Stop Drinking Bleach: How To Battle Racism
Now that the less racist whites have finally awakened and started talking about “systemic racism” instead of claiming to be colorblind and to treat everyone the same, I’m more hopeful than I’ve been since early 2009. But I remember what happened the last time hope and change came to America. The more racist white folks lost their minds, and many of the less racist ones blamed Obama for the behavior of the bigots who demonized him. The less racist whites thought electing a half-black man, an exceptionally smart, accomplished, eloquent, and moral half-white man would end the racism issue forever, would erase centuries of slavery and another century of Jim Crow. When it didn’t, they blamed Obama for not “uniting” us. The intelligent, less racist whites didn’t claim, as one well-dressed, sensible looking woman did, that there was no racism until Obama, but they certainly believed he was at least part of the problem. Talk about blaming the victim! That’s why my current optimism is so cautious and why I worry that my allies of all races might blow this moment. Allies, we need to proceed with deliberate and thoughtful speed, and we need to avoid giving the bigots ammunition to counterattack this movement. Here’s how we should proceed in battling this virus that has been in America since before it was a nation and has been much more deadly than Corona.
1) Don’t drink the equivalent of bleach. Don’t try quick fixes that can do more harm than good. Know the difference between political incorrectness and systemic racism. Black men are not being murdered in the street because the late night Jimmys wore blackface (actually, they just darkened their skin to play black people) in 2000 and 1996. Conservatives will weaponize political incorrectness in two ways—using it against allies like Kimmel and portraying us as silly “snowflakes,” attacking harmless comedians like the Jimmys or cultural artifacts like Aunt Jemima. See my 3/30/14 post on blackface and political correctness.
2) Don’t settle for symbolic gestures that change little or nothing. I have reminded people what happened after nine black people were killed by a domestic terrorist in a church in South Carolina. The confederate flag at the South Carolina Capitol was removed, and the next year a white supremacist won enough electoral college votes to enter the White House and start destroying our democracy. He won South Carolina easily. Also, unarmed black people continued to be killed by police, and in a new racist twist, white folks started calling the police on black people who were just living their lives. I appreciate the gestures of NASCAR and especially the Mississippi legislature in removing the confederate flag, but that removal won’t prevent unarmed black (mostly) men from being killed, nor will the removal of confederate statues or the renaming of forts end racism. Those gestures might make us feel better temporarily, but they won’t help us battle systemic racism while they will aggravate the white supremacists and give ammunition to the politicians who enjoy using the “cultural war” to win the votes of people for whom they usually have contempt. I appreciated that Senator Mitt Romney marched with the peaceful protesters and said, “black lives matter,” but I would have appreciated it more if he said it as President while signing a robust criminal justice reform bill that policed the police more effectively. I wouldn’t have cared if the probably more personally racist than Mitt LBJ had said, “we shall overcome” while he was a senator or while he was refusing to sign the Voting or Civil Rights Act as President, but I’ll never forget what he said because his actions brought real change. If Romney supports the bill presented by the two black Democratic Senators, then his words will matter more.
3) Words do matter, which is why we need to use and police them more carefully. See the 11/21/18 post on subliminally racist language. Unarmed black (mostly) men are not killed because people use the n-word that rhymes with “trigger,” but because in the Bible and western culture, “dark/black” means “bad” and “evil” while “light/white” means “good” and “innocent.” I would bet a month’s social security check that Democratic Senator Cory Booker has been racially profiled less often than Republican Senator Tim Scott, not because Scott spends more time in the South, but because he is several shades darker than the could pass for Armenian or Arab, if not white, Democratic Senator. These subliminally racist words are hard to eliminate from our language, but we need to be aware of their effect. We also need to monitor other words used by our enemies. We need to point out that when Trump and his racist associates (looking at you, Barr) demonize the peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters using words like “terrorists,” “rioters,” and “anarchists,” they put black people’s lives at risk. Just as calling Bill Clinton or Bill O’Reilly a rapist won’t lead to nine white people being killed in a church the way calling Bill Cosby a rapist can for black people, calling the white men who carried guns to an “open the economy” protest in Michigan “terrorists” won’t lead to people of color threatening white people with guns the way white people are now threatening blacks. In addition to policing our enemies’ language, we also need to be careful how we use language. If the BLM folks had added “Too” to their slogan, we old black folks who are tired of educating clueless white people wouldn’t have to say (still) that white lives have always mattered. We wouldn’t have to explain that we don’t say “white lives matter” for the same reason that we don’t have to say “white history” or “white literature.” Now we have a problem with the slogan “Defund the Police.” Even most black folks know that we need at least a few police officers to protect us from real criminals. How about “Retrain the Police” or “Rethink Policing”? Rewrite, allies!
