So, this has been bothering me ever since Starbucks. Can we have some HONEST conversation about why it is black folks can't sit down, rent an AirBnB, grill in the park, etc without white folks flipping the hell out? Maybe I should rephrase it - why are ordinary actions by black folks seemingly threatening to white folks?
I'm really perplexed by all of this foolishness and want some discussion around what people are taught and what creates some sense of heightened awareness as it relates to black folks' random daily activities.
Post by Velar Fricative on May 14, 2018 10:55:39 GMT -5
Because white people generally aren't used to *seeing* black people live their lives? I don't know. I think when you don't live near black people, don't work with them, don't do business with them, don't spend time anywhere with them, etc., and all you know and see about black people is through the lens of the media that doesn't show black people unless they're being portrayed negatively (as criminals, as impoverished, etc.), it's downright weird to see black people taking vacations and shit or even just sitting somewhere minding their own business.
I mean, it sounds ridiculously stupid when I type it out but if I had to hazard a guess, that's why. Even in diverse cities like Philadelphia which is still segregated like so many other big diverse cities.
Post by W.T.Faulkner on May 14, 2018 11:06:15 GMT -5
I agree with Velar Fricative . I also think that we white women are raised to be fearful of the world around us, and encouraged to "trust our instincts" (which are racist). Then, when the police are called for no reason, the better-safe-than-sorry excuse can be used as a false vindication.
It's kind of in the same vein as the paranoid white moms who are convinced their children are going to be picked up by child traffickers at Target, when really a guy is just looking at some hoodies a few feet away from your kid.
Privilege -- the state of having relatively little or nothing real to fear -- just means that many white women are creating danger in their own heads.
White women are afraid and use our fear, which is largely irrational, as an excuse to do racist shit like this.
Post by cookiemdough on May 14, 2018 11:09:47 GMT -5
I would also request that this be a discussion of the why, or what you learned from growing up or talking with friends or whatever that brings this out. This is a board primarily comprised of white women, so I don’t want it to be a discussion of “other white people”.
I agree with Velar Fricative . I also think that we white women are raised to be fearful of the world around us, and encouraged to "trust our instincts" (which are racist). Then, when the police are called for no reason, the better-safe-than-sorry excuse can be used as a false vindication.
It's kind of in the same vein as the paranoid white moms who are convinced their children are going to be picked up by child traffickers at Target, when really a guy is just looking at some hoodies a few feet away from your kid.
Privilege -- the state of having relatively little or nothing real to fear -- just means that many white women are creating danger in their own heads.
White women are afraid and use our fear, which is largely irrational, as an excuse to do racist shit like this.
I would also request that this be a discussion of the why, or what you learned from growing up or talking with friends or whatever that brings this out. This is a board primarily comprised of white women, so I don’t want it to be a discussion of “other white people”.
All of it. I can't think of a single aspect of our social or private lives that aren't tied to racism, or making a group of people feel "less than" to elevate our own status.
Some of it is our schools, and what we are taught. I remember being in college and being told that slavery was just a facet of the civil war, which greatly jacked up my thinking for a while (this is a white supremacist trope for those that don't know). Some of it begins before we can make a conscious choice and what schools our parents enroll us in.
Some of it is what we see on the news every day. We'll see the celebrations of white people, and the crimes of black/latinx people (on the news here anyway).
Some of it is the reinforcement of our police officers. Such as how they interact with our community both in their jobs and privately.
Some of it is gender reinforcement.
Some of it is the subtle differences of the housing industry, and how certain neighborhoods are undesirable.
I think what Velar Fricative said is part of it. To address the white women specific part of the question, though, my opinion is that it's the systemic racism and other problems that perpetuate it. I would love to be wrong, but I would hazard a guess that a majority of white women were raised (and still live) in a world where they don't question authority, generally defer to the (mostly white) men in their lives and don't "make waves" and generally live in a bubble of fear of the unknown. And that fear exists among all socioeconomic levels and manifests itself from the lowest level all the way up to the top.
