On Race and the Blindness to Blackness

Black Lives Matter street mural in D.C. - visible from space

I've been having a rough couple of weeks. I've been as depressed and exhausted as I can remember. Physically, yes, but mostly emotionally. My Blackness is something I can never take off. I don't want to, but people (mostly white) provide uninvited comments, looks, and stares, microaggressions and ignorant comments at school, at work, on the go, and everywhere in between. That's on top of systems that were built specifically with the aim of Black disenfranchisement. 

I breathe in racism like the body takes in air - automatically and without a second thought. A quick story:

This blog used to be called "Nig-Unit Nation". My creative moniker used to be Nig-Unit. I have a Nig-Unit tattoo. My freshman year of college, in an effort to promote myself and my music, I made everyone call me Nig-Unit. But can you guess how I got that name? I went to a nearly all-white private school from 7th-10th grade. Good kids who largely meant well. Freshman year, when G-Unit was first getting big, I used to write "G-Unit" on the chalk boards before class. Why? Idk, just something to do. But kids would come behind me and add "Ni" to the "G-Unit," creating "Nig-Unit". 

I've always worn white uncomfortability with my Blackness as a badge of honor. Yes, I've altered the way I dressed, talked and carried myself around white spaces thousands of times. I hated doing it and would push back against it every chance I could. In the "Nig-Unit" moniker, I found the ultimate trump card, and so I embraced it with open arms. It was me at my most provocative and unapologetic. I almost lost my college scholarship over it. But that's okay because I loved and believed in myself every step of the way.

I'm sure whichever students spent 5 seconds thinking and repeating the above joke did it and moved on to the next thing, but the experience shaped who I am to my core. I love everything about the "Nig-Unit" brand, and so I've viewed it mostly as a positive, but what if it was a different Black kid, and it caused them to hate and doubt themselves? That's the thing about racist acts: the person giving them only thinks about it for a second (if that), and the person receiving them thinks about it for the entirety of their lives.

Moving on to the police, for as long as I can remember, I've always avoided police because I've never had a positive experience with them. I've had a neutral experiences a few times (e.g. police not breaking up a college house party), but my general experiences? When I was 16 or 17, I was pulled over 3 different times in a 7 day span by the police in a Columbus suburb just because I didn't "belong". My Blackness was an excuse to pull me over. They ran my plates and my license, and let me go. A few years ago, I got a open container ticket in Bushwick for standing outside of a house door with a Jamo bottle in my hand. I didn't even get questioned. But this isn't about my relationship with the police - it's about the seeming long-term indifference to the systematic suffering of people of color in America. 

A lot of information and emotions have been shared over the past few weeks. I've compiled some articles, images, books, quotes, etc that I think are helpful for non-Black people to see, read, and understand.

If there's one positive of the environment covid has fostered, it's that people cannot turn away from this movement. They must pay attention. And since everyone is paying attention, everyone must act. Silence is no longer a serviceable option. For the majority of Americans, human rights is not a political topic anymore. Either you're for it or fuck you.  

Thoughts:

Some things I've been seeing from people and brands that have been irritating me lately:

• "I don't see race" - this has always been an asinine statement to me. I understand not wanting to make judgements or decisions about a person based on their skin color. But I've always felt that "not seeing" race is to ignore a person's racial experiences with larger culture. You have to "see race" to understand those struggles
• "In these unprecedented times" - unprecedented for you, perhaps, but none of this is new to me or other POC communities. When I see someone, especially a brand, write "in these unprecedented times", what I hear is that you've never been forced to care about this until now
• Companies have rightly been called out for paying lip service to social justice and anti-racism when they don't make any significant effort to recruit or promote racial and gender diversity within their director and executive ranks. Posting a #BLM black square on Instagram used to be the party line to show support. But the community has receipts now, and are calling out every company who isn't doing their part
• I'm happy white people are pushing for these changes. But I firmly believe it is not within the realm of acceptability for white people, collectively, to be accepting brand apologies on BIPOC's behalf. 
• When a company acknowledges they fucked up, that is not something worthy of thanks 
• When a company says they'll do better, that is not something worthy of praise
• Since there are more white people in this current movement than any other group, we cannot have white voices, and their "thank yous" for even the most basic sense of company responsibility, drown out the Black voices demanding that more work be done

Articles:

• Shenequa Golding's "Maintaining Professionalism In The Age of Black Death Is….A Lot":
• Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta Mayor, on being a mother and the inability to protect her Black son during the protests [link here]
• Scott Wood's 5 THINGS NO ONE IS ACTUALLY SAYING ABOUT ANI DIFRANCO OR PLANTATIONS [link here]
  
