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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums“OK, so what would convince you that racism is real?”
A great article by Adam Mansbach, author of the NYT best seller, Go The Fuck To Sleep.
It's long but a great read. Very interesting to see the differences in the "reality" of different people, for different reasons.
I didnt look any of that up just now; I keep facts like this handy because Im a dude who speaks about race and whiteness and politics in public sometimes and I like to stay strapped. But Ive constructed a life and a career that keeps me completely isolated from those white peoplereal white people. I dont even have awkward Thanksgiving conversations with some crotchety old-fuck uncle who thinks the president is a secret Muslim.
But it wasn't really okay. ...
It's a very good look at a reality many of us would prefer not to face. It's worth the read.
Salon link OK, so what would convince you that racism is real?
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)training and getting a job, say the last two years of high school. That would bring it out real quick. Even the thought of it...but I enjoyed it.
A bit silly, but it makes the point quit well, I believe.
marym625
(17,997 posts)Would see the racism if they had a black child in their home for a couple years while the kid worked?
Color me jade but I am pretty sure that the racism would be brought out more than the family understanding it better.
Or am I completely off the mark on what you meant?
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)Sorry. My cognitive thought process is on the fritz this morning. Need more sleep
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)libdem4life
(13,877 posts)brush
(53,784 posts)if you're serious a white kid living his last two years of high school in a black household and going to the same high school as the black kids.
A disadvantage black kid living with a suburban white family would probably get the most immediate benefit but the white kid living with a black family, IMO, would get the most lasting life lessons.
The article is well worth the read, btw. And there is a url at the end where other similar material can be found.
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)rhetorical. The intent was to measure the reaction, i.e. dormant racism, of PC white folk confronted with a black young man in their home. It's not entirely new...as it was briefly tried way back in trying to segregate white schools, but it did not work for many reasons.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)especially if the white kid lived with a non-poor Black family. If the white kid went to live with a poor Black family, everything but the most egregious conflict(?)/incident(?) would be viewed as poverty-based, as is so common here.
brush
(53,784 posts)The white kid would learn different things in a middle class black family or an affluent one for that matter, than with a poor black family.
All three would give the white kid a whole lot to chew on. He/she would have a tougher time sticking out two years in the latter case, and as you say, it would take a wise black family's counseling and a receptive kid to distinguish and separate the just plain racial issues that spring up from the purely economic ones.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)I'm digging this author.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)For some reason I can't excerpt passages to place here and comment on them. But there were two (or three) passages that, when taken together, ought to give people great pause to consider the/their "economic (in)justice and social (in)justice are the same thing" ... the former will birth the latter, position that appears on DU so frequently.
I'll have to wait until later ... If I remember, and depending on the direction this thread goes ... I'm learning (no, actually acknowledging and giving weight to) stuff about this place.
marym625
(17,997 posts)Truly a beautiful response.
I wish I could write like this guy does.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)I engaged in way too many of these discussions before I came to understand that years of selective memory produce a lot of people who know they're right, who know that they're decent, rational and knowledgeable, and who know I"m a nut who is beyond reaching by reason.
Regarding this apparently inevitably brief relationship, studies show that ideological compatibility tops by far education and income, and no doubt other factors I don't remember, in how couples choose each other. Poor Jessie, already clueless before being accused of involvement in a racist situation in the bar. I felt her frustration like it was yesterday.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)See a good number of the response I receive on DU!
marym625
(17,997 posts)I didn't but I have certainly heard it often enough.
I'm not exactly sure if you are saying you see it now, "the light" so to speak, or you are feeling Jessie still.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)It is very difficult to live a life in America today that doesn't increase the power and volume of those spreading the most hate and racism across the world.
It can be a difficult pill to swallow for people of any background. But none more so than those stepped in one of privilege and ignorance.
marym625
(17,997 posts)This guy has said it better than any other white guy I have ever read. Or at least it spoke to me more
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)being in a place where it's directed at them. Not sure where that would be, though.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)I don't think so.
Remember how the conservative social safety net hater, changes his/her tune when faced with having to access those services ... don't they tend to limit their new found empathy to just those services they require?
Why would this be any different?
marym625
(17,997 posts)I think I was extremely lucky having the parents I did. And that my mom taught in an all black high school in Chicago and that she is the person she is.
I don't know what it will take to wake up the country as a whole. Maybe it's just impossible. But I very much think this article speaks to the issues very well.