Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "sean-hannity"
Black and Blue: What We Can Do
As horrifying as the events of the past week have been--two more unarmed black men killed by the police, five Dallas police officers who were protecting protesters killed by a too well-armed, insane black male veteran--I have been encouraged by some of the responses. As usual, Obama's (Dallas) speech on the topic was eloquent and balanced, although some may have thought he was a bit too easy on the police; other politicians/talking heads called for more empathy and less blame. I have written about this topic so often and for so long that I am growing tired of it. But I can't keep quiet when so many others who know and care so little about race relations continue to talk and write. So here are my solutions to the "black and blue" problem:
1) Let's talk. People who think racism will disappear if we just stop talking about it are as ignorant as the people who think Obama was born in Kenya or that Donald Trump is going to build a wall, paid for by the Mexicans, between Mexico and the USA. As I've said many times lately, racism is like cancer and termites; we can't eliminate it if we don't know where it is. We need to talk not just to people in our own race or those sympathetic to our cause but to those on the other side. I'm not as cool as Obama, so I have tried to avoid talking to bigots face to face (I don't want to go to jail), but I've enjoyed debating them on Google+ and in other social media forums where I know I can maintain my cool. I've actually even made a few of them think and show me some respect, although most just block me, usually when I mention Obama's white mother. White people with black and other nonwhite friends and nonwhite people with white friends, you need to talk to your friends about race. If you can't talk to them about it, they are not your friends, and you shouldn't want to be their friends. But we need to watch how we talk, and as I said in an earlier post (3/30/14), we all need to grow thicker skins, be less defensive. Blacks and other nonwhites, try to avoid calling whites "racist"; instead try to show them how their thinking about race is wrong and let them determine whether or not they are racist. Whites stop pretending to be colorblind, and stop talking about purple people. There are no purple people (and why purple, my favorite color, why not blue or green?), not really white (actually more beige or peach, sometimes orange) folks. Nothing says I'm a defensive white person who becomes nervous when race is mentioned than the "I don't care if they are white, black, or purple" line.
2) Public bigots shut up; public intellectuals speak up. Certain people like former New York mayor Rudy G. and presumptive Republican nominee, "whiny bitch" Donald T. need to stop talking. They need to be (publicly) silenced on the subject of race. For slightly different reasons, we don't need to hear from Reverend Al Sharpton and Reverend Jesse Jackson. Fairly or not (and their reputation is at least partly earned), they are seen as race baiters, men who show up whenever they can make some noise (or maybe even some money) by talking about race. Sean Hannity and some of the other right-wing race baiters on Fox News should also keep quiet. But we need to hear from intellectuals who have studied and thought about race for years, people like Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME, and media critic Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who in 1997 wrote the book that needs to be reissued immediately--THE ASSASSINATION OF THE BLACK MALE IMAGE. Novelists and poets like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie also need to write essays or talk on television about this crisis. Most people probably don't realize that in the nineties Morrison edited two books of essays on race--RACE-ING JUSTICE, EN-GENDERING POWER: ESSAYS ON ANITA HILL, CLARENCE THOMAS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL REALITY (1992) and BIRTH OF A NATION'HOOD: GAZE, SCRIPT, AND SPECTACLE IN THE O.J. SIMPSON CASE. Since the media has resurrected both of those cases (hmm, I wonder why), Morrison's books also need to be republished.
3) Let's laugh. Comedians who feel comfortable joking about race also need to be heard right now. Bill Maher, Louis C.K., and Chris Rock, keep going after Trump, but you are the best race humorists, so we need you to joke about this blue-black problem. Chris, joke about how you feel when you see a cop. Louis, you do the opposite; joke about how you and the white cops are buddies, even when you're carrying a gun and drinking while driving. Bill, you know what to do, something similar to your joke about what would happen if a young black man attacked an older white woman when you were discussing the 2008 (Obama versus Clinton) Democratic primary. All of the rest of us need to get a sense of humor about race. The nonwhite people should probably tell the jokes about themselves, but whites need to be able to laugh. An older white friend (she's in her seventies) and I enjoyed my joke (despite some earlier tension when discussing race) about her black dog sitting on the couch (he supposedly knew better) after I had sat on it. When I returned to the couch after she forced him off, he lay on the floor with his head in his paws for a few minutes and then looked at me with a slightly plaintive and slightly annoyed look. I said, "Hey, don't look at me like that; I can sit on this couch because I'm not as black as you." The black dog didn't laugh, but we did.
