dontbearuiner:vivaladivatracy:Progressive Racism from White...

dontbearuiner:

vivaladivatracy:

Progressive Racism from White Women

If you don’t read anything else today, READ THIS

Charlottesville, VA — A local black farmer’s response to recent white nationalist activity in Charlottesville is going viral on Facebook for drawing attention to a less blatant — but still rampant — form of racism. His post on Sylvanaqua Farms’ Facebook page called out the hypocrisy of local liberal residents who were patting themselves on the back for opposing the overtly racist white nationalists while remaining blind to their own constant, covert, racism.

Read the viral post in full below:

A message to Charlottesville about Lee Park from your local Black farmer:

I know some folks are really feeling themselves about this whole Love Trumps Hate counter-rally to Richard Spencer’s punch-worthy shenanigans in Lee Park. I’d like to appreciate it, but frankly I just don’t.

I’ve lived in several cities and visited many more before Charlottesville. I like this town for its natural beauty, it’s [sic] small size, the friendliness of its people, and its food. But folks, here’s something else: Charlottesville is by far the most aggressively segregated place I’ve ever lived in or visited. And that seems a strange thing to have to say about a town that hosts a public university.

I say “aggressively” for two reasons. One, because of how assertive police (and the citizens who summon them) are here with racial profiling. It got so bad in 2014 – 2015 that I stopped renting farmland on estates where I could be easily seen from the road, and I stopped making food deliveries into wealthier neighborhoods because of how often police would “happen by” and sometimes even question me five or ten minutes after I got a strange look from a passerby (usually someone jogging, but occasionally someone in a car). I’m not a paranoid kinda guy, but this happened way too often to be a coincidence.

It isn’t Richard Spencer calling the cops on me for farming while Black. It’s nervous White women in yoga pants with “I’m with Her” and “Coexist” stickers on their German SUVs.

Second is the sheer degree of cultural appropriation going on with businesses in the city proper. It’s little things – e.g. shops and other businesses incorporating wide swaths of hiphop culture into their branding while having not a single Black owner, partner, employee, or vendor. And those businesses are KILLING IT here. This is a town where Blackness advances White-owned brands and subjects Black-owned businesses to inspection by law enforcement.

Do you really think that problem comes from people like Richard Spencer?

Check out C’Ville Weekly’s Instagram feed when you get a moment, and try not to notice that the few depictions of Black people are limited to sports, singing, criminal justice, or single parenthood. White people, meanwhile, are represented as political activists, chefs, cogs in the gig economy, musicians, dancers, people who get married, visual artists, songwriters, architects, landscapers, thespians, artistic directors, wedge-heel-wearing rugby players, dog lovers, farmers, firefighters, and people who play with their kids in cul de sacs.

Richard Spencer is not the editor of C’Ville Weekly.

Truth is, as a Black dude, I’m far less bothered by the flag wavers in this picture than this town’s progressives assuming its race problem has nothing to do with them. The former is a visual inconvenience. The latter could leave my daughters without a father.

So please, put down the candles and instead ask yourself: why is my city like this? Why is life like this for Black people in my wonderful city? The answer is a lot closer to home than Richard Spencer or Lee Park.

The post exposes a much larger problem than the outward (though admittedly small in number) white supremacists: African-Americans face a barrage of not-so-apparent racism every single day — and many people are unknowingly participating in it. Hopefully, this viral post will help spread awareness about institutionalized and ingrained racism — and help heal this cancer in our society.

One of my favorite Yom Kippur sermons I heard as a kid (and I’m 35 and still remember it, if that’s any indication), was of a dude who’d done a few really shitty things in his life, and who now wanted to atone for his misdeeds. The rabbi told him to go into the field across the way, and to pick up the three really big rocks there and move them.

The guy did it, and came back to the rabbi feeling good that he’d done this thing. Then the rabbi told him to pick up all the pebbles in the field.

The pebbles were the innumerable minor, but still shitty and disrespectful things he’d done over the years. The systemically shitty things he’d done.

It’s easy to point to the boulders. We’ve got to look at the pebbles.