And I don't say this to make an excuse in any way, shape or form, because saying this is how we were taught is the biggest load of BS ever. But I say it as a white woman who was raised in a white AF family but thankfully ended up in fairly diverse schools beginning at young age - I was always the odd one out having friends of other races ethnic backgrounds, always the one getting yelled at for having differing opinions (on everything, this is not racially specific). I felt like I got a lot of "KAdams is getting too big for her britches" growing up because I didn't want to live in the bubble. But for every woman like me, there are countless more who are content to stay there forever, and the cycle repeats itself and gets worse, even.
The factor I've personally seen and heard the most, from where I grew up and from my family and some friends, boils down to ... when white people feel disenfranchised, we look to bring other groups down a peg or two in order to make ourselves feel better about our own situation.
I grew up in an area of working-class people, with a lot of talk about how the old groups of *hardworking, Christian, family-oriented Irish/Italian/Polish people* are fading away and how it's such a shame that "they" are moving in ("they" in this case includes Black, Latinx, Muslim, and Egyptian people) and ruining everything. Meanwhile local government and board of education is corrupt as hell, white kids are fist fighting outside of school and spraying graffiti (but that's just the way these kids are, shrug), white adults are littering and have drug/alcohol problems (but they're doing the best they can!), you name it.
The annual St. Patrick's Day parade is a cherished town tradition (even when someone with a great-great-grandfather from Ireland is peeing on the street and spraying Silly String all over the place for someone else to *maybe* clean up - because it's just being proud of our heritage), but an Eid festival full of families is suspicious and should be suspended because some of the kids took selfies where the local airport was in the background so surely they're plotting something. The white drug-addicted neighbor is an OK guy because he does handywork for us once in a while, but you shouldn't worry about blowing through the red light near the housing complex on the edge of town because black people are just waiting inside to come to your car and rob you (like they have nothing better to do?). The black guy driving a nice car deserves a second look because that just doesn't look right, but the white school board employee who got stopped at an alcohol checkpoint had a cop drive his car home so he wouldn't get in trouble, but it's OK because he's a nice guy and shouldn't get in trouble just for that. Affirmative Action is stealing college funding from the white girl working at ShopRite to put herself through school.
The white people causing trouble and destroying the town are just hardworking people struggling to get by and doing the best they can. "Everyone else" are the ones ruining it. Not us. Can't possibly be us. We work hard and just make mistakes once in a while, or we just have bad luck. That's the difference between Us and Them.
I'm sorry. I don't think this is a sufficient-enough answer.
Post by Chuppathingy on May 14, 2018 11:28:03 GMT -5
"If you see something, say something" is really overplayed. Maybe,on rare occasion, it causes some genuinely well meaning person to call the police come but most of the time it's a cover for people like the bitch at CSU or the one at Yale.
I also think that most white people have ingested the message that racism is OK if you keep it to yourself and cloak it in politeness. In this case I'm thinking of how my mother used to exist her parents racism when I was a kid. "Grandma would never say that in public so it's not ok to correct her" mixed with "we don't see color" nonsense.
I can't pinpoint specific things taught and not taught, but it was always things like we discuss on here. "Good neighborhoods" and "good schools", suburbs = good, city = bad, just thinly veiled racism. But if you're a kid, how do you know what that stuff is really saying? So it sinks in. And even if you aren't openly hostile, it sticks in your subconscious for sure.
You'll get flippant responses like "white people suck" but I know you want more than that so I'll share my disjointed thoughts. I think Velar's right in regards to how segregated our lives still are. This weekend I went to the funeral of a black man. There were several hundred people in the church and I was one of about 5 white people. As I sat there I thought about how even in death, the segregation of our lives comes through. And I thought about how if my funeral were held today the ratio of the races would likely be the exact opposite.
From my experience, I don't remember any overt teachings of racism. I don't remember being taught to fear the black or Hispanic male. My parents certainly didn't use derogatory language towards other races, but I'm certain that like most white people they used micro-aggressions and their unconscious biases came out. And I also didn't grow up knowing many black people so my primary examples were the Huxtables or people on daytime tv, or news stories. My high school class of 600 had maybe a dozen black students.
