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Tag Archives: Institutional Racism

The Atomic Weight of Racism

02 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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Academia, Atoms, Black History Month, Capitalism, Carbon, Exceptionalism, Frederick Douglass, Higgs Boson Particle, Ida B. Wells, Imperialism, Institutional Racism, Martin Delany, Metaphors, Narcissism, News Media, Physics, Public Intellectuals, Quantum Physics, Racism, Social Media, Subatomic Particles, Systemic Racism


Visual representation of grand unified theory, explain physical forces at cosmic and quantum levels, via Garrett Lisi, circa 2010. (http://functionspace.com).

Visual representation of grand unified theory, explaining physical forces at cosmic and quantum levels, via Garrett Lisi, circa 2010. (http://functionspace.com).

A few months ago, I found myself pondering the many years in which I and a cadre of experts, scholars, and trolls have written and talked about American racism. The evidence (or lack thereof) that those who fight for racial justice and those who fight for White supremacy (or at least, a White-dominated status quo) have gathered. The sense of righteous indignation or dispassionate sense of racial superiority expressed in sound bites, at conferences, in classrooms, in faculty and staff meetings. I found myself thinking, “We’re never going to convince the majority that they have built themselves a hypocritical house of cards, are we?”

Of course this is true. A person doesn’t have to be a pessimist or fatalistic to arrive at this conclusion. Long before Ta-Nehisi Coates or the great late Derrick Bell, or James Baldwin or Malcolm X, or even W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, there was the sense that the house that racism built could never be broken down with faith and words alone. Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and Ida B. Wells (or Wells-Barnett) said as much in the nineteenth century. It would take action, perhaps even, a calamity to break down this house.

I started thinking about American racism as an atom, then. It could be as simple as a hydrogen atom, but despite the preponderance of Americans who will live out their lives in willful ignorance, America and its racism is a bit more complicated than one proton and one electron. That’s the America most of my students think they live in. When it comes to racism, America is more like a carbon or iron atom before being smashed at light speed in a particle accelerator in Switzerland. With lots of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Enough so that it could combine with anything and corrupt everything.

A visual representation of a carbon atom, electrons, protons, an neutrons, February 1, 2016. (http://periodic.lanl.gov/).

A visual representation of a carbon atom, electrons, protons, an neutrons, February 1, 2016. (http://periodic.lanl.gov/).

Carbon is very much a constantly morphing combinator. Scientists can make virtually endless chains and structures with carbon — along with its companions, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen — giving us plenty of other organic compounds not found in nature. That is American intersectionality in a nutshell, between racism, class inequality, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other -isms that combine and recombine from one generation and one issue to the next. Stereotypes, microaggressions, and death by a thousand cuts, are its results.

But carbon molecules in the natural world already exists in long and almost endless chains. Our DNA and its double-helix strands, the structure of hydrocarbons that make up petroleum and natural gas. Even without the interventions that make interpersonal, individual, and internalized racism the fodder for social media and American politics, structural racism and institutional racism are already well embedded in America’s vast array of institutions.

Then there’s the stuff that’s beyond the mix of the six electrons, six protons, and six neutrons that make up a carbon atom. Quarks, leptons, bosons, among as many as 248 subatomic particles — including gluons, neutrinos, and photons. The newly discovered Higgs boson particle (as of 2012), for instance, is apparently what provides matter mass.

The subatomics of American racism, though, are fairly well-known and haven’t been new to us researchers for decades. Imperialism, American exceptionalism, narcissism, and capitalism. They all help give mass to American racism, so that it is not just a matter of perception, or, as some mavericks have suggested, a disease or psychosis. These are the particles that convert the energies of racism into a tangible, weighty reality.

 An example of simulated data modeled for the CMS particle detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. (where collision of two protons would produce a Higgs boson particle and release energy, in blue), October 1997. (Lucas Taylor/CERN via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

An example of simulated data modeled for the CMS particle detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. (where collision of two protons would produce a Higgs boson particle and release energy, in blue), October 1997. (Lucas Taylor/CERN via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

Yet atoms and their subatomic particles aren’t forever. Heck, electrons are often in two places at the same time, their quantum locations change so often. The way scientists know all this is through atom smashing at places like the Hadron collider in Switzerland. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to smash protons straight into a group of atoms to explode its subatomic contents. Ultimately, somewhere between fusion, fission, and smashing, to break down the carbon-like atom that is American racism. But I don’t think those of us working to do so should hold our collective breath.