• Scott Wood's Eleven Riots That Changed US History for the Better [link here]
• Rachel Szabo, BTS Group Co-Founder & Solutions Architect, on specific action she plans to take to create a more just and equitable world [link here]
• NYT's "Corporate America Has Failed Black America"
• Ramesh Nagarajah's "Reflections from a Token Black Friend" about his experience with racism at a primarily white high school in Boston in the mid 2010s
• Caroline Randall Williams' "You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument" [link here]
• Matthew Fleischer's "Want to tear down insidious monuments to racism and segregation? Bulldoze L.A. freeways" [link here]
• NYT's "How the Philadelphia Police Tear-Gassed a Group of Trapped Protesters" [link here]

Legislation / Change:

I believe the best way to channel this anger, pain and energy is to vote for representatives who will fight for strong legislative solutions to institutional and cultural racism. For those that think legislation is not the way, I ask you, what sort of progress would have been made if we left racism to a capitalist society? Where would we be without the force of the federal government enacting the following Civil Rights laws?

• Civil Rights Act of 1957 - Created the Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice
• CRA of 1960 - Established further oversight and enforcement powers for CRA of 1957
• CRA of 1964 - Prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, and schools. Outlawed discrimination in federally funded projects
• 1965 Voting Rights Act - Prohibited discrimination in the sale or rental of approximately 80 percent of US housing + prohibited state governments from violating constitutional rights of Native Americans
• CRA of 1968 - Prohibited discrimination in voting and enacted penalties for obstructing voting rights

As such, we need strong state or federal laws on the following topics:

• Passage of H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act (link here)
• Whether there are financial reparations or not, we need congress to pass this bill so we can scientifically determine the effects of white supremacy and develop recommendations for how to rectify them
• Passage of H.R.7120 - George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020
• This bill was drafted by the Congressional Black Caucus and passed by the House last week. The competing Senate bill, feels like an example of white supremacy because you have the white, republican Senate (save for Tim Scott) telling BIPOC that they know better what type of policing our communities need. It feels like they're refusing to listen
• Use of Force Project analyzed 100 police departments to determine how use of force is detailed, authorized or restricted, and developed an easy-to-read chart. For example, New York City police department has no policy that (1) bans chokeholds, (2) requires a warning before shooting, (3) requires exhausting all other means before shooting or (4) requires comprehensive reporting whenever an officer uses force or threatens to use force. Studies have shown that more restrictive guidelines lead to a reduction in force used [link here].

Books/Videos:

• At the Hands of Persons Unknown by Philip Dray
• This extraordinary account of lynching in America, by acclaimed civil rights historian Philip Dray, shines a clear, bright light on American history's darkest stain—illuminating its causes, perpetrators, apologists, and victims.
• Here is an excerpt from the NYT when the book was published in 2003. I cried reading it because of the graphic detail, but also just how ingrained it was in American life for white people to unjustly mutilate and murder innocent Black people with local governments and police departments tolerating or encouraging it
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander discusses the transformation of slavery to Black Laws and Jim Crow, and finally to the modern prison system
• Jane Elliot's Brown Eye/Blue Eye documentary, which shows white children how discrimination works by substituting skin color for eye color
• Justice In America's is a criminal justice podcast, and the first episode is about the bail system and how it favors the rich and disproportionally affects POC and the poor
• Ava Duvernay's 13, the Netflix documentary about the criminalization of being Black and rise of America's prison system. Did you know America has 4.4% of the world's population and 22% of the world's prison population? And Black males represent 33% of America's prison population despite being 6% of the general public? 

Business:

Apply pressure in your workplace/industry to enact sizable, permanent change:

• Goldman Sachs said it wouldn’t take a company public if it didn’t have at least one woman or minority on its board
• Push for companies to tie exec compensation to diversity metrics

Additional Readings/Twitter threads:

• CNN anchor Chris Cuomo discusses America as a tale of two cities on the death of George Floyd [link here]
• Samuel Sinyangwe's twitter thread on research-based solutions to stop police violence [link here]
• Samuel Sinyangwe's twitter thread on MEANINGFUL legislation that has been proposed and, in some cases, passed in cities and states to address police violence. Consider passing legislation like this in your community, too [link here]
• Barack Obama's "How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change" [Link here]
• There's a really excellent sociology paper by Yale professor Elijah Anderson on what that Central Park woman (Amy Cooper) tried to do by calling 911 on the Black birder. It's called "The White Space" [Link here]

Playlist

I made a playlist to accompany this article. At first it was sadness and solace, which gave way to anger. I was always more like Malcolm and Martin. As a result, the playlist is two parts: the first half is resilience and the second half is anger.