Racial Dialogue? Maybe That Could Do Something?

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We're listening to people speaking at us, all the time. 

We expect our leaders to be articulate talkers and we encourage their constant talking. 

When we hear from our President or our representatives, it's always in the form of a speech or an interview. 

What I want to see is a good dialogue. 

Not a debate, wherein two people with opposing views go head to head and try to win.

I want a discussion. A good dialogue in which two or more people get together with the clear intention of learning from another and talking and listening and asking questions of each other around a specific topic. 

I think if we could get our white leaders and black leaders to sit down and dialogue about race, as white people we might learn something. 

Because right now we have people addressing us regarding race. They have clear ideas about race in America and they are going to share those clear ideas with us. 

And the ones who are dialoguing and listening to others about race are not our leaders. They are on the Kojo show or in your church, but they are not our representatives. 

No, we expect our representatives to have done their thinking, to have clear ideas and clear heads and to state what they think at us. 

How much more might we respect our leaders if we saw them actually wrestling with tough issues like humans do? Instead of just preaching at us?

Maybe if we got to see our leaders THINKING about race in dialogue, we would be willing to listen more and learn through their dialogue.

I know that I don't usually recommend anything to the reader except to always ask questions, but I want to recommend something. 

I think we should push for a national dialogue on race.

It could be something as elaborate as a series of discussion questions disseminated to all Americans to get them asking difficult questions about what they believe about race. 

Or it could be something as simple as a weekly dialogue on race with our president and respected leaders centered on a weekly question. 

No goals for this dialogue except openness and tolerance. Just honest dialogue in which white people (and people in general) are required to think about what race means and how people are actually treated in these United States. 

And I say white people in particular, because in this current society we as white people have the distinct privilege of choosing when we think about race. We don't have to think about race every day like persons of color do. 

We have the privilege of ignorance. 

I'm in a book group at my church. We're reading and discussing The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and one of the questions our leader brought up today was why there weren't more white people in our group. I don't think we actually answered the question, but I kept thinking about it nonetheless. I think as white people we don't talk about race because we don't have to talk about race. I think we often don't want to talk about race because for some reason we feel guilty, like we're being called racists whenever the topic is brought up. But I think the key reason why we don't talk about race is that first reason: we don't have to. 

But we MUST. We must think about race and talk about race and begin to dismantle its deep hold in this society or else we are letting oppression continue and we are denying the possibility of justice for all. 

We must dialogue. And we must push our leaders to dialogue, not just talk at us.

For it is only through thinking out loud and listening to others that we learn what it is that we actually think and believe and push ourselves to change for the better. 

E.M. Forster said "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"

We must talk to each other so we can change ourselves for the better.

And wouldn't that be cool if our leaders did the same?

White Privilege Helps Me Out...Again

I gain so much from my white privilege.

I met recently with an adviser at the college in which I'm currently enrolled. After a BA and an MA in my subject area, I finally recognized that I must complete some basic education courses in order to certify to teach in all states. So I'm going back to school, happily if I'll be honest, because I do really love school, no matter the ease of subject material. I guess that comes with always asking questions.

So I have a meeting scheduled for 5pm, but I get there early with my one-year-old son in hopes that I can squeeze in an earlier appointment.
I can't.
They are definitely backed up.

At five, the adviser Erica calls me back. A kind young white woman, probably about my age, and very skilled in helping me feel comfortable, Erica, from her credentials, has been advising for a while. In fact during our meeting another adviser steps in to ask her a question, signaling to me that Erica must be in charge or at least leading a collection of other advisers.

The reason I came into the office today, Erica, is to get a hold-override  on a course I need, I tell her when we sit down. The hold is in place because my pre-requisites for the course have not been verified - I need to have taken their introduction to education course before I can register.
Now I took a foundations of education course in my undergrad years. But that was eight years ago and the content requirements have shifted dramatically in the aftermath of Race to the Top and the introduction of the Common Core Standards and PARCC assessments.

