Road to hell

[muckefuck]

I think the most depressing thing about the events in Ferguson is the complete predictability of the response, from the police rolling up to peaceful demonstrations more heavily armoured than battalions in Iraq to the focus on everything else but the issue at hand. I am seeing a lot of informed and angry dissent from the dominant narrative this time around, but I suspect that's more a product of the composition of my flist and the fact that I rely increasingly on alternative news sources. Whenever I check in with the mainstream media, it's the same sterile privileging of the "official" version.

If there was any question about what's being repeated outside of my echo chambers, it was settled yesterday by an exchange with my sister where she reveals herself completely ignorant of the existence of racism. You know what I mean: She equates it with bigotry and, while she recognises that injustice exists, she doesn't view it as systematic or institutionalised. Fortunately, Buzzfeed put together a clear and simple graphic of the racially-biased policing that goes on in Ferguson which seems to have gotten her attention. She's not dumb or indifferent to abuse, she's just--in her own words--"naïve".

Of course, that only depresses me more. Whereas my high school had more Buddhists than Black people (it was run by a Catholic religious order, mind), hers was reasonably diverse. She bought her house in a suburb with a 50% White population (the one we grew up in was 80-90% White) and insists on sending her children to the local public schools, in part so that they'll be exposed to a broader selection of humanity than we were at that age. In spite of that, she doesn't actually seem to have any Black friends--or at least none who would feel comfortable discussing the deep disparities in their experiences. She's passionate about fighting injustice--when several firefighters got a raw deal from the city council last year, she was rallying people to their cause--but she can't fight what she hasn't learned to see.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

1. You're decidedly less outgoing than my sister.
2. You don't have kids. IME, mothers often end up having conversations about topics you or I would never consider initiating.

That said, I can think of only a couple of Black friends with whom I'd be reasonably comfortable initiating such a conversation. I'd like to think that more than that would be comfortable initiating such a conversation with me.

I'm actually more inclined to initiate discussions of race relations with POCs than with White people. At least I know that most POCs and I will be starting from the same basic assumptions, whereas other White people generally range in their attitudes from some degree of cluelessness to outright denial.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but don't POC have plenty of reason to suspect a white person's motives in quizzing them about this stuff? So often it's to get validation, or reassurance, or out of being too lazy to look stuff up (not to mention treating people as reps of their race), and maybe you can't be honest anyway because you can't afford to antagonize anyone at work, etc. It's just so fraught, I think. I guess now that I think about it, a couple of people have told me stories about police harassment or related issues, but they brought it up, not me, and more in the sense of just telling a personal story than in trying to have a grand discussion about racism.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone ever really sets out to have a grand discussion of racism. Often the only way these discussions ever get started--because everyone is so inhibited by all the factors you mention--is for someone to say something so stunningly clueless that their friend(s) just can't pass over it in silence. I know that's how I've gotten my ass educated more than once (often in this very journal).

[bunj.livejournal.com]

In her defense, I know of at least one black friend of her's. I was visiting during one of her open game days and a couple was visiting with their son. One of the members of the couple was white, but the other was black. Their son is even named after a famous black poet. He spent most of the day playing with our nephews.

Whether our sister feels comfortable discussing race relations with them may be a different matter.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm not trying to attack her in any way, I'm just hangwringing about the enormity of the problem. Face it, a lot of people from our background don't even care about providing an integrated environment for their kids. (Quite the opposite, generally.) She does, and yet she's still missing the boat.