trayvon martin and the privilege of invisibility

Amid the media frenzy over the George Zimmerman acquittal on July 13th, I came across this Jet interview with renowned scholar and activist bell hooks.  When asked about how African American parents should talk to their kids about the dangers black children face today, hooks reminds us that our current crisis doesn’t present a new dilemma for African American families.  She explains that black parents have always practiced what she calls, "parenting for justice"--a phrase she uses to describe ways black parents teach their children to be activists for justice while also raising their kids’ awareness regarding the inequities and dangers they will face growing up black in America. 

Reading the interview I was immediately reminded of a performance by my fellow Listen to Your Mother cast member Taya Johnson back in May.  Taya's piece, Peanut Butter and Jelly, recounts the tragic and sudden loss of her husband and the subsequent challenges she faces raising their special needs son alone.  Embedded in this story, however, is the fear and weighted responsibility Taya and her husband felt in the moments when they discovered they would have a son.  Taya notes that parenting is terrifying for everyone, but adds, "our fear was doubled as raising an African American boy presents a unique set of challenges and concerns."  She continues that racial "anger, fear, ignorance and hatred is often directed to and acted upon black boys and men." In the face of these threats, Taya and her husband made a plan: their family, with a strong emphasis on the role model of the father, would help their son Marcus to navigate these challenges. 

Sadly, Marcus's father did not live to see that plan through, leaving Taya to rely on male members of their extended family to help Marcus know the man his father was. Still, I find it remarkable that even though they wouldn't have used this language, Taya and her husband had planned how they would "parent for justice" before their son was even born.

Of all the fears and anxieties I felt when pregnant with my son, I never worried that I was bringing him into a world that would not welcome him.  I have never worried that someone in our neighborhood might perceive my son as a threat.  I have never counseled him on how to avoid arousing the suspicions of others.  I have never advised him about how to stay safe if confronted by the police. 

I have never had to deliver these dire warnings because Gareth enjoys a privilege that white people, including myself, take for granted.  It is the privilege of invisibility.  Gareth’s whiteness lends him a legitimacy and a belonging that allows him to walk regularly to 711 to buy candy without fear. He is invisible because no one notices him.  No one suspects him.   Of course, I worry endlessly that he will step carelessly into traffic, but in all the times he has made that trip, it has never crossed my mind that he might get shot. 

Such freedom of movement should not be a privilege; it is a right. 

The work of securing this right for all young people should not fall to African American parents alone.  White people can “parent for justice” too. 

First, we can educate ourselves and our kids about racial profiling.  I don’t just mean that we should understand that it happens.  Rather, we need to understand what it’s like—or admit that we don’t really know so that we can ask questions and find out. 

Have you ever felt targeted by the police for something beyond your control?  This has only happened to me once in my life, and arguably, it wasn’t beyond my control.  In January 2001, I went to DC to protest the election of George W. Bush.  Despite my peaceful intentions and my right to free speech, the police repeatedly treated me like a threat to society rather than as an active, socially conscious part of it.  They blocked my way, barked orders at me, refused to look at me, and refused to answer my questions.  At one point, when the police unlawfully blocked the protest route, I turned down a side street chatting and laughing with some fellow marchers.  Two police officers came out of nowhere and attacked the young man walking just in front of me.  They threw him to the ground and raised their clubs at him, yelling for him to lie still.  I watched in horror before I was corralled away by additional officers (no, I was not arrested). 

Later that afternoon, as I was driving home, I contemplated my treatment and the mixed emotions it had evoked.  I had felt indignant, angry, misunderstood, and sometimes afraid.  Most surprising to me, the unfair treatment made me want to fight back.  I wanted to yell at the police, point my finger in their faces and tell them how wrong they were about me.  I wanted to push them to make them acknowledge me when I was talking to them.   I didn’t do any of those things, but I was shocked to discover how quickly the police could make me want to. 

