Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "affirmative-action"
Coloring the Ivory Tower: The Problem with Affirmative Action
An article published in the L.A. Times last week revealed that nonwhite faculty members at UCLA had endured considerable discrimination. Having spent, as the subtitle of my memoir indicates, forty-eight years in white institutions, I was not surprised to learn that racism was so prevalent in a highly-ranked university. In fact, the Kirkus Review of my book describes it as "an unflinching account of the serious discriminatory practices that fester in the supposedly enlightened ivory tower" and comments on the "formidable sexism and racism" that I faced. The reviewer was referring, I am sure, to the American Literature professor at UCLA's sports rival, USC, who thought I was stealing typewriters when he saw me in the English Department early one morning, and to another USC professor who told me when I showed up at his house with two male classmates that I looked like a hostess and asked me to cut the cheese for the class party. When I let that man know that I didn't come to graduate school to cut cheese, he just smiled and waited for the next woman to arrive. The blue-eyed, blonde woman didn't mind cutting the cheese, but not only was that white man sexist, he was a fool not to realize that asking the only black woman (in fact, the only nonwhite woman) in his class and in the USC English Department graduate program to serve as a hostess was insulting and racist. That ivory tower dweller was definitely not enlightened when he encountered me in 1972. And then there were my tepid letters of recommendation, written by the white male USC faculty. Two of them said that I would make a good two- or four-year college professor. I was earning a Ph.D., but their letters suggested that I wasn't qualified to teach graduate students.
The best example of how post-civil rights era racism works in the ivory tower, however, occurred at Cal Poly Pomona, where I taught for thirty-one years. I had been a lecturer at Cal Poly while I was writing my dissertation and had asked the chair if there were any fulltime positions on the horizon when I was finishing. When he said, "no," I took a position at Tufts University. But I had been at Tufts for only a couple of months when the assistant chair called to tell me that there were two positions, and I should apply for one. I was hired along with a white male graduate of UCLA. Because we were hired at the same time, my white male colleague and I had to compete against each other for tenure and promotion. Although we both met the criteria for tenure and promotion, we had to be ranked because occasionally the university did not have enough funds to promote everyone who is qualified. That was not the case both times that the white man and I applied for promotion. Still, we were ranked.
I captured the first competition for ranking in a parable that I wrote in 1989 and published as an Appendix to my memoir. The parable was titled "The Race: Affirmative Action and Negative Reaction." In the parable, Evelyn Ashford, who represents me, is racing a white man named (somewhat maliciously) Charlie Blank. The official of the race, a man named Mr. White, hands Evelyn two-pound weights to carry, puts hurdles in her lane, and then tells her to step back two feet. When Evelyn races Charlie in the one hundred yard dash, he barely edges her, but Evelyn protests because Mr. White handicapped her. Of course, she loses the protest as well as the race. The parable ends with: "Defeated, but still in the race (pun intended), Evelyn left the track."
My seventy-something white male colleague from Texas, who was my first reader, thought that the two-pound weights and hurdles represented all of the socio-economic obstacles that I had to face before arriving at Cal Poly. After all, my white male competitor was the son of a doctor while my father finished only tenth grade. He probably attended a highly-ranked elementary school while I skipped kindergarten (I was living with my illiterate grandmother at the time) and spent my first six school years in a separate and unequal all-black elementary school. However, I had overcome those obstacles by working hard at a highly-ranked public high school, Evanston Township High, and at two private "white" universities, Northwestern and USC. So the weights and hurdles represented the new obstacles that the white male chair placed in my path to make it more difficult for me to compete against Charlie. I was given a difficult committee chair assignment that was not supported by released time, which meant that my full teaching load consisted of three classes while Charlie, the Basic Writing Skills coordinator, taught only two. I was even asked to teach a fourth class, a third composition class, for three weeks when an older colleague was sick. I refused to do twice as much work as my white male colleague, even though the promotion process was used to pressure me.
Several years after he put me in my place by handicapping me in the RTP (retention, tenure, promotion) process and then voting with the majority of the RTP committee to rank me second behind the white man, the by then former chair joined with two other white men to sabotage an attempt by the university to diversify the faculty. I was on the department diversity committee, along with a Latino male, but the three white men outvoted us. They didn't believe that we should have a special diversity hiring procedure so they just refused to present any of the many qualified applicants to the department. When I heard that the Associate Vice President of the University had accused our department of racism, I rushed to his office to tell him what had happened because I knew that the white men would try to use the Latino man and me as shields against the racism charge. I pointed out that I didn't get two votes because I was black and a woman, so I was usually outvoted by the white men.
Affirmative action may have made it more difficult for the old white boys' network to conduct business as usual, but it did not end racism in the ivory tower. Unfortunately, the people in charge of making affirmative action work in the universities were too often like the Republican governors in charge of implementing the Affordable Care Act. They didn't believe in it, so they tried to sabotage it. Too often these "old white boys" didn't recognize what my Texas colleague realized after reading my memoir. The black female perspective is not only different but valuable.
