I'm not Bothered: My Battle with Smarty-Pantsness

I have this really bad habit that drives a lot of people I know crazy, but I ain't bothered. Whenever I read something, or hear something, or and told something, my brain immediately goes "is this true?". And if it turns out to be true, my next question is "what explains it?". This reflex, much like swatting away flies, has gotten me far, but does not always make those around me happy.

So I comment on people's memes that have inaccurate information in them, I tell them their most deeply held beliefs, that they have organized their lives around, are bunk, and I frequently tell people, I will have to look that up later. They insist that I trust them, or I believe them for once, but that is not the issue for me, this is not a question of trust. If you have engaged me in a topic, I owe it to myself, but also to you, to have a full understanding of it. But rest assured, I know the difference between facts and opinions, and if you have a strongly held opinion, you are well within your right to hold it. But if you base your opinion on incorrect facts, I would just like to politely correct them. 

People can look at, and accept the same facts, and come to different conclusions, but it would be nice if we could agree on those baseline facts. I suppose that is why when the revolution comes the intellectuals are always the first to go. Facts are inconvenient, they are messy and get in the way of a good story. Who needs historians reminding the Minute Men that we've seen this anti-immigrant story before, or economists telling Republicans trickle-down economics does not work ever, or scientist warning us that global warming is real and we are causing it, or sociologists demonstrating that when you put a marginalized group on marginal land and cut them off from society and provide them few opportunities for advancement or integration you get violence and there are thousands of years of evidence in a variety of societies that shows this. 

These realities are inconvenient to power, to people's sense of self, to the bottom line. But it does not change the facts. So sometimes when you are trying to correct the record and popular misconceptions you'll annoy people. But that's ok, because I'm not bothered.

Uber America

I read articles suggesting that airbnb is contributing to high rents, and not the result of it. Because you know, who doesn't want strangers in their house when they are not there, or worse, when they are. It used to be called a break-in, now it's the only way to make rent. Just finished an article that notes most professors at US universities are adjunct, the "Uber of higher learning", who still have Masters or PhD, but accompanied by low pay and no job security.

Article after article noting that a 4-year degree is now the equivalent of a high school diploma, and that college grads have lower unemployment, yet are often working jobs that do not require a degree and that do not pay enough to cover their rent and pay back the loans. Everyone's a consultant, an independent contractor, a freelancer. So in short, you go to school, you get that degree, you land the job, all so you can charge people to sleep on your pull-out and drive an Uber at night to make ends meet, you know, the American dream. Well at least you have your freedom.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-jones/students-in-debt-professo_b_8402560.html

In America, Whose Black, Who Gets to Decide and Why do We Care?

Everyone seems to be talking about this Rachel Dolezal woman and I have to admit, I have not been following this story, as I hate all things sensational, this is not news. But since a few people have asked me what I think, I have looked into it, and I have found some commentary related to this story that actually interests me. Like I told my dad, tongue squarely placed in cheek, "I love that America is a place where you can constantly reinvent yourself; be anything you want, even black".

Later I told a friend, who has been accused of thinking he's black, though he is a Frenchman who learned English by watching Spike Lee movies (if I am remembering correctly) and really admires black American culture which I have always respected, "I am of the opinion that race is a social construct and has no basis in anything biological and if someone wants to identify as black I don't really care. I think it just reveals that race and the particular boxes our race puts us in really is really a fraud".

What I like about this article, by Kalli Holloway, is that instead of focusing on one woman, she deconstructs the ways that white privilege, racial theories, purity, respectability politics and history collide in this seemingly bizarre story of a woman transforming herself in a way that defies logic in America: changing her privileged whiteness to maligned blackness. Because as "race-blind" as many white people claim to be, America has very rigid rules about race and who is what and what that means. So that was my question, whose black, who gets to decide, and why do we care so much.

When I was a kid there was a boy who had moved down from DC who frequently told me I was "trying" to be white, as if it was something you could strive for and if you just reached a little bit more. And this year a young white girl of means told me she was blacker than me because I had never heard of the rapper she had mentioned. Racecraft puts us in boxes and when you are the oppressed that box can feel very small, almost suffocating; creating the illusion that race is real. When I was younger, I frequently felt like I wasn't doing black right, which conflicted with the person I was trying and wanted to be.

