The Good, Racist People...

[one_voice]

Last month the actor Forest Whitaker was stopped in a Manhattan delicatessen by an employee. Whitaker is one of the pre-eminent actors of his generation, with a diverse and celebrated catalog ranging from “The Great Debaters” to “The Crying Game” to “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” By now it is likely that he has adjusted to random strangers who can’t get his turn as Idi Amin out of their heads. But the man who approached the Oscar winner at the deli last month was in no mood for autographs. The employee stopped Whitaker, accused him of shoplifting and then promptly frisked him. The act of self-deputization was futile. Whitaker had stolen nothing. On the contrary, he’d been robbed.

The deli where Whitaker was harassed happens to be in my neighborhood. Columbia University is up the street. Broadway, the main drag, is dotted with nice restaurants and classy bars that cater to beautiful people. I like my neighborhood. And I’ve patronized the deli with some regularity, often several times in a single day. I’ve sent my son in my stead. My wife would often trade small talk with whoever was working checkout. Last year when my beautiful niece visited, she loved the deli so much that I felt myself a sideshow. But it’s understandable. It’s a good deli.

*snip*

The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion. We can forgive Whitaker’s assailant. Much harder to forgive is all that makes Whitaker stand out in the first place. New York is a city, like most in America, that bears the scars of redlining, blockbusting and urban renewal. The ghost of those policies haunts us in a wealth gap between blacks and whites that has actually gotten worse over the past 20 years.

*snip*

I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark. It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: “Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.” It is messaging propagated by moral people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/opinion/coates-the-good-racist-people.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

[Little Star]

1. Damn! I hate bigotry......

and besides I also adore Forest Whitaker. k&r

[one_voice]

4. I hate bigotry too...

also a huge Forest Whitaker fan.

I have a cousin that's gay and bi-racial. Life for him was hell for a very long time. I saw much of the racism that he saw, coming from an inter-racial family as well, but he had the added hate because he is gay.

He's one of my favorite cousins. I spent so much of my youth with him, he was more like a brother. One of the funniest people I know. I think that's how he got through a lot of it-his sense of humor.

He live in Florida now, hates it, except for the weather. I miss him.

[Little Star]

9. I'm so sorry to hear that your cousin had to go through that....

I have a similar story about my cousin Jerry who was about 5 or so years older than me. He watched me when my parents went out, he walked me to the bus stop when I was old enough to go to school, etc. We remained very close even after I was married with children. He was murdered where he lived in NYC because he was gay, I was in my mid twenties at the time. I will always love and miss him. Can't type anymore because I can barely see the keyboard.

Life can be so cruel. I know you know the truth of that.

[one_voice]

10. I'm so sorry Little Star...

I did not mean to upset you! I'm sorry you lost your cousin to hate and bigotry!

I think we're better people because of the things we went through/witnessed. As bad/hard as it may have been I don't think I would have changed a thing, I believe it made me a better person. In turn I think I've raised kids that will always stand up for what's rights and fight against bigotry and hate. And that's a good thing.

[malaise]

2. I'm actually amazed at how little coverage this story

actually received. Still shaking head.

[Starry Messenger]

3. k&r

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. K&R

[geek tragedy]

6. It's not only white people who pull this shit.

Black landlords and black security guards will sure as hell discriminate against black potential tenants and black shoppers.

In my neighborhood (west Crown Heights) Caribbean landlords have been known to take potential white tenants around to see the white people living in their building--"see, white people like you live here too."

[840high]

7. Correct. In my area

black security guards will stop black people in a heartbeat.

[DevonRex]

8. Thanks. I had not heard the story.

Racism is so damned ugly. Parents teaching their kids to be racist is abuse, IMO. It's like a sickness that can be fought and kept in remission, but the ugliness never quite leaves you. Like you can never get clean of it. And it's not just being taught that directly by your parents. It's growing up in a racist society, knowing it, and your parents going along quietly to get along, not making waves, not teaching you what to do in the face of all that hatred.

It leaves you feeling powerless, not grounded, knowing you don't fit in anywhere in the scheme of that society. Because you feel like you're the only person on the face of the earth who sees that what's been going on is racism. I used to think of The Emperor's New Clothes a lot and think surely everybody else must see what I saw and just wasn't saying anything. Then I began to understand that most actually believed in an inherent inferiority of other races. And it was all brushed with a veneer of politeness in public.