4) Ignore the molehills and focus on the mountains. In other words, forget about the politically incorrect and focus on the systemic, dangerous, pervasive racism that I've been dealing with for almost seventy years. It's not important that Paula Deen or Donald Sterling used racist language in private. Who cares what they said in their homes? But when son of an immigrant white mother Donald Trump can openly question the citizenship of son of an American white mother Barack Obama because Obama's father was a black man born in Africa while Trump's father was a white man born to German immigrants in New York, that's a problem. And it's a bigger problem when Trump can become the Republican nominee by doubling down on his bigotry. When Will Smith and some barely known British actor who played Martin Luther King don't earn Oscar nominations (so that they can lose to Leo), it's not a problem, nor is it a victory when many diverse actors win the Tony or are nominated for the Emmy, but it's a problem when ABC (home of Shondaland on Thursday and "blackish" on Wednesday) is clearly assassinating the black male image by focusing on OJ (twenty years later) and Bill Cosby. HBO's movie on Clarence Thomas also seems oddly timed. Where are all of the anniversary shows on Columbine or Timothy McVeigh? When the late Natalie Cole does not receive as much attention at the Grammy Awards as the late David Bowie, it's not a problem, but it's a problem that black males are more likely to be shot and imprisoned while black female victims are more likely to be ignored. It's a big problem that all Americans don't receive the same treatment that white males receive. When a white male shoots up a school, a theater, or an abortion clinic, or blows up a government building, we don't suggest that all white men should be deported back to Sweden, Germany, or wherever their ancestors originated, nor are we afraid of all white men because we know that some of them are crazy, savage killers ( in the past they not only shot and bombed, they lynched and castrated; one innocent-looking blond man even ate people years ago). But the biggest problem is that fair-haired whites look more innocent than dark-skinned blacks because we've all been brainwashed to view white as innocent and safe (angels wear white) and black as evil and dangerous (witches wear black). As I said in a comment recently, even the black Spice Girl was called Scary.
5) Let's learn. It's probably not possible or maybe even appropriate for all students to be required to take a course in ethnic studies to earn a high school diploma. Besides, what the student learns from that course would depend on the teacher (a racist teacher might teach the wrong lessons). But I know that the white students who took my general education black literature course learned not just about black literature but about what it feels like to be in the minority. Even when only 40% of the students were black, the whites were in the minority because there were quite a few Asians and Latinos taking the course. A few of the white students admitted feeling threatened in a class taught by a black teacher and where their people were often cast as the villains. Depending on the students and how they approached me with their concerns, I would either laughingly welcome them to my world or I would snap at them, "Hey, Faulkner is one of my favorite writers, and he says that black people stink. I love HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Do you know how many times the word 'nigger' appears in that book?" Nonwhite students are steeped in the white world. Most of the books that we read are written by and about whites, and once I left elementary school, I had only two nonwhite teachers. Whites also still run our country (check out Congress and the Supreme Court), and they are still all over television and the movies. But most whites are less familiar with nonwhite cultures. They need to learn about those cultures so that they can understand and maybe even empathize with us. We are less fearful of those we understand.
I still believe that racism will not end until we are all so mixed that we can't distinguish the races, but until that happens (and I'll probably be dead by then), we need to work on trying to understand each other, and as the late Rodney King said, "Just get along."
1) Let's talk. People who think racism will disappear if we just stop talking about it are as ignorant as the people who think Obama was born in Kenya or that Donald Trump is going to build a wall, paid for by the Mexicans, between Mexico and the USA. As I've said many times lately, racism is like cancer and termites; we can't eliminate it if we don't know where it is. We need to talk not just to people in our own race or those sympathetic to our cause but to those on the other side. I'm not as cool as Obama, so I have tried to avoid talking to bigots face to face (I don't want to go to jail), but I've enjoyed debating them on Google+ and in other social media forums where I know I can maintain my cool. I've actually even made a few of them think and show me some respect, although most just block me, usually when I mention Obama's white mother. White people with black and other nonwhite friends and nonwhite people with white friends, you need to talk to your friends about race. If you can't talk to them about it, they are not your friends, and you shouldn't want to be their friends. But we need to watch how we talk, and as I said in an earlier post (3/30/14), we all need to grow thicker skins, be less defensive. Blacks and other nonwhites, try to avoid calling whites "racist"; instead try to show them how their thinking about race is wrong and let them determine whether or not they are racist. Whites stop pretending to be colorblind, and stop talking about purple people. There are no purple people (and why purple, my favorite color, why not blue or green?), not really white (actually more beige or peach, sometimes orange) folks. Nothing says I'm a defensive white person who becomes nervous when race is mentioned than the "I don't care if they are white, black, or purple" line.
2) Public bigots shut up; public intellectuals speak up. Certain people like former New York mayor Rudy G. and presumptive Republican nominee, "whiny bitch" Donald T. need to stop talking. They need to be (publicly) silenced on the subject of race. For slightly different reasons, we don't need to hear from Reverend Al Sharpton and Reverend Jesse Jackson. Fairly or not (and their reputation is at least partly earned), they are seen as race baiters, men who show up whenever they can make some noise (or maybe even some money) by talking about race. Sean Hannity and some of the other right-wing race baiters on Fox News should also keep quiet. But we need to hear from intellectuals who have studied and thought about race for years, people like Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME, and media critic Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who in 1997 wrote the book that needs to be reissued immediately--THE ASSASSINATION OF THE BLACK MALE IMAGE. Novelists and poets like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie also need to write essays or talk on television about this crisis. Most people probably don't realize that in the nineties Morrison edited two books of essays on race--RACE-ING JUSTICE, EN-GENDERING POWER: ESSAYS ON ANITA HILL, CLARENCE THOMAS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL REALITY (1992) and BIRTH OF A NATION'HOOD: GAZE, SCRIPT, AND SPECTACLE IN THE O.J. SIMPSON CASE. Since the media has resurrected both of those cases (hmm, I wonder why), Morrison's books also need to be republished.