While driving my car and marveling at this surprising turn of my character, a police cruiser drew alongside me on the highway.  When I saw that black and white in the corner of my eye, I flinched and cowered a bit in my seat, expecting him to pull me over.  I had learned to feel like a criminal in just one day.  Then I remembered that this officer had no way of knowing that I'd protested earlier--that I was no longer the subject of his suspicion and ire.  By getting in my car and driving away, I had disappeared back into the privilege of my invisible self, a self who was free to move about the city without question.  I felt a tremendous sense of relief. 

My one day of minor mistreatment doesn't even make a drop in the bucket when compared to the systematic infringements of racial profiling.  If I could feel so targeted, so angry and so vulnerable in such a short time, what must it be like for young black men who endure the suspicious gaze of those who unjustly fear them on a regular basis—and during the formative years of their childhood no less?  How often do they feel afraid?  How often do they alter their plans to avoid trouble? How often are they incited to violence they wouldn't otherwise commit?  

I have heard arguments that profiling is an insignificant problem because innocent people should have nothing to fear.  That argument overlooks the more far reaching damage done to a population that falls perpetually under a suspicious gaze.  Even more importantly, the argument ignores the fact that racial profiling subjects the same population to repeated risk of dangerous conflict.  Eventually, someone gets really hurt, or as happened in the tragedy of Trayvon Martin, someone dies.  

That is unacceptable.  To truly bring an end to racial profiling however, we must overcome an even greater hurdle: our fear. 

Have you ever felt unduly afraid or suspicious of a young black man?

I've spent a lot of time studying things like race theory and the history of slavery, Jim Crow, civil rights and stereotype.  Still, I live in this society that privileges whiteness while demonizing blackness, and I am not immune to its influences. 

I admit that there have been times when I have looked twice at unknown black teens who have walked through my neighborhood or past my car.  I am ashamed of those feelings, but instead of hiding them, I think we should confront them.  We should ask ourselves where our fear originates: in personal experience, or elsewhere?  Far more than personal experience, we will find the seeds of fear in Hollywood, on television, in the news, in the application of the law, and in the law itself.  

As these many sources of fear show, no one of us has single-handedly created this culture, but whether we like it or not, we are all stewards of it.  Understanding the root of it can empower us to resist.  Instead of blindly perpetuating fear and stereotype, we can question them.  We can educate ourselves about their origin and history, and we can “parent for justice” by teaching ourselves and our kids to look beyond stereotypes to see the promise and the humanity they mask. 

Without fear, the practice of profiling would die, and we could finally guarantee young black men the privilege of invisibility--the privilege of moving freely without evoking suspicion and incurring harassment. 

We can do all that, and if we think Trayvon Martin should be the last innocent black child to die for our fear, then we must. 

charles ramsey, white folks & living language

photo credit: abcnews.go.com

I think it's high time for white folks to stop laughing at the way black folks talk.

Of course, I'm referring to the latest social media sensation: Charles Ramsey.  But you know he's not the only one.  There are others such as Sweet Brown and Michelle Clark.

Some will argue that instead of mocking Ramsey, the Internet attention celebrates Ramsey's heroism.  I'd suggest it's a little of both: a sensational story told by an easily sensationalized guy.

The great irony of it is, many white people laugh at black vernacular because they think it's ignorant, when in fact, it's actually white ignorance about black vernacular that lies at the heart of the joke.  With little understanding of the origins, intelligence and cultural value of black vernacular, it might be easy to mistake it for an unsuccessful attempt at Standard English.  In that light, black speech can come across as charming, child-like, hilarious, or even offensive. 

As Americans, we hear a lot about the many things slavery took away--things like freedom, dignity, family, and wealth.  We need to know about those things.  However, white folks also need to understand that three hundred years of living and dying in bondage did not happen in a cultural vacuum.  Slaves developed rich cultural traditions, especially around religion, music, and language.