Black Lives Matter and My Dreamy Heaven

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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#BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter, Dreams, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, God, Heaven, Institutional Racism, Jordan Davis, Life and Death, Michael Brown, Nature, Photons, Police Brutality, Quantum Energy, Quantum Mechanics, Racism, Renisha McBride, Revelation, Sandra Bland, Self-Reflection, Structural Racism, Tamir Rice, The Universe, Trayvon Martin, Walter Scott, White Vigilantism


A shower of photons, December 31, 2015. (http://www.theallium.com).

A shower of photons, December 31, 2015. (http://www.theallium.com).

It was a strange place, this place of peace and comfort. To realize that at the quantum level, we each were all bundles of energy, that our bodies were but vessels that carried our real selves in our earthly years. That heaven was much, much more. Pearly gates and a white-bearded God? Nonsense! Try singularities and endless connections between the past, present, and future, between multiple universes and realities! We existed everywhere and in every time. There was no pain and no need, because we were everything and everything was in us and with us.

A high-resolution picture of the Pillars of Creation, in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000-light-years from Earth, via the Hubble Telescope, circa 1995, retouched January 5, 2014. (Armbrust via Wikipedia via NASA). In public domain.

A high-resolution picture of the Pillars of Creation, in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000-light-years from Earth, via the Hubble Telescope, circa 1995, retouched January 5, 2014. (Armbrust via Wikipedia via NASA). In public domain.

In this space and place, I met them. The ones that once left us behind. The entities who once lived in the earthly realm, whose bodies were decimated, whose minds had been wounded. It was here that I met Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Kindra Chapman, Samuel DuBose, Joyce Curnell, Ralkina Jones, Raynette Turner, Christian Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Jordan Davis, John Crawford, and Jonathan Ferrell.

There were so many more bundles of light and energy in my presence that I felt myself cry. Not real tears, because while I could see and hear everything, I didn’t have any eyes or ears. I wanted to hug them all, but didn’t have any arms. I wanted to embrace them, but didn’t have any lips.

But there was one thing I could do. I merged my little bundle of energy with theirs. It was a joining more real and miraculous than anything I ever felt when tethered to Earth. I felt so alive, so free, so one with the universe. It was as if my material life was a nightmare and a dream, and this heaven the one true real.

In an instant, every feeling and thought I had merged with the feelings and thoughts of hundreds, if not thousands of other lights. And in that instant, the one question I had they asked and answered before I knew what my question was.

Don’t feel for dead. We are alive and well, and will be always so. Feel for the living. For theirs is a world of struggle and suffering.

They do not know who they really are. They do not know that their bodies are but machines, and their lives are not real.

In that singular moment, I understood. How could anyone in the living years truly appreciate the privilege of a corporeal existence when that is but only one form of life? If we as humanity could not know ourselves, how could we protect ourselves from ourselves?

I did get a glimpse, just a brief one, of another answer.

“To make our lives matter, fight for a better world. It doesn’t matter if you lose, but it does matter if you give up.”

As soon as that thought materialized, I woke up, sad to find myself in my middle-aged body, reconnected to my one quadrillion cells and Earth’s gravity and pressure.

————————————————————

A collage of Black and Brown people killed by police and White vigilantes, February 2015. (http://thefreethoughtproject.com/ via Gawker.com).

A collage of Black and Brown people killed by police and White vigilantes, February 2015. (http://thefreethoughtproject.com/ via Gawker.com).

If I could, I’d want to meet all of the recent victims of police brutality and murder and White vigilantism and have a conversation. I would ask each of them only one question. Something like, “What did you want to get out of life?” or “What did you want your life to mean?” Because ultimately, that’s the most important question any of us can ask ourselves while we are alive in this physical world.

The structures that allow law enforcement agencies to assume those with Black and Brown bodies are criminals and undeserving of life pass those assumptions on to their individual police officers. The fourth estate does at least as good a job of passing these assumptions on to millions of ordinary civilians. The result is that thousands of us never got the chance to answer this most important question in our living years. If we cannot agree that this is a shame and a pitiful way to live, than we truly live in a nation in which Black and Brown lives (not to mention, people in poverty and others of different religions and ethnicities) don’t matter. For that — if for no other reason — is why we need Black Lives Matter, and we need Black Lives Matter to matter more, in the here-and-now linear world right now, in 2016.