In my mind I know my previous course does not meet the pre-requisite standard as laid out by the course catalog.

So I begin to mentally piece together my argument, mentioning first that I can try to get the 2007 course catalog from my alma mater so we can compare the two and pulling my two transcripts out for reference, but she stops me.

She says "I should refer you to the education department on this one, since that's what I'm supposed to do, but you seem like a pretty responsible person, so I'm going to do the override."

I'm somewhat speechless. All my pretty good arguments about how the State had accepted my undergrad course as valid and how my graduate courses more recently dug into that content I was missing fall onto the floor.

In the moment, I thank her profusely for removing the hassle of 1) getting a meeting with an education chair and/or 2) having to take and pay for another course this semester; I round up my things and my kiddo, and stroll on out of there.

It wasn't until I was in the car that I began to dismantle her statement.

I "seem like a pretty responsible person."


Let me list some pieces of evidence arguing against her assumption for a second:

1) She hadn't looked over my transcripts at all and took my claim of a BA and MA on my word alone.
2) I was not dressed professionally
3) I brought my son. My fifteen month-old BUSY son, with me. My son who is constantly chatting and eating and getting into everything. I brought him. To this meeting.


Evidence supporting her assumption that I am responsible:

1) I am white


I recognize that some might say NO! She might have done the same thing for a black woman. And maybe she would have, but the statistics say that bias against black bodies is real. That she would not have done the same thing for a black woman.
Maybe if the black woman was dressed nicely and didn't bring her kid along. But a black woman in jeans with a toddler in the stroller that she was feeding throughout the meeting? No, Erica would have referred her to the education department. Because that black woman would not "seem like a pretty responsible person."

Now this course pre-requisite override is a small example of the major benefits I receive from being white.

As I've mentioned before, the BIGGEST, all-time privilege I receive from being white is this: I don't have to think about the injustices suffered by black people. I don't have to think about the injustices suffered by persons of color at all. I don't have to think about the injustice perpetrated against them every single day.

But I must choose to think about injustice.

Every day I must choose to SEE and RECOGNIZE my privilege and choose to SEE and RECOGNIZE privilege systemically built into the foundations of this country. And I must listen to stories from black life. And I must talk with white folks about their privilege. And I must choose to do this every day.

For it is so easy to forget.

This Starts With Me

Donald Trump's followers include many overt white-supremacist racists. Donald Trump, I would argue is also an obvious racist.

For a while I thought this public overt racism might be a good thing for the Black Lives Matter movement. Trump's speeches and voter questions are revealing a large segment of the population that is deeply and obviously and proudly racist.

Wouldn't that make us all realize that racism is alive and well?

I mean, you can't deny that general bigotry exists when one of his supporters claims all the problems in the US today are due to Muslims and that we need to "get rid of them."

 Wouldn't those sort of comments make the even the strongest racism-ended-with-Obama arguments fall to pieces?

In part, yes, no one can deny that a large part of the population holds racist beliefs - Trump and his followers have made that obvious.

Where this public knowledge actually hurts our progress is in how progressive white folk take and use this information about overt racism.

As I've said before, the movement to end systemic racism is NOT a black responsibility. It is a white responsibility. We must recognize individually our white privilege, dismantle it, and use our white privilege as leverage to bring about social justice. It starts within our individual selves.

But Trump and Limbaugh and Cruz and the rest of them have made it so much easier to relocate the problem outside of ourselves.
THEY are the racists.
THEY are the bigots.
THEY are the problem.

And the discussion of racism becomes an us-vs-them debate. WE progressives have it right. THEY conservatives are the racists and the bigots. THEY are wrong.

There is no possibility of ending systemic racism if we make this conversation about THOSE racists.

The conversation, white people, must be about I, racist.
I, white privileged.
I, complicit ignorer of injustice.

This starts with me.