As an adult, I've come to be able to acknowledge the biases I've held. But pinpointing where and when I picked them up isn't possible. They come from being born and raised in a society where every institution and every industry is designed to uphold the privilege of the white man and woman.
I can only assume that for the women that feel the need to call the police on people just living their lives, it is about fear of something they might not understand (I know this sounds stupid, but I believe there is some truth in it) and to a larger extent, about power. These women, using the police force to cause someone else to change their behavior, gives them a sense of power.
I would also request that this be a discussion of the why, or what you learned from growing up or talking with friends or whatever that brings this out. This is a board primarily comprised of white women, so I don’t want it to be a discussion of “other white people”.
For me, I'd say both of my parents are racist, of the "I have a black friend" variety. They both grew up in the country, although my dad was in the Air Force, which I would think would have opened his eyes a bit. They also both grew up poor, which I think leads to the mentality of not feeling privileged. So that's what I was raised with. I call my mom out on stuff all the time. I don't hear it talking with friends. I talk about it with my kids though. And I learn a lot here. I work in the rural south, and I can absolutely see some of the women I work with calling police because of nefarious behavior like waiting for a meeting or packing up after vacation. I think it would be framed as trying to be helpful. Like, "Oh, I just saw someone I hadn't seen before loading up their car and I was worried that Mr. White guy was being robbed! I didn't even notice they were black!"
I agree with Velar Fricative . I also think that we white women are raised to be fearful of the world around us, and encouraged to "trust our instincts" (which are racist). Then, when the police are called for no reason, the better-safe-than-sorry excuse can be used as a false vindication.
It's kind of in the same vein as the paranoid white moms who are convinced their children are going to be picked up by child traffickers at Target, when really a guy is just looking at some hoodies a few feet away from your kid.
Privilege -- the state of having relatively little or nothing real to fear -- just means that many white women are creating danger in their own heads.
White women are afraid and use our fear, which is largely irrational, as an excuse to do racist shit like this.
I think that this is so spot on. We are for sure raised to be afraid of the world around us and then when we are so privileged living in our pristine homes in our white neighborhoods with everything perfect, we know that we should be fearing something, and history, the media, our communities, etc., point to people of color.
But back to specifically what Velar Fricative said--I grew up in NH and now live in VT. I believe these are the two whitest states in the US. People up here think they are liberal and not racist and get so fucking offended when I explain that is because these people have never actually experienced LIVING with a black community. Like, seeing a person of color here STILL gets (liberal) white people saying things like, "oh, the black person," when describing a person of color because they stand out so much. It is infuriating. (Example: "oh, her boyfriend is black." instead of just, "oh, her boyfriend does XYZ for a living." Like, the color of their skin is the descriptor used because we see people of color so infrequently in this region)
Can ya'll talk about specific examples of "fear the world around you?"
Like, I know I'm cognizant of odd behavior or someone following me, but not the random guy sitting next to the store. I look at him and think - he's just chilling - not OMG LOITERING! CALL THE COPS.
Post by turnipthebeet on May 14, 2018 11:38:17 GMT -5
Why are we so afraid of black people? On the surface, because most of us grew up without much interaction with people who are different from us, and Were taught to fear differences. And the extent of conversations I heard about racism was that it was abolished after the civil war, and then again after the civil rights movement, and now black people need to get over it because my friends and I had never owned slaves, so what do we have to apologize for?
But I think deep down it’s because it’s understood that if black people organize and rise up, we could become the oppressed and end up treated the way we have treated black people. And apparently rather than apologizing and attempting to start making amends/reparations, we are going to dig our heels in and continue/increase the behaviors that have brought us to this point, further increasing the underlying fear.
I am sorry. White people need to be held accountable.
I would also request that this be a discussion of the why, or what you learned from growing up or talking with friends or whatever that brings this out. This is a board primarily comprised of white women, so I don’t want it to be a discussion of “other white people”.