While our high school teachers drilled into us the importance of proper grammar and vocabulary, the reality is that language is alive and ever-changing. That's why it's hard to read Shakespeare and  nearly impossible to read Chaucer.  It's why we don't say "thee" and "thou" anymore, and it's why "ain't" and "bling" now appear in the dictionary.   It's also the reason that enslaved Africans, when thrust into their English speaking bondage, did not speak a precise copy of the language they heard from the mouths of their captors. 

Inevitably, slaves blended Standard English  with the many African languages they either spoke themselves or were introduced to over the course of the slave trade.  This kind of blending typically simplifies grammatical structures in language.  We see this especially in verb conjugations such as that used by Charles Ramsey when he says "It's" instead of "There were" in the phrase, "It's some mo' girls up in that house." 

Consider also that slaves had only limited access to Standard English.  They didn't, after all, sit around chatting over tea with their overseers (those men probably didn't speak it very well anyway).  In addition, a systematically enforced illiteracy denied them access to the written word.  Without the corrective of written language, transmission of language becomes less specific, with the proliferation of substitutions like "wif" for "with" and dropped endings  like "mo" for "more."  In the context of an evolving language that communicates effectively, these alterations aren't errors, they're simply changes that reflect the given circumstances.

You may be thinking, "But that was a long time ago, why doesn't Ramsey learn "proper" English now?"

I can't speak specifically for Ramsey, but I can point out that slavery continued for three hundred years.  That's a lot of talking.  It's certainly plenty of time to develop a rich oral tradition that serves not just as a means of communication, but as an important source of cultural identity and pride.

Black vernacular can be inspirational and participatory.  We see this in call and response patterns that still characterize political and religious speak today.  It can also be double-voiced, which means it is intended for two audiences: an insider and a an outsider.  It is intentionally and creatively indirect, with "yo' mama" jokes providing just one small but popular example.  And finally, it is subversive.  Since black vernacular evolved under extreme stress, with its speakers under constant surveillance, it carries with it an awareness of a listening third party, one the speaker will invoke or evade as necessary. 

We can see Ramsey's awareness of a third party in both his 911 call and in his initial live interview.  He references McDonald's early in both.  On the call he gives the address then says, "Hey, check this out.  I just came from McDonald's right?"  Similarly, at the beginning of the interview he explains that "I heard screaming.  I'm eating my McDonald's."  Rather than a hilariously irrelevant piece of information from an ignorant neighbor, this savvy tidbit offers up an alibi to police or other officials who will eventually overhear these conversations.

Ramsey appears to recognize himself as at risk in a racially charged situation where a distressed white girl has called 911 in the presence of a black man (who also happens to have a record of domestic violence).   While he sets up the story for the reporter (It all started when I was eating my McDonald's and I suddenly heard screaming), he communicates a slightly different narrative to police who might eventually overhear (a white girl started screaming but it didn't have anything to do with me because I had just come from McDonald's and was minding my own business eating my food on the porch).

Later, Ramsey makes his awareness of the racialized narratives around black men more explicit when he says, "Bro, I knew something was wrong when a pretty little white girl ran into a black man's arms." Again his statement is double-voiced.  For a black audience, this statement is a joke that he punctuates with, "Dead giveaway!"  For a white audience, the statement is a veiled accusation about how racist stereotypes unfairly represent black men as dangerous to white women.  While people in the background laugh at the joke, the white reporter hears the accusation and runs away.

In light of all this, it doesn't make sense to ask why someone like Ramsey doesn't make more of an effort to learn "proper" English.  If his speech is part of his identity and serves as a positive signifier for his community and its history, why would he want to give it up? And why should he? 

Ramsey's grammar reminds us that abducted Africans brought their languages here and blended them with that of their captors. His animation illustrates a long tradition of story telling in a culture that suffered centuries of forced illiteracy. His content shows his social and political savvy as well as his ability to speak to two audiences at once. 