In the Gospel of Luke we're told that Jesus shared a parable about a Pharisee and a tax-collector praying at the same time in the temple. Jesus says that the Pharisee stood praying before the Lord and thanked God that he was not like this evil-doer, this tax-collector. Jesus notes that the tax-collector also prayed, but did so with deep humility. Jesus says that "He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’"

Then Jesus praises the tax-collector for his humility instead of the praising the Pharisee for his self-exalting righteousness.

I would say we could replace those two job titles in the parable with progressive and conservative, or democrat and republican, or whatever degrading term you have for "the other side" and the story would still hold. 

I thank God I am not like those racist conservatives. 

But as Jesus teaches, that pride is wrong. 

Christ calls us to a life of self-reflection. 

A life of humility. 

God, have mercy on me, a privileged white racist. 

The Beloved Community starts with me. 

Taking Away Your Privilege

"That can't be productive"

I've heard this statement or something like it in response to the actions of the members of the #blacklivesmatter movement and other similar organizations in Ferguson, MO these last few days.

Blocking I-70? Rioting? Protests, no matter how peaceful? Interrupting political campaigns? Doesn't this just make people angry? 

The answer is yes. Yes, people will get angry. People will be inconvenienced. Your life will be interrupted.

 

Drivers stuck behind a wall of human arms stretching across a major highway. Patrons of various businesses shut down by protesters. Progressives attending rallies for fill-in-blank-with-favorite-candidate. 

YOU.

You will be inconvenienced. You might even get angry. 

But you will be forced to THINK. You will be required to STOP and think. 

You will lose a few seconds or minutes of your life to these space-occupying persons of color and their white supporters. 

And in those few seconds or minutes will hopefully be a mental reckoning. For this issue, this problem, this discussion of race in America is IMPORTANT. 

It's important enough to interrupt your life. 

Privilege is this: being able to turn off the suffering of others and completely forget about it without a single consequence for yourself.

So this black movement is taking away your privilege. 

You're no longer allowed to turn off their suffering. 

You will be faced with it time and time again. 

And you will have to think about it.   

Of White Discomfort

Baby boy, husband and I were boarding the train to head downtown to do something. I cannot recall what now, but I'm sure it was something fun; we rarely do un-fun things as a family these days.
Baby boy was in the stroller as he is a no-good walker still, so we took the elevator down to the platform.
We're chatting, the two of us, about something mindless and baby boy is joining in the chatter.

The elevator door opens and a black man and woman exit the elevator continuing in their conversation. As she passes me, she says, without looking me in the face and with the sincerest of tones, "ma'am, I am sorry for being so loud."

I immediately respond, "Oh no, don't worry, you're fine," in my sincerest of tones.
We load on the elevator and head up to the platform. Once we're on, though, I turned to husband and say, "Oh my goodness, that sucks. She thinks she made me uncomfortable. So she apologized. Because I'm white and because black persons always have to always make white people feel ok."

I start thinking of what I should've said, other than "you're fine."

A couple days later baby boy and I are downtown playing in the splash fountain. He's sopping wet but I don't want that in my car, so we head to Starbucks for an inevitable beverage and the usage of their lovely changing table.

As I round the corner to the back of the store where there are two bathrooms, I encounter a large black man and I say, "They're both full?" He responds affirmatively and says something nice to my son who smiles and waves at him - we're making conversation.

One bathroom opens up, and, as he is first in line I expect him to use it. He instead holds the door and insists that I go first. I say, "Thank you, but we can wait." There's another one that will open soon.

 He insists kindly, still holding the door for us.

I accept and enter the bathroom. He lets the door close and says to me in a sincere and friendly tone, "Now don't forget to lock the door."

He's giving me permission to lock the door.

He's recognizing that as a white woman, archetypically I am uncomfortable around him, and he's recognizing my discomfort and attempting to ameliorate that discomfort.

He was gone when I left the bathroom with my changed and dry baby boy.

What could I have said, anyway, had he been there? Thank you, of course, but what else?