The best example of how post-civil rights era racism works in the ivory tower, however, occurred at Cal Poly Pomona, where I taught for thirty-one years. I had been a lecturer at Cal Poly while I was writing my dissertation and had asked the chair if there were any fulltime positions on the horizon when I was finishing. When he said, "no," I took a position at Tufts University. But I had been at Tufts for only a couple of months when the assistant chair called to tell me that there were two positions, and I should apply for one. I was hired along with a white male graduate of UCLA. Because we were hired at the same time, my white male colleague and I had to compete against each other for tenure and promotion. Although we both met the criteria for tenure and promotion, we had to be ranked because occasionally the university did not have enough funds to promote everyone who is qualified. That was not the case both times that the white man and I applied for promotion. Still, we were ranked.
I captured the first competition for ranking in a parable that I wrote in 1989 and published as an Appendix to my memoir. The parable was titled "The Race: Affirmative Action and Negative Reaction." In the parable, Evelyn Ashford, who represents me, is racing a white man named (somewhat maliciously) Charlie Blank. The official of the race, a man named Mr. White, hands Evelyn two-pound weights to carry, puts hurdles in her lane, and then tells her to step back two feet. When Evelyn races Charlie in the one hundred yard dash, he barely edges her, but Evelyn protests because Mr. White handicapped her. Of course, she loses the protest as well as the race. The parable ends with: "Defeated, but still in the race (pun intended), Evelyn left the track."
My seventy-something white male colleague from Texas, who was my first reader, thought that the two-pound weights and hurdles represented all of the socio-economic obstacles that I had to face before arriving at Cal Poly. After all, my white male competitor was the son of a doctor while my father finished only tenth grade. He probably attended a highly-ranked elementary school while I skipped kindergarten (I was living with my illiterate grandmother at the time) and spent my first six school years in a separate and unequal all-black elementary school. However, I had overcome those obstacles by working hard at a highly-ranked public high school, Evanston Township High, and at two private "white" universities, Northwestern and USC. So the weights and hurdles represented the new obstacles that the white male chair placed in my path to make it more difficult for me to compete against Charlie. I was given a difficult committee chair assignment that was not supported by released time, which meant that my full teaching load consisted of three classes while Charlie, the Basic Writing Skills coordinator, taught only two. I was even asked to teach a fourth class, a third composition class, for three weeks when an older colleague was sick. I refused to do twice as much work as my white male colleague, even though the promotion process was used to pressure me.
Several years after he put me in my place by handicapping me in the RTP (retention, tenure, promotion) process and then voting with the majority of the RTP committee to rank me second behind the white man, the by then former chair joined with two other white men to sabotage an attempt by the university to diversify the faculty. I was on the department diversity committee, along with a Latino male, but the three white men outvoted us. They didn't believe that we should have a special diversity hiring procedure so they just refused to present any of the many qualified applicants to the department. When I heard that the Associate Vice President of the University had accused our department of racism, I rushed to his office to tell him what had happened because I knew that the white men would try to use the Latino man and me as shields against the racism charge. I pointed out that I didn't get two votes because I was black and a woman, so I was usually outvoted by the white men.
Affirmative action may have made it more difficult for the old white boys' network to conduct business as usual, but it did not end racism in the ivory tower. Unfortunately, the people in charge of making affirmative action work in the universities were too often like the Republican governors in charge of implementing the Affordable Care Act. They didn't believe in it, so they tried to sabotage it. Too often these "old white boys" didn't recognize what my Texas colleague realized after reading my memoir. The black female perspective is not only different but valuable.
Mad Men: Do White Men Need Affirmative Action?
I've been engaging in a relatively friendly social media debate with a white man named James. James, who lives in Florida (why am I not surprised?), thinks that we blacks are "hypersensitive," that Obama is the worst President in a century, and that he has contributed to "the minor racial conflict" in America by talking about it. He also thinks that we shouldn't blame the Founding Fathers for having slaves and failing to include blacks and women among those who were created equal because they lived in a different time. When I pointed out that America was built on racism, mentioning Native Americans, Japanese, Chinese, and even white ethnic groups like the Italians and the Irish as oppressed groups, James rejected my argument because people are treated worse in other countries.
I enjoyed debating James because his arguments were so easy to attack and because I have spent my life thinking about and discussing race. At one point during the debate, I pointed out that I would never try to tell James what it was like to live in a foreign country (he lived in Asia), but he thinks he can tell me what it's like or what it should be like to live as a black woman in my own country. I wasn't certain whether that was a difference between white men and black women or just between James and me.
Since he either didn't carefully read or didn't remember all of my admittedly rather lengthy arguments (the longest chapter in my memoir was on race), James at one point accused me of sounding angry. I quickly reminded him that I had embraced the stereotype of the angry black woman. As I said in my second book, white people would be angrier if they were treated the way we black women have been. Try cleaning white folks' houses, go home to clean your own, and then be accused of being lazy, and see how you feel. Try reaching middle age without having stolen anything and still be treated like a thief in stores, and see if you don't get a little pissed. And if white men pawed you on buses and in movie theaters and offered you money for sex when you were makeup free and not wearing provocative clothes while white women acted as if they were scared of being raped by your brother, father, or son, how would you feel?
