The events detailed in I cried when I got home became a turning point in my life. I became more active here and elsewhere and more receptive to listening to others' pain. But someone had to die to spur me to the streets.
Last Thursday, my husband and I drove downtown in our city to join other folks here in Raleigh and around the country in expressing our outrage at the lack of indictment against the police officer who killed Eric Garner.
As usual, there were way more black folks there than white folks, which infuriated me. Didn't everyone see how unfair this all was? Where were the rest of the white people in this majority-white city?
On Tuesday, I saw this article, which shows that though most white people might believe that the police officer who killed Eric Garner should have been indicted (they ain't so sure about Darren Wilson), they also largely believe that the police in their own town or city are treating black folks just fine. And then I understood.
Apparently, most white people still don't believe this is an issue black people face anywhere and everywhere. They see it as just a case of a few "bad apples." So how is it that I and some other white people can see so clearly that the issue of police brutality is institutionalized and happening to people of color all over this country and are marching in the streets, but most other white folks cannot and are not? What is different about us?
I suppose we could look at how most white Americans don't have friends of color. Self-segregation does make it easier for white folks to tune out folks of color. But the thing is, in real life, I have no friends of color, merely a couple of acquaintances. So I'm not sure having no friends of color is the sole issue. We could also look at how the history of racism is even taught in schools, but again, I went to the same schools and received the same terrible education about race relations as most of the other white students.
In wracking my brain to try and figure this out the past few days, I was thinking about how I progressed from being a confused young white teenager who noticed something odd about race relations in this country way back during the LA riots of 1992 to a determined white woman out in the streets of Raleigh last week, eyes fully open to the racist framework of our injustice system. As with anything else in life, my thinking on this issue grew organically based on the people I met and what they said, how they behaved.
But it hit me Monday night precisely how I personally began to understand why police brutality against people of color is a major issue, and how I personally went from railing against injustice from behind my computer screen to getting out on the streets to protest. Follow me below the squiggly-do for more.
One of the things I struggle with constantly when discussing race and racism in America is how to make sure I don't accidentally start talking just about white people rather than staying focused on what black people are saying and going through. Writing an entire diary on why white people are largely apathetic towards the idea that police brutality is something we should all be worried about, well, let's just say that I wrote an entire diary about white people and ended up junking it and starting all over again. It's difficult to not make something about yourself while still writing about what you know. In the end, I decided to focus on the times black people directly intersected with my life, changing my point of view.
Because I realize now that segregation is the issue, but it's not as simple as most white people don't have non-white friends. It's that black voices in general are rarely ever heard anywhere. Not in the news. Not in movies. Not on the radio. Nowhere. If you want to actually hear black people speak about something, you actually have to go look for them. Black people do this naturally, in the same way women of all colors will often actively track down voices of other women while living in a world in which men dominate all walks of life. But for white people? I doubt many of us even realize that there are a variety of black sources of media, and I don't just mean BET.
So I guess the question is - why did I stray from the traditional white media and actively try and track down black voices back in 2012?
The answer begins in 1992, when I heard two black male teenagers on my school bus discussing the failure of a jury to convict any of the officers who beat Rodney King. In 1991 and into 1992, the Rodney King trial was the biggest media story everywhere as far as I could see. I was living in Germany at the time, yet still felt the tension. However, no one I knew was talking about it. Not my white friends. Not my white teachers. And certainly not my white parents. In the end, the only two people I even heard discussing it were these two black teenagers. So I guess that is why, more than twenty years later, some of what they said remains seared in my mind.
The most vivid part of their conversation was when one of them said that when he heard the news, he was so angry he felt like he could take an axe and chop down an entire forest. That just blew my little white girl's mind. How could anyone be so angry about something that no one else I knew cared to even discuss? That was the first moment in my life in which I realized that there was something odd about race relations in this country. Of course, being white and young and surrounded by white people who thought racism was over, I quickly moved past it. But I never forgot. To this day, I'm pretty sure I owe those two black teenagers a major debt of gratitude. They changed my worldview.
Sadly, and embarrassingly, I didn't think too much about race and police brutality again until BART cop Johannes Mehserle pulled out his gun and shot Oscar Grant, killing him. The video went viral almost immediately. I remember watching it with my husband and just being filled with outrage and despair. Even worse, the fact that the police tried to deny what we had all watched in the video was like salt in the wound. How could anyone think that we could be so stupid? Turns out, I was the stupid one for even thinking that question. Because it turns out, a whole lot of white folks absolutely believed it was just an accident. By this point I was 32. I was almost exactly twice the age I was during the LA riots. A little more self-aware. But I still wasn't at the point where I was listening to black folks.
For the next three years, tragedy after tragedy kept appearing on my radar.
And then George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012. It wasn't a cop this time, but this was the tipping point for me. Thankfully, within a month I learned about white privilege for the first time. I read James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and all the questions I had had in the back of my mind about why unarmed black men and women kept getting killed and why so many were in prison made sense for the first time.