American Racism: “Same As It Ever Was”

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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"Once In A Lifetime" (1983), Beatings, Ben Fields, Booker T. Washington, Central Park, Death, Ida B. Wells, Institutional Racism, James Blake, James Frascatore, Morning Oregon, NYPD, Police Brutality, Racial Harassment, Racial Incidents, Racism, Spring Valley High School, Talking Heads, University of Missouri, White Vigilantism, Yale University


Ida B. Wells-Barnett, age 32, photographed by Mary Garrity, c. 1893, cropped and restored, September 8, 2013. (Adam Cuerden via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, age 32, photographed by Mary Garrity, c. 1893, cropped and restored, September 8, 2013. (Adam Cuerden via Wikipedia). In public domain.

A young African American woman refuses to leave her seat. Authority figures arrive to demand that she leaves. She refuses again. One authority charged with “upholding the law” then picks the young woman up and drags her from her seat. But this isn’t Spring Valley High School near Columbia, South Carolina. Nor is it 2015. This incident involved the anti-lynching journalist Ida B. Wells, who sat in a first-class ladies car on the segregated Memphis and Charleston Railroad train rolling through Tennessee. It occurred on May 4, 1884. Except it was three White men, who dragged and threw the then not-quite-twenty-two year-old off the train for refusing to give up a seat she paid for.

Just like with the Black teenager whom Ben Fields assaulted in the name of the law, I’m sure one of the things Wells might have thought was, “This is 1884. Why is this still happening?” The circumstances that led to both incidents were obviously different, but the racism that led to these violent responses was not.

With all that has occurred to break the illusion that Americans live in a twenty-first-century, post-racial utopia, Americans still bring up the times in which we live whenever racism rears its ugly head. Whether it’s the NYPD tackling ex-tennis star James Blake in September, the Black teenager at Spring Valley HS in October, or the responses to Black students at the University of Missouri or Yale in the past week, the need for temporal incredulousness is often present in the midst of these racist incidents. “You would think at some point they would get the memo that this isn’t okay, but it seems that there’s no stopping it,” Blake said after the incident with Officer James Frascatore.

At what point or time? As if saying “Why is this happening in 2015?” has anything to do with bringing systemic, institutional, individual, and internalized racism to an end. If there had been truth and reconciliation commissions at the end of Jim Crow in the South in the 1960s and 1970s, maybe then Americans can quote the year as evidence of irrational racial dissonance. If the federal government had provided reparations after Emancipation in 1865 or after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, perhaps then what year this is would matter. Racism and racists have never cared about the year or the supposedly multicultural, progressive times in which Americans lived.

Harris & Ewing photo of Booker T. Washington, circa 1905-1915, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, January 18, 2010. (Cantheasswonder via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Harris & Ewing photo of Booker T. Washington, circa 1905-1915, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, January 18, 2010. (Cantheasswonder via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Before his death in 1915, Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington experienced something all too many Americans of color face year after year. Washington delivered two speeches at churches in Manhattan on Sunday, March 19, 1911. That same evening, Washington went to an apartment building on West 63rd Street near Central Park, allegedly to meet up with a friend of his accountant on business. After attempting to find this mystery person at the building twice, Henry Ulrich, a 40-year-old White male, confronted Washington and punched him in the head. A White bystander handed Ulrich a walking stick and together, the two men chased Washington toward Central Park, hitting him with the stick on his head and face at least a dozen times. It wasn’t until Washington fell into the arms of NYPD Officer Chester Hagan, at a southwest entrance to Central Park, that the attack came to an end. After his initial arrest, Washington produced his identification papers. Only then was he released, allowed to press charges against Ulrich, and taken to a hospital to get 16 stitches and recover from his head bashing.

Morning Oregon headline on Booker T. Washington trial, November 7, 1911.

Morning Oregon headline on Booker T. Washington trial, November 7, 1911.

Despite having the support of Andrew Carnegie, former New York City mayor Seth Low and President William Taft, Washington’s assault charge was destined to fail. The New York and national press — yellow journalism at its best in 1911 — tried Washington on their front pages from March 20 on. Laura Alverez did a wonderful job in misrepresenting herself as “Mrs. Ulrich” in defense of her paramour at the trial. Alverez accused Washington of saying, “Hello, Sweetheart” to her — a dog whistle back then for the ultimate taboo of interracial sex — when Washington was outside the apartment building. Two of the three judges voted on Monday, November 6, 1911, to acquit Ulrich of the assault charge, news the national press gleefully reported. Among them was the Morning Oregonian, which had “‘Beating Up’ Darky Brings No Punishment to Man” as part of its headline.