I told James that I thought he also sounded angry; he, of course, denied it because why would he be angry? I can explain why I, a black woman, born in the Jim Crow South in 1949, am angry, but what is the white man's beef? As my new favorite comedian, Louis C.K., has pointed out in my new favorite comic routine, white men can go back to any time and still be treated well. They can go back to the year 2 and get a good table. But no black woman in her right mind would want to go back to the 19th Century or even the middle of the 20th Century. Louis C.K. thinks we blacks don't want to go back past the eighties, but I prefer the seventies (before Reagan, "reverse racism," and jericurls) when black was cool, we wore big Afros, and gave our children African names. I think the white man's anger started around that same time and has grown since Obama took office.
When we hear Mitt Romney complaining that he could be elected President if he were Latino (although we have yet to elect a Latino President) and when he snarls at our President that he is entitled to his own plane and his own house but not his own facts, what he's really saying is I should be elected President and have the plane and the house because I'm white, and you're not. White men are angry because they are no longer the only ones entitled to ride on Air Force One and live in the White House. They are also no longer the only ones entitled to serve as governors, Senators, and U.S. Representatives. Most of these angry white men remember when only white men had those jobs. Some are old enough to remember when only white men could serve as jurors. And these angry old men want to go back to those days. That's what they mean when they say that they want to take their country back. Sure, they think the country is theirs, but they also want to go back to the days when white men ruled. Sorry, James, and all of you other angry old white men, but we are not going back. We have entered a brave new world, where white men are no longer entitled to the best things in life.
In some ways, I feel sorry for these poor old white men. It must be hard to lose privileges that they expected to enjoy all of their lives. And as I said when discussing the differences in the way the public perceived and treated John and Elizabeth Edwards, white men don't have generic pity cards to play. We feel more sorry for women when they lose a child, and we're more bothered by a white male teacher who has sex with his underage female students than by a white female teacher (those "hot" blondes featured on Fox News) who has sex with her male students. We can also say just about anything about a white man (we can call Edwards a Ken doll, Chris Christie fat), and the politically correct police will not come after us, but let an old white man say the wrong thing, let him call a black man "articulate," or a woman "beautiful" or "sexy," for instance, and he's labeled "racist" or "sexist."
It's so hard out here for the old white man in the 21st Century that I'm beginning to think he might need affirmative action. Nah, he just needs to accept his new reality.
I enjoyed debating James because his arguments were so easy to attack and because I have spent my life thinking about and discussing race. At one point during the debate, I pointed out that I would never try to tell James what it was like to live in a foreign country (he lived in Asia), but he thinks he can tell me what it's like or what it should be like to live as a black woman in my own country. I wasn't certain whether that was a difference between white men and black women or just between James and me.
Since he either didn't carefully read or didn't remember all of my admittedly rather lengthy arguments (the longest chapter in my memoir was on race), James at one point accused me of sounding angry. I quickly reminded him that I had embraced the stereotype of the angry black woman. As I said in my second book, white people would be angrier if they were treated the way we black women have been. Try cleaning white folks' houses, go home to clean your own, and then be accused of being lazy, and see how you feel. Try reaching middle age without having stolen anything and still be treated like a thief in stores, and see if you don't get a little pissed. And if white men pawed you on buses and in movie theaters and offered you money for sex when you were makeup free and not wearing provocative clothes while white women acted as if they were scared of being raped by your brother, father, or son, how would you feel?
I told James that I thought he also sounded angry; he, of course, denied it because why would he be angry? I can explain why I, a black woman, born in the Jim Crow South in 1949, am angry, but what is the white man's beef? As my new favorite comedian, Louis C.K., has pointed out in my new favorite comic routine, white men can go back to any time and still be treated well. They can go back to the year 2 and get a good table. But no black woman in her right mind would want to go back to the 19th Century or even the middle of the 20th Century. Louis C.K. thinks we blacks don't want to go back past the eighties, but I prefer the seventies (before Reagan, "reverse racism," and jericurls) when black was cool, we wore big Afros, and gave our children African names. I think the white man's anger started around that same time and has grown since Obama took office.
When we hear Mitt Romney complaining that he could be elected President if he were Latino (although we have yet to elect a Latino President) and when he snarls at our President that he is entitled to his own plane and his own house but not his own facts, what he's really saying is I should be elected President and have the plane and the house because I'm white, and you're not. White men are angry because they are no longer the only ones entitled to ride on Air Force One and live in the White House. They are also no longer the only ones entitled to serve as governors, Senators, and U.S. Representatives. Most of these angry white men remember when only white men had those jobs. Some are old enough to remember when only white men could serve as jurors. And these angry old men want to go back to those days. That's what they mean when they say that they want to take their country back. Sure, they think the country is theirs, but they also want to go back to the days when white men ruled. Sorry, James, and all of you other angry old white men, but we are not going back. We have entered a brave new world, where white men are no longer entitled to the best things in life.
