Debt or “I ain’t own no slaves.”
People tend to be very supportive until it looks like it will cost them money or opportunity in order to change things. Then they yell, “I don’t owe you shit!” Or, near as bad, are apathetic. It doesn’t matter whether it’s about race, gender, sexuality, climate change, world peace, or whose turn it is to buy dinner. People tend to be supportive when all it costs is the echo. As soon as it costs something tangible to right a wrong, from children to adults, the negotiation ends.
“I didn’t enslave anybody. My ancestors didn’t enslave anybody. They just got here in the fifties.”
I often hear that white people don’t know any of their ancestors past their parents somehow. Like none of them had grandparents or great-grandparents. I hear that this part of their family didn’t arrive in the country until after something, as if one line builds a family. Kids do that, pretending that they had nothing to do with the broken thing.
“I just got here!”
You can work for Pepsi without owning Pepsi. You can buy, sell, and consume Pepsi all without owning the company.
Here are some honest people to put that behavior to shame. I met a couple of the descendants of the people who owned my ancestors. Nice couple of folks. They took me out to dinner and we talked. They owned it uncomfortably at first and then we talked and had a good time.
I met another guy, a former doctor who does Civil War reenactment medicine (for both sides). He was helping me research my book. His ancestors not only owned some of my ancestors from the Eastern Shore, but also Frederick Douglass.
These people were very civil, very nice, and very open. They owned their history. And they understand the world as it is now as well. They get it. Not saying that the rest of you are all lying. But a lot of you are.
Some white people definitely arrived in the US after the Civil War, after the World Wars, or just a few years ago. You still arrived in a country where your skin color placed you, by default, a class above an enormous population that had been here for hundreds of years.
Your grandfather did a thing? If your grandfather was black, do you think he’d have been able to do that thing? At what point in your ancestry could a black person have done what your ancestors did? This is one of those integrity checks. I would expect someone to say, “At any point,” or, “If he worked hard,” or “Not if he was all sensitive about everything.” These are the kinds of things that place the onus on the people deliberately placed on the outside of opportunity.
“That wouldn’t be fair. Pick yourself up. It’s better for you.”
When this is genuine (it is sometimes), it comes from people for whom the system works exactly as it should. You’re smart, you work hard, you take some risks, and you do well. You’re dumb, you’re lazy, or you play it too safe, and you’re stuck where you are or slide down some. Sounds great. Everyone else in the country (except people born much better off than you) want the system to work for them exactly the same way that it works for you.
I love watching Forged In Fire. If I had ever had the space in my life for it, I could totally see starting a little forge in my backyard and making knives as a hobby. Especially since most of the knives the contestants choose to make (when they have the choice) are the same three from the same culture. Which is to say, Euro-American. I’d like to make some other options.
But when they are asked what they’ll do with $10K, they’re not like, “Pay down some debt. Post my brother’s bail. Buy some food for the hard times. Set it aside for my kid’s college. Take a shot at a real business.” They’re going to Disney or buying a big blue power hammer. Which is to say, they don’t actually need an extra $10K.
Despite the fact that many of them talk in such a way to appear aligned with an image of a poor country fella (yes, obviously they are overwhelmingly white men from red areas), they are doing financially just fine. Which is great. I want that for them. They seem like nice guys. I just also want that for everyone else, too. Everyone else should also get to start a hobby that is fun and potentially lucrative. But they can’t. Because other people have to eat and experimenting with a hobby isn’t worth the risk.
Same goes for every gun hobbyist I watch. Guns are an expensive hobby that these folks can engage in and justify to their family. But they’re still hobbies. And they can afford this expensive hobby of buying, shooting, maintaining, and trading. They’re doing fine.
These people started from the middle and finished in the middle. And that’s fine. And they are happy that the opportunities provided by the middle landed them comfortably in the middle. And that is also fine. If they scramble for more, there’s a chance they’ll do even better. If they get lazy or stupid, there’s a chance they’ll slip a bit. But generally they all stay about in the middle. Like I said, All fine.
This doesn’t apply to everyone, of course. Some white folks are just making it. Just barely. You know how you’re just making it? I know there’s no small number of you just making it. I’ve met you. Now think about the black version of you. They’re not. The black you is definitely not making it.
Poor white people, the system is shorting you, too. Just differently. Stop putting up with it. You have a grievance and it has nothing to do with what this country owes black people. It’s how this country deals with all people who are not already wealthy.
