Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

by Emmanuel Acho

Names aside, they’re all Karen, the meme: an entitled white woman who throws tantrums, asks to speak to the manager, and sometimes calls for the cavalry against a supposed Angry Black Man.

Lest white men catch a break here, have you ever heard of Black Wall Street?

The conflict between those brave black people and the white Tulsans who wanted Rowland’s life erupted into what’s now known as the Tulsa Race Riot or Tulsa Massacre.

Let’s compare: Both Rayshard and Jerry resisted arrest. Only one of them beat the police with their own weapon, then stole their car and sped off. And only the other one died.

Let’s Get Uncomfortable

It’s not white people’s job to police the feelings of black people, but as fellow human beings, please grant black people the right to the full gamut of emotions regarding their wounds.

The memes, the images, the art … they are all political.

Talk It, Walk It

White Fragility

How to Be an Antiracist.

Stamped: Racism, Antiraci...

Woke ...

Let people have emotions.

I will fight every nigger in here. —RILEY COOPER

He said it with the hardest ER.

“half nigger”

“nigga,”

nigger.

Let’s Rewind

niger,

“black.”

N...

nigger

All with the express purpose of demeaning black people.

N.W.A:

Niggaz Wit Attitudes.

Nigga

Maya Angelou

Let’s Get Uncomfortable

There is no conversation that excuses a white person using the word nigger.

Talk It, Walk It

black people,

The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why.

“Eulogy for Nigger.”

That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. —JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS, THE EPIC OF AMERICA, 1931, COINING THE TERM AMERICAN DREAM

Why in the heck do we still have things called plantation shutters?

“post-racial America.”

American dream,

systemic (or structural or institutional) racism.

Racism is a form of oppression, a.k.a. those with more power putting their thumbs on those with less power.

Let’s Rewind

systemic racism is the legitimizing of every dynamic—historic, cultural, political, economic, institutional, and person-to-person—that gives advantages to white people, while at the same time producing a whole host of terrible effects for black people and other

people of color. Those effects show up as inequalities in power, opportunities, laws, and every other metric of how individuals and groups are treated. Which is to say: systemic racism is making the unequal treatment of people of color the national norm.

Homer Hoyt,

The most desired on the list were Anglo-Saxons and northern Europeans (this whole white-race business was still coming together), and at the bottom of the list were Mexicans and Negroes.

redlining,

Hoyt’s thinking got codified across a bunch of real-estate practices, from biased homeowners’ associations to hair-trigger evictions.

According to a 2016 Pew Research Center study, only 43 percent of black households are homeowners, contrasted with nearly 72 percent of white households. Add to that stat the fact that homeownership is the most common way to build generational wealth, and you can begin to see how white families pass down advantages to their children, while black families aren’t able to set up their kids for the future.

So schools in poor neighborhoods are forced to do more with less.

“separate and unequal.”