I do have some very interesting stories to tell, though, about the interaction and relationships of whites and blacks in the South during my time there. I'm a little bit nervous about telling them, since they involve family and my family would know exactly who I was talking about. Most are pretty good, in a strange Driving Miles Daisy sort of way, except nobody in my family ever had a chauffeur.

For now let's just say that my father had a way of spouting all the typical stuff of his day about segregation and politics. But you would not believe the lengths to which he would go to help out a black man in need. Not money, or not much, because we didn't have enough ourselves. But actual physical help. And spiritual if that was wanted, even though he wasn't a preacher. But he was a recovering alcoholic who helped other alcoholics. No matter which race, no matter what the circumstance.

He'd get a phone call in the middle of the night and he'd go. No matter where it was, at a time when racial tensions were high. Summer of 1968 is when we moved back to Mississippi, just south of Memphis. You get my drift now, right? Anyway, he'd go get the man from wherever he was, a juke joint out in the county somewhere usually. Take him for coffee and talk until he was sober enough to face his wife and drive him home. Then he'd help him stay sober if that's what the man wanted to do. Help him find work if there was work to be found. Daddy had the time to help people and he did. It didn't matter who they were. But he was a racist since he still believed in segregated schools.

For a daughter growing up who idolized her father, this was pretty hard to reconcile. I loved him dearly. I miss him every day. I think of the things he did, the way he lived his life, instead of the things he said. Mind you - he never, ever used the n-word or any other derogatory word. Not once. That was taboo in our home, including for visitors. I think sometimes that was their one little way of taking a stand. Maybe it was the best they could do.

So, that was one little story. It isn't meant to minimize his racism, because he was a racist. No doubt about that. It is meant to illustrate the point of the article. Daddy was a good man. In deed, probably the best I've ever known. But his words, the words of all those other segregationists? They resulted in a horrible policy, didn't they? Those words made African Americans feel they were not worthy of attending school with white children or even riding the bus like whites did. Couldn't sit in the same waiting room at the doctor's office. Those words accomplished a lot of evil.

And, I think my father shows how very complicated this is. How he could compartmentalize it in his mind somehow. And as his daughter, I'm still dealing with how to think of him. So, too, are those black men he helped I've no doubt. The ripples continue to this day.

[one_voice]

11. One of my earliest memories of my grandmother's...

racism was when I was in kindergarten. There was a girl I wanted to come over on a Saturday to play. My granny informed me that we didn't have those people in our homes as guests. At the time I had no idea what she meant.

Fast forward. My mom marrying my dad (he's black) granny did not approve, and wouldn't come to the wedding. Broke my moms heart. She came to the house before the wedding and helped my mom get dressed but wouldn't go any further.

When my sister was born, she wouldn't let her in her house, this was her grandchild.

My granny was never mean to my dad or his kids and eventually it was if none of that stuff ever happened. As the years went by she loved my dad as if he were her own son. In the years before her death when her mind started to go the only person she wanted around her was my dad, funny how that worked out.

When I married my husband her exact words to me were, 'Jesus Christ you can't do any better than a spic'. I was her favorite grandchild, wonder what she would have said if I wasn't. She did end up apologizing to me, and I do believe she meant it. I don't think she could have loved my kids more than she did. She was crazy about them. She loved my husband to death too. I don't know if she just continued to grow or what.

My dad is from Alabama and after he and my mom were married it was years before he'd take her down to see his family. He was still afraid of what might happen driving through much of the south, a black man and a white woman and this was in the 70's.

On the other side of the coin. My dad's sister (one of them) called my mom every white so-n-so. There was also another family member that had a problem with their marriage and said some pretty rotten crap as well.

Eventually, they came around too.

Some of the stories my parents have told me about things that have happened to them while they were out together are scary.

I can only hope that while there's a very loud segment of the population that is racist, it's shrinking.

[DevonRex]

12. Thank you so much.

I can't tell you how much it means to hear from someone whose memories are similar and kind of from the place and time that mine are from. And the reactions, and how looong it took for any acceptance and any change - it is all so familiar. And how that change only applies to a particular circumstance, not to race in general or attitudes about race. Like, sure one black guy is fine. But that doesn't mean that all other black people are OK or that Latinos are OK. Nope. That'll take another century and it'll be on a case-by-case basis by god. *sigh*

The ripples are still going on in your family, too. And so it goes.

I'm just waiting for the day they don't call my husband a Yankee when we visit. They can't seem to resist somehow.