silently 'loving your neighbor' isn't enough

I was part of the issue. I did not want to acknowledge it, but I was. I was taught as a child that if I was kind to everyone and didn’t discriminate other people based on the color of their skin I was doing great. This class brought to my attention systematic racism that takes place in America. I became enraged over the injustices that people of color face EVERYDAY. A lot of my anger stemmed from the fact that I had not learned about mass incarceration, racial profiling, and the disproportionate amount of Blacks living in poverty before. It was this semester that I learned that being kind to my neighbor was not enough. As a white liberal, I thought that bringing up the issue was enough, it simply isn’t. A lot of white people do not know where they stand in the fight of racial injustices, so they sit on the sidelines. Whites also have a hard time acknowledging their privilege. There is a fear of overstepping or falling into the white savor category that they chose to do nothing. This becomes the “silent white majority” they are not explicitly racist but since they chose to do nothing they become implicitly racists. Most of the time these are the people that say they are not racist because they have that token black friend. I cannot express enough that is not an argument that can be taken seriously nor is it valid. That is not going to be achieved by sitting in a classroom coloring a picture of his face. I am white. Both of my parents went to college. I am very privileged. Sadly, America is designed in a way for me to succeed. Becoming completely aware of this during the span of this semester broke my heart. I did not deserve this privilege. I now know that my job moving forward is to educate other whites of their privilege and to address racist remarks no matter how small. We love to throw around King's 'Dream' but what did King dream of? He dreamt of non-violent direct action, economic justice, equal education, decreasing poverty in America, and the end to housing discrimination. We consider most of these issues solved, but they are far from being accomplished. As we honor his legacy it is important to remember the progress he made while also recognizing that we still have a long way to go. Martin Luther King Jr. may have died 50 years ago but his DREAM has yet to be fulfilled.

Do You Know What Really Grinds My Gears: Episode 1

In today's first episode of "What Really Grinds My Gears", I'd like to discuss a phenomenon that I see all too frequently in person and on social media. When a racially-discriminatory event, like, for instance, the two (!) separate arrests of black males at Starbucks locations (1), occurs, there are many initial responses. For myself and much of the black community, the initial reaction is usually frustration, anger, but usually not surprise - systematic racism manifests itself in new and exciting ways every day, if you're black in America. However, the initial reaction from many white people, and especially conservative white people, is very different. As soon as they read the headline, they say or post something in line with: "oh man, just because they were black and the employees were white, it's suddenly a race issue", or, "all these liberal racists saying it's because they're black", or, "white people get arrested in Starbucks too, where's all the media then?". First of all, ain't nobody getting arrested for being white in Starbucks or they wouldn't have any business. Secondly, why don't you try harder to deny that racism could possibly exist in the 21st century? And in your beloved country? Preposterous. There's a very nice Negro that cleans my house and dusts my Robert E. Lee bust every Sunday, I can't be racist. Get the f--- outta here Mildred (2).

For real though, that has to stop. The oppression of black folk in America manifests itself in different ways constantly, and when it gets publicized, we have to take advantage of the opportunity to combat it. By refusing to even acknowledge the possibility of discrimination or racism in current events, one is only hampering social change and progress. Yes, it is a race issue, because the Starbucks controversies are just another example of the stereotype of black men in America as suspicious and criminals, a stereotype that results in unwarranted confrontations, arrests, and killings.


(1) Various incidents:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/starbucks-police-boycott-black-men-arrest-philadelphia-racism-a8305381.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/04/17/a-starbucks-in-california-treats-black-and-white-men-differently-according-to-this-video/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.139b14155126

(2) www.oldwhiteladynames.com

Life Expectancy in Shelby County

One of the classes that I took this semester was called Health Disparities/ Race Thinking. I add/dropped the class during the first week of the semester, and didn’t really know what to expect other than that it was an Africana studies class that probably talked about health. Through the readings and the discussions in that class, I have learned more than I ever thought I would about racial disparities in healthcare, racialized medicine, the horribly racist history of gynecology (and how female slaves were the Guinea pigs for most of modern gynecological practices), negative patient-physician relations and interactions, and so much more. One of the topics that I found the most upsetting was the relation between where someone lives and how long their life expectancy is. This issue was recently highlighted in the Commercial Appeal in an article titled “Death by ZIP code: In Shelby County, life expectancy varies up to 13 years depending on where you live.” One of the claims that is presented in this article is that zip code determines health outcomes in Shelby County more than genetic code does, highlighting the important role that social factors plays on health at the individual and population level. “In North Memphis, Frayser, South Memphis and Southwest Memphis, residents live an average 69 to 71.5 years. East Memphis, Cordova, Arlington, Germantown and Collierville had rates between 79.22 and 82.59 years.” This disparity is insane! That’s nearly a 10 year difference in life expectancy between two areas in the same county. How can people that live this close to one another have such drastically different life expectancies?