For me, I'd say both of my parents are racist, of the "I have a black friend" variety. They both grew up in the country, although my dad was in the Air Force, which I would think would have opened his eyes a bit. They also both grew up poor, which I think leads to the mentality of not feeling privileged.
I think this is a big thing where I live as well. There is a large poor population and it is also predominantly white here. So when these folks who have had no exposure to anything other than this right here and right now, no other cultures, etc, hear that "it is worse for people of color" they just think (and say) "well, I am not privileged, white people don't have privilege either, it's not just black people that have problems."
Why are we so afraid of black people? On the surface, because most of us grew up without much interaction with people who are different from us, and Were taught to fear differences. And the extent of conversations I heard about racism was that it was abolished after the civil war, and then again after the civil rights movement, and now black people need to get over it because my friends and I had never owned slaves, so what do we have to apologize for?
But I think deep down it’s because it’s understood that if black people organize and rise up, we could become the oppressed and end up treated the way we have treated black people. And apparently rather than apologizing and attempting to start making amends/reparations, we are going to dig our heels in and continue/increase the behaviors that have brought us to this point, further increasing the underlying fear.
I am sorry. White people need to be held accountable.
This isn't just about being held accountable. That's not my goal here. My goal is to have people share why this behavior feels so common. What is it about black people being black that triggers a reaction to call the police? What standard of behavior are we holding black folks to, but not white folks? Why is this the case? What have you been told or believe about black people that makes you clutch your purse or have your kid run to the other side of an elevator when you show up in it?
Can ya'll talk about specific examples of "fear the world around you?"
Like, I know I'm cognizant of odd behavior or someone following me, but not the random guy sitting next to the store. I look at him and think - he's just chilling - not OMG LOITERING! CALL THE COPS.
So, this is not specifically race related, but more "male" related.
Whenever my dad would leave town for a conference (or for awhile when my parents split up), my mom would legit move furniture in front of the doors and put stuff in front of the windows to prevent people from breaking in. Like, we lived in a town that had maybe 4 crimes a year. There was one cop in town and a population of 900. There was nothing to be afraid of.
And yet my mom was terrified of being alone at night in our home without my dad there. It is something that has stuck with me FOR YEARS.
Again, not specifically race related, but I also remember when a (white) guy came to sell dictionaries or some shit door to door. My mom called the police after he left because she didn't trust that he wasn't casing out our house.
Can ya'll talk about specific examples of "fear the world around you?"
Like, I know I'm cognizant of odd behavior or someone following me, but not the random guy sitting next to the store. I look at him and think - he's just chilling - not OMG LOITERING! CALL THE COPS.
Right. It's a level of paranoia and tattling that makes no good sense to me. Let them people live.
Oh this is easy! We white women have convinced ourselves that we are so desired and precious that people literally want to snatch us and our children. Not only that, in rural Nebraska every night on the evening news were mug shots of black and Hispanic men who had committed various crimes - breaking into cars, robbing gas stations, assault. White mug shots too, but if you don’t know any black or Hispanic men in real life, then this is what you associate them with. I was surrounded by white men, so it was easy to dismiss the men on the news as outliers, but the black and Hispanic men, that was sort of the extent of my exposure to them. They didn’t look like bill Cosby, Uncle Phil, or Steve winselow, so that was the connection made.
I think white people are raised to think they basically own the place -- "the place" being all of America and any space they occupy within it. It's just a feeling of supremacy, plain and simple. It's the long tradition of racism in Western culture, of feeling white people are the most advanced, the "winners," and know what's best.
Some people come out and say this, but most of the time it is communicated more subtly, but hegemonically, in textbooks, media, and basically everything we come into contact with culturally. I mean, it's all pure bullshit but 95% of white people don't stop to examine that. When they see something they don't like or don't feel included in, they feel like they are justified in their attempt to return the world to what's comfortable for them.
Post by sporklemotion on May 14, 2018 11:47:21 GMT -5
I think it’s partly fear and partly entitlement.