I have written before that there is, in my opinion, this erroneous idea that black people don't value education. Perhaps kids made fun of me for being a nerd, which happens in most communities, but not a single black adult ever chastised me for doing well in school, I cannot think of a single time. Even amongst the black boys, there was one or two. And I find it hard to imagine that kid's parents would be encouraging me and giving a different message to their own kids, "you better not come through this door with B's, ooh and if I even see one A I'ma tear up that behind". I'm just not buying it. There are far too many other structural factors that do a far better job of explaining educational attainment. In short, black kids are not failing school, school is failing black kids, period.

But it comforts a lot of Americans to believe this stereotype, and black people are not immune to these racist messages, some will come to believe them, and will vigorously reject those who disprove the stereotypes as I would have, and if I am being honest, still eschew those who fit them. And for the majority culture it is a convenient tool to reinforce racialized thinking. Place all the blame on an oppressed minority, and relieve society of any responsibility to tackle the issues that plague these communities. Though it is no surprise that many would get it wrong, many white people do not understand the black people in their midst (their one black friend), let alone black people quarantined in America's ghettos.  

In the end, however, race is an identity, one of many, which happens to be of the utmost importance in America; the lines are clearly drawn and must be maintained. No other category has been so legislated, debated, at once overly examined and ignored. It is not that I have darker skin, I have the same skin no matter where I am in the world, but that in America there are any number of assumptions and expectations that are attached. Because I have learned, after a decade abroad, race needs water to thrive, and that water is racism. If you have no intention of treating people differently, bestowing privileges on one and injustices on another, then you do not need race. If there is no societal need to justify why some groups are at the bottom and another at the top, then you do not need race.

When I was living in Senegal, though I was still aware of my blackness, I did grow up in America, it was less acute. It was refreshing to just blend in, no one gives you a second glance in the street, no one notices you standing in line at the bank, no one doubts your intelligence, or your right to be in privileged spaces. I definitely noticed the difference in treatment when I was with white friends and the attention, sometimes negative, they would attract. Though it is substantially different to what black people in America experience, it could be very unsettling, and they no doubt truly discovered their whiteness. There are also accounts of Africans who discovered their blackness once they arrive in America. For many Americans this would be a strange concept but an interesting perspective which Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains best here.  

Because the reality is, when everyone you see is black, then no one is black. When the worst student is black and the best student is black, when the police officer is black and the thief is black, when the beggar is black and the president is black, then black loses its meaning. When race is not the way by which a society decides who gets heavy policing and who gets respect, who gets crammed into ghettos and who gets spacious suburbs, or whose drug crimes result in prison sentences and whose result in rehab, then you do not need race.

There was a time in United States when to be Polish, Italian, Irish or Jewish meant you suffered horrible discrimination, these were distinct groups and the United States kept special crime statistics on these groups. They were refused employment, were trapped in tenements and disproportionately undereducated and involved in crime, and with varying degree of English proficiency. The results are predictable, this is what happens when you marginalize any group. But when the US stopped discriminating against these groups, built them suburbs and great schools, offered free and subsidized higher education, allowed them to be white, these ethnic origins became interesting historical footnotes and not an oppressive identity that one is forced to assume and that results in diminished opportunities. At the same time that these groups were coalescing into one identity the continent their grandparents had come from were still fighting through their ethnic and religious hatreds through two World Wars.     

Yet, we cannot make any progress in ridding ourselves of the idea of race as we were able to do with national origins and ethnicity. Most black people will tell you that no matter how educated you are or how high you rise, you will experience racism, you can never graduate from black. Class privilege can go a long way in shielding us from the worst effects of racism, but never all of them. It takes one cop acting stupidly and arresting a man in his own home, or driving too nice of a car, or forgetting to wear your suit and tie when you go out for a run, to remind you of this fact. Black is still imbued with so many stereotypes that are so hard to shake that not fulfilling them does not negate them, it almost in a way negates you. It makes you not really black, or not like other black people, or apparently invisible typified by the line "I don't see or think of you as black". But since I highly doubt these people see me as white, I must then be invisible. All these mental gymnastics that people perform to maintain their belief that race is real and natural. But all these contradictions makes sense, because in America our notions surrounding race have different origins and therefore consequences than any notion we have of ethnicity.