It's not my job nor my right to tell African Americans that they don't need to make me comfortable. I don't need to teach black folk a lesson on how to interact with white folks. Because they know how to interact with white folks for the sake of the safety of their bodies.

If I said anything to this man or to the woman on the elevator about how they didn't need to make me feel comfortable, that would be selfish - that would be me trying to make me feel better about the fact that I am a part of this white expectation of comfort. Or at least a white expectation that you as a person of color will not cause me discomfort.

Black folk who make white folk uncomfortable suffer consequences in this country. Their rights and their safety and their bodies are taken from them so quickly when they make a white person uncomfortable.

And yet, in the last year since Ferguson, as the #BlackLivesMatter movement has been popping up on white screens and in white news sources, white people have started to feel uncomfortable.

We've started to squirm a little bit and wince a little bit. Because for the first time in many of our lives we have had to consider race. We have had to think about what it means to be white in relation to what it means to be a person of color.

And for many of us, we've never HAD to think of this before. We've never been required to think of what life as a white person even means. Because as a white person, we're the normal, and all y'all are deviations.

AND THIS IS UNJUST.

We must feel discomfort. We must ask ourselves the tough difficult awkward questions. We must be willing to feel white and feel wrong, for it is only when we begin to question our own whiteness and what that whiteness means,
what that whiteness has gotten us,
what that whiteness can get us, can we begin to dismantle greater systemic racism.

It is only when I can recognize as a white person that I got that job, I got that relationship, I got that raise, I'm in this house, I got that loan, I got that car, I got that degree in large part because I am white; only when I recognize this discomforting fact can I begin to recognize the system of disadvantage, the system of racism, faced by persons of color on every front, in every part of their lives.

Persons of color are facing systemic discomfort all the time and yet they're expected to keep us comfortable? That's some bullshit.

As white folk, we need to get uncomfortable.

Leveraging Privilege

What is whiteness? Is being white even a thing? Why do I feel more white today than I ever have? Is it good to feel white? Should I feel bad if I'm white?

There is no biological difference between white persons and persons of other races save a slight melanin change. So just as you have blue eyes and I do not, she has more melanin and I have less melanin.

If there's not biological difference between us, then what is race?

 Race is a social construct created to establish power.

It's not our skin color that has separated us but our investment in our skin color that has separated us.

As George Lipsitz writes in Bill Moore's Body, whiteness: "has a cash value: it accounts for advantages that come to individuals through profits made from housing secured in discriminatory markets, through the unequal educations allocated to children of different races, through insider networks that channel employment opportunities to the relatives and friends of those who have profited most from present and past racial discrimination, and especially through intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generations."

Race might be just a social construct, but it is one that weighs heavily on all of life.
From the hospital you're born in to the doctor who treats you for your first ear infection;
from the preschool you attend (or don't) to the elementary teacher's disciplinary actions toward you;
from your high school involvement to your college application process;
from the adults involved in your life to the careers you're encouraged to pursue;
from investment opportunities afforded to you to your neighborhood and your kid's neighborhood.

Race weighs heavily on it all.

Let's back up for a second. You might be asking me, what does this mean? This "social construct" idea? What even is that?

Social constructs, according to Foucault, Bakhtin, Vygotsky and a bunch of other old white guys, are how we create reality.

The theory of constructionism is in opposition to the theory of essentialism, which basically says that things are how they are because that's how they are.

For instance, many people would argue that boys are born with an innate set of personality traits. Boys are strong. Boys are non-emotional. Boys are natural leaders.
Some would argue that these are essential traits - they are biological - they are predetermined.
A constructionist would argue, however, that these traits are not innately "male," they are instead taught. They are constructed. The idea of the boy is a social construct. Over time we have created the reality of boy-ness, requiring these characteristics and teaching, albeit not directly, that effeminate qualities are inappropriate in boys. This is especially problematic when a boy feels that he does not exhibit these "masculine" qualities naturally as some would expect.

