My thoughts on white privelege continued...

Well I haven't posted in a little while but I'm glad to be back. And by the way, I just got back from Puerto Rico... Yeah that's right, I just spent a week on the beach, in the rain-forest, and roaming the streets of Old San Juan. And I can't forget to mention the amazing coffee I drank. The average cup of coffee in Puerto Rico is as good as an excellent cup of coffee here...

Anyway. Last time I checked in I shared my thoughts on white privilege and now I'm going to continue.

I would like to thank Colin for his posting about racial profiling and the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. If you've been under a rock and haven't heard about it, you can read about it here and if you want to read one of many articles condemning the arrest go here and if you want to read an interesting commentary on an arrest that I never heard of, that involved actors Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright, go here.

In the second article that I linked to, the writer makes the following point:
If this hadn’t been the most pre-eminent scholar of African-American Studies in the country, we never would have known about this incident I have to agree. If you are looking for evidence of the existence of white privilege, one of the most obvious places to look at is the relationship between the police and Black Americans. I feel very confident in making the following statement: On a whole the interactions between Black Americans and the police are completely different than that of White Americans and the police. Periodically a story will come across the national spotlight that highlights this divide. The most recent story is the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. This man is so famous and well respected that President Obama immediately said that the Cambridge Police acted "stupidly" in their arrest. How on earth is a middle aged Harvard Professor arrested for a break in at his own home? It seems pretty ludicrous to most of us. How many people think that this would be just as likely to happen to a white Harvard professor?

I would have to say that I agreed emphatically with President Obama's assessment of the police conduct. If the arresting officers actions were justifiable than why did the Cambridge District Attorney immediately drop the charges? Anyway I more than likely preaching to the choir for now. That said I do wonder how people feel about the "beer summit". I have a whole lot of thoughts. On the one hand I am glad Mr. Obama made a strong statement about this event and I do think it makes sense for him to facilitate a dialogue on the issue of racial profiling. I feel that the dialogue ultimately fell flat. I'm not exactly sure that it makes sense for the President to be sitting down with Joe Officer and Joe Black American that was racially profiled. Quite frankly if he is going to add beer summit's for every racial profiling victim to his job description, than I think he will be very busy. Anyway the reason I fell that this "teachable" moment fell short is because I believe people like President Obama allowed the discussion to be hijacked by law enforcement and the supporters of the large police organizations like the Fraternal Order of Police. Virtually all successful politicians ascribe to the narrative that Police are beyond question. The men in blue are essentially the bedrock of our democracy, the people that do the dirty work so that the rest of us can enjoy the pursuit of happiness. Their are obviously several problems with this concept, but the most problematic aspect is the consistent racism that pervades police departments across the USA.

We didn't have to look very far to find the racism I speak of in this particular instance. I mean I obviously found the entire event to be incredibly racist but for those of you who might believe that this was just a good working cop doing his job you have Justin Barret. If you don't know who is you can read his email in the link below. (please note it is extremely offensive and some people may not want to take the time out of their day to read it) Justin Barret's crazy email basically calls Henry Louis Gates Jr a "banana eating jungle monkey" and a few other choice remarks and emailed it to a reporter that wrote about the arrest and also forwarded it to a bunch of his buddies. Now of course the Boston Police Department has moved to have him fired. But the question I have to ask is what on earth made this man think it was OK to send that email? Do you really believe that he never made these kind of remarks at work? I believe quite strongly that he worked in an environment that nurtures this kind of language. But of course we are led to believe that it is an aberattion, like the murder of Oscar Grant (if you don't know who he is you can watch his murder on Youtube), the murder of Amadou Diallo, the rape and torture of Abner Louima, and of course the arrest of one of the most pre-eminent Black American Scholars for a breaking in to his own home.

These are not isolated incidents...

2008

Hey y'all,

So here is my most recent poem of the week. I actually wrote it in 2006 or so... It was pretty cool because I had written it and forgot about it. In 2008 I found it and literally had no recollection writing it. In fact if it wasn't for the fact that it was in my hand writing and exactly the type of thing that I would write, I would have thought someone else wrote it. Anyway I made some adjustments to it at the time and renamed it 2008. I guess I'm just ahead of my time.