All this took its toll on an already sick 55-year-old Washington, a man already suffering from hypertension and high-blood pressure. The result was a physically and emotionally diminished Washington after 1911. Booker T. Washington died on November 16, 1915. The power Washington had exercised as an advisor to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Taft and as a racial accommodationist (some would say, an apologist) who befriended White philanthropists, it didn’t matter. His poor health may have been the symptom, but racism in all its forms was the ultimate cause.

It does not matter what year it is. Racists don’t care. It doesn’t matter if African Americans and White progressives hold die-ins in Ferguson, Cleveland and New York. Blacks and other people of color don’t have the same right to breathe without a racist’s say-so. It doesn’t matter if respectable Blacks wear nice suits and ties, attend Harvard, establish a university, or serve as President of the United States. Americans of color are all criminals and playthings in the eyes of racists, and the power structures for which they work have been set up to preserve racial inequality for centuries. And it doesn’t matter if liberals Black, White and Brown call for healing. Racists don’t want healing, and calling for it without acknowledging a flesh-eating, bacterial-infested wound like racism doesn’t do Americans any good. Booker T. Washington learned that lesson in 1911, and Ida B. Wells learned it in 1884. Millions of other Americans of color have learned that lesson all too well today.

Spring Valley HS, A Damn Shame

27 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, race, Youth

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Columbia South Carolina, Incident, Individual Racism, Institutional Racism, Internalized Racism, Misogyny, Narcissism, Police Brutality, Racism, Richland County School District Two, Spring Valley High School, Teacher Autonomy, Voyeurism


Ben Fields in midst of dragging student out of desk and throwing her across room, North Columbia, SC, October 26, 2015. (http://nydailynews.com).

Ben Fields in midst of dragging student out of desk and throwing her across room, North Columbia, SC, October 26, 2015. (http://nydailynews.com).

We all have in the past twenty-four hours either heard about the incident, read the details, or watched the video. Ben Fields, a White police officer (called a “resource officer” in the benignly dangerous language of public schools), brutally attacked a teenage Black girl in her classroom. The asshole with a badge flipped her over her desk and then threw her across the room like a piece of garbage. Arresting her for using a phone and refusing to get up, and threatening any other kid who came to her defense? This isn’t acceptable behavior. Period.

But this is more than the issue of an individual’s racism or even institutional racism in the case of this Richland County School District Two outside of Columbia, South Carolina. Yesterday’s incident speaks to, among other issues:

1. Lack of teacher autonomy. We now live in a place where a whole generation of teachers are risk averse, partly because of school shootings, but primarily because of corporate education reform. Many, if not most teachers are ill-equipped to deal with disciplinary issues in their own classrooms, and are too quick to turn to the violent hand of police and security because they have no idea how to do this aspect of their job.

2. Black misogyny. How could that teacher stand there, watch and condone that action? Aside from this Black teacher’s lack of autonomy, there may be a lack of empathy on his part as well. For all of the complaints about the police officer, this guy masquerading as a teacher was a coward, and implicit has condoned violence against a woman in an obviously nonviolent situation.

3. Voyeurism as racism. Even though a student recorded this incident and literally millions of people are now aware of what occurred, many respectable Negroes and a cacophony of Whites support the primal brutality captured in it. So much so that one could conclude that they embrace the idea that the police have the right to kill and brutalize kids without fear of reprisals. These narcissists may even love the idea of hurting kids of color, because that’s exactly what they would if they thought they could get away with it, too.

It hurts to watch the video or read about the incident, because if someone laid their hands on my kid with that level of brutality…

Why Boston U Isn’t For Me, and Shouldn’t Be For You

26 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Jimme, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Upper East Side, Upper West Side, Work, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Academic-Speak, Boston U, Boston University, BU, Checkbox, CMU, Cosmetic Diversity, Disillusionment, Institutional Racism, Jimme, Linda Sarsour, Meritocracy, Nepotism, Office of the Provost, Racism, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Righteous Indignation, Robert Turri Vise, Structural Racism, Suzanne C. Kennedy, Timothy Barbari, Tokenism


The main classroom buildings for the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, with the BU East 'T' stop in the foreground, July 18, 2010. (Fletcher6 via Wikipedia). Released to the public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

The main classroom buildings for the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, with the BU East ‘T’ stop in the foreground, July 18, 2010. (Fletcher6 via Wikipedia). Released to the public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

Since my first job working for my father in Manhattan in ’84, I’ve probably done over 200 interviews. By telephone, through Skype or WebEx or Adobe Connect, at conferences and in person. Probably about a third of those interviews have occurred with colleges and universities, for academic and administrator-level positions. For the most part, whether the interviews went well or when I didn’t have my “A-game,” my experiences have been pleasant ones. But, after two different interview processes five years apart with Boston University — one in October ’10, the other last month — there is a higher education institution that I will not work for, will not send my son, and will not recommend for anyone I know, under nearly any circumstances.

