“This is what it feels like to be black in America…"

[MrScorpio]

“This is what it feels like to be black in America. It sounds like the symphony of locking car doors as I traipse through a grocery store parking lot, armed with kale chips and turkey bacon. It looks like smiling when I don’t feel like it. It’s the instinct to enunciate differently, to use acceptable methods of signaling that I am safe to engage, or at least to disregard. “We wear the mask that grins and lies,” wrote the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. I feel that mask covering my soul, never allowing me to just freely exist.

I could argue that any negative reaction to my skin is a problem for others to grapple with and of no concern to me. I’ve tried that approach before; one memorable attempt ended with me being pulled out of my car by two police officers and handcuffed for the felonious infractions of having a blown headlight and insufficient self-abasement. It is an unspoken rule that blackness’ first and most important task is to make everyone feel safe from it. We ignore this mandate at our own peril, realizing that a simple misunderstanding is a life or death proposition.

Jonathan Ferrell ran towards police seeking help after a car accident and was given a hail of bullets for his troubles. Renisha McBride went in search of a Good Samaritan after her accident and a shotgun blast answered her knock. Teenager Trayvon Martin walked home with candy and tea and was greeted by the nervous trigger finger wrapped in an adult’s gun. Jordan Davis sat in a car outside a convenience store listening to music and a man who objected to the volume cut his life short with the boom of a firearm. The principal crime all of them committed, like countless others over the centuries, was being black and not sufficiently prostrating themselves to ensure the comfort of others.”
— Theodore R. Johnson, “Black History Month Isn’t Making Life Better for Black Americans” (via thisiswhitehistory)

http://mariposakitten.tumblr.com/post/76614254603/this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-be-black-in-america

[Skittles]

1. is it the segregation so many people experience growing up?

I grew up as a GI brat and many of my neighbors and classmates weren't just of color, their dads were enlisted just like mine.....is this why I've never felt threatened by, say, the young black guys I see in hoodies in my neighborhood? And why I can clearly see that when someone like Trayvon Martin is gunned down it very much because of his color?

[MrScorpio]

2. To me, it's a choice by those who look at Black people...

And decide to whether live in a fear based world, or a reality based one.

[Skittles]

3. I live in the real world, MrScorpio

I heard some loud hip hop at a gas station just today and........well, it sounded pretty good

[MrScorpio]

4. I trust that you do

I've never had any doubt about you otherwise, Skittles

[Skittles]

5. YEE HAW

check out all our hearts - WOO!!!

[Enthusiast]

6. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

[Scuba]

7. K&R

[M0rpheus]

8. I saw this somewhere, yesterday.

I was thinking about poking the bears in GD with it, but why frustrate myself?

[MrScorpio]

9. I feel your pain nt

[M0rpheus]

10. DU is a pretty good reflection of the real world.

There will always be someone who takes it as their job to refute something they have zero experience with.

It's just sad that topics like the OP will inevitably draw the feces-flingers, rather than foster an actual discussion.

[MrScorpio]

11. I post things, waiting for certain ones to show up and they do

But since I'm pretty good at handling myself AND I do get sizable back-up, these people can't touch me.

I'm not always around, but if anyone wants me to go out and poke some bears, I'll be happy to do that.

Just shoot me a PM and I'll take it from there.

I'm serious.

[M0rpheus]

12. I'm gonna take you up on that. nt

[MrScorpio]

14. Please do!

I love a good fight at times.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

27. awesomes! You're one of the good guys, MrScorpio.

frankly, it's astounding that there would be people who would be sheep-dips on the subject. On yahoo, or freeperland, certainly, but here at DU? Yecccch!!!!!

[Blue_Tires]

15. This kinda-similar piece was posted the other day:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024492894

[M0rpheus]

16. I saw that as well, on some other site.

And then I saw it here. That thread actually turned out well (minus "Name removed&quot , considering they way most of these go.

[Number23]

19. That's definitely true. But I was still rather surprised at the number of responses and recs

Oh, well. I guess if we had been screaming about the Third Way (not Republicans, mind you. The Third Way, which is a group of Democrats that arouse more ire and hate around here than any republican could ever hope to) or the 1% the recs would have been through the roof.

[onpatrol98]

24. You're right...

I've noticed that. The NEXT presidential election will feel different for me.

[brer cat]

13. K&R

[Blue_Tires]

17. Kick

I grew up and currently live in one of those "You-don't-look-like-you-belong-here" neighborhoods (this was a neighborhood originally laid out in the 60s and however the arrangement worked at the time, it was designed as a retirement enclave for high-ranking retired military), and yes, we have our own Neighborhood Watch and most of my neighbors' cars have NRA bumper stickers...Everyone knows me by now so it isn't quite the issue it used to be in my younger days; but I *always* think about Trayvon's case when I'm walking my dog at night, frequently while wearing a hooded sweatshirt...

If white Americans for one day could just experience "the glance" we get when a stranger/police/store cashier sizes us up and assumes we're criminals or about to commit a crime, they'd understand it fully...