2008

It’s been 9 years since Seattle
10 years since Jericho 98
7 years since the killer cops got free from their 41 bullets
8 years since millions screamed brick by brick wall by wall we’re
gonna free Mumia Abu Jamal.

I hope this hiccup of a movement isn’t over
Cops in riot gear, anarchist with bandana’s covering their faces,
People wreckin' shop from San Francisco to Brooklyn
Let me find out that the modern day protest era is already over,
Swallowed up by liberal former peace niks,
With a legitimate war to protest and democrats to endorse,

I remember the streets of Philadelphia during Y2K,
Food not bombs, the three-ring clown circus, and MOVE in Clark Park.
These images stand in contrast to the vote for Kerry pins
Brandished by protesters in NYC 2004
Tell me it’s not over,
Tell me I’m not condemned to here the new rallying cry of the left
“Vote for Hillary”
I don’t want to hear about Supreme Court justices,
And which candidate would send how many troops to war,

I want to hear about class war,
And the poor taking the fight to Greenwich, Connecticut,
to Fifth Avenue,
Taking it to the North Shore of Long Island.

Say it ain’t so.

Please don’t tell me that all I have to be happy about
is the mid-term elections and the hopes that the
lamest political party in history might do something
different than the most sinister one.

Please tell me there is a voice out there that says

Smash the starbucks,
Destroy wal-mart,
And remove the slumlords.
I pray that voice is still alive in the subconscious of our people.
I pray that the propaganda machine of the system has only
Strengthened our convictions.
I pray that this lull in political action is the calm before the storm.

Tell me we are not gonna wait for judges to tell us Mumia is guilty.

Tell me I’m gonna get off my ass and demand that we don’t.

Tell me that I’m not gonna be a lazy leftist waiter, republican hater, policy reforming, peace loving, conflict fearing a-hole.
I can’t take that image of myself.
Please tell me that my current trepidation is grounded by wisdom and sound strategy.
Tell me I’m still gonna fight, die if I have to.
Tell me I’m not so afraid of death that I will accept
This Fahrenheit 451,
big brother watching,
cops searching me for no reason,
Phony, civil liberty violating society.
Tell me I won’t wait for the constitution to save me from the injustices I encounter everyday.

Please don’t tell me I’m gonna miss Sandra Day O’connor.

Cause if that is all I have, than I have nothing.
I have nothing without my unquenchable thirst for liberation.
I am nothing without my unbendable will to overthrow oppression
In all its forms, by any means necessary.
My children will have nothing if they inherit a legacy of capitulation,
An estate of apathy and …
My children don’t deserve a life of wage slavery
in order to buy food, clothes, shelter, gasoline, knick-knacks at the dollar store, ipods, cell phone cameras, 401k, dental insurance, and corner store diets.

My children may have no choice.

But I do.

I can fight to free them from the chains
of the most rotten filthy empire known to humankind.

Or I can die tryin’.

Or I can accept it.
Please tell me I won’t accept it.
But don’t lie to me.

I’d rather accept the truth than believe in a lie.

I'm not sure

Hey y'all. This is a new thing I'm going to do from now on. It's the poem of the week. Let me know what you think. Peace.


I’m not sure where to go from here…
I have plans, just no idea how to execute them.
Just type, Just type
… Taking a sip of green tea…

I’m searching for a way to escape melodramatic metaphors
But they seem to be stalking every keyboard stroke.
In some ways that’s what it comes down to for me.
I’ve written countless poems and I don’t know how to write anymore.
I don’t forget to breathe but I often forget to think.
What is this feeling?
I swear I wish I could describe it for you.
My inability to articulate what I’m going through
is my greatest frustration today.

My thoughts on white privilege

Well after a long overdue hiatus, I’m back with another posting about white privilege.
But guess what?

