Okay, at the risk of pissing off just about everyone on Daily Kos I'd like to have a discussion about race. What I am about to say is my own perspective pieced together over some years thanks to some friends I have been lucky to have. I'm white and my view of the "black" (or Hispanic or Native American or...) is based only on observation and discussion, not direct experience. I have encountered some anti-Semitism face to face, but not all that often. Not saying I am revealing anything earthshattering, but given some of the recent fights on dKos I feel the need to throw in my 2 cents.
There was a diary on dKos recently where a black Kossack was having a meltdown over perceived racism on this site. I am not here to comment on the merits of his accusations or of those who are returning his meltdown back at him. I come not to throw oil on the flame war but to give some personal perspective in hopes of bridging a divide that helps no one by right wing idiots who hate blacks and progressives about equally. [I want to emphasize that one purpose of this diary is to understand and respect the anger behind that meltdown because there are genuine reasons behind it. It is those reasons I want to explore.]
Race is an extremely touchy subject in America...in many countries in fact. Discussing the Korean population in Japan can be about as touchy there as discussing racial issues in the US. But I have found it both enlightening and helpful to wade into it open minded. Particularly after seeing how racial dynamics can play out in a progressive white part of town. Progressives come from a very different perspective than conservatives when it comes to race...but the racism that is practically enshrined in our system is hard to escape even for a progressive. And bottom line is, it can be hard for a white to fathom the pervasiveness of racial inequality in America.
To me, any discussion of race or gender has to start from the realization that America was FOUNDED with racism and sexism included in its foundation. Too often excuses are made that ignore this: things like "slavery wasn't so bad," or "the Civil War wasn't about slavery," or "that is all in the past, things are equal now." Even school textbooks perpetuate some of the excuses and have trouble facing the real facts of America's racial history. But people born in minority communities learn about and face the real facts throughout their life.
As long as people ask questions like "are we ready for a woman president" or "are we ready for a [fill in your favorite ethnic, religious or racial minority] president" we still have a long way to go. I like to point out that if we are still asking if we are ready for a woman president this long after Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, etc. have ALREADY had women presidents/prime ministers, we should be embarrassed. The election of Obama represents one of the most fundamental turning points in my life because for the first time in my life the dumb question "are we ready for a black president" has been answered with a pretty resounding "Yes." In some ways the rest of Obama's presidency is likely to pale in historical significance next to the very fact that he WAS elected in America.
About 10 years ago I was living in a great place in the Hollywood Hills. We had a dinner guest one night who identified himself as a "libertarian." This guy was basically a fool who used libertarianism as a way of blaming society for his own shortcomings.
When he heard I was a scientist he asked me, with obvious bitterness, how I felt being in a field where women and minorities were given an unfair advantage because of affirmative action.
Well, I have never felt anyone had an unfair advantage over me in science...I haven't really seen the system work that way at all and thought the guy was a fool for thinking so. What I said was that I feel fully confident that I can make it on my own merits and if I can't that I applaud anyone else who does. I have never felt reverse discrimination was even vaguely an issue. And I have only known one person who may have been given an unfair advantage because of her gender and race...but that is another story.
It was about then he identified himself as a libertarian in a way that suggested somehow that made him a superior being on this issue, so I couldn't help but yank his chain a little. I replied, "Oh, yeah, libertarian. Isn't that what they used to call anarchist?"
To give you an idea what he was like, rather than laughing and correcting me, he actually started to sputter in rage and blustered, "they aren't ANYTHING alike."
I smiled and said, "I know the differences."
And, again, to give you an idea of how mediocre this guy was, he let me get away with that and subsided in rage. My landlady, his friend but also a liberal and feminist, grinned at me like crazy.
He was an angry white man. He was, quite simply, mediocre but wanted to find other people to blame for his failures, so women and minorities getting too much from society were to blame for his mediocrity. Personally, when I am mediocre, I blame myself.
This guy was actually an above average example of the angry white man. Most examples are far angrier and far less intelligent. And they are the main targets of the kind of propaganda Fox News puts out. They are the core of the Teabagger movement. There is a whole chunk of our society who isn't really all that skilled, smart or strong but aren't happy being mediocre. Rather than look into themselves for the problem, they blame the blacks, Asians, women and anyone else they can think of.
Back in the actually elected Bush presidency, many were trying to blame Mexico and Japan for our economic woes. It couldn't be us, it had to be "them." Before we finally elected our first black President we had the unelected Bush as president, an angry white man icon, a man who was so lacking in skill, intelligence or imagination that it boggles the mind, yet Bush was President and people looked at Colin Powell, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and asked "are we ready for a black/women president?" We apparently were ready for an idiot, dry drunk liar long before we were ready for intelligent, capable blacks or women.
