Speaking On Racism In An Abstract Way Will Never Solve Race Relations
Deniability is one of the hallmarks of politics and social life in the 21st century, and we see this often in the media when it comes down to addressing issues of race head-on. The media’s role is particularly disturbing considering that it is regarded as “The Eye” of the people; the engine room of information that drives social interaction, orientation, and stratification.
But when the media chose to be a propaganda machine that tells people what to think and what to think about more so than encouraging critical thinking, then it has lost its sense of responsibility.
When we hear people talk about racism, they talk about it abstractly. We hear about people in the media but for the most part, racism is spoken about in the abstract. There’s never really a specific TYPE of person attached to it. We already spoke on the personality traits of a (closet) racist.
Racism isn’t some imaginary monster under the bed. People in real life enact it. Everyone has to admit it, and that includes the media.
The white supremacist female who called 911 on the black man in Central Park probably didn’t “believe” she’s racist because she might’ve never said the N-word out loud or flew a Confederate flag. People like her are all over the place. The Internet, the streets and everywhere else call these racists’ “Karen.” Many black people have dealt with Karens unfortunately. BBQ Becky and the other white women who’s racism has been exposed on camera are the Karens of the world. They’re cowardly and they will not hesitate to weaponize their white privilege to confront their discomfort/hatred of black people.
As for law enforcement, people say that the Ku Klux Klan infiltrated but we don’t agree. The KKK has been in law enforcement. Look up slave patrol. The system of law enforcement has operated on racial lines for a long time, and the KKK was all part of its inception. The system didn’t create itself; it’s people that created it, enforced it, and are actively encouraging it today.
Tokenism, discriminatory practices in businesses (hiring and firing, for example), denial of racism/privilege, projection (“reverse racism”), racial profiling, mass incarceration, and many other things all happen today. These are practices that are enacted by real people.
As soon as stuff like this circulates, we always hear “not all cops are bad” or there are “good cops.” Ok, so a few cops did nothing while their fellow police officer murdered a man who was unarmed AND handcuffed on the ground. Where were the “good cops” in that situation??
How many more dead bodies like that of George Floyd will it take for people to realize that policing is awash with racism and that the notion of “there are good cops” is nothing but self-delusion?
We have a serious race problem in this country due to the racist individuals out there who engage in these behaviors/practices. You have people angrier with Colin Kaepernick kneeling to protest police brutality than a racist cop who engaged in police brutality by kneeling on a black man’s neck. That speaks volumes. It is only people whose head is in the clouds that still think policing in this country and all that it stands for isn’t inherently racist against black people.
Also, silence shows that more people are racist than you think. It’s easy to turn a blind eye when you have the privilege to do so. When you think about all of that, it creates a domino effect. That domino effect allows white men with guns to occupy a government building and white supremacists in and out of police uniform to murder black people.
Black People Will Not Be Able To Respectability Politic Their Way Out Of White Supremacy
Yes, improvising is a general way of life, especially when it’s become obvious and viable as the only way out of a tight situation. Unfortunately, in America where black people are the victims of racism and white supremacists have legitimized their racist whips through the exploits of government machinery, there is very little or no room to outmaneuver the racists.
So, when we hear some black people saying when they jog, they will wear their college sweatshirt, we couldn’t help but think “seriously now.” Here is the black man trying to outmaneuver the racists around him…by trying to change his looks to appeal to the trash out there who doesn’t give a damn about your life even if you dressed like the Pope.
As if black people in suits and ties weren’t lynched before. Trying to get racists to view you as “safe” doesn’t guarantee that you are safe from them trying to blow your brains out.
No, you’re not safe by how you look.
You can change the way you talk, cut your hair, be a goofball, and “dress nice” all you want, that’s NOT guaranteeing your safety. Botham Jean was murdered in his apartment while eating ice cream. He never looked like a thug or a criminal yet he met his death in the hands of a white supremacist female in the comfort of his home.
You’re better off getting a gun to protect yourself and your family. Seriously, for anyone thinking “respectability” is going to do anything for you, GET REAL. The only way your skin type can be respected and your life are guaranteed the safety and longevity it deserves is when you are equipped to defend yourself. Think about it; what would happen if, any time a racist gruesomely murders a black person, and within a short time, he/she would suffer that same fate? Harsh, right? As crazy as it might sound; that might possibly be a deterrent and make them think twice when next they want to murder another black person. While we don’t advocate violence, we advocate for self-defense. We also understand that an eye-for-an-eye is a viable option. If someone speaks the language of violence, then in order to ensure our survival, we must be ready to speak that language also.
Black people should be able to go to places and jog and move as freely as anyone else. However, the reality is, we’re not white and America is not the land of the free This is a fake mantra its leaders always boast of to the rest of the world. A white person can jog around and it’s seen as normal. A black person doing that is seen as abnormal.