One of the largest factors is access to healthcare, which is much lower in areas of predominantly low socioeconomic status (which also tend to have higher minority populations). “In 38106 and 38126, some 28 percent and 22 percent, respectively, of adults aged 18-64 had no health insurance in 2016, census figures show.” In combination with the relatively low rates of health insurance coverage, the areas of Shelby County with the lowest life expectancies also have fewer healthcare facilities, and those that do exist tend to be underfunded. Access to healthy and affordable food, jobs, public transport and housing are also issues that disproportionately affect the residents of the zip codes with the lowest life expectancies. Prior to this semester, I knew that Memphis had racial disparities in pretty much every metric, but I did not know just how bad the health disparities were.

Source: https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2018/03/12/memphis-shelby-county-life-expectancy-varies-zip-code/321264002/

Misconceptions

     Very recently, I saw a thread on twitter of a girlfriend telling her boyfriend's story about his interaction with a police man. She told us that he gave a homeless man some change at a 7/11, and then proceeded to make his way back on the interstate. When he got on the interstate, a cop pulled him over. The cop assumed that the black individual gave the homeless man drugs. Before the cop even got to the car, the man pulled out his license and threw his wallet on the dashboard. When the cop got to the car, he asked for his license and registration, but the man told the cop that it was on his phone. His phone was in his pocket, and he did not want to reach for it for obvious reasons, so the cop proceeded to tell him his car smelled like weed. The cop made the man get out of the car, and had a gun pointed to the mans back. The cop continued to yell at the man to reach into his pocket and to grab his phone, but then man began to cry. He was crying because he knew as soon as he reached for his phone; the cop could shoot him and claim he thought he was reaching for a weapon.

     Obviously, upon reading this, I was furious that the man did absolutely nothing, but because of his skin color, he was being treated like a criminal. When I took a second, I took a step back and analyzed how my life and perception is with the police force. The last time I got pulled over; violence never crossed my mind. Actually, the last time I was stopped, I forgot to get out my insurance card. When the cop was literally at my window asking for license and registration, without thinking, I reached and got my card out of my glove department. The cop never said anything to me, and I never told the cop what I was doing. When I started thinking about this story and my experience, the black man threw his wallet on the dashboard, so he would not be accused for reaching for anything. I, on the other hand being a white female, just casually reached into an unknown compartment and nothing happened.

     Taking note of both of these events, I realized that I will never understand what it is like to be a black individual in this oppressed world. I will also never try to understand the oppression that black people go through, but will always recognize that it does take place. My unconscious lifestyle shows the racism that takes place in today's community, so the question at hand is whether or not the United States as a whole will recognize the problem at hand. 

The truth about Memphis

A few weeks ago, Memphis commemorated MLK50, the 50^th anniversary of King’s assassination. Newscasters from all of the country, and all over the world, came to Memphis to participate in and document the events. In an NBC broadcast live from Memphis, Lester Holt spoke about the Lorraine Motel as a place “where King died, but where the movement he led- and his dream- survives”. ^[1] Holt’s intentions were pure, but he slightly missed the mark for a variety of reasons. I know that he was simply trying to honor King and King’s legacy, but his remark downplays the truth about how King’s death actually affected Memphis. His statement implies that King’s assassination did not have any poor affect on Memphis, when in reality, it had negative effects that continue to ripple throughout the city even today. Washington post journalist Leta McCollough Seletzky framed the Lorraine Motel in a different and much more accurate way, writing that it “isn’t just a landmark or a place where something terrible happened; it’s a wound from which the city never fully recovered- a gash in the civic soul that still aches, maybe even festers” ^[2]. I like the use of the word “fester” here because it provides an image of an untreated wound that has possibly even gotten worse than when the injury first occurred. Fifty years later in Memphis, racial economic disparities still exist. Racial educational disparities still exist. Racial injustices still run rampant.

Another problem in Holt’s comment is the ambiguity of the “movement” and “dream” that he ascribes to King. Exactly what movement was Holt referring to? Was he referring to the sanitation workers’ strike? Was he referring The Civil Rights Movement as a whole? Additionally, what “dream” is Holt talking about? The vagueness of this statement supports the master narrative that Julian Bond portrayed. Bond explained the false narrative that Americans have constructed over the years: “Dr. King was tragically slain in 1968. Fortunately, by that time, the country had been changed, changed for the better in some fundamental ways…”. This portion of Bond’s work sounds a lot like Holt’s comment. The only difference is that Holt was actually being serious.