There are only a few institutions that have been so bad that they’ve moved from my [expletive] list to my permanently-banned-from-my-life list. Even Carnegie Mellon isn’t on the latter list, and I’ve talked about their conservatism and weirdness around diversity before here. But Boston University’s treatment of me as a potential employee, well, it took my breath away without putting me in an NYPD chokehold.

Round 1, Boston University, August-October 2010

Let me rephrase. I was never a “potential employee,” because on the two occasions I interviewed for jobs there, Boston University in the end treated me as a checkmark interviewee. In the fall of ’10, I emerged for them as a candidate for the director of their Washington, DC program. They interviewed me three times: at the American Political Science Association conference in DC in August, at their old DC program headquarters (while also showing me their new one, still under construction) in September, and in person on the main Boston University campus in late October.

For that last interview, they pulled out all the stops. They flew me in, put me up in a nearby hotel the night before, and even took me to lunch. Of course, they also had someone give me a two-hour guided tour of the campus that morning, after one morning meeting, on a day with thirty mile-per-hour winds coming off the Charles River as we walked from one end of the campus to the other. It’s funny. Up until then, I never thought of a campus tour as sinister. But then I realized, if I’m spending two hours during the heart of the workday doing a campus tour with a twenty-four year-old BU grad in forty-five degree weather, what did that mean for my real chances at that job?

My final meeting was with a professor who advised political science and history major in the DC program. That meeting ended at 5 pm on October 22, with which I knew that they were supposed to make a final decision in a week or so. Despite a thank-you email and two follow-up emails, I didn’t hear from Boston University again until November 29. Roberta Turri Vise, the point person for my interview process, didn’t explain why the final decision took more than five weeks. Nor did she explain why after six weeks of correspondence, no response from my requests were returned by her or anyone else in her office.

Round 2, Boston University, January-March 2015

I decided that this was a one-off thing, that with our generation of job searches occurring in a buyer’s market, that some folks really don’t care about being professionals in their dealing with interviewees. Boy was I wrong! Even in a market where people ignore applicant materials and send mass rejection emails without a candidate’s name on it (or worse, with someone else’s name), Boston University claimed a unique crown.

Hierarchy tree of Boston University's leadership team via the Provost's Office, April 26, 2015. (http://www.bu.edu/info/about/admin/).

Hierarchy tree of Boston University’s leadership team via the Provost’s Office, April 26, 2015. (http://www.bu.edu/info/about/admin/).

I interviewed with them again in January and at the beginning of March. This was for a position in their provost’s office, a director position managing undergraduate and graduate fellowship opportunities and advising students via those opportunities. The position was a bit beneath my experience, but they seemed interested, and I already knew from some initial research that it was a new position, so I went ahead and applied for it. My first interview was by telephone, with Suzanne Kennedy, the assistant provost for academic affairs at Boston University. It was a pleasant but underwhelming interview, and I actually didn’t expect a call back. So I kept up with my usual work of teaching, consulting, and looking for more consulting opportunities.

I received an email five weeks later asking me to come up to Boston for a second, in-person interview. I gave it the go-ahead, although the length of time between first interview and correspondence concerned me. So too, did my back and forth with Kennedy’s assistant over travel, as she had initially booked me at times that were very inconvenient for interviewing purposes. Not to mention, the major snow issues that Boston experienced in February.

The interview on March 4 was honestly one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had interviewing for any job. I’m including an interview in which I discovered the place was a sweatshop in Chinatown, during my summer of unemployment in New York in ’88. I had three meetings in all, one over lunch with Kennedy, and two with the two associate provosts at Boston University in academic affairs (one undergraduate, one graduate). Over lunch, the conversation was going well, until I asked the question about the level of diversity with applicant pools for Fulbrights, Trumans, Borens, and Rhodes’ scholarships and fellowships. I kid you not, Kennedy’s eyes literally glazed over as soon as I asked about diversity. Keep in mind, I had asked about socioeconomic diversity — I hadn’t touched racial or gender diversity yet. After lunch, I didn’t see Kennedy again for the rest of the interview process.

