OK, time for my monthly post lol. As you can guess by the title, I have found a more useful book for you to read about racism, and it's called White Rage by Carol Anderson. I haven't actually finished it yet, but within about 5 words, I was already drawn in. The book is one laundry list of "legal" action that white people have taken to preserve their superiority over the African American starting with the end of our civil war. I think laundry list is an unfair term because the book is brilliantly organized, but I hope it conveys the sheer volume of crimes committed against Black humanity. The presidents that we were taught "weren't so bad" or "were basically good guys" sided with Trump-esque politicians who wrote or manipulated laws to keep Black people in their "place". From incarcerating legally "emancipated" Black folks for vagrancy to massacring Black folks in their homes to interrupting the Great Migration by pulling Black people with tickets off trains to refusing to allow Black people to receive education, the real character of the white person has been put into words.
The most interesting takeaway for me so far has been the title, White RAGE. Like most of us, I was taught to see the KKK as a mob of angry, raging white men who ran around in white sheets setting Black people on fire. Then Martin Luther King had a dream and Rosa Parks sat on a bus, etc. But an underlying theme of this country, and therefore this book, is that white people become ENRAGED when they see Black people elevating themselves, and will do anything they can to ensure that Black people stop elevating themselves. Racism against Black people has been made legal for centuries and it's about time we recognized that.
Oh, and were you thinking that you had nothing to do with the past? That none of this is your fault because you didn't know this was going on, you weren't taught about this before and you think this system is vile and you reject it? Sorry, but there's no jail pass for the white person's conscience. Whether you like it or not, you have social and economic power that you do not deserve, and it's up to you to figure out how to redistribute it.
I, for one, would love to see colleges and universities admit exclusively Black people for one year. Oof, I just HEARD your jaws clench! But think about it - companies are seriously claiming they can't hire Black people because they can't find "qualified" Black candidates. Oh, and did you think that there might not be enough qualified Black students to get into all these colleges? Well, what percentage of these Black students might become k-12 teachers, and make sure that Black children are not cheated out of an education like they have been for centuries? I get it. It's easier to hate all the Chinese international students who are making it harder for your little Timmy to get into Harvard than it is to destigmatize community college, or to raise the minimum/working class wage to something we can actually live on. So it would also be easier to continue to say "look, 6% of our freshman class was Black this year, up from 4% last year!! We're so excited, we put up a Black Lives Matter banner!" than it is to admit at least 99% Black students.
So since you probably didn't like my idea, tell me what ideas you have. I'm not white, so I'm really not a direct cause of the problem. Asians do, of course, have our own complicated role in racism and anti-Black sentiment, but we can talk about that after you've told me what power you plan on giving up to the people your ancestors stole it from.
No comments:
Post a Comment