The 1619 Project Meets 2020 Realities.
The New York Times publishes an extremely elite black woman today, telling us the problem with America and how we can fix it. She might convince a liberal grads seminar, but the rest of us I don't think believe she lives in the same world as the rest of us...
Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, legal scholar and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — the bestselling book that helped to transform the national debate on racial and criminal justice in the United States.
I will not pretend to have a road map that will lead us to higher ground. But for those who are serious about rising to the challenge, I will share a few of the key steps that I believe are necessary if we are to learn from our history and not merely repeat it.
We must face our racial history and our racial present. We cannot solve a problem we do not understand. Donald Trump would not be the president and George Floyd would not be dead if, after the Civil War, our nation had committed itself to reparations, reconciliation and atonement for the land and people that colonizers stole, sold and plundered.Instead, white people who enslaved blacks were granted reparations for the loss of their “property” while formerly enslaved blacks were given nothing — not even the 40 acres and a mule they were promised. Ever since, our nation has been trapped in a cycle of intermittent racial progress followed by fierce backlash and the emergence of new and “improved” systems of racial and social control. These cycles have been punctuated by various movements, uprisings and riots, but one thing has remained constant: A majority of whites persistently deny the scale and severity of racial injustice that people of color endure.It’s not enough to learn the broad outlines of this history. Only by pausing long enough to study the cycles of oppression and resistance, it becomes clear that simply being a good person or not wishing black people any harm is insufficient.Nor is voting for Democrats or diversifying police forces. In fact, those efforts have not made much of a dent in ending abusive policing or mass incarceration.There are many excellent books, articles and films that can help to put our racial moment in context.A good place to start if you are new to racial justice history and advocacy is Ibram X. Kendi’s trio of books, “How to Be an Antiracist” “Stamped From the Beginning” and “Stamped,” his young adult book co-authored with Jason Reynolds. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s book, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” and Ava Duvernay’s film, 13th are especially relevant now. And Andrea Ritchie’s book, “Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color” is essential reading, given the comparatively little attention that police killings of black women typically receive. Paul Butler’s book, “Chokehold,” is an excellent exploration of police violence against black men — past and present. The documentary “Whose Streets?” depicting the aftermath of Michael Brown’s murder and the uprisings in Ferguson, Mo., will open your eyes to the tragedies and triumphs of that period, as well as “blatant racism and hypocrisy on display from the powers that be,” in the words of a writer in Rolling Stone magazine.No matter your race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, sexual orientation or background, you have much to gain by deepening your understanding of how we got to this place. I recommend reading classics like James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time,” Angela Davis’ “Women, Race and Class” and the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, as well as books like “The Radical King,” which feature writings and speeches of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that the mainstream media is inclined to ignore.Read and organize study groups or book clubs. Begin the process of racial reckoning in your city, neighborhood, school, workplace and family. Demand that your school district adopt racial justice curriculum.
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In Minneapolis, "racial justice curriculum" means teaching black children they have been oppressed in America for the past 401 years. How can you teach what you don't believe? "Protestors" (not Antifa, they tell us) burned the public library on Lake Street down. Nobody much feels like meeting in Zoom book clubs to discuss the never-ending Negro problems and the White Man's alleged burden of fixing it...
Ms. Alexander re-writes the narrative, and makes legal conclusions that differ from cases that have gone to trial and have yet to. She is convinced that education, culture and community understanding -- by the "white" community -- will uplift her black community only if "whites" take the appropriate actions at this time...
Most whites expect the heavy lifting that needs to be done now needs to be initiated by black people in black communities. The White Man cannot fix those cultural problems that have festered. Don't blame it on slavery's original sin of 401 years ago either. Blacks need to overcome that, and acknowledge that black slavers in Africa took them from their past history on the continent and sold them to the New World. The blacks who get educated and get past the shackles of their slavery pasts (for those who did not immigrate to America, later) succeed in this country, some beyond their wildest dreams...
Most whites expect the heavy lifting that needs to be done now needs to be initiated by black people in black communities. The White Man cannot fix those cultural problems that have festered. Don't blame it on slavery's original sin of 401 years ago either. Blacks need to overcome that, and acknowledge that black slavers in Africa took them from their past history on the continent and sold them to the New World. The blacks who get educated and get past the shackles of their slavery pasts (for those who did not immigrate to America, later) succeed in this country, some beyond their wildest dreams...
As an elite, upper-class black woman, I wonder if Ms. Alexander would dare move her family into a middle-class, mixed-race American neighborhood today. (How would she and her husband handle pettty crimes by young black men, and older ones? Let it pass?) Like many black professionals in her class, I doubt it. They freak at an off-leash cocker spaniel, it seems...