I was listening to a podcast— I think it was the Reveal one about redlining, but it could have been a different one— that talked about how the media rarely depicts people of color as middle or working class— stories generally show very poor (stories about state assistance, homelessness) or very rich (celebrities, etc.) . So there’s a perception that there isn’t much of a middle class. If a person lives in a homogenous neighborhood that exacerbates the issue. I think I was raised in this kind of bubble; I didn’t know many POC in my town.
So when people are at their middle class hangouts, they think that POC look out of place and they become judgy or suspicious. They believe that uncomfortable = unsafe so they act on it. They figure the person couldn’t possibly belong there.
I think there is a culture of fear that is promoted in the US.
I moved to the US after university, and while I moved from Canada (so, not _too_ different, but different enough that every now and then even now, almost a couple decades later, I have "wtf" moments when something doesn't compute), I moved her as an adult. Racial issues were particularly jarring, I think, because I didn't have the same childhood background to introduce coded language.
I remember hearing warnings about certain parts of town, I remember a road trip where the dudes in the car wouldn't stop at a gas station to let me go pee, and made me hold it until we were in a "better part of town". I notice how often people get confused when my barely-accented-english speaking pasty-white person starts talking about having to deal with immigration, and how those policies might affect me. It hasn't necessarily been glaring, but there are little things that fall into coded language that seems to perpetuate the status quo.
I also think the US (at least, white culture in the US) is based on fear. Fear of the other, fear of losing privilege, fear of bodily harm, fear of losing one's position, fear of losing one's employment, fear of this, that, and all the other things. And the current post 9/11 climate exacerbates that - everything and anything can be a potential threat.
And I think that fear impacts a lot of the white brain. And, if anything and everything can be a threat, than anything obviously "other" is likely a threat, because it's not something that commonly intersects one's life. And it's easy to fall into this line of thinking. It's reinforced by the 24/7 news cycle, by gossip and rumours and mass media with it's focus on legal/police/emergency type shows that make crazy oddball situations seem more likely.
Can ya'll talk about specific examples of "fear the world around you?"
Like, I know I'm cognizant of odd behavior or someone following me, but not the random guy sitting next to the store. I look at him and think - he's just chilling - not OMG LOITERING! CALL THE COPS.
So when I talk about the fear, it's like this nebulous fear of the unknown that I was raised with. We were low income, so people with money were unknown and my family always had negative things to say about them. So I grew up thinking that rich people only cared about money and weren't genuine and couldn't be trusted. My family never traveled, aside from some trips my grandparents took my mom on back to their home country. But as an independent adult, she never went anywhere. Our one big family trip was, you guessed it, freaking Disneyworld. They never had desire to see the world outside of what we lived in, so they were suspect of people who did. It was very much the thought of "this life is good enough for us, it should be good enough for everyone." I don't know how else to explain it, really. I was just always made to feel like trying new things or wanting to do things that weren't generally accepted white activities like sports was inherently wrong.
I promise that when I say this, I am not trying to be rude or flippant, but it's something that just always sticks with me in life and it's an apt analogy, at least for my life and how I was raised. But I always think about food. We ate pretty much the standard American diet of crap growing up. Hamburgers, hot dogs, frozen meals, steak, potatoes, very little in the way of vegetables and almost no ethnic food other than what my immigrant grandparents cooked. But at my house, my father ruled the roost and he wouldn't even try new foods. So my mom never cooked any. I know this is basic as hell, but I didn't even try Chinese takeout until I was a teenager and eating at friends' houses. When I'd suggest it at home, it was shot down, and definitely in the "we don't eat that here" tone. Like it would be a moral failing to add other cultures to our lives, because we were Americans, damn it and this is what we eat.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but I still recognize it when I see some of my extended family. One time I mentioned a trip I had just returned from and one of my cousins actually asked me "but what did you eat?"...and it just made me sad. Because that fear extends to everything and is going to keep people in their small neighborhood, in their small lives and afraid of anything different or any change.
I agree with the irrational fear part, and think a big part of that is that there is a lot of conditioning around beliefs that white women are such prizes that people are trying to kidnap and harm us right and left, which is reinforced in storytelling and media. This, of course, is a means of control and a form of internalized misogyny.