This discussion of sex v. gender is extremely oversimplified, but I provide it only as an attempt to explain what a social construct is.

We construct our reality in an attempt to organize our world. Through billions of years we've developed as a species, building our societies on what we have deemed best practice overtime.
Why do we do this? Why must we organize our world and create our reality?

It always comes back to power. Everything is about power. Everything.

We organize our world  - we create our reality - so that we can establish systems of power.

To go back to the gender example, if there are constructed male qualities that over time are deemed better than constructed female qualities, we will invest in the male qualities instead of the female. And the more we invest, the more power is held.

So race. How is race a social construct? And what does this construct have to do with power? And what does this construct have to do with me?

Over time we have invested in whiteness. This was not an individual's decision. No future KKK member came out to a group of white folks and said, let's demonize the black person so that we can hold power over them. This idea of whiteness has evolved.

As human beings we naturally work in our best interest and our best interest is to hold the power. Therefore we have overtime created a series of beliefs about humans whose bodies produce more melanin so that we can hold the power over them. On the plantation, in the field, in the career path, in the classroom, on the road, in the justice system, we hold the power because of our socially constructed whiteness.

And the most disturbing part of this idea of whiteness is that we have been told it does not exist.

We are told that the black race exists and the hispanic race and the asian race and the middle eastern race, but not the white race.

That is privilege in its finest. The privilege of never having to be labeled. Of always being the unmarked category.

The more we ignore the existence of whiteness as a social construct in which we invest in our daily decisions, the more we can ignore the disadvantages faced by those of the marked categories, the "races."

We must begin the process leveraging our whiteness for justice, and this begins with a recognition that whiteness is real (albeit constructed, but what isn't), whiteness exists, whiteness is powerful.

Only then can we dismantle the power whiteness holds in our own lives and use that power for justice.

Hold Yourself to a Higher Standard

I don't think business is innately bad but I do think that business is naturally not humanitarian. It's business. Nor do I think that government is innately good, but I do think that we can hold ourselves to a higher standard through our government. 
For instance, in South Africa they have a massive squatters problem; ending apartheid meant abandoning basically holding cells for black persons who were violating apartheid laws by being with white persons. So they now have these massive buildings that are filled with homeless persons, many employed, who just cannot afford to live in the housing that is available, so they're squatters. 
But when Nelson Mandela and the post-apartheid congress in South Africa were building this new form of government, one not based on racism and oppression, they were writing laws that held them to a higher standard. And so they included laws that gave squatters rights. Their laws state that a squatter cannot be removed from the property, even thought it does not belong to said squatter by definition, unless the government can provide for the person a humane living situation. 
So the SA government is scrambling to build housing, human housing, for these homeless persons, because their laws say they have to. Because it's the right thing to do. 
They even offered these homeless people trailers, but they knew their rights and refused to move without full running water and sanitation. 
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. 
At the time, they certainly didn't live up to that statement, nor do we now, however, we build these standards, these laws, so we can hold ourselves to them. So we can BE the people that we want to be. 
So yes, I think government should do more good than business. Yes, business can do good, for sure. But that's the anomaly, not the archetype.

The Nonexistent Dream

So I think there's an ideological disconnect here.
 We believe we're the land of opportunity; that if you just work hard, anyone can make it. We tell our kids this in school which builds them up for a massive mind-shift when they realize that is just isn't true for everyone.

Yes, for a large segment of the population, the dream is alive and well. You work hard, you'll get far.

However, the facts prove that if you have anything stacked against you, anything at all, really, you probably won't make it as far as you want to.
The dream does not exist for many folks in the US.
 If you're disabled,
 have children at a young age,
have an incarcerated parent,
are in foster care,
 are born into a poor family who cannot support you,
are black,
 are brown,
are an immigrant,
are trans,
 are a woman,
and heaven forbid you're MORE than one of these, the odds are stacked against you.

YES, some people make it past these odds. But these people are the anomalies. They are not the archetype.