When Roman citizens were starving, instead of feeding the people, the state put on lavish gladiatorial pageants in the Colosseum. There was plenty of money to do this, they just wouldn’t spend it to improve the lives of the citizens. But they would use it to distract the citizens for long enough for them to forget that they were starving.
Our society is a fire hose of meaningless distraction. All the while, the citizens are starving, the frog is boiling in the pot. Look up from your distraction and from your own self-interest and see that things are not right.
Sorry, mixed metaphors. I do them.
And when we see that things are not right, we need to be able to communicate that to the people in our lives, both the people that need to be cautious and the people that need to fix it. If people in your life have hurt you or if you have hurt other people, you have to be able to have those kinds of difficult conversations.
My ability to negotiate social situations is roughly equivalent to an ATV zipping across a minefield. I’m going to hit something. Still, I can generally manage these conversations well-enough. So I’m confident that if my dumb ass can do it, the rest of you can do it much better.
People have to have enough faith in the people in their lives to be honest with them about their experiences with them. Because, if you do have good people in your life, they will hear you and work to make it better.
People have to have faith enough in the people in their lives that when someone is honest with them about their experiences with them, that they will hear them instead of finding ways for this problem to go away quietly.
We are trying to be honest with you about our experiences. We are not distant and removed. We are standing next to you, and we are telling you that these things are so.
And the people who steadfastly, bullheadedly continue to be obtuse in the face of the overwhelming? Well, with an inability to communicate with civility or in good faith, I imagine their personal relationships are held together in patches by chewing gum and spite.
If we could do one thing that would set everything right for everyone that has been disenfranchised, I would say do it. Short of that, I have to focus on a group that has been disenfranchised by this country uniquely, continuously, and with no real end in sight.
Essence
I’ve been beating up on white people for a little bit here. Let me take a minute to say something nice.
When I was a kid, a white family stopped by around Christmas and dropped off a couple of presents. They had somehow learned that we didn’t have very many that year. They were giving us some help, taking money they could have spent on themselves, to make sure that the difference between their Christmas and ours wasn’t so huge. Fire truck, if you’re curious. We really appreciated it.
I’ve met a lot of people like that over the years, black, white, and more, who are out there trying to make things… I won’t say better, but more fair. I should call them all out individually one of these days.
I ended up with this internal conflict in the years that followed. I didn’t want help, I wanted to help people. But I didn’t want people to know that I was helping them. I didn’t want the reason for my help to be that I wanted thanks or praise. I just wanted to know that people were better tomorrow than they were yesterday. That’s the thing, the very thing there.
We don’t want extra. We want the system to work the same for us. It seems to work pretty fairly for middle class white males. You work hard and use your brain, you do well. You’re lazy and stupid, not so well, but you don’t starve and die. Plenty of room in there for hobbies. Doctors, cops, schools, and restaurants treat you like a real person. TV and movies have depictions of you as good guys and bad guys, complex and simple, main character and side character, and in every genre imaginable.
You get to grow up with a sense that you can do absolutely anything and learn how to make use of that opportunity when and if it comes. The roads are clear and the doors will open if you just knock. And you might hit it big if the stars line up. That’s great. We want that. Whatever is necessary to get that needs to happen.
Balance is hard to achieve because it is hard to perceive and hard to define. The pendulum swings from one side to the other and it looks like it’s going to pass the middle by a lot and we focus on that. But then it swings back and forth and back again, losing energy, until it rests at the center. At balance. At correct.
We don’t want or need more than anyone else. We just want that.
That’s it. The same thing.
We want to be able to step onto the mat without a shackle on our ankle, without an arm tied behind our back, without a crowd throwing glass bottles at us, without hope of victory already beaten out of us, with the same access to training and equipment and opportunities as the other guy. So that, when someone wins, there isn’t an asterisk next to their name that they can’t see, anyway.
And when we say, “Can I at least let my arm out and get this thing off my ankle,” maybe we don’t want to hear you complain that you didn’t ask to have the shackle you’re not wearing removed so why should we.
What To Do
I personally have no idea. Smarter people than me have better ideas. Ask them. Because honestly, I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot. It’s hard to do in such a way that maintains some sort of positive vibe in this country.