3) Let's laugh. Comedians who feel comfortable joking about race also need to be heard right now. Bill Maher, Louis C.K., and Chris Rock, keep going after Trump, but you are the best race humorists, so we need you to joke about this blue-black problem. Chris, joke about how you feel when you see a cop. Louis, you do the opposite; joke about how you and the white cops are buddies, even when you're carrying a gun and drinking while driving. Bill, you know what to do, something similar to your joke about what would happen if a young black man attacked an older white woman when you were discussing the 2008 (Obama versus Clinton) Democratic primary. All of the rest of us need to get a sense of humor about race. The nonwhite people should probably tell the jokes about themselves, but whites need to be able to laugh. An older white friend (she's in her seventies) and I enjoyed my joke (despite some earlier tension when discussing race) about her black dog sitting on the couch (he supposedly knew better) after I had sat on it. When I returned to the couch after she forced him off, he lay on the floor with his head in his paws for a few minutes and then looked at me with a slightly plaintive and slightly annoyed look. I said, "Hey, don't look at me like that; I can sit on this couch because I'm not as black as you." The black dog didn't laugh, but we did.
4) Ignore the molehills and focus on the mountains. In other words, forget about the politically incorrect and focus on the systemic, dangerous, pervasive racism that I've been dealing with for almost seventy years. It's not important that Paula Deen or Donald Sterling used racist language in private. Who cares what they said in their homes? But when son of an immigrant white mother Donald Trump can openly question the citizenship of son of an American white mother Barack Obama because Obama's father was a black man born in Africa while Trump's father was a white man born to German immigrants in New York, that's a problem. And it's a bigger problem when Trump can become the Republican nominee by doubling down on his bigotry. When Will Smith and some barely known British actor who played Martin Luther King don't earn Oscar nominations (so that they can lose to Leo), it's not a problem, nor is it a victory when many diverse actors win the Tony or are nominated for the Emmy, but it's a problem when ABC (home of Shondaland on Thursday and "blackish" on Wednesday) is clearly assassinating the black male image by focusing on OJ (twenty years later) and Bill Cosby. HBO's movie on Clarence Thomas also seems oddly timed. Where are all of the anniversary shows on Columbine or Timothy McVeigh? When the late Natalie Cole does not receive as much attention at the Grammy Awards as the late David Bowie, it's not a problem, but it's a problem that black males are more likely to be shot and imprisoned while black female victims are more likely to be ignored. It's a big problem that all Americans don't receive the same treatment that white males receive. When a white male shoots up a school, a theater, or an abortion clinic, or blows up a government building, we don't suggest that all white men should be deported back to Sweden, Germany, or wherever their ancestors originated, nor are we afraid of all white men because we know that some of them are crazy, savage killers ( in the past they not only shot and bombed, they lynched and castrated; one innocent-looking blond man even ate people years ago). But the biggest problem is that fair-haired whites look more innocent than dark-skinned blacks because we've all been brainwashed to view white as innocent and safe (angels wear white) and black as evil and dangerous (witches wear black). As I said in a comment recently, even the black Spice Girl was called Scary.
5) Let's learn. It's probably not possible or maybe even appropriate for all students to be required to take a course in ethnic studies to earn a high school diploma. Besides, what the student learns from that course would depend on the teacher (a racist teacher might teach the wrong lessons). But I know that the white students who took my general education black literature course learned not just about black literature but about what it feels like to be in the minority. Even when only 40% of the students were black, the whites were in the minority because there were quite a few Asians and Latinos taking the course. A few of the white students admitted feeling threatened in a class taught by a black teacher and where their people were often cast as the villains. Depending on the students and how they approached me with their concerns, I would either laughingly welcome them to my world or I would snap at them, "Hey, Faulkner is one of my favorite writers, and he says that black people stink. I love HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Do you know how many times the word 'nigger' appears in that book?" Nonwhite students are steeped in the white world. Most of the books that we read are written by and about whites, and once I left elementary school, I had only two nonwhite teachers. Whites also still run our country (check out Congress and the Supreme Court), and they are still all over television and the movies. But most whites are less familiar with nonwhite cultures. They need to learn about those cultures so that they can understand and maybe even empathize with us. We are less fearful of those we understand.
I still believe that racism will not end until we are all so mixed that we can't distinguish the races, but until that happens (and I'll probably be dead by then), we need to work on trying to understand each other, and as the late Rodney King said, "Just get along."