In our society, people throw around phrases like “King’s dream will never die” and other happy-go-lucky ambiguous statements. The problem with this is that it completely undermines the reality that our country still has work to do in achieving full racial equality. Some white people in this country would rather construct a false narrative of perfect racial harmony than admit that the problem of racial injustices in our country has still not gone away.

[1] Beifuss, John, and Daniel Connolly. “National, International Media Highlighted Problems and Potential of Memphis during MLK50.” The Commercial Appeal, The Commercial Appeal, 6 Apr. 2018, www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2018/04/06/mlk-martin-luther-king-jr-memphis-tn-media-problems-potential-mlk-50/479971002/.

[2] Beifuss, John, and Daniel Connolly. “National, International Media Highlighted Problems and Potential of Memphis during MLK50.” The Commercial Appeal, The Commercial Appeal, 6 Apr. 2018, www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2018/04/06/mlk-martin-luther-king-jr-memphis-tn-media-problems-potential-mlk-50/479971002/.

Brown V. Board of Education and Memphis

     Did Brown V. Board of Education ever happen in Memphis? The answer is a solid no it did not. In the 1950s when it was supposed to happen, Memphis claims they were not ready to integrate schools yet. They decided that they were going to create private schools, so that white families could send there kids there rather than having to integrate the public schools. Even today, we see that the Minority enrollment in private schools is 30% and in public schools it is 90% [1]. Memphis' population is 2/3 black, so if 90% of public schools are black then this just shows how many white kids attend private schools.

     This situation also shows the different levels of education a child can receive. In most cases, Shelby County Schools are not having that many resources poured into their school because most families are struggling financially. On the other side, white families are paying $20,000+ to send their kids to these private schools which means they are further more pouring into that school to make sure their kids receive the best education at hand. 

     Also within Memphis public school system, different boundary lines are being created. "As the original argument in Board V. Board of Education reminds us, those separate and unequal systems have especially pernicious impacts on an array of non cognitive outcomes. Most segregation in public schools today occurs because district boundary lines sort students into separate school systems.." [2] This is talking about the municipalities within the education system. Municipalities are the school systems that are zoned to the upper class neighborhoods and communities of Memphis, and tend to be the most successful schools. With this being said, these schools are only zoned to kids that have the financial opportunity to live in these zones, therefore; they get these resourceful schools in return. 

     Title one at the most basic level means individuals that live within low financial incomes. After the demerger happened, the municipalities received their share of federal funding even when they do not have any kids that qualify for this funding. With that being said, they basically took funding away from schools within Shelby County that had more than 90% of their population receiving Title One funding. This one instance also show the resource and money that is being taken from high poverty schools. 

     The looming question is will Memphis ever integrate their schools? Will Title one, high poverty, children ever receive a decent education?

[1] “Home.” Memphis, TN Private High Schools | PrivateSchoolReview.com, www.privateschoolreview.com/tennessee/memphis/high. 
[2] Frankenberg, Erica, et al. “Segregation by District Boundary Line: The Fragmentation of Memphis Area Schools.” Educational Researcher, vol. 46, no. 8, 2017, pp. 449–463., doi:10.3102/0013189x17732752.

Copy & paste citation

what does reparation look like?

 How much reparation is needed for African Americans? Since America was founded it based its values on taking from other people to gain what they want. They took from the Native American when they came to America and they took from African Americans went they brought them to America and enslaved them. The economy of the south was built off the backs of America American labor and hardship. What kind of reparation is needed for that? White people continued after slavery to lynch black people and kill them. Land and houses were taken from blacks but still there is no reparation. Why is their no reparation? White privilege allows for white people to ignore simply downplay their age-old actions. It helps to uplift the white community in situations crucial to the economic growth of black people. White privilege is something that only benefits them and raises them above any other race. It causes tension in America because it can blatantly be seen in mass incarceration, police brutality, and education. These are three vital things that keep African Americans from achieving as much as or more than white people. The effects of no reparation have led to the economic and political gap between whites and blacks.  Then you have to ask yourself, “what would the world look like if there was reparation for blacks? If white privilege wasn’t a thing?”. With being a part of and a victim to it for so long it is hard to see a world like this especially because it is ingrained into Americans beliefs and values. I would start by dismantling the system at hand and electing minorities to reconstruct this system. In the first 5 years of this system, minorities can only run and be elected for positions of government. A part in that takes away the power of white supremacy and gives it to minorities to redistribute wealth and power. Reparation happens when we acknowledge the fact that these events did happen and carry the deadly emotional, mental, and physical weight to the people being oppressed. Then we can understand that it was not only wrong but needs actions to fix. Understanding that white privilege cannot be used and must be disabled to ensure an equal right to everything. What is your idea of reparation? What does American need to change in order to see that we need reparation? How long will it take?