I grew frustrated with the fact that white people I knew weren't discussing this (other than Tim Wise) so, for the first time in my life (and thanks be praise to the internet), I tracked down voices of color who were. For the past two and a half years, I have received a major crash course on what black people think about a wide variety of things. For free at first, but later I began donating to independent media to help make sure that these sources can continue to run. I am forever indebted to so many black people. Folks like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Elon James White, Dr. Blair Kelley and many, many others are out there talking about life from a black perspective. Once I looked, I was amazed at how easy it was.
And I would be remiss if I did not thank the black people right here at DailyKos who have taken their time and energy to educate me. Denise Oliver Velez, shanikka, JoanMar, mallyroyal, ChitownKev, and more have been some of the best educators at this site. I also want to thank Black Kos as a whole. That group has definitely opened up my worldview.
After reading what all of these folks and more have written in the past few years, I've come to realize that a lot of black folks are much better at talking about race and racism than I likely ever will be. Which makes sense. I've only been learning about this stuff for less than three years. Black folks have had entire lifetimes to work through it, and pass it along to their children just so their children might have any chance of survival in this country. And this is why I want to end on what I have learned from young black activists in the past four months.
A couple months ago, Dr. Blair Kelley wrote an article which put the movements we've seen developing in Ferguson, down in Florida and right here in North Carolina into historical perspective. One passage really stuck out to me:
Somewhere along the line, we began to think that marches are important only if they are big. We all grew up learning about or harking back to our memories of the 1963 March on Washington. The images we recall of that day are of the many thousands who came from all over the country to march and gather at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; we remember the preprinted signs, the marchers dangling their feet in the reflective pool, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the podium. But what many have forgotten is that the people who gathered that August day were drawn from local movements around the country. And when they left Washington, D.C., for their homes, they returned to carry on the struggle in their own communities.
This echoes what Denise Oliver Velez has said here time and time again, and what Elon James White Tweeted out last night in response to the frustration he felt at some white people wanting instant gratification in the movement:
When I came to DailyKos years ago, I was what you could call a politics junkie. I enjoyed discussing it like it was a sport, though I did genuinely care about the issues. When George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges, I was no longer satisfied with just discussing issues from behind a computer screen. I needed to do something. Today, after two and a half years of listening to black folks, after going out to a protest last Thursday night in which black women discussed the violence police are committing right here in my own community, I'm committed to the idea that what we need to change things is not just the vote, but a movement.
We need a movement which addresses a variety of issues, as so many issues are interconnected. And to have a movement, we have to get out on the street. And by we, I mean white people standing side by side with the people already doing this work. Right now, the most committed and organized activists I see are people of color. The most committed and organized activist organizations I see are organizations which address issues that pertain to all people, including people of color. People of color have been discussing this shit for years, while most white folks were off in our own world worried about our problems but little else. We need to join with the people of color who are out on the streets. We need to Support the Dream Defenders. I invite you all to come on down to Raleigh on February 14, 2015, and support Moral Mondays. We need to support the Ferguson activists. And while we're at it, we need to support black activists at this site. Come on out to the Porch at Black Kos every Tuesday and Friday at 4. I promise you it's an education worth having, full of wonderful and talented folks.
More than that, we need to look for local ways to help. Last Thursday night was not my first demonstration in Raleigh. I had marched in the sweltering heat after George Zimmerman was found Not Guilty. I marched in the freezing cold back in February in the massive Moral March. But this past Thursday was the first time I got to hear local black Raleigh citizens actually talk about what their lives are like. I heard, for the first time, the type of violence the police whose tax dollars I pay are perpetrating against young black folks.
And that is why I am dedicated more than ever to the idea that we need to have local movements. In the ten years since I've been coming here, I've completely transformed from being interested in national elections to understanding and becoming interested in local movements. Yes, voting matters. But what matters more is that we get white folks out on the street listening to people of color who have been out there for a while trying to get us to stop and listen to them.
They are trying to get us to understand
Black Lives Matter.
FOIA Project Update: How You Can Help
Background
For details on our FOIA project, please see last week's diary How to open a can of WHOOPS! on 19 Republican governors - STDDs - Action Week 14 by Tortmaster.
How You Can Help
We need 12 more volunteers in states listed below to send FOIA requests to their state's governors or health departments. We know Kossacks will help you with your requests, including JoanMar, 2thanks, and others. Just send our group a private message! Some states have already made a little progress. If you want to help with any state's efforts, let us know in the comments or via kosmail. Each state name in the chart below includes a link to that state's FOIA resource material):
Progress on FOIA Request from a Democratic Governor |
Ferguson Decisions |
Links to FOIA Resources |
Organizing |
Request Delivered |
Request Shared |
Reply Received |
Missouri |
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