The modern white/black dichotomy only came into existence in the 1600s with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade and a need to determine who could and could not be enslaved; whose bodies could and could not reproduce slavery. Ideas surrounding inherent intelligence, strength and virtue based on race was necessary to justify the inhumane institution that was slavery, and this thinking is so entrenched that to this very day many white people honestly believe that black people have a higher threshold for pain than white people and that we are less intelligent and more prone to violence; this is the master's justification for slavery and whippings. The disparities between the two groups, which are a result of racism, only serves to reinforce these ideas and convince us all that race is real and natural. 

Another reason race is so powerful is that as groups assimilate in America they inevitably adopt the majority cultures racist attitudes and insist on maintaining the racial hierarchies they are now benefiting from. Bill O'Reilly is the personification of this type of behavior. Descendent from Irish immigrants who probably suffered horrible mistreatment when they arrived in America, however, he grew up in an all-white suburb built after the war for the children of these immigrants, and grew up to have a popular TV show where he dedicates a lot of airtime to disparaging and peddling the worst stereotypes about black people. The same stereotypes that were staples in America and Britain about the Irish. Rich.  

But the last reasons I believe race is so hard to undo in America is that troubled societies need scapegoats and black America serves this purpose well. There are a lot of issues that plague America that frequently get recast as issues in the black community, that then conveniently do not require any coordinated action and does a disservice to all Americans. Anything that is considered bad can be squarely placed on the shoulders of black people. America has a teen pregnancy problem, a drug problem, an obesity problem, a criminality problem, a gun violence problem, a failing schools problem, a poverty problem but these issues tend to be labeled black problems in America, whereas outside the US they are more soberly viewed as American problems. This has gone so far that now that most people consider racism to be a bad thing, many white people surveyed think that black people are more racist than white people and that white people are the biggest victims of racism in America. You can learn more here.

My fear is that this whole debacle will be another sideshow and America will not take the time to question its assumptions, to question the deeper whys of this and other stories on race. America will do what is always does and talk about race and not about racism. Whatever Rachel's reasons for wanting to be black, black people have known for a long time that people who would have been considered black but had lighter skin would pass for white, some people, in my own family refused to do so, even though people told them they could. Because as this article states, "a key part of our history of passing for white is that it could get you killed; it was a very high-risk, high-yield investment. Playing at being white, gaming the system to take advantage of privilege that was meant to be off limits to you, was tremendously dangerous".  

The fact is, as dangerous as it was, in a racist country it makes sense to try and game the system, the perception of being white pays off big time. The fact that Rachel seems crazy to most people is because we cannot conceive of the benefits of playing at being black, there is no significant return. Therein lies the real issue, her performance gave lie to post-racial America and that is what we should be talking about. She seems crazy for wanting to be black in America because we all intuitively and for some of us obviously, know that it is better to be white than black in America, that is true to this day even if some want to pretend that is not the reality. So knowing what we know now, or should have known already, about race and how destructive and fictional racialized thinking is, why is race still so important to us, who gets to police the color line and why do we insist that people stay in their lane. Who benefits from all this maneuvering?

http://www.alternet.org/why-it-was-so-easy-rachel-dolezal-slip-black-skin

Baltimore and Non Sequiturs

Today's vocabulary lesson

Non sequitur: a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.

Example:

Black person: We want the police to stop shooting our unarmed black men, we want transparency, accountability and justice.

White person: What about the culture of criminality, low test scores and out-of-wedlock births?

In this examples, a black person is talking about a serious issue, that is well documented and that must be a terrifying and demoralizing reality to have to live with. They are also suggesting a possible solution to the aforementioned problem. The white person in this example (#notallwhitepeople) has dismissed the problem and the suggested remedy and brought up an entirely different set of issues that are immaterial to the subject at hand while also playing with racial stereotypes that could only be gleaned through popular media, which as we know, is mostly controlled by the same types of white people who would offer this sort of retort and also have little knowledge of actual black people. The point of the entire exercise is to derail the conversation and in a cruel sleight of hand to put the blame on the marginalized for their own discrimination. So let me put a few ideas to rest:

