Out of my many problems with Women and Gender Studies is that there is a blatant refusal to see women holistically and just as capable as men of autonomous evil. We reject the contributions of men to our characters and careers under the guise of patriarchy. We lay all the blame for our suffering under the umbrella of male oppression.
The subject of race relations is no different.
The teacher mentioned in the article. Do you think her facebook assertion of, "a generation of criminals" was a spontaneous thought about a single act? Let me tell you something I know for a fact, we bring our thoughts and ideologies to situations and they are omnipotent and omnipresent without an utterance.
I would ask that teacher if she avoided the smile of a student. I would ask that teacher if she phoned her teaching in or maybe ladled it out with a ten foot pole. I am not saying that the action of the student or students are excusable. I'm saying that the conversation of race is not superfluous. It needs honesty.
How many times have I heard conservatives bragging and loudly extolling the myths that they worked their way through college? Please tell me then, WHOM is responsible for the staggering sum on the United States' ledgers which are entitled, "student loans?" I've heard my fellow White students loudly complain about entitlement programs such as food stamps. I can name at least ten nearly and almost totally White universities and I can also show you that someone, in those hallowed university towns, is receiving EBT cards seven days a week. And please don't get me started about White women and affirmative action. Daughters of Clarence Thomas, each and every one, in absolute denial of the doorknob placed on the portal where entrance was previously denied.
We need more than a talk about race in general. We need to admit the challenges of race and the rewards for being the "right" race. We need this more than anything.
La Vonda R. Staples
Writer and Historian
--
-- On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Tracy Flemming <cafenegritude@gmail.com> wrote:
Why Talking About Race Is Pointless
The issues are more complicated than our "conversation" will concede.
By: John McWhorter | Posted: September 7, 2011 at 12:04 AM
So suppose we did it? Suppose we Talked About Race as so many say we
do not? Desmond King and Rogers Smith have just said, to great
acclaim, that neither major party has wanted to talk about race much
since the 1970s. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley's Poverty Tour is
nominally about the poor, but what truly animates them is race.
Smiley's problem with Obama during his campaign was whether Obama
cared about black people, and West has famously said that Obama is
afraid of "free black men," not free poor ones. Critics hating on The
Help accuse its creators of not wanting to "confront" race as directly
as they should, with Valerie Boyd even referencing Attorney General
Eric Holder's 2009 point about America's cowardice in not wanting to
have a "conversation" about race.
The implication of this call for a conversation is that it would teach
whites that racism still exists. Sure, blacks would learn something
along the way -- undefined, one senses, however, and less important
than what whites would learn. If they would only listen.
But a national conversation about race would take us to exactly where
we are now on the topic: a messy controversy, typical of complex,
adult issues rooted in the vagaries of social history and its
legacies. Jim Crow's over. The Archie Bunkers are mostly dead or
close. There are no crystal-clear fundamentals to take white people
into a corner to "school" them about.
Example: Let's have a conversation about education. A white teacher,
hit by a black student, recently rued on Facebook that she was
educating "future criminals." Syracuse University's Boyce Watkins
thinks she was "educating black kids without sufficient cultural
competence." Here's a "Can we talk?" kind of story -- this lady's in
the dark, right?
But exactly how would we teach her this "cultural competence"? Watkins
describes how easily he connects with inner-city black kids, but via
what lessons could we pass his ability -- rooted in lifelong traits of
identification, demeanor and language -- on to a white lady? And
remember, the second we try to list any specifically "black" traits to
teach this woman, we will be roundly accused of stereotyping. The
issues here, while urgent, will not yield to a "conversation" at -- I
mean, with -- whites.
Let's have a conversation about crack. That is, laws that penalize
possession and sale of crack cocaine, sold most by blacks, over
powdered cocaine, sold most by whites. King and Smith think this is
about "targeting blacks" and that America doesn't want to "talk" about
it. But the Congressional Black Caucus was strongly behind these laws
in the 1980s because selling crack on the streets destroys communities
in a way that selling powder in your parents' basement in Scarsdale
doesn't. Plus, inner-city residents right now typically wish the cops
would do more to keep hoodlums from selling dope on their streets.
So apprising whites of their racism in a "conversation" would not do
anyone any favors here. Stopping the war on drugs, which has had
disproportionate effects on blacks -- as much to the surprise of black
lawmakers as white ones -- would be more appropriate.
King and Smith also want "talking" about race that encourages
integration in schools -- which is just short of saying that a bunch
of you-know-whats can't learn in the same place. There's a
"conversation" we could do without, especially where whites can hear
it.
What about the fact that black kids are less likely to call
studiousness "white" when most of the students aren't white? Check the
data here (pdf). What about making all-black schools better?
King and Smith want us to "talk about" making civil service tests
"fair and inclusive," referring by implication to potential black
firefighters' problems with qualifying exams. But what kinds of
questions would we deem unfair for black test takers? What content of
black character requires changing the questions on an exam on which
working-class whites regularly do OK? What about a conversation about
making sure that black firefighter candidates know to study for the
test as hard as many others do?
Or let's have a conversation about how we are treated in stores. In
Ralph Banks' new book, Is Marriage for White People? a black
interviewee says that she is uncomfortable when her white partner
doesn't understand the racism behind experiences such as store clerks
asking, "May I help you?" The idea is that these clerks wish you
weren't in the store.
Now, in my experience, clerks often say "May I help you?" on orders to
be solicitous, or even because they want to get you to buy more to up
their commission. In New York, quite often I get "May I help you?"
from black Caribbean and African clerks. I suspect that people like
Banks' interviewee are interpreting the clerks' question inaccurately
-- at least usually. Yes, I know racism when I see it: I just wrote
about a truly racist club owner in this space. I'm talking only about
"May I help you?" Is this really, as we are told, a matter of being
"trailed" in stores?
And the problem with a "conversation" about it would be that most
clerks likely would deny the racism of which they are being accused.
The question: How many black people who have felt that the interviewee
would be prepared to believe them and concede that they had been
mistaken? That's not the result that most seekers of a "conversation"
about race are seeking, and thus the conversation would leave us where
we are.
And let's not forget that when whites create The Help, about racism in
the Old South, the "conversation" is all about how they didn't make
the more progressive-minded whites in the story racist enough. And on
top of this, quite a few whites feel this way about the movie -- and
yet how many will read in this that a conclusively useful
"conversation" has been had on this movie or anything else?
It's not that "nobody wants to talk about race." It's that the old
ways of talking about it don't work.
Let's say, for instance, that Obama made certain folks happy and
started "talking about race." According to our happy warriors' script,
he would call for Ebonics lessons and street-cred training for white
teachers. He would suggest in a speech that store clerks not say "May
I help you?" to black patrons (only for them to then be accused of
racism of a different kind). He would urge the civil service to use
tests that are easier for black people, and call for the police to
ignore inner-city residents seeking the police to rout out gun-
battling drug dealers.
Sorry, but I, for one, am glad Obama won't be taking this tack, and
the reason he won't is not that he, or anyone else, "doesn't want to
talk about race." We talk about race year-round. The result, however,
is not a Grand Acknowledgment That Racism Still Exists, but ambiguity,
new questions and even frustration.
We should get used to that. No other shoe is going to drop. There is
nothing we are not talking about. Rather, we are dealing with what, in
most provinces, is called real life.
--
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La Vonda R. Staples
Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences
Community College of the District of Columbia
314-570-6483
"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."
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