Anywhere we go, we are looked at and judged harsher. So imagine jogging down the street in a white neighborhood. A black man/woman jogging won’t be treated the same as a white man/woman jogging.
Also jogging around with a college T-shirt isn’t going to work. Respectability politics is a joke. Black people wore suits and ties and were lynched. You won’t cut your hair or pull up your pants enough to get respect from racists. Get real. It’s time to activate the survival instinct necessary to simply move from instinct into counter-violence if needed in order to ensure that we continue to live.
Black People Can Only Depend On Themselves For Their Own Survival
Lately, we’ve been seeing black people asking why white people won’t speak on Ahmaud Arbery being murdered by the two white supremacists.
Well, there are 3 possible reasons for that, and here they are in no particular order…
- They are most likely racist themselves and don’t care
- They are disgusted by what happened and just don’t know what to say
- They don’t know what’s going on
The reality is, while some of your white friends might care, there are some of your white “friends” who don’t care.
Just post a lot of pro-black posts on social media and download the Unfriend App and you will see the fake friends once they hit that unfriend button. We have to be real about the world we live in. We live in a world that is dominated by racism/white supremacy.
We see black people looking to white people to “step up” and do something but we’ve concluded that that won’t happen. We can’t look to a white savior. Hoping and praying to white Jesus hasn’t enhanced the condition of black people in this country. We know the majority of black people are Christians, but so are the many white supremacists out there who wants black people dead. Yes, the Bible teaches “turn the other cheek,” but it didn’t say you should be plain stupid and the Bible teaches many other things too. People cherry-pick what best suits them and what highlights their personality traits. If someone is already docile and timid, they will cherry-pick quotes and scriptures that will give them an excuse to be cowardly.
It’s time to start getting REAL and deal with the real world as something tangible. Black people have to protect themselves. We’re on our own in this fight. If there are white people who are really about solving “the race problem” then simply saying you don’t like (loud) racists and having a black friend on standby isn’t enough. You will have to do more.
There’s no amount of hoping and praying and marching that is going to solve this problem. We live in sophisticated slavery, so we’ll have to get more courageous and sophisticated with our ways of dealing with this.
It’s time movements dedicated to black empowerment and black liberation gets more sophisticated by progressing from a mere movement into a full-blown race organization. One with ties with renowned world organizations, with strong political, social and economic connections in and out of the country as such that it can influence political decisions in high places. It would also need to be strong enough to rally the support of the entire black race in the world, and especially one that can respond to violence in the best ways possible. Yes, it has come to this and once this becomes the norm, the government that has been complicit all along will be forced to come back to their senses and rise to the occasion to criminalize overt (and covert) racism and police brutality of black people. By the time they start seeing their businesses threatened, economic activities grounded to a halt on a large scale, and American embassies and businesses in black countries and elsewhere going up in flames; the one percenters will rise to do the needful. They cannot stomach the thought of losing any of their wealth. That is a fact. They will have to start producing justice.
White Privilege Is Real And It Is Based On Black Failure
The reason why a group of armed white men can surround a government building and not be called “thugs” or get attacked by police officers is that… they are white. Try that as a black man and see if you are not gunned down on sight.
The reality is, America was built for white people. It was built on the idea of whiteness. Everyone else is OTHER.
When you think of CRIME, you think of black people. When you think of TERRORISM, you think of Muslims. When you think of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, you think of Latinos. Yet, when you think of PATRIOTISM, you think of white people. That is the ideological mindset driving governance and its machinery in this country. You better wake up to this reality and figure out how to deal with it.
White people are more valued in America. Even the ones who are poor and/or commit a crime. They are more valued than their counterpart who isn’t white. A white person who shoots up people in mass will be seen as “mentally ill” while a black person that commits a crime will automatically be called a “thug.” That is how America works.
Until people fully realize that reality, a white boy who shoots up a black church will continue to be taken in alive and treated to Burger King while a black boy playing with a toy gun in the park will get murdered on sight. Believe it; America is the stark opposite of freedom, a cradle of injustice, and a so-called Christian nation that mocks God to his Holy face.
Some white people admit that this is a reality and others deny it exists. The ones who deny it exists say things like “well, there are poor white people, where’s their white privilege” or “there are white people who are struggling in life, where’s their white privilege” or…
They say “it’s not about race, it’s about class.” We know and understand full well that all white people aren’t rich/wealthy and all white people’s ancestors didn’t own slaves. Great. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the fact is, poor and middle-class whites just don’t go through the same things that their black counterparts go through.
They are not victims of a system of racism. We see how white criminality is treated in society in relation to black criminality. They always get the benefit of the doubt while their black counterparts don’t. If a crime occurs in an area where there is a poor white person and a poor black person and the cops come, they will automatically assume it was the black person who committed the crime.