This same dynamic also results in a deep inability to cope with any discomfort at all in any way, and we are told that we shouldn't have to ever just sit with discomfort or question it but should immediately seek escape from that.
So you add onto that the minimal exposure to black people in our everyday lives plus hearing racist narratives in the media about violence in black communities, and the conditioned helplessness leads to an inability to rationally assess the risk in an actual situation.
Can ya'll talk about specific examples of "fear the world around you?"
Like, I know I'm cognizant of odd behavior or someone following me, but not the random guy sitting next to the store. I look at him and think - he's just chilling - not OMG LOITERING! CALL THE COPS.
I think we (white women) are taught that we are targets because we are so desirable. And I don’t mean sexually. It’s kind of impressed upon us that we are just at constant risk. Watch your purse, cross the street if you feel uncomfortable, etc.
If someone sits down next to me at a Starbucks where there are 5 other empty tables away from me, the only explanation is that that person wants something from me. My wallet, they’re going to follow me to my car, etc. the explanation cannot be that he just...sat down.
We are taught that our children are precious and must be guarded from strangers (never mind the risks posed by family members). So if someone smiles at your children, they must be trying to kidnap them.
I am not sure where that “teaching” comes from because my mother isn’t a person to react that way or discuss things like that (if she thinks that way she doesn’t say it) but I know it’s a large part of the mentality of white women.
I can't pinpoint specific things taught and not taught, but it was always things like we discuss on here. "Good neighborhoods" and "good schools", suburbs = good, city = bad, just thinly veiled racism. But if you're a kid, how do you know what that stuff is really saying? So it sinks in. And even if you aren't openly hostile, it sticks in your subconscious for sure.
The coded language is a big part. It has to be coded so people don't get accused of being racist. I was just thinking about how during discussions of certain neighborhoods among white people, there will inevitably be jokes about getting shot while wandering around. I won't sit here and say I've never made those jokes or sat quietly while they were made around me, because I'm guilty of both. So yeah, people assume black people just shoot each other and commit "black-on-black crimes" especially when there's no white person around to tell them they're wrong. I think this all goes along with white women wanting to "keep the peace" too.
The other part is that white women are taught that cops are 1) handsome men who are there to protect them (yes that's sexist), and 2) someone to look up to.
And yes, I pulled the "white women" card because this is 100% not what I was taught. I still get sick to my stomach if I have to call (3 am piano playing not withstanding).
I can't pinpoint specific things taught and not taught, but it was always things like we discuss on here. "Good neighborhoods" and "good schools", suburbs = good, city = bad, just thinly veiled racism. But if you're a kid, how do you know what that stuff is really saying? So it sinks in. And even if you aren't openly hostile, it sticks in your subconscious for sure.
The coded language is a big part. It has to be coded so people don't get accused of being racist. I was just thinking about how during discussions of certain neighborhoods among white people, there will inevitably be jokes about getting shot while wandering around. I won't sit here and say I've never made those jokes or sat quietly while they were made around me, because I'm guilty of both. So yeah, people assume black people just shoot each other and commit "black-on-black crimes" especially when there's no white person around to tell them they're wrong. I think this all goes along with white women wanting to "keep the peace" too.
I agree with this. Like I said, as a kid, you can't really suss out the coded language, but you'd sure as shit understand the literal words if adults were using them. It's a problem if you're raised hearing the coded language or the bad jokes and then you get to adulthood, if you don't have any black friends or coworkers or teachers, what is it that would be the motivation to push you outside of that world on your own? I don't know the answer to that.
Because white people generally aren't used to *seeing* black people live their lives? I don't know. I think when you don't live near black people, don't work with them, don't do business with them, don't spend time anywhere with them, etc., and all you know and see about black people is through the lens of the media that doesn't show black people unless they're being portrayed negatively (as criminals, as impoverished, etc.), it's downright weird to see black people taking vacations and shit or even just sitting somewhere minding their own business.
I mean, it sounds ridiculously stupid when I type it out but if I had to hazard a guess, that's why. Even in diverse cities like Philadelphia which is still segregated like so many other big diverse cities.