And, because of how neglectful our entire economic model is of people who are not already financially solvent, there are a lot of people who need help who aren’t black. Black people need a just system and should have some compensation for the tremendous, ongoing advantage that white Americans have enjoyed for far too long at the cost of black people. But if this country is going to work, the result of whatever we all decide (and we all need to decide it together) needs to be that when a new citizen steps onto the field, it is level, it is fair…
All of this sucks. It’s a big bowl of shit and it’s still steaming. Reparations isn’t just about slavery. It’s about the shit we’re still dealing with today. Generation after generation. If white conservatives had to eat this bowl of shit, they’d have joined up with Malcolm X and stormed the streets with guns.
Think about that, the most angry, aggressive people in this protest are the people who would be conservatives if they were white. And they’d have been killed. Because a few expensive rifles and a pile of airsoft gear is nothing compared to what a militarized police force or the actual US military can bring.
Writing all of this is a big risk for me. I don’t like being this visible or vulnerable. I don’t like talking about race. I don’t like making people uncomfortable around me. I do that by accident all the time, anyway. I would recommend not being black, politically moderate, and socially awkward all at the same time if you can help it.
This is emotionally taxing, even for me, a person who doesn’t experience a lot of emotion. I just have to put all of this out there and trust that the people reading this are going to take what I say in good faith. But I know how people are and expect this risk to be punished in some form or another.
I like to end these things with a little positivity and hope. Not this time, though. If we could hear good sense when it was said to us, clearly, rationally, and politely, we wouldn’t still be on a death spiral with climate change or covid or poverty or health care or the military industrial complex. And certainly not with racial inequity.
But we can’t hear things unless they are shouted at us and shoved in our faces. Because we treat someone politely letting us know that something is a problem as if they were shouting. Because we (and really I mean you, and you know who you are) lack perspective.
If
Some of you mean well and, with the overwhelming material coming out, you’re slow to get it. But you’re getting it. Eventually. But damned slowly. I appreciate it and will continue to try to give you the space you need to get it. But… you know… get it faster.
Some of you are stupid. And evil. I just can’t help you.
- – If you were more angry at a football player respectfully kneeling during the National Anthem than you were at unarmed black people being killed by police, then you don’t care about the country. You care about watching your minstrel show without politics.
- – If you think Dave Chappelle is hilarious, but never changed your position about racism, I wonder what other things you find funny.
- – If you Identify with Archie Bunker, then you probably missed the progressive message of the show. It was about the younger generation teaching the older intolerant generation how not to be assholes. It’s as stupid as identifying with Elmer Fudd on gun issues.
- – If you liked Andy Griffith, then you shouldn’t have a problem understanding how police are supposed to solve 90% of problems. If you don’t get how ridiculous they portrayed Barney, the one guy with a gun (played by a former Marine who got it), then you don’t get the problem with the cartoon villain look that police have adopted. Long live the Galactic Empire, I guess?
- – If you think people who attack cops should be shot, while leaning on videos of cops having dangerous encounters as proof that everyone stopped needs to be treated the same as that lethal threat, then you are un-remembering every video of a white man pointing a gun at a cop and not dying, every white woman punching and hitting and attempting to stab a cop, and protests of fascism in the streets where people threw rocks at cops. Because I’ve seen all of those, too.
- – If you think that 1% of cops are causing 99% of problems, and that people wouldn’t have problems with cops if they didn’t break the law, then you don’t understand how law enforcement works well enough to be practicing it.
- – If you hear “defund the police” as “disband the police” after all of the explanation that has been done on the matter, then you’re probably still hung up on conservatives’ continuing effort to defund Planned Parenthood. It may be your intent to end PP. It is not the intent of black people to end the police. Black people get that police are important. Policies, practices, and accountability are what this is about.
- – If your response to criticism and demand for a conversation is to stomp your boots and not do your job, then you’re a fucking child.
- – If you think that the sheep complaining that the sheep dog has killed too many sheep while looking for the wolf is “sensitive” or “petty,” maybe the sheep dog would rather be a wolf. Maybe we need a new sheep dog.
- – If you are arguing (because of course you don’t actually believe this… unless you’re stupid) that the Confederate flag isn’t a symbol of racism, then I’m guessing you don’t have a problem with the swastika or the Taliban flag.
- – If you are trying to gain support by pretending that WWII memorials as part of the desire to take down Confederate Memorials, then I’d say you’re running out of arguments.