In some ways, I feel sorry for these poor old white men. It must be hard to lose privileges that they expected to enjoy all of their lives. And as I said when discussing the differences in the way the public perceived and treated John and Elizabeth Edwards, white men don't have generic pity cards to play. We feel more sorry for women when they lose a child, and we're more bothered by a white male teacher who has sex with his underage female students than by a white female teacher (those "hot" blondes featured on Fox News) who has sex with her male students. We can also say just about anything about a white man (we can call Edwards a Ken doll, Chris Christie fat), and the politically correct police will not come after us, but let an old white man say the wrong thing, let him call a black man "articulate," or a woman "beautiful" or "sexy," for instance, and he's labeled "racist" or "sexist."
It's so hard out here for the old white man in the 21st Century that I'm beginning to think he might need affirmative action. Nah, he just needs to accept his new reality.
Then & Now: 2017 Feels Like 1989 To Me
A couple of weeks ago, I was doing what people my age often do--sorting through my past, looking for what to discard and what to save--when I came across two unpublished articles (actually one was a partial article) that I wrote in 1989. One was titled "The Language of Human Behavior" and focused on my experience with racism in the class (Language and Human Behavior) that I called my least favorite in my memoir. The other was untitled but focused on race relations myths, primarily on what I called "affirmative action myths." As I read those articles, written during the first year of Bush I's administration, the year I turned forty, two years before the Rodney King beating, and three years before the L.A. riots, I was stunned by how relevant my comments are today. How could there be so little change in my perception of the world and my place in it after almost thirty years of apparent progress?
I've always recognized the eighties as a backlash-to-progress period similar to the Jim Crow period following Reconstruction, and I've compared those two periods to the one we're in now. Maybe that's why my comments at the end of the eighties seem so relevant today. Before I read "The Language of Human Behavior," I remembered the attack on affirmative action, the dominance of conservatism during that period, and Bush I's use of "law and order" racism (the Willie Horton ads) in his 1988 Presidential campaign against the governor of Massachusetts. I even discussed how black people's hairstyles--the greasy jheri curls instead of the big Afros of the seventies--reflected the eighties political climate. Still, I was startled by the following sentence, explaining my heated, unprofessional response to the racist rejection of the book DISCOURSE AND DISCRIMINATION by some of the blue-eyed white students in my class: "One answer might be that I was responding to the increasingly tense racial climate in our society--the skinheads, the racially motivated murders, the Supreme Court's reversal of civil rights gains." I knew what the Supreme Court had done in the eighties, but I didn't remember that the skinheads were around during that period, and I still have no idea what eighties racially motivated murders I am referring to in that sentence. I remember that a black man was savagely murdered by being dragged behind a truck in Texas, but that must have happened in the nineties because Bush II bragged about the white killers receiving the death penalty during the 2000 Presidential debates. I guess there have been racially motivated attacks on black people in every decade of our history, and yet we are the ones who are considered violent and savage.
Both of these 1989 articles make points that I am still making. In "The Language of Human Behavior," I discuss how my students had made me feel better about our racial climate by convincing me that the racial slur "nigger" was a verbal taboo, more offensive than references to sexual organs or bodily functions. Then I argue, "But on that stormy day when I introduced a book that presented the minority point of view, their facial expressions and eyes told me something else. To those hostile students, on that day anyway, I was a "nigger," flaunting my blackness, forcing them to think about it." In two recent blog posts, the response to Michael Eric Dyson's new book (2/12/17), and my last blog (4/23/17), where I commented on the treatment of Paula Deen, I was still discussing the relative importance of that racial slur.
Although affirmative action is not the "hot topic" now that it was in the eighties, some of the points made in that article seem even more relevant now. For instance, I discuss the colorblind myth, pointing out how racist it is for white people to want to deny my race: "These people who need to deny race are as racist as those who seem overly preoccupied with it, those who seem to mention my race every time we talk. In fact, these "colorblind" people are probably more dangerous because they have convinced themselves that they are without prejudice while being clearly threatened by my race. Otherwise why deny it?" When I watch commentators knocking themselves out to explain why working-class, small-town Middle America white people would elect a born-rich, insane, white male New Yorker over a raised-in-the-middle-class and the Midwest woman, I recognize that they are ignoring the bigotry in the room. They are refusing to admit that most Trump voters elected an out-of-the-closet, politically incorrect bigot to stop the browning of America and put women in their place. And when I hear so-called liberals blame Hillary Clinton's defeat on "identity politics," I recognize their comment as the 2017 version of eighties "colorblind" racism. My 1989 statement is almost too relevant today.
Just as relevant today is the following passage from that second article: "This tendency to assume that only white experience really matters is reflected in the attitudes of some of the students. More than once, I have been forced to stop class to explain to a student that minorities are Americans. . . . In another class, students talked about the American culture. When I asked them what the American culture was, they described white Protestant culture." Omitted from that quoted passage is a section describing an incident I have referred to many times in discussing how we view Americans. In that section, I described how a Mexican American student told me that I was from Africa when I pointed out that I am both a minority and an American. I also point out in this section of the affirmative-action myths article that the word "non-white" is accepted by all, but when I would use the word "non-black," even in a black literature class, students would often laugh. Of course, every time I hear a commentator (once even a liberal black commentator) say, "America voted for Trump" or when I hear talk of "real Americans," I know that nothing has changed since the eighties. White people are still seen as real Americans while blacks and other nonwhites are seen as foreigners.