1. There is no black culture of criminality, there is just criminality

2. There is no such thing as black on black crime, there is just crime

3. There is no such thing as a black culture of dependency and entitlement

4. There is no such thing as black leaders, we do not hold votes, we did not pick Al Sharpton; he is just a media personality, no more a black leader than O'Reilly is a white leader

5. Drug use and selling is no higher in the black community than in the white community and may very well be lower (this is anecdotal but I did go to college)

6. And not to contradict my last point, there is no monolithic black community

7. Thug is racist, any word that can only be used for one race and mostly said by old white men should be fairly obvious

And the last one, which I would like to spend more time on is this notion that black people HATE education. I had this idea for an Onion headline yesterday "Black Grandmother Disappointed to Learn Grandson First in Family to Graduate College". This came to mind as I was thinking, could you find a single grandmother who wouldn't be immensely proud of their family member for achieving that goal, and worse would be deeply disappointed.

When I was growing up all black people around us talked about was doing well in school, and fretting over, the mostly boys, who weren't doing well and staying out of trouble. As an aside, when I was a child I spent most of my time, when we were not on the military base, with black people living in the poorer parts of town, not knowing there were areas with large white populations in cities like Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida or DC. To continue, there is probably nothing that black people care about more and talk about more than good jobs for themselves and good schools for their kids. We built black universities when we couldn't get into white universities. The first civil rights battle was for school desegregation, not voting, not interracial marriage, not housing, but good schools for black kids. Our schools are failing our kids and the majority culture couldn't care less. I think it’s important to note that black people are some of the biggest victims in the for profit university scams. We are clamoring for quality education and it is falling on deaf ears.  

Black people left the South, one of the largest migrations in the US, to escape state sponsored racist violence and to seek opportunity in industrialized cities. My own family was a part of that migration to the North ending up in places like Worcester (another place that I thought was all black growing up), Philadelphia, Trenton and Baltimore all living in what are now majority black inner cities. I spent a lot of time visiting my uncle in Baltimore during the 90s and I saw firsthand, though I didn't fully understand what I was seeing until much later, the implications of almost a century of policies that have injured the residents of that city: redlining, de-industrialization, globalization, sub-prime mortgages, the drug war, mass incarceration, and simple neglect.

What do black people want, some ask. The same things we have always wanted. Good jobs, good schools, good police and fair policies that uplift and not crush. Black people are not looking for handouts and we most certainly do not have a sense of entitlement, this idea would be laughable if it weren't so insidious. I am always disheartened when I hear a certain subset of white people talk about black culture as a list of pathologies, because black culture for me is just not that. My black culture is persevering despite the odds, working twice as hard and being twice as good just to get to the starting line, knowing that troubles don't last always, that you may not have much but you've got your health.  

My heart goes out to the people of Baltimore, I remember your city as a gritty place very much different from my suburban environment in neighboring Virginia, but I have lots of good memories from that time. I will leave you with one of my favorite memories.

My uncle is a minister in Baltimore and we used to go up quite regularly and of course would go to church. At the time there was a classically trained Russian pianist and his wife, a cellist, who were attending the church. The man had come to learn how to play gospel music, which I imagine was difficult to do in Russia. I was fascinated by this couple who would play classical pieces for the black congregation and then he would do his best to play gospel. Once after church we stayed late and I showed him some of the classical pieces I had been working on, most likely Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. He praised me telling me that I was very talented and gave me some tips of improving my speed, the best part was my mother, a gospel pianist, turned and saw me sitting at the piano, and said she hadn't even realized the classically trained Russian had gotten up and that it was me playing. Needless to say I was over the moon... light Sonata, (sorry couldn't help it). But later in life I was struck by this white Russian couple who came to this struggling black city to absorb and be immersed in a part of my culture that I myself gave little value, and they weren't afraid that just the sight of their white skin would send the black residents into a murderous frenzy like a pack of wild hyenas. They were a quiet couple that was loved by the church and were welcomed with open arms. That epitomizes black culture for me.

So please, stop with the non sequiturs, learn something about us from us. Listen to your black friend, and be open to new experiences, new sounds, new voices, and new perspectives. They are not a threat to you, they are an opportunity. Let my uncle’s congregation be an example, you may not be familiar with the music, or no its history or its composer, but you can sit back and enjoy the beauty of the melody. 

Vocabulary lesson over.