- – If you think people get offended at silly things, yeah, we’re offended about dying and having our prospects cut short because people in power put an opportunity ceiling over us. You should keep being sensitive about interruptions to your ball game.
- – If you have dug through hundreds of thousands of videos of people lambasting the system as it stands to find the three black people willing to post on the record in support of your position, then I assume you also haven’t noticed the warmer weather we’re experiencing or the curvature of the Earth.
- – Lastly, if you think people who have been through what black people have been through in the country are snowflakes, what the fuck have you suffered and endured and come out the other side of with your humanity intact? If you’re threatened by people taking a knee or taking down a cartoon, then you have no grit. Find you a black woman and get you some perspective.
The notion that these people standing up and fighting for their rights and others, recognizing when they have been wronged, and trying to find the answer isn’t an indication of remarkable personal responsibility, civility, and maturity could only be said by someone deliberately deactivating those same parts of themselves in order to defend an indefensible position.
Here’s a famous movie speech.
Like other shows, movies, etc mentioned here, the people who are the problem watch this and love it. Hell, I love it. But they also MISS THE FUCKING POINT. The people who made that movie did such a good job giving fair representation of the position of Colonel Jessup that people miss the point of that movie: that Colonel Jessup, while perhaps well-intentioned, was wrong. Damned wrong. Confusing people on your side with the enemy is wrong. It is the kind of thing that people do when they have power but none of the big picture calm that comes from the suffering and challenge that spoiled princes and princesses never get.
So watch the movie again and try to get it. Watch Archie Bunker, Star Trek, Dave Chappelle, Andy Griffith, and A Few Good Men. To those of you refusing to get it, watch them again and get it, ya dumb, evil asshole. Because this is the last polite notice.
For those of you that take these last observations really personally, I want you to remember something: Everything that we say online, everything that is captured in video, will be preserved indefinitely. In forty or one hundred years, people are going to look back on this and consider it all. They will look at the evidence available at this time. They will consider what became of racial tension, gender and sexuality inequality, health care, climate change, and everything that has transpired in this day.
They will look at the actions taken. And they will find what you said, what you thought, and what you did. They will see you as we see the worst citizens in footage from the 50s. If this is you, if you are this stupid, if you are this evil, then you have positioned yourself and your family on the wrong side of history. And history, she is watching.
I want to make it clear that these riots are not because black people “think” that there is inequity toward them in America. These riots are because black people “know” that there is inequity in America, have data to prove it, and are done waiting for an equal shot at the American dream. It is 2020 and we are done.
I understand that this is hard. Hard to see. Hard to understand. Hard to accept. But it is real, it is undeniable, and it needs to be addressed. I don’t want this post to scare you off of having the hard conversations with me or anyone else. It’s hard and we get that it’s hard. Maybe you have some perspective that I haven’t considered. I’m one guy. I don’t pretend to own the whole case. But you need to come with good faith. You need to address issues like generational inequality and inequity. You need to, even if you’re not living like Bill Gates, be able acknowledge the obvious disparity. And you need to come with something other than, “There are other problems in the country, too.” If you’re a decent person and you’ve got those things sitting on your tongue, let it spit and I’ll do my best to respond to it with the same good faith.
If you cannot see your way to being honest with yourself, if you insist on being obtuse in order to avoid addressing the obvious, if you are so determined to give one more generation of your children an advantage over mine while pretending that it isn’t so, if you are convinced that the only racial problem in America is that people of color prepare their children to deal with the country as it is, if you would rather spill blood (yours or mine) than resolve a real problem through glaringly sensible means, then know that I am on the side of the Persians, the Union, the Allies, BLM, and progress. My body may not be as capable as it once was, but I bring my knowledge, my intellect, the heart that you hardened, and my peculiar mind, the same mind that this structure has rarely seen fit to properly utilize.
A wrong was done. And the wrong persists. And it’s hurting everyone. Not just black people. It’s even hurting the stupid assholes. Because, believe it or not, I care about everyone’s children, yours, too. If your children knew the whole story, they would also want this fixed.
I don’t really care how we do it: with reparations, standardizing schools, adjusting taxes, cutting organizations whose job it is to nip at the heels of black people, or whatever else you can think of. This is wrong. Fix. It.
Fix the problem.
Fix the problem.
Fix. The Fucking. Problem.
-CG