It's hard for this born-in-the-Jim Crow-South black woman to face the fact that almost twenty years into the 21st Century, so long after Dr. King's death, and even after eight years of having a mostly black family in the White House, so little has really changed in race relations. I saw another reminder of how little has changed yesterday when I watched a news story about racist fans of the Boston Red Sox. I wrote in my memoir about how shocked and enraged I was when I moved to the Boston area in 1979 and had to deal with racism so long after I left the South in 1964. I just laughed yesterday when I watched that story about fans shouting "nigger" at a black baseball player. What else could I do?
Fortunately, there are a couple of major changes from 1989 to 2017 that have helped save my sanity. I wrote those articles in the summer of 1989, the year I bought my first (used) computer. Now I don't have to wait until summer to write about my rage because I'm retired, and I don't have to write articles and wonder where I can publish them. Thanks to improved technology, I can blog, tweet, and post immediately. I can watch "Meet the Press," Rachel Maddow's show, or Joy Reid's show and then tweet the participants. I feel somewhat empowered by that change, but I wish humans were as skilled at improving relations with each other as they are at inventing new ways to communicate. If they were, 2017 would not feel so much like 1989 or even 1979.
I've always recognized the eighties as a backlash-to-progress period similar to the Jim Crow period following Reconstruction, and I've compared those two periods to the one we're in now. Maybe that's why my comments at the end of the eighties seem so relevant today. Before I read "The Language of Human Behavior," I remembered the attack on affirmative action, the dominance of conservatism during that period, and Bush I's use of "law and order" racism (the Willie Horton ads) in his 1988 Presidential campaign against the governor of Massachusetts. I even discussed how black people's hairstyles--the greasy jheri curls instead of the big Afros of the seventies--reflected the eighties political climate. Still, I was startled by the following sentence, explaining my heated, unprofessional response to the racist rejection of the book DISCOURSE AND DISCRIMINATION by some of the blue-eyed white students in my class: "One answer might be that I was responding to the increasingly tense racial climate in our society--the skinheads, the racially motivated murders, the Supreme Court's reversal of civil rights gains." I knew what the Supreme Court had done in the eighties, but I didn't remember that the skinheads were around during that period, and I still have no idea what eighties racially motivated murders I am referring to in that sentence. I remember that a black man was savagely murdered by being dragged behind a truck in Texas, but that must have happened in the nineties because Bush II bragged about the white killers receiving the death penalty during the 2000 Presidential debates. I guess there have been racially motivated attacks on black people in every decade of our history, and yet we are the ones who are considered violent and savage.
Both of these 1989 articles make points that I am still making. In "The Language of Human Behavior," I discuss how my students had made me feel better about our racial climate by convincing me that the racial slur "nigger" was a verbal taboo, more offensive than references to sexual organs or bodily functions. Then I argue, "But on that stormy day when I introduced a book that presented the minority point of view, their facial expressions and eyes told me something else. To those hostile students, on that day anyway, I was a "nigger," flaunting my blackness, forcing them to think about it." In two recent blog posts, the response to Michael Eric Dyson's new book (2/12/17), and my last blog (4/23/17), where I commented on the treatment of Paula Deen, I was still discussing the relative importance of that racial slur.
Although affirmative action is not the "hot topic" now that it was in the eighties, some of the points made in that article seem even more relevant now. For instance, I discuss the colorblind myth, pointing out how racist it is for white people to want to deny my race: "These people who need to deny race are as racist as those who seem overly preoccupied with it, those who seem to mention my race every time we talk. In fact, these "colorblind" people are probably more dangerous because they have convinced themselves that they are without prejudice while being clearly threatened by my race. Otherwise why deny it?" When I watch commentators knocking themselves out to explain why working-class, small-town Middle America white people would elect a born-rich, insane, white male New Yorker over a raised-in-the-middle-class and the Midwest woman, I recognize that they are ignoring the bigotry in the room. They are refusing to admit that most Trump voters elected an out-of-the-closet, politically incorrect bigot to stop the browning of America and put women in their place. And when I hear so-called liberals blame Hillary Clinton's defeat on "identity politics," I recognize their comment as the 2017 version of eighties "colorblind" racism. My 1989 statement is almost too relevant today.
Just as relevant today is the following passage from that second article: "This tendency to assume that only white experience really matters is reflected in the attitudes of some of the students. More than once, I have been forced to stop class to explain to a student that minorities are Americans. . . . In another class, students talked about the American culture. When I asked them what the American culture was, they described white Protestant culture." Omitted from that quoted passage is a section describing an incident I have referred to many times in discussing how we view Americans. In that section, I described how a Mexican American student told me that I was from Africa when I pointed out that I am both a minority and an American. I also point out in this section of the affirmative-action myths article that the word "non-white" is accepted by all, but when I would use the word "non-black," even in a black literature class, students would often laugh. Of course, every time I hear a commentator (once even a liberal black commentator) say, "America voted for Trump" or when I hear talk of "real Americans," I know that nothing has changed since the eighties. White people are still seen as real Americans while blacks and other nonwhites are seen as foreigners.
