan (THEN SOLVE) those real problems. Then come back and cry about mean old Whitie.
I wish we still had that fellow (was it John Huang?) who used to do Quote of the Day, because you, sir or ma'am, deserve at least 15 minutes of fame for that observation. I'm going to remember that one. Walking While White.
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