If Ramsey's interview entertains you, I think that's okay, just as long as we see that entertainment not as an accident of stupidity but as a product of the richness and artistry of living language.

the word "boy," president obama, and romney's racism

There’s been a lot of lament in the last few days about President Obama’s unusual awkwardness and silence during the debate.  Romney brought his “A” game, if putting on a say-anything smarmy sales routine counts as such—which it does.

 

While I shared everyone’s consternation over President Obama’s failure to come out swinging, I found myself much more upset with one particular moment in the debate: when Romney says:

 

“Look, I have five boys.  I’m used to people saying something that isn’t always true and keep on saying it hoping ultimately I will believe it.” 

 

So.  Just to be sure we have it straight.  Mr. Romney claimed that he is used to dealing with people like President Obama because Obama is a lying “boy” just like Romney’s own sons.

 

Shocked, I sat bolt upright in my chair, asking myself, “Did Romney just call President Obama a “boy?”

 

We have a long history of white people calling black men “boy” in our country.  The term evolved during slavery as a way of emasculating black men.  By calling them “boy,” and disavowing their adulthood, slave owners robbed them of the intelligence, humanity and sexuality of a grown man.  As “boys,” black men had no autonomy over their lives and no claim to their women.  The black man’s status as a “boy” justified his position as dependent and beholden to a master who claimed to take care of him.

 

Like the “N” word, use of “boy” did not disappear with emancipation.  It remained a powerful linguistic tool through Jim Crow and continues to pack a punch today.    

 

If you watch President Obama as Romney delivers this line, there is a distinct reaction.  He turns slightly towards Romney, lifts his head abruptly and inhales through his nose.  For just a second, he exhibits the body language of a man rising to the challenge of a physical fight.  He’s pissed. 

 

Then he reigns it in under the mask of an awkward smile.



 

Here stands our intelligent and principled president, admirably keeping his composure while this big lying oaf disparages him with dripping condescension and a subtly delivered racial epithet.

I don’t think we can explain Romney’s allusion away as an innocent reference to his kids.  Let’s give the man more credit than that.  Whether implicitly or explicitly, he understands the nuances of language in American culture because he grew up here.  We all know the language.  What separates us is whether we choose to embrace or reject it. 

People say Romney has no soul, no principles.  He can’t seem to decide on which side of anything he stands.  Even his insinuation that President Obama is no better than his own apparantly dishonest boys comes amid his own whopper lies about taxes and healthcare.  (Apparently then, the apples didn’t fall far from the tree?)

I think in this moment, and perhaps against his will, the real Romney seeps through the seams of his pressed and starched shirt.  We've seen glimpses of this bully before.  He is a guy who will do or say anything to get what he wants: a guy who put his dog on the car roof,  and who cut off his classmate’s hair; a guy who wrote off 47% of Americans when he thought no one was looking.  And now, a guy who called his president a "boy" in hopes of getting a vote.

 

eating my words

I know I said "don't get glammed."  I meant it, but do I have to practice what I preach?  Last night, as Bill Clinton closed his speech with these rather sappy remarks:

I love our country— and I know we're coming back.
For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've
always come out stronger than we went in. And we
will again as long as we do it together. We champion
the cause for which our founders pledged their lives,
their fortunes, their sacred honor— to form a more perfect union.
If that's what you believe, if that's what you want, we have to
re-elect President Barack Obama.

I found myself smiling and joining in the resounding applause.  I almost stood up. 

Remembering myself, I looked around our empty living room, heard my solitary clapping and laughed, embarrassed in front of nobody.  The night before, Michelle Obama actually brought a tear to my ever-cynical eye as she concluded her talk. 

What's happening to me?  Republican or Democrat, I usually adopt a call and response formula when listening to political speeches, forcing Steve to suffer my regular outbursts as I complain about all the things left unsaid. 

AND, I have never even really considered myself to be a Democrat, because honestly, I'm left of them.  In the old days of Clinton and George Bush, Democrats frustrated me with their positions on things like trade, deregulation and gays.  I never thought the Democrats looked much different than the Republicans. 

