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.