It's hard for this born-in-the-Jim Crow-South black woman to face the fact that almost twenty years into the 21st Century, so long after Dr. King's death, and even after eight years of having a mostly black family in the White House, so little has really changed in race relations. I saw another reminder of how little has changed yesterday when I watched a news story about racist fans of the Boston Red Sox. I wrote in my memoir about how shocked and enraged I was when I moved to the Boston area in 1979 and had to deal with racism so long after I left the South in 1964. I just laughed yesterday when I watched that story about fans shouting "nigger" at a black baseball player. What else could I do?
Fortunately, there are a couple of major changes from 1989 to 2017 that have helped save my sanity. I wrote those articles in the summer of 1989, the year I bought my first (used) computer. Now I don't have to wait until summer to write about my rage because I'm retired, and I don't have to write articles and wonder where I can publish them. Thanks to improved technology, I can blog, tweet, and post immediately. I can watch "Meet the Press," Rachel Maddow's show, or Joy Reid's show and then tweet the participants. I feel somewhat empowered by that change, but I wish humans were as skilled at improving relations with each other as they are at inventing new ways to communicate. If they were, 2017 would not feel so much like 1989 or even 1979.
Positive Discrimination: The Case for Reverse Racism
I am on a mission to stop all people, but especially white people, from pretending to be colorblind and claiming that they treat everyone the same. In my second book, BRONZE RULE, and in my fifth Goodreads blog post (9/15/13), "Misreading People: Trayvon and George," I make the point that we read people based on everything that we see, including race and gender. In a later blog post (1/31/16), "Misreading People II: Victims and Villains," I describe how I was misread during a confrontation with several white people. The point that I make in this commentary is we need to recognize that we all read people, stereotype or profile them, and try to do it better. Similarly, we need to admit that we treat people differently based on how we read them and do a better job of "discriminating." In her book, WHY I'M NO LONGER TALKING TO WHITE PEOPLE ABOUT RACE, black British writer Reni Eddo-Lodge introduced me to the term "positive discrimination." It's similar to affirmative action or what white folks call "reverse racism," but I think it's a more honest description of how we can combat racism. Affirmative action could refer to any action, including an action unrelated to racism or sexism, that has positive results or that is trying to achieve positive results; "reverse racism" doesn't make sense. Reversed from what by whom? But "positive discrimination" means that we are discriminating in favor of some people, as opposed to against them, and we are doing it to help them, to affect them positively.
Eddo-Lodge's book shows that black folks in England (or is it Great Britain or the United Kingdom?) face the same racism and racism denial that American blacks do. The British whites also don't want to talk about racism while claiming to treat everyone "equal" and to be colorblind. Yet British black folks face racism in schools, on their jobs if they can find jobs, and when dealing with police officers, the courts, and prison guards. The evidence is overwhelming that black people are treated worse than whites, and not just by the government and the cops, but even by their white colleagues and friends. Whites' discomfort when discussing race is one way that they discriminate against blacks. I mentioned in my memoir how some of my white friends became uncomfortable when I brought up race and wondered how my married friends would feel if I changed the subject or looked uneasy when they mentioned their husbands or how my friends with children would feel if I didn't want to hear about little Alice and Jerry. Black people can't ignore race; it defines who we are. We are "other" because we're black; we, like all people of color, are not the norm. We are NONwhites; even our racial identity is negative. We don't talk about "white literature" because we assume all literature is white unless otherwise identified. For the same reason, we don't talk about how much white lives matter or how beautiful or human white people are. It's a given that white people's lives matter, that they are beautiful, human, proud, and smart, that they are not lazy, ignorant welfare queens, that they are not apes or aliens.
Whites' claim of color blindness and treating everyone the same gives them license to mistreat black people without being accused of racism. They can call the police on blacks for barbecuing in the park or for entering their own homes and deny that their actions were motivated by racism. They can call blacks stupid and have a stupid black preacher claim that they are pro-black (yes, I'm talking about Trump). This claim of color blindness, in fact, adds the insult of blame and shame to the injury of racism. For decades racist whites have blamed and shamed blacks for complaining about their racism. Some bigots have even argued that Trump was elected because good white folks were so disgusted with all of that political correctness and safe spaces discussion of the Obama era. And some Democrats blamed "identity politics" (which included discussions of sexism and homophobia) for Hillary Clinton's "loss" in 2016. Black women voted overwhelmingly for her while the stupid white women voted for a pussy-grabbing maniac, and the Democrats blamed the loss on Hillary's discussing black issues and travelling with the mothers of murdered blacks.