And so we tell ourselves that if we just let things be, if we just let business grow the way it's meant to grow, if we just give people the choices that they deserve, then society will improve. As businesses can thrive, people will then thrive. And this can totally be true for many people who do not fit into any of the aforementioned categories.

However, no matter what you believe about the goodness of mankind, business will always first make money.
And once in a while a big business exec turns into a philanthropist and we all praise them for their goodness, but just as Oprah is an anomaly for black people, Bill Gates is an anomaly for big business owners.

If we give businesses the right to do whatever the hell they want to do, they will hurt the poor and the oppressed. Archetypically, they will do what they need to do to make money and what they need to do is hurt the poor and the oppressed.

We have this dream that laissez faire means everyone wins. But historically that's false.
Look at how many lives were lost in the fight for workers rights. And SO many people lambasted those fighting for workers rights because removing child labor laws would be bad for business. OF COURSE it would be bad for business. But if it's the RIGHT thing to do, if it's the JUST thing to do, who cares if it's bad for business.

Our laws hold us to a higher standard. Just look at how much progress we've made regarding disability laws. And YES, disability laws have HURT business. We have to build ramps, what? We have to make everything accessible? What?

And yet, we pass these laws because it is the right thing to do.

Our minimum wage laws tell the world that we do not care about the poor and we justify this indifference with the American dream ethos - that if you just work hard enough, you'll climb the ladder.

But that last ten rungs of the ladder are missing for the oppressed people of this country. And unless you learn how to fly, or unless we rebuild those rungs, we're ignoring the needs of the oppressed and justifying it with the old pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality.

And school choice does not help the poor.
 I taught in DC, the district that has some of the countries best and worst schools and implements choice throughout. Poor kids will not travel miles via public transportation to get to a better school. They'll go to their neighborhood school. My school is in NE DC, one of the blackest parts of the country (yes, DC is insanely segregated) and no matter how hard you push families to put their names in the lottery, to apply to these better schools, they didn't have the time. They were working multiple jobs, often taking care of multiple families. School choice does not work for the archeypical poor family. If you want to fix our problems in education, pump the money into the poor public schools. Improve teacher training. Don't allow programs like TFA convince you that good teachers have no training. Get rid of 90% of the mandated testing (standardized tests are important, but should not occupy the majority of a poor kid's school year), Stop requiring teachers to follow curriculum that does not connect whatsoever to their kids.

Lastly I will say this in response to a recent comment. And this is me being an interrupter, calling out my fellow white folks to open their eyes to the suffering they're ignoring.

This is what the commenter wrote:
"The answer is that wealth disparity in the non-white communities is not due to low wages. It’s a function of people not working at all. According to the bureau of labor statistics 51% of all black Americans are employed vs. 58% of Americans describing themselves as white. That means you have something like 2.9 million African Americans that should be working but do not. In my opinion this is scandalous and should offend the sensibilities of anyone who cares deeply about the financial wellbeing of the non-white community."

They're not working.
They're not working because they're unemployed.
They're unemployed for a BILLION different individual reasons.

Please don't assume that they're unemployed because they' don't want to work.
Please don't do that.
 Please.

Because assuming that a black person is unemployed because they don't want to work is racism.

 It's deep deep racism that says that this entire group of persons is lazy and continues to affirm that same racism that justified everything from separate bathrooms to slavery.

Please read more books about life as a black person and never assume you fully understand and therefore have the right to judge anyone's motives ever.
 Ever.
 Please.

The Girl Who Should Have Called Racist

So I'm at Value Village thrift store one day with my son, this was sometime in the Fall, and we're browsing the paperbacks after picking up a few onesies for him. He's sleeping peacefully in his carseat which is sitting in my shopping cart when this older gentleman comes up and looks at my son and smiles. Now I LOVE IT when people smile at my baby. You could be the grumpiest person in the world, but if you smile at my baby, I love you and you become dear to my heart instantly.
So he smiles at my sleeping son and says to me that his son is now 32 years old and having kids of his own. He says how much he misses when his son was a baby but how he's grateful for his grandchildren. We talk the small talk about how "fast time passes" when they're this little and how I "should be grateful" for these days, even the hard ones because "they disappear."