It’s not about “class.” That plays a part, but it’s more so about race. There is a RACIAL WEALTH GAP, not a class wealth gap. Black wealth is dropping as we speak while white wealth is increasing. There might be some issues within the black race, but the system wired around black people is an economic and social chokehold, and it’s preventing black people from reaching their true potential. White supremacy has been choking black people until the last breath, literally and figuratively speaking.
Not Using Race Labels And “Color Blindness” Means Nothing To The System
A white person can walk up to a black person and ask them to stop saying “black” and “white” when it comes to describing people.
That same white person can go on to say that using labels like “black” and “white” is divisive and “perpetuates the problem.” They can also say something along the lines of “help me lessen the divide between us. Please.”
This white person would obviously be one of those “I don’t see color” types. If we were that black person, what we would say to those types is if we were to let go of the labels, you would have to do it first and lose all of your white privilege.
What people like him/her fail to realize is racism/white supremacy is embedded in the fabric of society. This is more than just about labels. This whole “I don’t see color”/“we’re all one human race” stuff doesn’t hold up in the real world. People like that want black people to unify with them at the expense of ignoring the atrocities that put black people behind white people in the first place.
It’s going to take more than just saying “Black Lives Matter” and saying we need to stop the division to replace a system of white supremacy with a system of justice. Tangible things need to be done. But that requires a deeper uncomfortable look at things and the capacity to actually want to DO something. A bunch of empty symbolism and acknowledgment won’t cut it. A true white ally would DO the work necessary to end the system of white supremacy (a system of injustice), not say we need to come together and hold hands and pray.
We’re all students of history. In our continuous studying of history, we have yet to come across a time where there was this utopia where all races of people lived in peace and unity. We’re all for peace and the world being a better place for everyone of every race to live in but we’re realists. Simply dropping labels will not fix anything. If this problem is to ever get fixed, people have to be real.
Do People Actually Care About Black Life Or Do They Value Inanimate Objects More?
Remember, the white woman who made a false 911 call against an innocent African-American man in Central Park? Well, we hope no cute names come out of this. People like her are dangerous. This is the type that got black men lynched. Emmet Till quickly comes to mind.
Unfortunately in America, inanimate objects (and animals) are treated with far more value than black lives.
Yes, things are being stolen, the property is being damaged, etc. but those businesses are insured and can get that stuff back. Buildings can be rebuilt. Unfortunately, life can’t come back. When a person dies, that’s it. The way the universe works is when there’s an action, there’s a reaction.
Since this country’s inception, no one cared about black life. Black people have fought for this country and came back to disrespect and terror. The level of hatred for black people in this country is atrocious.
People are worried about the property being destroyed, but guess what, white supremacists been destroying black people’s property since forever. BLACK WALL STREET isn’t the only time this has happened. So, whoever’s focusing on the looting and rioting and destruction, please miss everyone with comments about the property being destroyed. And don’t invoke Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. either. We don’t want to hear it and we’re sure others don’t either. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was more than just “I Have A Dream.” Look up why he really got assassinated.
Until people start caring about black life in a “wealthy” nation built on black oppression, keep the respectability politics to a minimum. Preferably zero. Focus more on how to end racism and terrorism that started all of this in the first place.
Tell us, in which of the developed countries of the world do you see a police vehicle smashing into protesters and the police chief defends it without blinking an eye? If not only in America, this can never happen elsewhere. America is a shadow of itself; a far cry from what it claims to be in the international committee of nations.
Agents Of Chaos Who Disrupt Movements In The Name Of White Supremacy
Remember the movie “The Joker?” Yes, the same movie that Donald Trump described as a masterpiece.
The Joker is a real person. He’s not just a comic book character. He was first introduced in the comics but there are people in real life who are the Joker. They are anarchists/agents of chaos. The character isn’t iconic for no reason.
Looting and rioting are going on but there are agents of chaos who have the tools and resources to burn places down and agitate situations. Black people typically don’t have the means to outright burn places down.
These people are outcasts. They are usually white men who are incels and losers who weren’t accepted by greater white society.
They hate black people. They hate other people of color too but they typically favor Asians. If they don’t fetishize them they use them as a deflection (“model minority”) to convince others they’re not racist. They are having a field day with the protests because it’s a perfect opportunity to HIDE in plain sight.
Yes, there is looting and rioting, but don’t be fooled. The media and the agents of chaos are having fun. This is also another layer of white supremacy. There is a race war and many other wars taking place right now. Pay close attention to everything. The earlier you realize the situation you are in now, the better you will be to not be taken unaware and deal with it accordingly.
Donald Trump may be right after all; some terrorists have hijacked the protest and were using it to further their selfish end. But what a section of the media only shows you with the looting are images of some black people breaking into some businesses to loot. You hardly see images of whites looting stores and businesses blind, and in the end, they will blame the big bad black man, whereas, those who are doing the looting are white supremacists.