White people love black people when we don't talk about race, when we tell them how wonderful they are, or when we express forgiveness and love while singing beautiful hymns after a racist terrorist kills our family members. They love us also when we attack each other, which is why the white folks didn't come after Bill Cosby for his "rapes" when he was chastising black folks, telling them to pull up their pants. They really love the black folks, like academic Shelby Steele and Cosby during his watch-what-you're-wearing days (he knew how much costumes mattered for blacks, especially young boys and men, even before the murdered Trayvon Martin was blamed for wearing a hoodie on a rainy night) who blame blacks for their own oppression, but don't let us become angry, don't let us mention how badly we've been treated, and don't let us remind them that they voted for Trump and GW Bush while we voted for Hillary and Obama. Then they don't like us as much.
If white people want to be seen as not racist, as the good ones, they need to practice positive discrimination. They need to treat black people better than they treat each other. I don't mean that they should start calling the police on each other. Several months after I made a fuss on Google+ about the differences in the way allegedly sexual bad boys Bill Cosby/Nate Parker and Woody Allen/Roman Polanski were treated, the #METOO movement happened, and I complained even more. I explained my potentially confusing behavior in a tweet. I don't want more white men to go to jail for sexual misconduct. I want fewer black and brown men to go to jail. So white folks, you can still trust your white friends and be friendly with them. Just be friendlier and more trusting of blacks. I used to be annoyed with the participants in the Goodreads liberal group because they wouldn't argue with me when they clearly disagreed. They would attack each other while remaining silent when I attacked. Initially, I thought they feared my black rage or just didn't want to be called racist. Now I wonder if they understood that a black woman has experienced enough oppression and taken enough abuse in her life and so should be treated with more compassion. If so, they're good white people. In the early eighties, when a white friend and I were walking around a small Central California town, where I was the only black face, she noticed that some white people were overly friendly to us while others acted as if we were going to steal their wallets. I told her their behavior represented two different kinds of racism. I've changed my mind. The friendly people were practicing positive discrimination. I noticed the same behavior when I first moved to Claremont in the late eighties. Some whites were very friendly, and others glared and looked like they wanted to cross the street to avoid passing me. The friendly whites were practicing positive discrimination.
Unlike Eddo-Lodge, I talk about race and racism to white folks more now than I did before a white supremacist entered the once again too appropriately named White House. I recently told a white liberal that he needs to check himself before he starts educating the "bad" white folks. I asked him to check to see if he became angrier at his black friends (or became angry quicker) than he did at his white friends. And I asked him if he thought he was better than his more racist white friends because he had black friends and felt comfortable talking to black people, or did he understand that his black friends were better than he was for being willing to be his friend and talk to him.
I call on all people, especially white people, to practice positive discrimination when dealing with black folks. If you see a black person walking toward you, turn your frown into a smile (even if it's a nervous smile) and greet her with a cheery "hello." Hold the door for older black people and call them "mam" or "sir." If a black person becomes enraged, try not to look frightened or angry. Instead calmly and cheerfully try to diffuse the situation. Watch your tone because condescension is as annoying to black people (some of whom are smarter than you are) as suspicion and abuse. Unless you see a black person picking a lock or breaking a window, do not call the police on her or him. If you see white people calling the police on black people or otherwise discriminating negatively against them, defend the blacks and attack the whites.
Positive discrimination won't cure all of the problems caused by racism. Western cultures and languages will still be subliminally racist as will the governments and political leaders. The police will still be more afraid of dark people and therefore more likely to kill them. Dark people will still have more trouble finding employment, but at least they will not be abused by random white people as they're trying to live their lives and deal with the persistent, relentless oppression that entitled white folks cannot even imagine.
As I've said to more than one "colorblind" person, we don't treat babies the way we treat middle-aged folks. We don't treat athletes the way we treat physically disabled people, and we don't treat learning challenged students the way we treat geniuses. We also don't treat men the way we treat women. Nor should we. And we certainly shouldn't treat black people the way we treat white people. Our experiences in America have been very different. Let's try to treat everybody better than the jerk in the White House does, but let's save our best treatment for those whom he treats the worst--black people.
Eddo-Lodge's book shows that black folks in England (or is it Great Britain or the United Kingdom?) face the same racism and racism denial that American blacks do. The British whites also don't want to talk about racism while claiming to treat everyone "equal" and to be colorblind. Yet British black folks face racism in schools, on their jobs if they can find jobs, and when dealing with police officers, the courts, and prison guards. The evidence is overwhelming that black people are treated worse than whites, and not just by the government and the cops, but even by their white colleagues and friends. Whites' discomfort when discussing race is one way that they discriminate against blacks. I mentioned in my memoir how some of my white friends became uncomfortable when I brought up race and wondered how my married friends would feel if I changed the subject or looked uneasy when they mentioned their husbands or how my friends with children would feel if I didn't want to hear about little Alice and Jerry. Black people can't ignore race; it defines who we are. We are "other" because we're black; we, like all people of color, are not the norm. We are NONwhites; even our racial identity is negative. We don't talk about "white literature" because we assume all literature is white unless otherwise identified. For the same reason, we don't talk about how much white lives matter or how beautiful or human white people are. It's a given that white people's lives matter, that they are beautiful, human, proud, and smart, that they are not lazy, ignorant welfare queens, that they are not apes or aliens.
