I cannot accept your apology. 50 years is a long time to see and yet not comprehend. According to David Simon, your learning curve is flatter than many White people in this country.
In the documentary, The House I Live In, David Simon acknowledged, “a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century.”
We shrugged off so much of our manufacturing base, so much of our need for organized labor, for a legitimate union wage, for union benefits, for the types of jobs with which you could raise a family and be a meaningful citizen. We got rid of so much of that, that oops, we marginalized a lot of white people. And lo and behold, white people, when they are marginalized, when they are denied meaning, when they are denied meaningful work, they become drug addicts too. They become involved in the methamphetamine trade, they start turning themselves over to the underground economies, the only ones there to accept them. Capitalism is fairly color blind, in the end. Our economic engine, when it doesn’t need somebody, it doesn’t need somebody, and it doesn’t give a damn who you are. White people found out a little later than black folk, but they found it out.
I cannot accept your apology. I was born without privilege and without money in one of the worse neighborhoods in Chicago, Englewood. However, my father worked hard and died young; my mother raised the hell out of me, and the universe gave me a double dose of intellect.
I earned my way into a prestigious college, but they accepted me under their affirmative action program. Even though I brought good grades and high SAT scores to the table, they enrolled me, along with other black students from inner city areas, in a summer remedial program before the first semester. It was an insulting experience and I have not had much use for affirmative action since then.
Today I am 53, still Black and still female. I live in a White neighborhood. My children attended all White schools. My daughter married a White guy and I have two grandchildren who are look like White kids. I have a glimpse into both Americas.
I cannot accept your apology because I too did not understand White privilege completely enough “to leverage that understanding to forcefully argue for affirmative action.”
My mother raised a revolutionary and I am a rebel for all the right causes but I now see that I let my personal experience with affirmative action jade my opinion of our country’s need for this legislation.
President Kennedy forcefully argued for government intervention to guarantee that everyone in this country have the “equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.” Affirmative action has come and gone without a realization of his vision.
I am shamelessly liberal. I am also a diehard capitalist. I have to confess that I was busy making money during the Clinton administration and I totally missed the prison-industrial complex.
The older I get, the clearer it is to me that even the rules of my beloved capitalism have changed to exclude the unworthy from participation while stacking the deck in favor of a privileged few. While these privileged few happen to be mostly White, being White does not guarantee you a seat at the table anymore. Every time I hear the word "micro-loan" I want to slap the person who perpetrated this affront to poor people, deluding them into believing it is possible to start a business with only $5000.
But, it was only after Corporate America had imprisoned our welfare class, turned our "working class" into "sharecroppers" and transformed our "exempt" employees into nouveau "slaves" that I finally "got it." I am no one’s slave. I started my own business, gave myself the promotion that eluded me for years and hired my own children. I provide professional services and it has not escaped my notice that our government's "money" contracts are awarded to those who are connected and my in-box is clogged with RFPs to provide janitorial services and uniform maintenance.
I made fighting for the rights of others a full time gig. I do not work in the inner city. I work with “hillbillies” and “rednecks” and (in their words, not mine) “trailer trash.” I do not know if they like me, but they know that they need me.
We cannot afford to get this twisted because the future of our country is at stake. Poor White people need affirmative action too. If we fight this war as Black vs White, we are going to lose. This is not a RACE war. This is a CLASS war.
The small town in which I live also has a militarized police force and I doubt that they have even one black cop on the force. Like every person of color in this country, I have my police brutality stories. I worry MORE because my son lives in a good neighborhood than I probably would if he lived in the inner city. It might surprise you to learn that White people talk about cops in my town the exact same way I hear Blacks talk about cops. Tattoos negate White privilege.
More than 60 years after the shameful Groveland FL murders of four innocent Black men by the police department, our police officers still operate as vigilantes; still they appoint themselves prosecutor, judge and executioner, carrying out the executions first.
Like you, I apologize for not taking it to the streets when states began to dismantle affirmative action programs designed to give a few more people a shot the American dream. I apologize for defending the rights of the poor to food stamps and to affordable housing and to health care BUT not demanding that we provide to these same people even a lottery’s chance that they can climb out of the poverty hell where they now live.
It is clear where this road ends. President Kennedy said of the hopeless, the desperate and the ignored, “unless the Congress acts, their only remedy is in the street.” Our seated Congress appears capable of only one response to the needs of ordinary American people, paralysis. Come November I am voting to replace every one of these self-serving parasites.
While it is just my opinion, I feel that President Obama would NOT betray America if he “forcefully argued for affirmative action.” We need the muscle of the Constitution to open doors barricaded to prevent some in this country from an “equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.” President Kennedy said, "Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality."