And it has an effect on blacks and all other races that see that stuff. Although it's not just blacks, but the irrationaI fears and hate that some white people have about blacks is the worst.
These stereotyped go straight into the subconscious and are almost impossible to eliminate. Without going into the worst of them, I'll stick to the more mundane. I remember network shows and also movies where they routinely killed off the black guy who deserved as much to live, but I noticed another theme in those as well, about who was disposable.
The white professional or wealthy person and their family always survived. The working white people and people of color, just went into the meat grinder, their worth clearly less. All the empathy through character development was spent with the white characters as the definition of humans with feelings.
Generations have seen movies about 'upper class' families and their lives, dripping with sentimentality. I'm not saying there have been no improvements, but I think this underlies a certain part of people's psyche, that POC simply don't feel love and care as others, thus are not trustworthy and should be feared.
I know in my personal life this is not at all true, and I think most people willing to give each other a chance, will find that all people are as intelligent, generous, honorable and loving as anyone could be. So I want to see many more of these stories, because they reflect my life and might change the hearts of many. I would like to see a string of such stories, really.
The story of Michelle and Barack Obama coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, and in his case, a broken home and a mother who died from cancer, is a common theme that the GOP rejects for all people, not just people of color. In particular, they have gone after single mothers. But we have a POTUS who is essentially after his father left them, a single mother, right there in the White House. And Michelle's father was a blue collar worker. These people just don't count in their reality because of their circumstances. But they are the epitomy of the so-called hard working success story. I feel sorry for the people who refuse to recognize that the couple in the White House is what Americans say they believe in, yet reject them for spurious reasons.
They worked to achieve professional lives by holding close to their dreams, against the odds and with grace and respect. That is a threat to the racist mentality, it means blacks are just as good at everything they assumed was special to them. In other words, their hatred for the Obamas is envy and fear, that perhaps they will not stay on top in the rat race and be rich, which is how they define their quality of life. But I say, why would one be satisfied to be merely a rat in a race and not more? As Obama said:
Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
This POTUS is the greatest example for youth of all colors that I have seen. And part of the true nobiility of the Obama family is that it really is not about them. They are doing this not as much for themselves as everyone. For black youth, you see it in their eyes on the campaign trail. He is the living reality of what their lives could be, not the gangster culture that has been pushed, and it's claimed that many backers of that genre are white media owners who want to denigrate black society. What they ended up doing was denigrating the entire society, but what did they care, if it didn't affect their status?
I used to watch news reports growing and it's still that way on cable television, where a child had been abducted or killed. If they were white, all tears and sympathy and tons of air time. If they were people of color, a brief moment of a family member screaming in anguish and then nothing. The contrast in the amount of anxious concern is obvious. Most of the time, there was no questioning of the relatives at all, no time spent on them. Like they didn't exist.
I remember asking myself, 'Is this to mean that they don't love their family or children as much, because we never see them?' I think that was exactly what media did, dehumanized them. As Obama's staff told the people he went to comfort in CO, time is not an issue. But the more time a society focuses on the feelings of a group, the more attention, the more value. The same with the Trayvon case, little of their anguish, lots of sympathy for the guy who shot him. Who although by some archaic reasoning is not 'really white,' is getting the same treatment.
Someone made the analogy here about the bias the media has put into our minds. It was something like 'mass murderer or shooting': black = thug; brown = terrorist; white = mentally ill. IOW, white people don't terrorize and don't rob, rape and kill if they are in their right minds. The others, well, they might do it as a matter of course, or their genetic makeup, is what that says. And I'm tired of these lies. True, we can't all get along all the time, but we need to admit the good and the bad in all of us, not assign those qualities to race, class or anything else.
None of those labels should be applied to any one group, the plain facts should be put out there. But they aren't, and they should be. We need to be judging people on their character and not their skin color, always, it's going to be hard to do without positive examples to push back the old ones.
Okay, that's my reply and I'll bet it's much too long. But I'm very happy that you posted this. If you find more, please post.
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