My second sign came from my third meeting. I met with Timothy Barbari, associate provost for graduate affairs. It was obvious that Barbari hadn’t even looked at my CV before I walked into his office. The first thing Barbari says to me, with him pushing his body into the back of his chair so far that his attempt to be at ease looked more like a rocket revving to take off — “so, you have a rather interesting CV.” I may not have earned all of my money as an academician, but I’ve been around academic-speak long enough to know that interesting can mean a lot of different things, mostly bad. In this context, interesting meant “not straightforward, not linear in progression, not typical in terms of whom we typically hire.”

I was already feeling a bit like a checkmark or token interviewee by the time I left Barbari’s office for Logan. But after USAirways canceled all their flights to DC that evening due to a snowstorm that wouldn’t drop a snowflake for another twelve hours, it got worse. I notified Kennedy through her assistant that I was stuck in Boston overnight from Logan, and left a message the next morning that the Amtrak to DC was my only option, as more flights had been canceled. No word, not even a “I’m sorry that you have to go through this” response. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that Friday, nearly a day after I returned to DC, and after a third message about them needing to reimburse me, that I heard from Kennedy’s assistant.

At that point, I wouldn’t have taken the job even if they had offered it to me. As it was, I didn’t hear from Kennedy again until April 7, five weeks after a second interview, and despite a check-in to find out what happened with this director position. It’s this kind of calloused approach that leaves folks shaking their head.

Shaking Off The Dirt

I’ve made a few determinations based on these experiences. For one, if this is the way that treat job candidates who look like me, how well do they pay and treat their service staff, the most vulnerable people on their campus? Not well, at least from what I saw and have experienced. For two, the fact that for both interviews, their top concern seemed to be about competing with “schools across the Charles River” — i.e., Harvard, MIT, Tufts — was somewhere between disconcerting and ridiculous.

An elephant shaking off the dirt, circa 2012. JD Rucker via Pinterest.com).

An elephant shaking off the dirt, circa 2012. (JD Rucker via Pinterest.com).

The fact that with tuition, books, and room and board it would run the average BU student $60,000 per year also told me what I needed to know. Boston University is a place that wants elite status and elite students, and in pursuit of this Pollyanna goal, wants to hire people they feel fit the bill. As long as those people look like everyone else running the university — mostly White, with a few people of color lightly sprinkled in leading positions at the institution. Because Boston University has what activist Linda Sarsour (Twitter, @lsarsour) calls cosmetic diversity, a genuine attempt at diversity across socioeconomic, racial and gender lines is unnecessary, at least for the powers whom run the institution.

Aside from Martin Luther King, Jr., who earned his doctorate in divinity at Boston University in the early 1950s, I’ve known or known of only one person of color with a degree from BU. She was a neighbor at 616 East Lincoln, a few years younger. Based on her description of more than two decades ago, I’d have to say that Boston University has changed for the worst. Like most universities, they seem more interested in prestige and raising money than in fulfilling their mission.

And with that being the case, why send your kid to Boston University? Especially when, for the same amount of money or less, every other school in the Boston area is either better, or at least, cares more about diversity and learning beyond the cosmetic.

“Animals” and “Respectability”

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Animals, Authentic Blackness, Authenticity, Eric Garner, Gospel of Prosperity, Institutional Racism, Jamal Harrison Bryant, Masculinity, Michael Brown, Murder, Officer Darren Wilson, Oppression, Police Brutality, Politics of Respectability, Racial Stereotypes, Racism, Respectability, Rev. Al Sharpton, Stereotypes, T.D. Jakes, Thugs, White Privilege, White Violence, Whiteness


Rev. Al Sharpton waiting to speak at Michael Brown funeral, Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, St. Louis, MO, August 25, 2014. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post Dispatch, Robert Cohen, via http://www.wkbn.com).

Rev. Al Sharpton waiting to speak at Michael Brown funeral, Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, St. Louis, MO, August 25, 2014. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post Dispatch, Robert Cohen, via http://www.wkbn.com).

With America’s history of racial oppression, it should come as no surprise that the range of reactions to events like the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown (among many others, male and female, Black and Latino) have been on the side of racial stereotypes and assumptions. On the one hand, police officers, ordinary Whites and some ultraconservative Blacks have used the terms “animals” and “thugs” interchangeably because Garner and Brown were big Black guys, the stereotypical boogeymen, lurking and ready to rape, maim and kill scared-shitless White folk.

