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.
I just don’t care anymore
Actually, you'll note that he doesn't actually say that he didn't steal the iPhone. So I could believe story. Maybe she saw him take it.
I actually agree with most of the observations the guy makes in this article. I’ve said on many liberal sites that we are all racist to one degree or another.
But with this sentence and until the end “That’s why the U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated ...” the author goes on to make ludicrous conclusions.
He is almost trying to say that whites give up their rights to defend themselves against agressive blacks because they are, without knowing it, motivated by racism.
But the article does make a good argument for blacks finding their own country where they are the majority. The author, at the end of the day, is complaining that people are human beings. The only way around the problem he describes is to, if you are a black man who wants to avoid constant racism, is to either create, or find a country where blacks are the majority and move there.
South Africa is lovely this time of year. They have the same natural resources and amenities north america has. It would be a good place to create a predominantly black nation.
Blacks attempt to explain their general incompetence as a group by blaming whites. They should examine themselves for they are largely the source of their own ineptitude both biologically and culturally.
Detroit has its profile for a reason. So does parts of Macomb County.
So assuming someone is a criminal because they’re black is “racist”and assuming someone is racist because they’re white is not?
What you’re proposing is anathema to the whole reason to HAVE a “black culture”. It’s actually a leftist culture, an anti-culture, a rejection of Western Judeo-Christian culture.
Why embrace a culture based on God’s Law when the whole point of embracing your own culture is to reject God’s Law?
whenever someone says there are more black men in prison than white men due to racism, I retort “yep. And we have more men in prison than women because of sexism!”
It ends the conversation, or, at least any RATIONAL conversation.
That’s funny, I see racism all the time. All I have to do is flip on the TV and wait for Obastard to make a speech.
I profile based on statistics and probabilities. It’s a good way to stay alive on the street. Black men commit the largest percentage of violent crime in the US, by a wide margin. I’m not going to put myself or my family at risk for the sake of kumbaya naivety.
I see racism alright, but basically from the Negro community. With their anti-Semitism, voting for people because of their skin color, trying to cover up the depredations of the many criminals in their community; etc. I see racism. There is no disconnect.
I live in an area with less than 1 percent blacks. Why would I even spend a lot of timte thinking about it?
And the counter picture has a carton full of brown eggs with one broken white egg.
Cry me a river. Last night I was coming out of the grocery store walking in the crosswalk to get to my car in parking lot. Most people stop for people in the cross walk in these parts. We are a polite people, and it just happens to be the law. Anyways, a car doesn't stop as I was crossing, nearly hitting me. The car then proceeds to incorrectly and illegally park in a handicapped spot. The person driving the car could have been Rachel Jentel's grandmother.
Was I surprised? No. I just stared her down and muttered under my breath something that would cause this post to be deleted.
The point of my post is things happen to whites too. People need to get over it and just be Americans regardless of their color. If black people don't change their culture, then there will always be racism.
and of the interracial rapes, some 14,000 black perp on white victim, while NO white on black victim could even be documented... Additionally, The real state is more that 50% (more like 60%) of all murders AND violent crime comes from 3% of the population. That stat comes from the group of black males under 30. If you cut that to BM between 15-30 the number of murders does not appreciably change, meaning that more that 50% of all murders and violent crime are perpetrated by about 1.5% of the population.
“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.”
Bullcrap. The left has just determined that topics which conservatives talk about are secretly racist, and then used the fact that we talk about them to declare us racist. Only preschoolers and lefties are fooled by that type of “logic”.
I actually held open a door for a black woman only for her to proclaim, “Wazza matta? U don think I can do dat?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Heh heh. My response:
I’m sorry. I always hold the door for a lady. I see I made a mistake here. Won’t happen again.
I see it. I’m just tired of the whining. Get over it and enjoy life.
“...52 percent of whites think race relations are “good” in America...”
What kind of dreamworld are those 52% walking around in? I assume they live in places that are overwhelmingly white.
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