Think about the message that sends. Think of the anger it generates in an intelligent black person or a white woman. Bush was more valued by America as a whole than even the most capable black person or woman. And God help you if you're a black woman!
The angry white man is, in my eyes, something of a buffoon. It is hard to take seriously someone who is a member of the most favored group in the world but who is convinced that the world is unfair to them. It would be crazy if it didn't get people like Bush "elected."
But there is another group who stands in the way of progress on equality, and I call them the "conveniently compassionate white men." This group I have largely been unaware of until a primary election that Brooklyn became obsessed with in 2006: the NY-11 Congressional race. The specific circumstances don't matter. What matters is the conveniently compassionate white man is, in essence, a comfortable, wealthy white liberal who is perfectly happy to give blacks and women equality...as long as it doesn't inconvenience him or his view of himself as an enlightened champion of all that is pure and good. It is quite possible I have been a member of this category and I think it is here that problems arise on dKos. In some ways I am painting a caricature here, but I have seen this caricature living and breathing in my neighborhood in a big way, so I know there is some real truth to it.
The conveniently compassionate white guy is harder to criticize because by and large his heart is in the right place and he in general votes well. But when it comes down to it, he has implicit faith that a white guy can do a better job than a minority or a women, and if you differ with him he will call you racist for reverse discrimination.
I know because I experienced this during the NY-11 race where my step-daughter was called racist because we supported a black candidate in a predominantly black district and we were EXPECTED by our neighborhood to back the wealthy white liberal candidate.
It was that EXPECTATION that as a white male liberal I would support the white male liberal candidate over the black male liberal or black woman moderate candidate that upset me. And the fact that my family and I were considered racist because we preferred the black male liberal over the white male liberal. This was a hotly contested race so tempers grew pretty hot and these accusations were not rare. We were told taht we should be color blind when we vote, as if our choice of the black liberal candidate was somehow a reward we were giving to blacks rather than an informed choice we were making.
My wife, even more furious than I was at the racism we saw around us during that primary, put it this way: "Why are we color blind only when it comes to an election?"
I think it is time to face some facts about Brooklyn and about America:
A baby born to a black woman in Brooklyn is much more likely to die in infancy than a white baby. Medical care is far worse for black children than for white children. Schools in predominantly black neighborhoods are far worse than those in predominantly white neighborhoods. Blacks are much more likely to go to jail than whites for the same crime. Black males have about a 50% jobless rate in NYC, far higher than the rate for whites. And blacks have a substantially lower life expectancy than whites. From birth to death, blacks have it worse than their on average richer, melanin-deficient neighbors.
That is the reality everyone who is born with considerable skin pigmentation is faced with.
And it pisses people off big time because it is fucking frustrating to struggle with the high unemployment, the taxi drivers passing you by, knowing too many friends in prison or dead all too young...
And I think most white progressives are kind of clueless about the level of frustration this inequality produces. Angry white men blame the victim. They claim that blacks have it too good and are too favored, completely ignoring the reality of increased child mortality, 50% unemployment, lower life expectancy... Conveniently compassionate white men usually are in favor of programs that help black neighborhoods and are even willing to pay higher taxes to do so...but I discovered they are not always comfortable being represented by a black Congressman.
I had a friend I called my angry black man friend. He took it from me because he knew I wasn't criticizing...if anything I respected his anger and listened to where he was coming from. We had long political discussions over beers most Fridays. When he moved on I missed those discussions. No one I knew could get more pissed off than him but it was always enlightening and enjoyable to talk with him. We did not always agree but mostly we did and I learned a lot about what it meant to be black in NYC from him.
Recently I wrote a diary about Nina Simone. She was one angry black woman and for damned good reasons. And as one of the best singers and musicians in American history, she could express it powerfully. Here is her powerful expression of her anger after incidents like the bombing of a black church in Alabama and the assassination of Medgar Evers. The song title says what's coming...Mississippi Goddamn:
The line that strikes me the most is this:
"Don't tell me, I'll tell you
My people are just about due."
Yeah. Blacks in America are STILL just about due to have their kids survive infancy at a rate equal to that of whites, to have schools that are on average just as good as in white neighborhoods, to get the same prison sentences as whites if they commit the same crime, to have the same employment rate as whites, to have the same life expectancy as whites...to BE equal in the most fundamental ways. These inequalities may well have many root causes...but whatever the root causes they exist and blacks in America come face to face with them throughout their lives.