It's my birthday!. Yeah I'm 35 and ready to take the world by storm...

As I said before this is part of a series of posts that I’ll be contributing over the months to come. I asked everybody to share their thoughts on white privilege. It’s a difficult topic and I appreciate all of the responses I received. I’m not quite prepared to respond directly yet, so there is still time to share your thoughts, please do! Also I mentioned that my partner Laura would be writing a post on the subject. That is still to come.

Lastly I hope you checked out the blog posts of my students. They are an amazing group of young intellectuals and could use your encouragement.

Today I’ve decided to share with you my thoughts on white privilege. I figure I asked y’all to put your ideas out there; it’s only fair if I stick my neck out there. So here it goes:

Newsflash, I believe that white privilege exists! I don’t know if y’all knew that I felt this way but I do. I think I have a pretty interesting perspective on the subject. I grew in Binghamton, NY, raised by my white mother from Montana. My father, a Puerto Rican raised in the Bronx, was in and out of the picture. Even though I had a diverse group of experiences, through my family and various networks, the majority of my friends growing up were white. My mother was a PhD in English. To many kids, both white and black, I “spoke white”. I found this ironic because aside from my brilliant mother the most eloquent adults I encountered in my childhood were people of color.

I often found myself in conversations that normally wouldn’t take place with a person of color around. At least 10 times in my adolescence, someone used the word nigger in front of me thinking I was white. I would like to say that I always confronted these situations assertively, but I didn't. A few times I almost got in fights, sometimes I vocalized my concern, and a couple of times I said nothing. It’s hard to admit that. The last time it happened I was 24 years old. Ironically I was in a hotel in Puerto Rico with my ex-girlfriend and her father. He made a reference to OJ and how he was exonerated because of all of the Niggers in LA. I remember thinking I couldn’t believe this was happening. It had been years since I’d encountered this type of situation. I grew dreadlocks in college because I never wanted anyone to doubt that I was brown. I thought for a second. I was so extremely angry I was about to go off on the man and then I determined it would be best for his daughter, if I didn’t and so I left. I told her I wasn’t coming back in and we left together. In the past 11 years, I have yet to encounter that situation again.

The reason I share this is because I want to make the distinction between bigotry and privilege. 99 percent of the white people I have encountered do not use the word nigger. However 99 percent of the white people I have encountered are friends with, were friends with, or are related to, someone that uses the word nigger. Every time I've encountered the word, there were other (white) people in the room and the person using the word felt comfortable enough to use it. Most of the white people I know would say something if they encountered that situation. If anyone used the N-word around my mom she would have screamed at them so loudly that the world would have shook. That’s not the point. The point is bigots are all around us and they treat their white counterparts differently. The thing is many times the people they encounter will have no idea that they are bigots. It might be the policeman that pulls you over, or the principle at your kid’s school, or your boss’s boss.

It’s a safe conclusion to say non-bigoted whites are treated better by bigots than non-white people. That’s a privilege. What percentage of white people today could be considered overt bigots? I couldn’t guess but I will say that it’s probably a whole lot less than 50 years ago. But here is the thing. If you get pulled over and let go by a bigoted cop and you don’t know that person is a bigot, what can you do about that? Are you going to read the cops mind and demand to be treated the same as a person of color? For people that are not mind readers it might be difficult. Others might say, I'm not doing anyone any favors by getting a ticket and that might be true. White privilege can't be boiled down merely to a handful of isolated events.

For argument's sake let's imagine you live in a country that was founded by white bigots. Well that would mean that your country was designed to benefit them. Let's say that great strides have been taken to address bigotry. It is no longer socially acceptable in mainstream society to be a bigot. But nothing has been done to pro-actively address the privileges gained by generations of white people as a result of the bigotry of the founding fathers. (For the record, feel free to ask the same questions about Gender) Assume that aside from affirmative action, which has mostly eroded, there have been virtually no institutional changes to address this fundamental issue. It basically boils down to this. “OK back then they were really racist, we won’t do it again and everything will be fine”. And heck it is fine. It turns out that this hypothetical country created by bigots just elected a black president. Hooray!!!