Finding Comfort In Blaming The Media For The Division Between Races Means Your Face Is In The Sand
Racism is a system that precedes the media. While the media is big part of the overall problem, it isn’t the main problem. We think people get too comfortable blaming the media for the division between races.
Does the media exacerbate the division? Absolutely.
Wasn’t there a division between races before TV, radio and social media were a thing?? Read some history and you’ll see that the answer is yes.
The media is a problem and it comes with all kinds of machinations, but racism/white supremacy existed long before we had any media machine. The mainstream media is just an auxiliary branch of the system of white supremacy.
While police brutality and racist cops was (and still is) the topic of discussion, protesters (the black ones) are still being demonized. We’re hearing about the white ones causing trouble, but in passing. The focus is still on the “troublesome” black youth.
It’s OK To Have White Friends/Allies Without Being A Good Pet Negro
Friendship is no friendship when it lacks reality. This is going to be uncomfortable for some black people to hear, but here goes:
It’s OK to have white friends, but it’s not OK to be their comic relief.
Society at large already doesn’t take black people as seriously as they should. Thinking that every white person that smiles or laughs at you at your job (or somewhere else) likes you is silly and naive.
It really is.
Using your existence to convince people that you are “non-threatening” and won’t make them uncomfortable is a waste of an existence.
When you are just the source of everyone’s entertainment, people laugh AT you, not with you. You are a COURT JESTER. You are not respected and you are not seen as valuable.
Yes, have a sense of humor, but don’t act stupid. It’s OK to be taken seriously and demand respect. Anyone who wants you to come down to their standard because of the color of your skin isn’t worth your respect and friendship.
Not all white people that find it convenient to post hashtags or signs identifying with Black Lives Matter understand the pros and cons of doing that. In short, doing that could even be causing more harm than good. Don’t get it twisted; we’re not against white people supporting a black cause. But you can’t be helping someone if that helps is harming him or her more. Imagine protest signs that reference black penis being put up during the George Floyd’s protest. Fetishizing black genitals to show support to a black cause is more dehumanizing than good, as it reflects historical tropes linked to the brutalization of black people. We know that white women and black men have sex with one another, but that’s not something that needs to be broadcasted during a time of protest; a protest for black survival. What goes on behind closed doors needs to stay behind closed doors.
Let Politicians And Cops Have A Taste Of Their Own Medicine
We got a kick out of what happened to the Minneapolis Mayor, Jacob Frey, when he met with protesters who asked him to defund the police as a way of checkmating their misconduct. When he replied no to the question, he got clowned and booed by the crowd who told him to get the fuck out.
This is what needs to happen to all politicians. If they can’t do what needs to be done, then it’s best to Cersei (*Game of Thrones reference) them. They need to be forced to do a walk of shame out of the area.
It’s funny seeing a dog that loves to bark at people running like mad, crying foul when it gets confronted. Seeing dozens of police union chiefs complaining of being treated like thugs and with disrespect by lawmakers and the media following the George Floyd’s protest speaks volumes of how irresponsible people can get.
In other words “how dare you to treat us the way society is supposed to treat black people!” Interesting how being treated like an animal and a thug is unacceptable when you wear blue and have a badge and a gun. But you don’t waste a second when you have the opportunity to treat black people like animals and murder them for no just reasons.
If politicians and cops aren’t made to taste their own medicine, they will never own up to their responsibilities and do what’s right for the people.
A Friend Is No Friend When He/She Cannot Support Your Cause
Corporations who call themselves your friend when they won’t support your cause are corporations that don’t need any more of your money. Companies like Starbucks who bans their staff from wearing anything that supports Black Lives Matter would need to be boycotted in order for them to reevaluate what they’re doing. These are the entities that prefer to pander towards closet racists or people who are apathetic.
So much for “racial bias training.” This isn’t surprising though. There is a myth (or fact) about a marketing term called NUD (Non-Urban Dictate) that has floated around the Internet streets. Starbucks is apparently is part of the list of companies that NUD describes. That means that they don’t target “urban” (code-speak for black,) consumers. If that really is the case, then since they have practically said they don’t need your money, one could ask why waste it on them?
Is Racism Finally Receiving National Attention?
New data indicates that many white Americans are showing interest in racism as something that is affecting black people. Although the figures the data shows isn’t close to the numbers of 100,000 people who turn out during the protest in Los Angeles, at least 75% of white Americans now say racism is a real problem in the country.
While that is good news that the awareness is spreading fast, we still need to see it translate into serious demands that will galvanize politicians and stakeholders in the justice system to act and create a real system of justice. Words alone are not enough. Until this data translate into actionable policies that produce positive tangible results, black people’s mistreatment by a racist status quo will continue unabated.