Then, in the 1990s, Ralph Reed and his Christian Coalition marched the Republicans up to the deep end of fundamentalist conservative politics.  It was only a matter of time before young impressionable men like Rick Santorum and Paul Ryan would strip off the garments of reason and jump in (leaving poor Mitt on the side with his life preserver and his toe in the water, trying to look like a joiner). 

Everything's relative, right?  If what tweeters not-so-affectionately call "right-wing-nut-jobs" (#RWNJ) want to spew bigoted messages of hatred toward American people while ironically espousing the humanity of corporations, then the Democrats, with their moderate messages of tolerance, diversity, community, and public service, look pretty darn good. 

It doesn't hurt that I truly believe Obama's economic plan to tax the 1% and invest in the middle class represents our best chance for getting out of this economic mess  (very optimistically assuming oil prices remain stable and the European economy can hold itself together).

Clinton was right when he said that trickle down economics have no history of success.   In our current climate, tax cuts for corporations who are already hoarding money won't trickle down to us, rather, they'll flow in a broad band river to Switzerland, the Cayman's and elsewhere.  

Why should we pay to pad their already flooded bank accounts--and then pay for the schools, the Medicare, the roads and everything else they privatize for their further profit along the way? Let's face it folks, we have to pay for those services one way or another:  either through taxes to a democratically elected government over which we have at least some power, or to corporate providers to which we would be completely beholden.  I choose the former.

I want Democrats to get tougher on climate, to cut out the drone strikes, to deal responsibly with Guantanimo, but those are things to fight for after the election (and those are things I could never hope to see Republicans address). 

For the convention, I admit I'm having fun sitting alone on my couch eating my words, getting glammed, and feeling hopeful.

i thought i raised a white supremist

Olivia, ever the jokester, comes home from school the other day.

Olivia: "Mom, I have a joke."
Me: "OK.  Let's hear it."
O:  "It's racist," she says, giggling mischeviously.
M: "OK.  Then you shouldn't repeat it."
O:  "I know, but it's sooo funny."
M: "Olivia, racists jokes aren't funny.  You shouldn't repeat it."
O: "No mom, you don't understand.  It's sooo funny!"

In the battle of who gets to talk," Olivia always wins. The child, beautiful and charming as she is, cannot stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth.

She delivered her joke.

I'll take my own advice and not repeat it, but I will say it wasn't anything new. The gist of it:  there are too many Mexicans. 

We live in a diverse area, and Olivia's friends hail from a wide variety of backgrounds.  I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of friendly 6th grade banter going on lately regarding everyone's various "colors."  Olivia, for example, calls her bi-racial friend, L., "Hershey."  In return, he calls her "low-fat milk."  They laugh.  I'm glad they find difference normal instead of scary.

This is not the first time Olivia has repeated a racist joke, however.  She will tell me, "It's ok because L. told it, and he's black," or "R. told it and he's brown."  I admit that things have gotten murky.  What's the etiquette for a black person telling an anti-black joke to a white person?  Is the black person "allowed" to do that?  Is the white person supposed to laugh? 

I do know this:  It's NOT ok for the white person to repeat the joke.  When I explained this to Olivia, she knew it too, telling me, "Mom, I know.  I know.  L. and I are just joking around.  We're friends." 

They seem to have it worked out.  Do they really need my intervention?  Are they at a level of racial familiarity and comfort that my too-careful generation cannot understand?

But what about this joke about Mexicans?  It nagged at me even after we'd put the conversation to rest.  Olivia obviously thinks it's OK to tell a racist joke if you know your audience and acknowledge the racism.

I disagree.  There remains this underlying problem of why the joke is funny. And that's what I realized I needed to ask her about.

On the way to school the next morning:
M: "So...[not so casual segue]... Why do you think that joke about Mexicans is sooo funny?" 
O: "I don't know, it just is."

We go round a bit with similar answers until we get to:

M: "I'm not angry or anything.  I'm just trying to understand something.  Let's think about it."
O:  "Well, you know.  It's funny because there are too many Mexican people."