4) Make the camera your friend. I posted on Facebook that the camera has been our best weapon in fighting racism. I focused on the television camera in the sixties, the video camera in the nineties that showed the Rodney King beating, and the cellphone and the police body cameras that have shown too many unarmed black people being murdered during the 21st Century, but we also have pictures from the beginning of the last century, showing white people laughing and enjoying themselves at lynchings as if they were at picnics. The difference between George Floyd and Michael Brown is that we saw what happened to Floyd. The video of Michael Brown started after he was dead, so we don’t know what really happened. Did he try to take the gun from the killer cop as the conservatives have argued, or were his hands up as black witnesses claim? Racism warriors need to have their cellphones ready to film. Filming white bigots with guns or cops harassing blacks will help save lives. The videos are also useful for those of us battling conservatives on social media. I’ve won several battles by asking simple questions: Where are the pictures of blacks laughing and celebrating while a white person burned? Where are the videos of blacks beating unarmed white people who are peacefully protesting? The recent videos of cops gassing and shooting with rubber bullets peaceful protesters and journalists have helped me to label them rioters and win the battle.
5) Win word wars on social media and in person with historical evidence, facts, and logic. I thought I knew about the Tulsa race riot, but I certainly didn’t know that airplanes were used. We are not only on the right side of history, but we have all of the right evidence. We just need to beware of our enemies (and bigots are our enemies in this war) using fake statistics and straw men to counter our overwhelming evidence. When bigots talk about black-on-black crime, I point out that most crime is intraracial and wonder why they worry about black-on-black crime only when we talk about police killing unarmed blacks. When they say more whites are killed by cops, I focus on how many more whites there are in the USA and ask about unarmed whites. If they’re telling the truth, they have to admit that more unarmed blacks are killed. If they claim that blacks commit more violent crimes, I use language and definitions to call them out. Define “violent crime.” I also use the crack (a black crime) versus opioid (a white health problem) issue to show how a black boy throwing a rock at a car or a person can be accused of committing a violent crime while a white boy engaging in the same activity might be called mischievous. I talk about the self-fulfilling prophecy, now called confirmation bias, and stop and frisk. If police ignore crimes committed by whites and call relatively innocent acts committed by blacks violent crimes, blacks will commit more violent crimes. Finally, I push back hard on the myth that blacks are a dysfunctional race who need more help than whites. Blacks don’t have fathers? What about Mama June‘s four daughters by four different men? Bristol Palin’s two (?) children? Those teenage moms that had their own shows and appeared on the cover of PEOPLE? Blacks are poor and on welfare? What about the poor whites in rural areas, the Appalachian whites? I make the case that the blacks who have succeeded are exceptional while those who have failed are not losers, just ordinary folks who could have been President if they had rich white daddies like not so smart George W. Bush and insane Donald Trump. Then I ask what excuses white folks have for being mass murderers and opioid users. I use the Tulsa, Wilmington, and East St. Louis white riots to show that blacks did overcome slavery and become prosperous even during the Jim Crow years, but whites destroyed their towns and murdered them. I have never lost a racism word war on social media.
The racism battle will never be completely won. There will always be a racist backlash to our progress, and the progress will always be a few steps forward and one or two back, but sometimes (as during the sixties and with the election of Obama) the move forward is a giant leap. This could be one of those times. If we use the right weapons effectively to both attack our enemies and defend ourselves and our allies, we can create permanent change so that black lives will finally matter almost as much as white lives always have.
1) Don’t drink the equivalent of bleach. Don’t try quick fixes that can do more harm than good. Know the difference between political incorrectness and systemic racism. Black men are not being murdered in the street because the late night Jimmys wore blackface (actually, they just darkened their skin to play black people) in 2000 and 1996. Conservatives will weaponize political incorrectness in two ways—using it against allies like Kimmel and portraying us as silly “snowflakes,” attacking harmless comedians like the Jimmys or cultural artifacts like Aunt Jemima. See my 3/30/14 post on blackface and political correctness.
2) Don’t settle for symbolic gestures that change little or nothing. I have reminded people what happened after nine black people were killed by a domestic terrorist in a church in South Carolina. The confederate flag at the South Carolina Capitol was removed, and the next year a white supremacist won enough electoral college votes to enter the White House and start destroying our democracy. He won South Carolina easily. Also, unarmed black people continued to be killed by police, and in a new racist twist, white folks started calling the police on black people who were just living their lives. I appreciate the gestures of NASCAR and especially the Mississippi legislature in removing the confederate flag, but that removal won’t prevent unarmed black (mostly) men from being killed, nor will the removal of confederate statues or the renaming of forts end racism. Those gestures might make us feel better temporarily, but they won’t help us battle systemic racism while they will aggravate the white supremacists and give ammunition to the politicians who enjoy using the “cultural war” to win the votes of people for whom they usually have contempt. I appreciated that Senator Mitt Romney marched with the peaceful protesters and said, “black lives matter,” but I would have appreciated it more if he said it as President while signing a robust criminal justice reform bill that policed the police more effectively. I wouldn’t have cared if the probably more personally racist than Mitt LBJ had said, “we shall overcome” while he was a senator or while he was refusing to sign the Voting or Civil Rights Act as President, but I’ll never forget what he said because his actions brought real change. If Romney supports the bill presented by the two black Democratic Senators, then his words will matter more.
