I am certainly not the person you will find crying foul about "the man" keeping me down or constantly lamenting the dragging of my ancestors over on slave boats or anything like that. All in all, I've let a fairly decent life with relatively few incidents of racism. However, I cannot dismiss that there are definitely people, like my parents, who faced and continue to face much more hardships brought on simply by the colour of one's skin.
I married a white, Jewish woman who I love dearly. Being Jewish, she and other members of her family have faced their share of prejudice and scorn. However, as I pointed out to her a couple of times in our years together, it is not the same and simply cannot be compared. While there are certain characteristics that are passed down in genetics of a Jewish family, most of those tend to not become prominent until the person grows older. For example, the hunched back, certain facials features, etc. The younger, modern Jewish person is typically not recognized as Jewish until they open their mouths and either use a known Jewish phrase or specifically tells someone they are Jewish. We are not so fortunate.
One is immediately identified as a black person from birth! It is simply a matter of looking at the person in question. Yep, I'm black. Always have been, always will be.
And it is in the outward identification that partially lies the issue. Humans are very visual animals so if they associate something with a particular image (i.e. in movies and theatre, the colour black is used to portray wrongness, evil, danger, death, negativity, low worth, etc.), then they have a hard time when the image is applied to something foreign to them. I do not believe that games, movies and TV should be blamed for this alone. Yes, early on they reinforced the stereotypes that branded a people harshly but what is the excuse for the here and now in 2008? Why are the black women still so angry? Why are the black men still leaving them with children ? Though that one may be answered by the previous question or is the cause of it. Why are the jails filled with black men and black youth? Why are the education and social programs geared to placate instead of actually helping uplift? And to borrow (and paraphrase) a line from Mr. Singleton's 'Boyz 'N The Hood', "Why is there a liquor store on almost every corner in the projects, Harlem and the ghettos of major cities but not the same in Beverly Hills and the O.C. and Martha's Vineyard and Park Avenue and the other affluent neighbourhoods in America"?
The answer is simple and the solution is almost as much. Don't frequent those businesses and they will close or change to survive. Don't feed and perpetrate the stereotypes. Keep the family together and if you cannot, at least ensure the members ALL survive and thrive. Don't look for the easy way to success on the backs of or in spite of your neighbour who has found a way to make good. Especially don't try to bring them down because your ass is too lazy to lift yourself up. All of these things are simple. NONE of them are easy.
And it does not just go for the Blacks/African descendants (I hate the new age terms), but for every easily identifiable immigrant and descendant of an immigrant including my Orthodox friends. We are all our worst enemy in this regard and we only need a modicum of control and thought to fix it. As the saying goes, if you are not a part of the solution, you ARE the f**king problem.
Peace.
Special Reports - Black in America
Editor's NOTE: I heard Nas on our local urban radio station, FLOW 93.5. I listen to a lot of different styles of music but I would have to say that Dance, Old School and Top 40 are my many genres of music. While I listen to a fair amount of Hip Hop, it tends to be either Old School Rap or more dance-like tunes; the mainstream stuff. I tend to find a whole album full of more self-serving babbling than anything I could get into. Hearing Nas' words though intrigued me to listen to the whole thing. So, to insure it was worth it, I do what I always do; I downloaded it off the Net. If I like an album, I buy it; the proof is the thousand or so CDs that we own. I will be buying this album and supporting the Artist. While I won't ever play it repeatedly, I will play it enough to hear and understand and interpret the words. I think that is what he wants us to do. The cover, as he explained it, came about from the pushback he received to title his album with the dreaded 'N' word. Since mainstream stores were not ready for the inevitable backlash that would come from doing that, he and a friend came up with the untitled album cover below. The image is SO powerful that putting ANY writing on the cover would have detracted from the image. It works and it is effective. I asked DW what she thought about the cover when I sent her the jpeg image. I did not say anything else because I wanted her honest reaction; it was much different from my own which further cements my comments above. That is not to say in ANY way that her impression was wrong; it was just different. Understanding that is what is going to bring this world closer instead of furthering the mess that we live in now. Peace.
Please comment on what were your impressions on seeing the cover. Thank you.
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3 comments:
I won't comment on the cover. I'll save that for a night when you and I are sitting in our house or your house and can discuss this.
However, I applaud your attitude about breaking stereotypes. The same goes for women in general.
You may find this hard to believe but women are also stereotyped from birth and it's a battle we still fight on a daily basis. However, it drives me crazy when a hear a woman saying, "They do that because I'm a woman."
We fight our own gender based battles and so I can empathize somewhat with the predicament that a black person can face. However, I agree in that we don't have to allow ourselves to be victims of the prejudice, either.
Did that make any sense or did I just talk myself into a circle?
All very true and valid. It also applies to the aged, the young, the old, the handicapped and the oddly dressed. However, I would point out that the degrees of discrimination are very different. For example, if you, me, a person in a wheelchair and a punk rocker were all at a bustop waiting for a bus, who do you think people will first remember was there nine times out of ten? Example number two, while there are some backwards countries (YES, you are backwards people) show great disdain on the birth of a girl child and will either kill it or shun it or circumcise it, they are the exceptions to the norm. Disdain for a black person is not determined by gender, age, weight, disposition, heritage, lack of a handicap or position in life. Simply being black or having black blood in you is enough to cause scorn. On site. Unprovoked.
A woman will face all sorts of ills but will almost never be refused the company of a man; especially if she is good looking. People will leave a room, clutch their purse, put their hand on their phone, and whisper rudely if an unknown black person enters the room.
Truly, the only group I can think of that is almost as much of a position as blacks is the morbidly obese. They are ridiculed and laughed at in public, told to eat elsewhere, sent away from stores, refused rides and more. BUT, if that person is not black, they will still be welcomed more readily in a lot of places and treated better in a lot of places than if they were black. That experiment has been proven many times but comedians and documentary people alike.
Understand that I am not going through all this simply to be on a pedestal or soap box; nor am I doing it to put you or anyone else down. I am just hoping to educate, incite discussion and thought. I don't have to ponder on this subject as I know it all too well. From being passed over in school because they did not think my intelligence was high enough (in truth, I was bored from the lack of challenge so used to act up), to be made fun at in elementary school of my "chocolate face", to having words with a fellow cub scout who did not want me in his tent, to being stopped on the street by police because I fit the profile of a suspect they were looking for (I asked and it was basically "male, black, big"), to having a girl say her family would never let her date a black guy, to being passed over for promotion by a moron, to being fired because I was the easiest candidate, to being refused a bank account.
All of that has happened in my short 40 years of life but I consider myself lucky that I did not live in the same times 40+ years ago as I have gone through nothing in comparison to my folks (being spat on at a TTC bus stop, fights in a laundry mat, etc.) or those that came before them. To put another perspective on it, if you won the 400 million dollar powerball, the word on the street would be that a married Canadian woman with three kids won the big money; if I won it, it would be a black man from Canada won it. the news used to do it too. It was always a male black, an Asian male, a male of East Indian descent; they NEVER said white or Caucasian until very recently. It is a subtle thing but they add up and one cannot help but notice when they do.
All I can say is that I am blessed to be around people, like yourself, that treats me like any another fat guy that happens to come over once in a while. It is that which gives me hope for the next generation because times are a-changing and every little change counts. :)
Peace.
I totally agree. Someday - again when we're sitting in a house with time, remind me to tell you what really opened my eyes to the unrecognized biases against black people in our everyday society.
Love ya...we fat people have to stick together, you know!
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