I admit, her answer surprises me.

M: "Really?  Why are there too many Mexican people? What's wrong with Mexican people?" 

I can feel the volume and pitch of my voice rise a bit in the annoying way it does when I feel emotional.  I take a deep breath, hoping to keep my tone as casual as hers.   I try to remember what I learned in Lamaze 1,000 years ago about focus, relaxation and breathing. Could that be useful here?

O:  "You know.  There are just too many!" 

Innocent of my distress, she speaks in a tone that is happy and disarmingly matter-of-fact.  It's as if she's telling me, "You know, Mom.  The P.E. teacher has hair in his nose.  It's funny!"  Plus, why does she keep saying I know?  What do I know?  Apparently nothing!

With help from a few strategic and breathless "hee hees" and "hoo hoos," emitted through the clenched teeth of a parent in the throes of something out of her control: 

M: "Well...maybe there are too many white people? What if your joke was about white people?"
O: "That would be dumb."

I sense we're getting somewhere now.

M: "Why?"
O: "Because."
M: "Well, when I look around, I see a lot of white folks.  Why doesn't that mean we have too many white people?"
O: "Because, Mom. It's our country! We own it!"

my reaction

My breathing turns to the desperate kind,  "you know," the kind that means the Lamaze training really isn’t working anymore. 

M: "What? How do you figure that?"
O:  "We took it over.  We own it."  Then, sensing my disagreement, she looks at me, "Don't we?"

And this, my friends, is when we arrived at kiss-and-ride. 

With a line of cars waiting impatiently behind me, I kissed my sweet little white supremist goodbye and sent her off to lord over all of her many colored minions for a fun-filled day of harmless racist banter between friends. 

We've talked about racial equality: to respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person.  We've talked about slavery and how wrong that was.  We've talked about Martin Luther King and what a great man he was.  We've talked about how things should be.  The thing we haven't talked about is how things are. 

I tried to sound casual when she got home in the afternoon, but I'm pretty sure I started talking before the door closed behind her--now who has words tumbling out of her mouth? 

During the day, I concocted a kid's version of the eco-racial history of the U.S.  It went something like this:  "Imagine if you and I play Monopoly and I cheat for 400 turns around the board (300 years of slavery plus 100 years of Jim Crow), refusing to let you buy houses or collect $200 when you pass Go.  During that time, I buy all the property and collect rent from you.  I get really rich and powerful.  After 400 turns, I decide to stop cheating by letting you collect $200 when you pass Go and letting you buy houses if you can afford them. I tell you things are equal now, but I keep all the money and houses I got while I was cheating.  Would the rest of the game be fair?"

"No way!" she says with indignation. 

"Right," I answer.  "Well that's kind of how it is now in America.  A lot of white people want to play fair, but even though there are lots of poor white folks, white people as a community still have most of the money and power that we inherited from all that cheating.  Plus, it's only been 47 turns around the board since we tried to stop the cheating."

She looks at me with wide eyes.  "Oh." 

Feeling all puffed up about how well I thought I'd handled this, I ask her: "So, do you understand why it isn't fair to say 'We own it,' or 'We took it over?' or why it's not funny when white people make jokes about who has (or doesn't have) money or power?"

"Yeah," she answers.  "I get it."  Then, "but mom, I didn't mean white people."

"What?"

"I didn't mean white people own the country, I meant Americans.  You know, like British people own England. Mexican people own Mexico.  Americans own America."

Now it's my turn.  "Oh." 

Suddenly I'm all turned around.  First, I'm not sure that's true (that she didn't mean white people), but also, I realize this is one of those moments where, good explanation or not, I had spent a lot of time answering the wrong question.

Apparently, instead of a white supremist, I have some sort of xenophobic nationalist on my hands!

Is there a board game that will help us talk about immigration?  Somehow I don't think Risk or Stratego will achieve the desired effect.

Parenting is sooo complicated.