I suspect a number of you feel like you're visiting Bizarro World

This is short, but because I've answered everyone else on the front page, I'll answer Wes here too.

P6

If you do not, or will not, acknowledge the majority of whites that hold no animus toward blacks, (indeed we want the number of succesful blacks to grow, big time), how do you expect our numbers to increase?

What am I to think when I look in a black man's face and see that I am disliked, distrusted, and disrespected because I am white?

This has been sitting on my monitor for, oh, a half hour or so. It is so neat a reversal of the Black position…and I strongly suspect there's no animus or trickery involved on Wes' part so I'm not trying to jack him. But let's try this for a moment:

If you do not, or will not, acknowledge the majority of Blacks that hold no animus toward white, (indeed we want the number of succesful interactions to grow, big time), how do you expect our numbers to increase?

What am I to think when I look in a black man's face and see that I am disliked, distrusted, and disrespected because I am Black?

We got half the problem. You got half the problem. If I were into quotas I's say we got 12.5% of the problem.

And in response to the particular hypothetical ("If you do not, or will not, acknowledge the majority of whites that hold no animus toward blacks"), I quote from my post which started this really interesting discussion:

And every time a Black person mentions there's still racism to be dealt with, he's reminded of how many Blacks are in the middle class, how much closer we've gotten to equal pay for equal work, like white people had a damn thing to do with it. Collectively, I mean. Some of y'all individually are da bomb. Most of you ain't bad and I really feel most of you mean no harm. But collectively "White People" have fought tooth and nail against leveling the playing field and everyone has been too fucking polite to just say it like that, to put the pattern together under everyone's nose.

Do I have to say "emphasis added" when I'm quoting myself?

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.prometheus6.org/trackback/5598
Posted by Prometheus 6 on July 21, 2004 - 9:40am :: Race and Identity
 
Prometheus 6's blog | latest article | previous | next
 

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

I guess it sort of leaves us in a difficult place. If we both agree that individually we're generally all good (or at least not bad) people, how do we get over this?

I'm not really sure how, if on an individual basis white folks aren't bad, we're collectively fighting against leveling the playing field. Even if you're saying it's simply through inaction, I wouldn't necessarily characterize that as "fighting tooth and nail". :D

You're never going to get to the point where everything is fair, unfortunately. Hopefully it gets better over time, and sometimes you win, sometimes someone else wins. Women are in the most bizarre situation right now, I think, where the hyper-feminists have turned men (white or otherwise) into the butt of every joke -- just watch a few daytime TV commercials for an example. If you believed TV, you'd think no man could feed himself or clean anything. But at the same time, there are still a lot of oppurtunities that aren't necessarily open, simply because people feel women are more emotional or less smart or whatever. I have to say it's just SO weird.

I guess black people are probably in a similar situation -- I think for the most part they are seen as, say, better at most sports and they wield a lot of power there. (Okay, I'm totally talking out of my rear end today, but I'm having a sinus infection so my brain isn't functional. I usually don't post here, but I thought this was an interesting conversation).

Anyway, I'm totally off my point. I think what I wanted to say was this -- what do you think will help level the playing field? What can people who are black or white (or green or purple..) do to help everyone have fairness?

I personally think I do pretty well as an individual -- I grew up outside DC, and in my school I was a minority! (It was a magnet school to encourage integration that was heavily black, latino, and some various other diplomats children. Some senators sent their kids there too, since it was a good school.) So I don't think I have a lot of common issues that some americans have whove grown up in mostly white areas, who only know about black people (or jews, etc.) from TV or stupid email jokes or where ever the ignorant get their information. I certainly don't give a crap what color a person is.

So what am I doing as a part of the White Collective (makes me feel like the borg...) to not level the playing field? :D

Posted by  Ceilig (not verified) on July 21, 2004 - 2:33pm.

First thing you have to do is some history. Don't try to understand based simply on what I say…I'm not a "Black leader" and I sure shit ain't a "white leader."

Fighting tooth and nail? Yeah.

Check the post that started all this.

Check Texas, the wonder state that came up with the top 10% from each high school is guaranteed asmission to the State University. This is promoted as a fairer affirmative action. But the wealthy parents are saying now their kid in the 15th percentile is more qualified than the kid in the top 5 of the less affluent schools.

Get this: they say they are being discriminated against because they are rich.

They're fighting tooth and nail to perserve the system that they understand, the system that works for them. The system that created the inequalities, the mechanisms that preserve it. It's almost coincidental that minorities get screwed at this point.

How do you address it? Settle in for the long haul. Understand the scale and scope of what you're dealing with-over 400 years of social momentum.

Set JUSTICE over profit. But I know that's a fantasy (not referring specifically to you).

Beyond that, I don't know. The other day I wrote up a post on a Clinton interview one of the regulars sent me. I asked why if my response dealt with what he expected and in the process of anwsering he mentioned he was in one of the less diverse places on the planet and really didn't have a dog in the hunt.

This is a person for whom the easiest path was to watch it on TV. But he asked. DAMN good move. And he didn't ask me to represent all Black opinions. Better move.

Best move of all, though, was setting me up to say this: I can pretty much predict what folks will do once they're in a pattern but it's not easy for me to tell how to move folks off the dime when I don't know them at all.

SO I guess what I'm saying is, white folks of good will need to work on white folks the way Black folks of good will work on Black folks. This nonsense of each telling the other they ain't living right will not get the results you want...which is not to have to deal with racial issues.

Posted by  P6 (not verified) on July 21, 2004 - 6:39pm.