To get a better understanding of the dynamics of the hypothetical country let's take a look at the hypothetical Senate:
94% White, 3 % Latino, 2% Asian, 1 % Black

Hypothetical Population of Hypothetical country:
66% White, 15 % Latino 13% Black 4 % Asian 3% everybody else

Now the way the Senate was elected was determined by whom? You guessed it, those bigoted slave owning founding fathers. And let’s assume for argument’s sake that all 94 white members of the Senate aren’t bigots. (And let's assume that former Ku Klux Klan member and current US Senator Robert Byrd isn't a bigot either, for the heck of it) Well it appears that some of them certainly benefited by the designs of the former bigots. And that’s because of you guessed it, white privilege.

*Please note that the preceding condescending tone is directed towards bigots across the USA and not my beloved readers.

Now in our daily lives there are countless situations that continue to enforce the institutions of privilege and I have ten million more things to say but my brain is going to explode if I look at this computer any longer, so how about I check in again soon, cool?

Current events

Hey y'all,

Greetings from Columbus, Ohio. I'm sitting here in a Cafe at the afterparty for The Confronting Racism Conference. It was pretty cool. It was organized by mostly white people for the purpose of white people challenging their own racism. Many of the presenters were people of color including myself. All in all it was a positive event.

Right now I'm waiting to perform. The band I am in, Broadcast Live, is performing tonight for the after party. I expect to have good show.

Anyway, the main reason I'm writing is that I want to let you know about this cool project my students are working on. Students? You say. Every week I teach a current events class at the Harriet Tubman Democratic High School, an alternative High School that I helped to found in 2006. It was inspired by the Albany Free School, the oldest democratic school in the country.

So these amazing students of mine have created their own blogs. So I'm asking you to check them out, comment if you can and become a follower if you are inspired. I have links for the first to, Rashid and Diana below. Let me know what you think. peace

Rashid's blog

Diana's blog

checking in

Ohh my gosh. I can't believe how long it has been. I actually don't have a topic to write about now but I figured I should write somthing to make sure that everyone knows that I'm still a ghetto hippie.

So I'm moving. It's the 3rd. People usually move by the 1st. But such is the life of an eternal slacker. I'm going to Puerto Rico this summer. I know you're all jealous. That's about it for now.

Don't worry the discussion on white privelege is still a go. I think it is a topic that will still be relevant when I'm done slacking...

But this article might suggest otherwise...


Many news outlets have been reporting that there is a sentiment that the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed because Barack Obama is now the president.
Well maybe white privelege won't exist by the time I get to writing about it again.

First thoughts on White Privilege

So in the not so distant past I posted an entry asking for people's feedback on "white privilege". I asked people to write in and give their opinions on specific questions that I posed. And I got two responses. OK three, but Colin responded twice. It was somewhat interesting to me that my army of readers had virtually no responses. After a few days I became worried and so I reached out to some of my friends and most loyal readers (aka friends that have responded before) and asked them to post something. Than nothing. At this point I almost concluded that no one has any interest in my blog and that's why they aren't commenting. What if no-one except for Colin and Marcus actually read my blog? I was a little worried and so I installed a handy-dandy counter at the bottom of the page so I could figure out just how many people were coming to visit. My most recent count is 120 in a week. That said I've probably checked on it 20 times myself and you can count Colin in for another 5 or 10. And let's assume there are like 50 erroneous landings from the interweb. That leaves 40 or so legitimate views of this blog in one week. I'm sure that Heather Armstrong from dooce.com is scared. She gets like a million views a day. In fact she probably just got another reader because I just posted her link. It's true that the rich get richer but I digress.

So there are at least a few of you out there. So what gives? Are you chicken?
Well that's going to be my conclusion for now.

In the meantime, I've asked my partner Laura to help me with my next posting. I think it is going to be good so you should continue to check in and see what it's all about. About half of my visitors are related to her anyway, so hey I figure I might as well cater to my base.