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

[bunj.livejournal.com]

If I may hazard a potentially lighter note, when I first heard of the premise of China Miéville's book The City & The City, I had a hard time wrapping my head around it: two cities that occupy the same space but consciously ignore one another. Then I realized there was a perfect real-life analogy out there: black St. Louis and white St. Louis.

Sure, it's easier to segregate when you have physical separation, but not necessary. As long as you keep your interactions on the most basic level you need to, two societies can rumble along side-by-side without really knowing or understanding one another. It's more obvious in cities with a very mixed population, but I've never seen a fully integrated city, at least not in this country.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant.

I think I first realised how much this was the case when some newsmagazine (Newsweek?) ran a story on "hometowns" and a Black St Louisan wrote about a conversation she had with a White colleague who found it hard to believe they really shared a hometown when she reeled off a list of local attractions (Ted Drewes, Bevo Mill, etc.) and the author told her she'd never visited any of them. Then, of course, she gave a list of her hangouts and I'd never even heard of any of them, let alone visited them. (Dad's probably been to a few, however.)