(indistinct chatter)

Category: Racism

  • Insidious

    One of the last stops on our two-week Baltic cruise that we had no business taking in our career stages or income brackets was Gdynia, Poland. We had returned from touring the better-known city of Gdansk, famous for its cathedral and restored old city, and were desperate for snacks. We stopped at a shopping mall that had a grocery store on the second level, and we got on the escalator to go get our Euro-sweets and sodas.

    The escalator was one of those where the up and the down lines cris-cross past each other in the middle. As we rode up, a group of 5 or 6 teenagers was riding down. As we passed in mid-transit, I noticed how normal and fun the group appeared. My brain actually said out loud, “Huh. they don’t look stupid.”

    It took me the rest of the ride up to realize what had just happened. To understand, you have to know that I grew up in a part of New York State that was half-Italian, half-German, and half-Polish. At least that’s how young kid me would’ve explained it. I was certain Catholicism was the predominant religion in America. Ethnic jokes abounded. I have a vague recollection of Italian jokes, but the ones that really stuck were the Polish jokes. Or as we routinely said back in the day “polack” jokes.

    For the uninitiated, these jokes all centered around Poles as less intelligent than the rest of us, in ways that underscored their innate subordination. I’d heard plenty of them in school, in my family, and probably retold a fair amount myself. But I didn’t realize until thirty years later what an insidious, damaging effect they had had on my perception of actual people.

    Nowadays, when I have the urge to cross the street to avoid coming face to face with [insert marginalized group here], I remember that escalator ride in Poland, and I reevaluate my response in the context of my upbringing. I don’t know why I thought to write this down today, probably because of all *gestures broadly* this.

  • The argument against the argument against Harris – A white woman’s primer

    The argument against the argument against Harris – A white woman’s primer

    Most of the negative reactions to Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy (with at least one notable exception) have landed in two camps:

    Camp 1 (Republicans): Kamala’s a terrible black woman who didn’t earn the nomination!

    Camp 2: (Democrats): They’re going to say Kamala’s a terrible black woman and that she didn’t earn the nom! (What do we dooooo?!)

    Let’s review how both arguments are deployed in bad faith, and how to start pushing back.against them.

    “She didn’t earn the nomination,” aka “Democrats scrapped the will of the voters”

    Stephen Miller whining on behalf of Democratic primary voters who “filled in circles!”

    For the people bemoaning the lack of a democratic process here, how democratically have your last presidential candidates been chosen? Was Biden your first choice when the last presidential primary began? Was he your second? Or even third?! Set aside the fact that it takes an ungodly amount of money and connections to even enter a primary…the candidate is usually chosen by the time the 3rd or 4th state primary rolls around.

    My state’s primary is in May. In 2020, I wanted Warren, but there was no chance I was ever going to cast a meaningful vote for her. So until we have a national one-day primary, miss me with your “disrespecting the primary voters” BS. This was 14 million voters out of the coalition of 81 million that elected Biden to office. Voting for him unopposed. I was one of them. But that’s less than 20% of his electorate, and less than 10% of the electorate overall. Once he declared his candidacy for a second term, there was no real choice for voters. I didn’t hear many people complaining about the legitimacy then.

    “She’s a terrible black woman,” aka misogynoir

    We have to fight it everywhere we see it. Periodt.

    Debunk stupidity about childfree women. Why someone does or doesn’t have children is none of your damned business. (Side note, I personally find living a childfree life very not miserable.) Living in America gives you a direct stake in America. If Vance’s statement were remotely true, they’d praise Joe Biden for being a family man acting on behalf of America’s future. Instead, they bludgeon him with his strong paternal values to bloody him as corrupt. This is not a serious, good-faith criticism. We have to call it out.

    Push back on racist tropes. We white people have diminished people of color since before the founding as stupid and lazy. Primitives not worthy of citizenship or of meaningful participation in society. Every time we credit a Black person (often with a whiff of surprise) for being “so articulate,” we reveal this racist inheritance. Kellyanne’s “She does not speak well” is just flipping the “compliment” back to the historical status quo. Then she doubles down with the laziness trope, “She does not work hard.” Kellyanne’s arguments appeal to her audience’s racism. And we have to call it out.

    Dispense with garbage that black people and immigrants are ungrateful. JD Vance plays to his audience’s self-superiority by positing that he’s grateful to his country, and that you have a responsibility to give back. In 2019, Kamala Harris literally started her campaign talking about how much she loves this country, and how she feels a responsibility to give back. JD Vance just isn’t listening. Instead, he’s stirring up anti-immigrant, anti-black sentiment towards “ungrateful” freeloaders who do nothing for their paychecks. Our work as white people in this campaign it to call it out.

  • Confederates in Blue Jacket country

    Confederates in Blue Jacket country

    One of my Black colleagues shared the photo below during a recent trip to Ohio. I know I experience a visceral reaction when I see that flag flying. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be black and pass it on a holiday road trip. Like driving into enemy territory, I suppose.

    The lower Midwest feels awfully “southern” at times. Between the local dialect and conservative attitudes, it would be easy to think you were in Tennessee, or Georgia. I often have to remind myself these states fought on the side of the Union. The Union, winners of the Civil War. Maybe that’s the question we should be asking presidential candidates: “Who won the Civil War?” Because the resurgence of the Confederate flag every generation or so begs the question, are we forgetting our history? As someone born and educated in the north, I learned that THE NORTH won the Civil War over the SOUTH. I’m sure the story is more nuanced as taught in the southern states, but setting that aside, I always thought kids from former Union states would have learned this too.

    That’s why scenes like Confederate battle flags raised over Ohio homes break my brain. Ohio’s capital is home to a pro sports franchise whose very name is drawn from the state’s history supplying Union soldiers. Yet the Confederate flag persists in this state, as well as in its Union neighbor Indiana. I’ve been told, even here, that it represents “heritage”, which is certainly ahistorical, if not downright laughable. Whose heritage? Not those Hoosiers whose forefathers died for the Union. Not the Black and Native descendants of slaves and displaced First Nations. “Heritage” is just a romantic euphemism for antebellum white pride.

    I once saw this head-scratcher of a decal on the back window of of pickup truck. So much for “These colors don’t run.” Apparently, they do run. Into treachery.