[freshwest]

22. The name for that treatment I decided as a kid, was walking around with a target on your back.

With all that implies. I thought that had to be a huge burden to go through the world that way. Thus now people say, 'I got your back.'

As a white kid, I heard all the racist dogma, as I was 'safe' for them to talk around. But fortunately none of it was allowed by my family.

One of the old racist ideas was about having 'a drop of black blood.' The nutsos said if you had black blood, there would be some color under your fingernails, that proved you were 'not pure white.'

I remember that day looking at my fingernails, being afraid. Struck with fear that I would be identified as black. And at the same time, knowing how stupid an issue that was. And that racists thought it was that important. And that the target could be on my back. I think that is why I am so adamant about racism without being a person of color, but not going through that every single day of my life and living through the whole shit train. That fear was only the tip of the iceberg and I knew that.

Because I already knew about slavery, lynchings, how police went to black neighborhoods to shoot at them like fish in a barrel. The disrespect shown to black women and children by police, went against the logic of the nutsos' other rule of 'protecting white women and children.'

Why, I asked myself, were women and children of color not respected as women and children, if that was such a big deal? If they were going to claim black men were preying on them, in my single digit age reasoning, why go after the women and children of any kind or hue?

That was part of my reasoning when the Rosa Parks arrest happened, IIRC, for not giving up her seat to a white man. Why should, if women were so important, and she was older too, some stories said, were not women and elderly. not be respected? Was there not a privilege to be invoked simply on that behalf?

As crazy as it may seem to some, I was mightily offended on her behalf. As a white, I always gave up my seat to an elder on the bus. And as a female, I thought she should be allowed to sit down when an abled bodied man was present. I was only beginning to get the whole twisted up racist thing figured out in that era, the depths of depravity visited on blacks.

I got into arguments with those who said blacks should 'be shipped back to Africa.' My point was that if whites didn't want them here, they should not have brought them here in the first place. That was greeted with silence and anger, as I wasn't going with the 'ship 'em back' meme. Which was always idiotic, as natives may have wanted whites shipped back to Europe, but that didn't happen either.

Next thing the nutsos would go on about was their little so-called religion, and the founding of the USA. That whites were Christians and it made whites better, but there was no proof blacks were not religious and Christians, too. There was just something wrong about blacks, is all they were saying, flailing about trying to make points.

I said God created white and black people. That if they had a problem with blacks, they had a problem with God and should take it up with Him. That resulted in confused silence and they finally shut up. At least there was a lbit of shame, as they had been taught to fear God.

Then I've had to listen to the nutsos claim I must not be fully white, or a n-lover, and other such garbage. Since Rush got on air the nutsos have more justification, in their own minds and are if possible, worse than the older ones, some of whom at least, could be shamed to silence.

JMHO.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

28. doesn't seem crazy to me...

As crazy as it may seem to some, I was mightily offended on her behalf.


My mother would do and say things that made me puke. I guess that helped me be a liberal--I was embarrassed and offended by her. Also scared to death of her, but that's not the point right here.

I knew she did and said horrible things from a young age, but it was also the norm. Everyday life. But it was really startling actually hearing the venom when she turned it on black people. I was used to hearing it against me, but the racist slurs she spit out once in a while………... And I wasn't allowed to have black friends! OMG, I hated her hypocrisy……. Just……….. Ughhh.

[JustAnotherGen]

29. I love your beautiful mind!

As a side note - I had a friend growing up in my tiny town in Western NY that had parents who were raised to be bigots - but 'fought back' against what they were told. And they raised this friend and her sisters differently than they had been raised. Kelly said the 'nail' thing was because you had told a lie. Her family was over at one of my parents barbecues when she said this.

So she and I go around looking at all of the adults fingernails - my mom - always short on patience . . . tells us to stop being pests.

Kelly tells everyone what she was told at this multi cultural gathering.

Mr. D pipes in - "I was told it meant this" (what you indicated) and I don't want my girls thinking that all of their lives. I was eight and remember that to this day.

That's how people change - they recognize it in themselves and change it even just the tiniest little bit - so they don't pass it on.

And I remember Kelly being soooooooooooo upset by that - that it would even matter.

Today she deliberately teaches at an inner city school in a very rough high school in Rochester NY - out of principle.

[ScreamingMeemie]

18. .

There are no words to express what it is that I feel when I read these pieces.

[Number23]

20. That was amazing. K&R And I hope that everyone has seen the 21 Things you can't do

while Black thread too http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024492894

[MrScorpio]

21. That was a great thread

I even went into Mother Jones and dealt with the foolishness in the comments.

[JustAnotherGen]

30. Saw it yesterday

Thanks to you - and just HAD to kick it up.

[onpatrol98]

23. Yep...

"The principal crime all of them committed, like countless others over the centuries, was being black and not sufficiently prostrating themselves to ensure the comfort of others.”

Yep...that sums it up nicely.

[awoke_in_2003]

25. K&R...

is that the whole piece, or a snip? I ask so that I can mark it for later- work firewall is stopping me from seeing the link.

[MrScorpio]

26. It's the whole thing. nt