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to sound sarcastic because I love this conversation topic. It's good for me to hear at least once a week so I am reminded to cherish these days. Because at times I do forget how fast he is growing and a friendly reminder from an older person to snuggle him as much as possible is a red flag to slow down and enjoy.

So we're having this conversation I have with at least one person at least once per week, when he asks me how many children I want to have.
Kinda forward.
But whatever, I'm a pretty open person.

So I say, "At least two, maybe three kids"

He responds, "Good. You don't want to have too many kids. I just had two children and I was able to raise them well."

"It can be harder, that's true, to make ends meet when you have a big family," I say, starting to turn my cart to head to the checkout line. But my son is still sleeping peacefully, so I'm in no hurry.

He continues, "I worked all the time when my children were small. I never took a day off until my kids were finished with college. I was a cook in my own restaurant and I was there all the time, working so I could provide for my children. Now my son is a doctor and my daughter is a lawyer. I paid for all of their college as well. I worked hard."

"Wow," I respond. I'm loving this. If Value Village had benches, at this point in our conversation I would happily sit so I could hear more of his life story. He mentioned briefly that as an immigrant, he had a rough life trying to make money to support his family. But he worked hard so his children could have a better life than he did.

Then his story turned when he said, "Like Jews. They have one or two kids and they support their kids to become doctors or lawyers. Better people than they were. They work hard and support their kids. You should be like them. One or two kids is best. Like the Jews."

I respond somewhat awkwardly, "Well, there are some Jewish people who have more than one or two kids. I think it might be inaccurate to group all Jews together and say their all the same in their work ethic," but he cuts me off with this shocker:

"Just don't be like black people."

Wait, whaaaaaa?

He continues in my shocked silence, "Black people have too many kids and they can't hold down a job and their irresponsible and loud and our taxpayer dollars are paying...."

He goes on like this for a while, adding anecdotes of black boys who worked in his restaurant and families that live in his apartment complext,pausing only to add "but I'm not racist" to his rant.

I stutter in response, "No, sir, You're grouping all black people together to claim that they're all the same. And the same in extremely negative ways. This is exactly what racism is."

He doesn't agree with me and I'm not making a good argument, so he walks away. My baby starts stirring in the still shopping cart, so I start moving the other direction as well.

But I really regret that choice. Leaving.

My son would have been fine to fuss for a bit while I spoke longer with this man. I should have taken the time to discuss how he developed these ideas about ALL black people. I should have taken the time to question his hatred. I should have taken the time to call him out as a racist so that he could see the error of his ways and maybe correct them. Because what if he keeps thinking these things. These hateful racist thoughts can turn into to hateful racist actions.

Just this week a video was posted online of a college fraternity in Oklahoma singing about lynching n*ggers who want to join their frat. The cell phone video went viral, prompting the closing of this fraternity chapter and a great upheaval in the University's discipline policy.

My question, though, is why didn't the person behind the camera call those boys out for their racist hate speech? Yes, they posted the video online, that's true, but wouldn't an added word of rebuke have maybe made these boys question themselves?
Why don't we step up when our uncle uses the N word at Thanksgiving? Why don't we talk to the person who grumbles about how all these Mexicans are taking our jobs and should learn English? If we're not willing to TALK about racism, to call people out for being racist, then places like Ferguson will continue to blow up like they are.

Call people out. Who cares if they get frustrated with you. If they take one minute to think about their words and consider any racist tendencies they might have, then GOOD. But if we don't say anything, they won't. They'll continue thinking their thoughts and words are ok, aren't racist, are based on experience and therefore true for an entire group of people. These thoughts are dangerous. We must respond with the seriousness they require.