Ms. Alexander, and her educated and cultured ilk at the Times, has all the answers because she is not familiar with the working-class realities of lives of "essential" Americans these days, black and white and even illegal immigrant. When her son enlists as an inner-city police officer and puts a few shifts under his belt, maybe this wise, book-educated black woman will start to understand the books unwritten yet that she and her type of black people need to read about the realities of their own communities of color...
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ADDED: One question Ms. Alexander could start with: How should immigrant shopkeepers handle "losses" by theft? Both George Floyd and Michael Brown came into police contact because callers reported minor thefts from convenience stores. Should the immigrant owners just be taught that in America, if a poor black steals from you, you just "eat it"? The owners of corporate Cub Foods in Minneapolis might have received that message, but Target probably needs to hear it. And owners of little bodegas like Cup Foods too. Tell me: how do you teach immigrants that blacks have such "privilege" if that's the right word, and entitled to small thefts because of what happened in 1619 and the history of oppression all these centuries in America and all...
Another? How can we address and confront illegal drug abuse in black America that causes some of them to make poor social choices that affect others? Many alleged victims of police discipline have been found to have criminal records and drugs in their system. Responding officers have no knowledge of his, but men and boys in altered states show via their behavior and physicality when confronted that ... they are on something that makes them more aggressive. Ms. Alexander: how should a police officer -- black or white -- protect himself from such drug-addled aggression? Can the women of the black community step up to nourish their sons, brothers, fathers and lovers so they don't rely on illegal drugs in public places that force police to become involved? Can you get on that, when the book-reading is done this month, maybe? Sure would help society...
Finally: Affirmative Action. None of us believe that blacks are genetically inferior or cannot compete. Why do our Courts continue permitting the discrimination against white people based on the color of our skin?
Many educated black people do not want to be thought of as having needed "educational reparations" to lift them; they are confident they have succeeded on their own intellectual merits. So please, join us in the push to do away with skin-based discrimination in the 20th Century. It wasn't right then, it isn't right now. It skews society, allowing (sadly) college admissions officers to too often choose society's initial winners and losers (I write "initially" because again, sadly, promoting people above their intellectual merit level often catches up to them on the jobs, and they are summarily dismissed, or convinced to "resign".)
We need to judge the individual American citizen on the merits, not other factors, and eliminate those who might have attained their privilege though connections and credentials, not the quality of their work. White, and black and other. Woman and man. Birth citizen or naturalized. Straight or gay.
No more "specials" this morning in America...
Ms. Alexander, and her educated and cultured ilk at the Times, has all the answers because she is not familiar with the working-class realities of lives of "essential" Americans these days, black and white and even illegal immigrant. When her son enlists as an inner-city police officer and puts a few shifts under his belt, maybe this wise, book-educated black woman will start to understand the books unwritten yet that she and her type of black people need to read about the realities of their own communities of color...
--------------
ADDED: One question Ms. Alexander could start with: How should immigrant shopkeepers handle "losses" by theft? Both George Floyd and Michael Brown came into police contact because callers reported minor thefts from convenience stores. Should the immigrant owners just be taught that in America, if a poor black steals from you, you just "eat it"? The owners of corporate Cub Foods in Minneapolis might have received that message, but Target probably needs to hear it. And owners of little bodegas like Cup Foods too. Tell me: how do you teach immigrants that blacks have such "privilege" if that's the right word, and entitled to small thefts because of what happened in 1619 and the history of oppression all these centuries in America and all...
Another? How can we address and confront illegal drug abuse in black America that causes some of them to make poor social choices that affect others? Many alleged victims of police discipline have been found to have criminal records and drugs in their system. Responding officers have no knowledge of his, but men and boys in altered states show via their behavior and physicality when confronted that ... they are on something that makes them more aggressive. Ms. Alexander: how should a police officer -- black or white -- protect himself from such drug-addled aggression? Can the women of the black community step up to nourish their sons, brothers, fathers and lovers so they don't rely on illegal drugs in public places that force police to become involved? Can you get on that, when the book-reading is done this month, maybe? Sure would help society...
Finally: Affirmative Action. None of us believe that blacks are genetically inferior or cannot compete. Why do our Courts continue permitting the discrimination against white people based on the color of our skin?
Many educated black people do not want to be thought of as having needed "educational reparations" to lift them; they are confident they have succeeded on their own intellectual merits. So please, join us in the push to do away with skin-based discrimination in the 20th Century. It wasn't right then, it isn't right now. It skews society, allowing (sadly) college admissions officers to too often choose society's initial winners and losers (I write "initially" because again, sadly, promoting people above their intellectual merit level often catches up to them on the jobs, and they are summarily dismissed, or convinced to "resign".)
We need to judge the individual American citizen on the merits, not other factors, and eliminate those who might have attained their privilege though connections and credentials, not the quality of their work. White, and black and other. Woman and man. Birth citizen or naturalized. Straight or gay.
No more "specials" this morning in America...
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