Even after the civil rights era wound down Nina Simone didn't become any less angry because, despite some progress, she knew that too many were still saying "go slow" in the face of black desire for equality. She regretted this song later in life because it hurt her career, but at the time, it was a raw emotional reaction to the violent opposition to the demand of blacks to be equal. I find it sad that she regretted it. It was important that strong voices like hers challenged the KKK killings that were all too common at the time, and it is BECAUSE people like her publicly challenged them that things started to change.
Reflecting on how things have and have not changed for blacks in America, there is a revealing interview with Nina Simone from the 1980's. Can't embed it, but it is worth watching:
http://youtu.be/...
Her views on the collapse of the civil rights movement are depressing. Honestly, I wonder how she'd view the marriage equality fight. My bet is she'd be right there for expanding rather than restricting freedoms, but I don't presume to speak for her...if I did she'd probably come back from the grave long enough to punch my lights out.
Here is another song of hers that powerfully expresses the desire for true freedom, and the pride she has in herself and her own sense of freedom. This level of confidence and pride is damned hard for a black woman to find even today:
And she tried passing that pride on to others. Here is a song that is just as necessary today when so many young black kids face inferior schools and no opportunities:
My angry black man friend and Nina Simone have been necessary lessons for me in what blacks face in our society. I am lucky to have found them.
In a political forum like dKos, any black participant brings to the table this kind of anger and frustration from facing a LIFETIME, from birth to death, of tangible inequality. I think most white progressives don't really have a clue about this...or perhaps more precisely they know it intellectually but don't understand the gut level anger that Nina Simone expresses so well.
And when an intelligent, frustrated black participant on dKos faces the incomprehension some white liberals have towards this anger, sees that white progressives don't get what it feels like to be in a black skin, I imagine the frustration gets unbearable and erupts. Often the result are unfair accusations against genuinely well meaning white progressives, but the real target is the society that produces both the inequality and the inability of even progressive whites to SEE just what blacks feel through their lives. To paraphrase Nina Simone, Can you SEE it? Can you FEEL it? Mostly blacks don't have a forum to vent this frustration...and dKos SHOULD BE SUCH A FORUM. And I think sometimes it is. But not often enough. This is no one's fault. This is a microcosm of America as a whole and we are just reflecting the inequalities and divides of the larger society.
One issue that creates further tension is the issue of gay rights. More conservative members of the black community reject gay rights very vocally, and even some more progressive blacks refuse to see it as a legitimate civil rights issue. Here in NYC we have a nasty piece of work called Rev. (and State Senator) Ruben Diaz, jr. whose virulent homophobia disgusts many. And he gets lots of air time, making it harder to bridge the divide between black civil rights activists and gay civil rights activists. And I know some black gays who feel caught in the middle. But the divide is actually pretty easy to bridge and I will let two other Brooklyn State Senators, both of whom are better human beings and better State Senators that Ruben Diaz, show how it is done:
State Senator Eric Adams:
And my State Senator, Velmanette Montgomery:
So what's my point? Well, to blacks at dKos who find themselves getting pissed off at insensitivity and/or cluelessness on the part of white progressives, I'd like to ask you to cut us some slack and tone down the rhetoric. [Note: comments indicate I need to clarify. I want to emphasize I am NOT asking anyone to tone it down...in an ideal world I would LIKE to ask for a tone down, but this is not an ideal world and so I do not feel any right to ask for a tone down.] But then again I know if I faced the same levels of frustration and inequality you face from birth to death I'd be pretty pissed off too and I don't feel in a position to criticize. But bridges can be built, whether through the efforts of the likes of State Senators Eric Adams and Velmanette Montgomery above, or hanging out with some white progressives drinking beer once a week (hey...sounds like a job for Drinking Liberally!) getting to know eachother and letting them know what it is like being black in America, or whatever. The bridges can last longer and get us farther than the pie fights. But I understand the pie fights.
To my fellow white progressives, I think sometimes we miss the point when we hear an angry black person. I do think sometimes accusations of racism come too quickly and it surprises and angers white progressives, but I have come to understand what is behind it, the deep layers of frustration faced by a population that has so many fewer opportunities because of inequalities in education, jobs, protection by the legal system, etc. When you are faced with someone's anger you don't understand, think for a moment about Nina Simone singing "Mississippi Goddamn." She is expressing what many blacks feel day after day.
I also want to say as I end, that I focus mainly on blacks in America with references to issues faced by women as well. I want to emphasize that Hispanics and Native Americans face similar and in some cases worse problems. When I lived in San Diego the local KKK didn't target blacks. It targeted Hispanics...and beheadings was one of their tactics. And I'd say that Native Americans probably have the worst of almost everything in America...I suspect it will be a long, LONG time before America admits that it is ready for a Native American President...even though they were here first.
Hopefully this diary will generate positive discussion, not a continuation of the battle that has raged in other diaries recently. But part of me feels this may not end well...