3) Words do matter, which is why we need to use and police them more carefully. See the 11/21/18 post on subliminally racist language. Unarmed black (mostly) men are not killed because people use the n-word that rhymes with “trigger,” but because in the Bible and western culture, “dark/black” means “bad” and “evil” while “light/white” means “good” and “innocent.” I would bet a month’s social security check that Democratic Senator Cory Booker has been racially profiled less often than Republican Senator Tim Scott, not because Scott spends more time in the South, but because he is several shades darker than the could pass for Armenian or Arab, if not white, Democratic Senator. These subliminally racist words are hard to eliminate from our language, but we need to be aware of their effect. We also need to monitor other words used by our enemies. We need to point out that when Trump and his racist associates (looking at you, Barr) demonize the peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters using words like “terrorists,” “rioters,” and “anarchists,” they put black people’s lives at risk. Just as calling Bill Clinton or Bill O’Reilly a rapist won’t lead to nine white people being killed in a church the way calling Bill Cosby a rapist can for black people, calling the white men who carried guns to an “open the economy” protest in Michigan “terrorists” won’t lead to people of color threatening white people with guns the way white people are now threatening blacks. In addition to policing our enemies’ language, we also need to be careful how we use language. If the BLM folks had added “Too” to their slogan, we old black folks who are tired of educating clueless white people wouldn’t have to say (still) that white lives have always mattered. We wouldn’t have to explain that we don’t say “white lives matter” for the same reason that we don’t have to say “white history” or “white literature.” Now we have a problem with the slogan “Defund the Police.” Even most black folks know that we need at least a few police officers to protect us from real criminals. How about “Retrain the Police” or “Rethink Policing”? Rewrite, allies!
4) Make the camera your friend. I posted on Facebook that the camera has been our best weapon in fighting racism. I focused on the television camera in the sixties, the video camera in the nineties that showed the Rodney King beating, and the cellphone and the police body cameras that have shown too many unarmed black people being murdered during the 21st Century, but we also have pictures from the beginning of the last century, showing white people laughing and enjoying themselves at lynchings as if they were at picnics. The difference between George Floyd and Michael Brown is that we saw what happened to Floyd. The video of Michael Brown started after he was dead, so we don’t know what really happened. Did he try to take the gun from the killer cop as the conservatives have argued, or were his hands up as black witnesses claim? Racism warriors need to have their cellphones ready to film. Filming white bigots with guns or cops harassing blacks will help save lives. The videos are also useful for those of us battling conservatives on social media. I’ve won several battles by asking simple questions: Where are the pictures of blacks laughing and celebrating while a white person burned? Where are the videos of blacks beating unarmed white people who are peacefully protesting? The recent videos of cops gassing and shooting with rubber bullets peaceful protesters and journalists have helped me to label them rioters and win the battle.
5) Win word wars on social media and in person with historical evidence, facts, and logic. I thought I knew about the Tulsa race riot, but I certainly didn’t know that airplanes were used. We are not only on the right side of history, but we have all of the right evidence. We just need to beware of our enemies (and bigots are our enemies in this war) using fake statistics and straw men to counter our overwhelming evidence. When bigots talk about black-on-black crime, I point out that most crime is intraracial and wonder why they worry about black-on-black crime only when we talk about police killing unarmed blacks. When they say more whites are killed by cops, I focus on how many more whites there are in the USA and ask about unarmed whites. If they’re telling the truth, they have to admit that more unarmed blacks are killed. If they claim that blacks commit more violent crimes, I use language and definitions to call them out. Define “violent crime.” I also use the crack (a black crime) versus opioid (a white health problem) issue to show how a black boy throwing a rock at a car or a person can be accused of committing a violent crime while a white boy engaging in the same activity might be called mischievous. I talk about the self-fulfilling prophecy, now called confirmation bias, and stop and frisk. If police ignore crimes committed by whites and call relatively innocent acts committed by blacks violent crimes, blacks will commit more violent crimes. Finally, I push back hard on the myth that blacks are a dysfunctional race who need more help than whites. Blacks don’t have fathers? What about Mama June‘s four daughters by four different men? Bristol Palin’s two (?) children? Those teenage moms that had their own shows and appeared on the cover of PEOPLE? Blacks are poor and on welfare? What about the poor whites in rural areas, the Appalachian whites? I make the case that the blacks who have succeeded are exceptional while those who have failed are not losers, just ordinary folks who could have been President if they had rich white daddies like not so smart George W. Bush and insane Donald Trump. Then I ask what excuses white folks have for being mass murderers and opioid users. I use the Tulsa, Wilmington, and East St. Louis white riots to show that blacks did overcome slavery and become prosperous even during the Jim Crow years, but whites destroyed their towns and murdered them. I have never lost a racism word war on social media.
The racism battle will never be completely won. There will always be a racist backlash to our progress, and the progress will always be a few steps forward and one or two back, but sometimes (as during the sixties and with the election of Obama) the move forward is a giant leap. This could be one of those times. If we use the right weapons effectively to both attack our enemies and defend ourselves and our allies, we can create permanent change so that black lives will finally matter almost as much as white lives always have.
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