On the other hand, the traditional civil rights establishment and its cadre of ministers have equated the lessons of Brown and the Ferguson protests with the need to stop “looting and pillaging” and to stop wearing baggy pants. That’s the fallback position for attempting to explain why the message of police brutality and militarization against communities of color because of racism and classism isn’t getting through to Whites who have mostly been silent on these incidents.

As I’ve written in the past year or two, both of these perspectives suggest that Blacks and Latinos must somehow make ourselves worthy of humanity. That way, even the most racist of Whites could see that we’re not animals or thugs, but human beings worthy of the same human rights and civil liberties that they enjoy. This didn’t work even during the height of the Civil Rights Movement some five decades ago. Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., John L. Lewis, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Wearing suits and ties, marching with White allies, having the backing of the President of the United States. None of that swayed most Whites, as evidenced by changes in American politics since 1968.

Screen shot of CNN newscast coverage of support for Officer Darren Wilson at rally, Ferguson, MO, August 23, 2014. (http://rawstory.com).

Screen shot of CNN newscast coverage of support for Officer Darren Wilson at rally, Ferguson, MO, August 23, 2014. (http://rawstory.com).

The fact is, those Whites and sycophant Blacks who call African Americans and other people of color “animals” and “thugs” know we’re just as human as they are, if not more so. It’s their way of asserting that they’re better than us, precisely because they believe they can get away with seeing, calling and treating Blacks and other people of color as such. Especially since so many of these “animals” and “thugs” advocates have missed the full material benefits of American capitalism. And with America’s long history of allowing Whites to get away with lynchings, murders, rapes, race riots and other forms of violent oppression, why shouldn’t Whites think they’re in the right when they give money to Officer Darren Wilson for “doing his job” in murdering Michael Brown? As I’ve said before, the year doesn’t matter, the clothes don’t matter, our demeanor in public or how perfect our walk doesn’t matter to many — if not most — Whites. That may be our problem as people of color, but it’s definitely their problem as well.

Rev. Al Sharpton, sexual predator Jamal Bryant, megachurch-Gospel-of-Prosperity pastor T.D. Jakes and so many other men who spoke at Michael Brown’s funeral Monday put themselves on the other side of the “animals” and “thugs” coin with their agenda-loaded bloviations. Sharpton especially should know better, given his history of talking out of both sides of his mouth about the limits of the politics of respectability (Tawana Brawley comes to mind). Yes, being able to orchestrate nonviolent protests with proper victims in a way in which the mainstream media cannot dehumanize or engage in stereotypes was how the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum in the first place. But this methodology had its limits then, as it led to some victories that looked more like symbols than actual victories (even Dr. King said as much in his final three years). It definitely has its limitations now.

Foot on my neck and head, symbolic of oppression in terms of view of Black and Brown as "animals," April 18, 2011. (Donald Earl Collins).

Foot on my neck and head, symbolic of oppression in terms of view of Black and Brown as “animals,” April 18, 2011. (Donald Earl Collins).

We have a leadership that has grown corpulent and ossified in its stomach, pockets and spirit when it comes to oppression and how to respond. Their thinking in so many ways isn’t much different than the Whites who post pictures of President Barack Obama eating a banana with his face pasted onto the head and body of a great ape. That’s the full shame of watching a funeral that was more about individual agendas than it was about Michael Brown or his family and friends, or his life and death, or mobilizing a larger effort.

It’s already terrible that we already have a nation of millions trying to hold people of color back, if only in their own minds (to quasi-quote Public Enemy). We can no longer afford to have an aging leadership whom, even when well-meaning, is unable or unwilling to move beyond symbols and pontification to an effort that promotes new tactics and strategies and younger leadership. It’s beyond time for younger generations to take the reins, and not in a respectable way, either.

Aside

Caught Between Rage and a Working Faith

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Work, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Activism, Anger, Anger Management, Black Reconstruction (1935), Civil Rights, Eric Garner, Faith, Federal Government, Ferguson Missouri, Ferguson PD, God, Institutional Racism, James 2:26, Michael Brown, Murder, NYPD, Officer Darren Wilson, Police, Police Brutality, Prayer, Rage, Science, Social Justice, Structural Racism, Sunil Dutta, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wages of Whiteness, Works


"Officer Go Fuck Yourself" aiming rifle at protestors and journalists, Ferguson, MO, August 19, 2014. (http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/).