Whites' claim of color blindness and treating everyone the same gives them license to mistreat black people without being accused of racism. They can call the police on blacks for barbecuing in the park or for entering their own homes and deny that their actions were motivated by racism. They can call blacks stupid and have a stupid black preacher claim that they are pro-black (yes, I'm talking about Trump). This claim of color blindness, in fact, adds the insult of blame and shame to the injury of racism. For decades racist whites have blamed and shamed blacks for complaining about their racism. Some bigots have even argued that Trump was elected because good white folks were so disgusted with all of that political correctness and safe spaces discussion of the Obama era. And some Democrats blamed "identity politics" (which included discussions of sexism and homophobia) for Hillary Clinton's "loss" in 2016. Black women voted overwhelmingly for her while the stupid white women voted for a pussy-grabbing maniac, and the Democrats blamed the loss on Hillary's discussing black issues and travelling with the mothers of murdered blacks.
White people love black people when we don't talk about race, when we tell them how wonderful they are, or when we express forgiveness and love while singing beautiful hymns after a racist terrorist kills our family members. They love us also when we attack each other, which is why the white folks didn't come after Bill Cosby for his "rapes" when he was chastising black folks, telling them to pull up their pants. They really love the black folks, like academic Shelby Steele and Cosby during his watch-what-you're-wearing days (he knew how much costumes mattered for blacks, especially young boys and men, even before the murdered Trayvon Martin was blamed for wearing a hoodie on a rainy night) who blame blacks for their own oppression, but don't let us become angry, don't let us mention how badly we've been treated, and don't let us remind them that they voted for Trump and GW Bush while we voted for Hillary and Obama. Then they don't like us as much.
If white people want to be seen as not racist, as the good ones, they need to practice positive discrimination. They need to treat black people better than they treat each other. I don't mean that they should start calling the police on each other. Several months after I made a fuss on Google+ about the differences in the way allegedly sexual bad boys Bill Cosby/Nate Parker and Woody Allen/Roman Polanski were treated, the #METOO movement happened, and I complained even more. I explained my potentially confusing behavior in a tweet. I don't want more white men to go to jail for sexual misconduct. I want fewer black and brown men to go to jail. So white folks, you can still trust your white friends and be friendly with them. Just be friendlier and more trusting of blacks. I used to be annoyed with the participants in the Goodreads liberal group because they wouldn't argue with me when they clearly disagreed. They would attack each other while remaining silent when I attacked. Initially, I thought they feared my black rage or just didn't want to be called racist. Now I wonder if they understood that a black woman has experienced enough oppression and taken enough abuse in her life and so should be treated with more compassion. If so, they're good white people. In the early eighties, when a white friend and I were walking around a small Central California town, where I was the only black face, she noticed that some white people were overly friendly to us while others acted as if we were going to steal their wallets. I told her their behavior represented two different kinds of racism. I've changed my mind. The friendly people were practicing positive discrimination. I noticed the same behavior when I first moved to Claremont in the late eighties. Some whites were very friendly, and others glared and looked like they wanted to cross the street to avoid passing me. The friendly whites were practicing positive discrimination.
Unlike Eddo-Lodge, I talk about race and racism to white folks more now than I did before a white supremacist entered the once again too appropriately named White House. I recently told a white liberal that he needs to check himself before he starts educating the "bad" white folks. I asked him to check to see if he became angrier at his black friends (or became angry quicker) than he did at his white friends. And I asked him if he thought he was better than his more racist white friends because he had black friends and felt comfortable talking to black people, or did he understand that his black friends were better than he was for being willing to be his friend and talk to him.
I call on all people, especially white people, to practice positive discrimination when dealing with black folks. If you see a black person walking toward you, turn your frown into a smile (even if it's a nervous smile) and greet her with a cheery "hello." Hold the door for older black people and call them "mam" or "sir." If a black person becomes enraged, try not to look frightened or angry. Instead calmly and cheerfully try to diffuse the situation. Watch your tone because condescension is as annoying to black people (some of whom are smarter than you are) as suspicion and abuse. Unless you see a black person picking a lock or breaking a window, do not call the police on her or him. If you see white people calling the police on black people or otherwise discriminating negatively against them, defend the blacks and attack the whites.
Positive discrimination won't cure all of the problems caused by racism. Western cultures and languages will still be subliminally racist as will the governments and political leaders. The police will still be more afraid of dark people and therefore more likely to kill them. Dark people will still have more trouble finding employment, but at least they will not be abused by random white people as they're trying to live their lives and deal with the persistent, relentless oppression that entitled white folks cannot even imagine.
As I've said to more than one "colorblind" person, we don't treat babies the way we treat middle-aged folks. We don't treat athletes the way we treat physically disabled people, and we don't treat learning challenged students the way we treat geniuses. We also don't treat men the way we treat women. Nor should we. And we certainly shouldn't treat black people the way we treat white people. Our experiences in America have been very different. Let's try to treat everybody better than the jerk in the White House does, but let's save our best treatment for those whom he treats the worst--black people.