“Officer Go Fuck Yourself” aiming rifle at protestors and journalists, Ferguson, MO, August 19, 2014. (http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/).

We can add Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Kindra Chapman, Samuel DuBose, Joyce Curnell, Ralkina Jones, Raynette Turner and Christian Taylor to the list I started the post below with nearly a year ago. You could add Zachary Hammond to it as well, as structural White supremacy kills Whites dead, too (police state). There’s The Guardian‘s “The Counted” webpages on deaths at the hands of law enforcement. There’s also the Killed By Police website and via Facebook, and Fatal Encounters, among others, that track these death back much further (since The Guardian only began their webpages in June 2015).

The post I wrote last year was about what we could do, what I could or can do in light of living in a racist police state, otherwise known as living with the Gestapo. It’s still an open question, especially with reporters shoving microphones in the faces of the aggrieved asking them to forgive police officers who murder five seconds after learning the news. We’re supposed to be nonviolent, to forgive and turn the other cheek. Long before Malcolm X said during a radio interview in Boston in 1964, “In fact, it’s a crime for any Negro leader to teach our people not to do something to protect ourselves in the face of the violence that is inflicted upon us by the white people here in America,” this has been an issue. Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells (before she became Wells-Barnett) Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Nannie Burroughs, Marcus Garvey, among many others, raised this issue of what to do about state-sanctioned racism-based violence and murder years ago. We still don’t have any good answers, but we do have options. (A revolution, though, may well be necessary…)

+===================================================+

After the events of the past month — between Eric Garner and the NYPD, Michael Brown and the Ferguson, Missouri PD — I find myself of two minds. My primal mind says, “Fuck the fucking police!” Resist with rocks, with bricks, with bombs and grenades. Go buy a composite bow with composite arrows. Go buy a rifle with a scope, and take out as many of these motherfuckers as I can. Maybe they’ll think twice about putting someone like me in a choke-hold or shooting us with our hands up if they knew we could organize ourselves into vigilante groups, well armed and well adept at escape and stealth, ready to put the likes of Sunil Dutta out of their racist-ass misery!


– What we should be able to do to any corrupt cop or vigilante killing unarmed people of color…

Eric Garner in midst of dying from choke-hold via NYPD's finest, Daniel Pantaleo and (not pictured)  and Justin Damico, Staten Island, NY, July 17, 2014. (http://www.thegrio.com).

Eric Garner in midst of dying from choke-hold via NYPD’s finest, Daniel Pantaleo and (not pictured) and Justin Damico, Staten Island, NY, July 17, 2014. (http://www.thegrio.com).

The mind I live in and with every day, though, puts the kibosh on such evil yet well deserved plans of action. Because in light of so much police harassment, brutality and state-sanctioned murders, to say that this shouldn’t be a response belies everything all of us know about human nature. Yet my mind says, “No. This isn’t the way to fight. You’re a writer. You’re a teacher. You’re a believer. Use your tools!” So I pray, I always pray, for people to seek and find the light, to forgive and be forgiven, for peace.

But as the New Testament in James says, “Faith without works is dead” (look that one up, evangelical Christians committed to White privilege!). None of us can hope to change our own lives — much less something as intractable as structural and institutional racism — on prayer and faith in God, the federal government and/or science alone. We have to do, too. In my case, writing and teaching is what I do. Posting to my blog about the palpable rage that I know exists within me and many others who have faced brutality because of racism, misogyny, poverty, homophobia, Whiteness and fear. Teaching about “the physical and psychological wages of Whiteness” (thanks, W.E.B. Du Bois via Black Reconstruction [1935]). Being part of the social media crowd demanding humanity and justice for Michael Brown. This is who I am and what I do.

Me the Evil Blogger at home, Silver Spring, MD, August 1, 2010. (Donald Earl Collins).

Me the Evil Blogger at home, Silver Spring, MD, August 1, 2010. (Donald Earl Collins).

Is it enough to assuage my rage, my guilt for not being able to do more? Yes, most of the time. But I have to remind the perfectionist that remains within me, I can’t do much, but I can do something. And, that this isn’t about me, even with as much as I’ve experienced in racial profiling and abuse of power, at home and with police. It’s about all of us. So, if I do buy a composite bow with arrows, I will train to use it well. Just not on other humans, no matter how reprehensible.

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