Now no, I didn’t mean to suggest that you wouldn’t fight for injustices, but our different experiences lead us to slightly different ends.

For many blacks in the United States it has never been “a single bad experience” but series over a lifetime, and by the time a black person turns 40, its no wonder their jaded. Our generation has to fight past that jadedness, I agree, but I think we need to deal with the present. However, the present and the past are also linked. We will never get an accurate view of the present if we don’t acknowledge what led us to this present. By diving the past and future and taking into account for the now negates the experiences and the hurts.

If I’m wounded right now in the present, I’m going to have a scar in the future and if the injury is deep enough it can get infected and cause many other problems–all stemming from the initial wound. And that’s where I see our state of affairs right now. I think everyone wants to move forward, but we have to find the right method of healing this wound–clearly Band-Aids don’t work, and the mending process isn’t easy, in fact it’s quite painful. Often times, it may cause opening up the wound further to make sure the immediate area is cleaned properly. Then we have to treat all of the other infections that stemmed from the open wound. And that’s wayyyyyy far in the future.

I’m not saying you’re not a hardworker and didn’t earn by sweat, blood, tears and natural ability whatever it is that you have–but, how does one know that they’re getting “supposed handouts” unless they’re denied in the first place?

That is to say, how does the priviledged know that they are privileged unless that priviledge is taken away from them. It’s real easy when one doesn’t have to see just how easy others achieve stuff. If it’s normal for a family to buy a car for their 16 year old children JUST because they turned 16, whether or not, for instance they got straight A’s or not, then how would the child who didn’t get the car feel if all of a sudden the parents just up and said no, you need to work harder for it.

Or even this case, I have the privilege in a few of my classes of doing a 15 page paper in one day and still be assured at lowest a B on the paper. Many of my other friends don’t have that privilege. To me its normal, been doing that since high school, but to my other friends that’s an IMPOSSIBLE task–so, should I make them feel bad because of innate differences in how some of us may be able to do better than others.

I understand that there are MANY white folk who have it hard, A LOT–just ask the voters in that clip about W. Va. voters, but the weird thing is that some, and I do mean some of them might find themselves thinking (or maybe saying out loud in homogenous company) that “at least I’m not black.”

This whole idea of privilege and institutional racism is systemic. It never has been, is in the present, nor can I see it being in the future anything but systemic. It cannot and should not be reduced to the aforementioned examples. I would daresay that if we really dealt with the driving psyche’s of American’s we’re highly driven by basic racialized stereotypes on both sides of the aisle.

JLL

If you were indeed an object of racial prejudice, of ANY kind, than you are well within your rights to stand up and confront it, fight it, talk about it…but it seems to me that many young people use the past that we learned about in history books, coupled with a single bad experience of their own, to form a blanket judgment of the society around them.

Make no mistake, I’ve not lived your life nor anyone else’s. But I have lived mine, and I have not been given any of the supposed handouts that my skin should be bringing with it. I struggle every day with a world around me that hates anything different, and seems to hate me for not taking sides.

as far as the instances on the job, you neednt just make it a race issue, but its also a sexist issue. Many women have the same problem and I know many blacks in the professional field where if they’re in the minority in the office that many times the people that they have helped train, who are white, have gotten promotions over them. now that is generally from older people and I don’t know of any of my peers who have that as a problem, but then again, none of my peers are in all white professional situations.

I was quite conscious of the last part of my piece whether it seems to fit or not because its true. I think we get to caught up and making everything fit into neat categories but none of us TRULY think in neat categories. its never about this OR that but rather this AND that. Please don’t take offense to the following, but it seems as though that line of thinking is saying that you can always talk about the sweet by and by and how things will be in the future and neglect to deal with the nasty now and now and I believe that in order to move forward the two must exist on the same plane.

jLL

For starters, you give a good example of Institutional Racism in this post. However, it is ONE example, and while it does seem like it could fit in the Institutional Racism category, your self-described arrogance and lack of self-restraint in class could just as easily have been the cause for the unfair grading of your work. (Notice I don’t argue that the grading was unfair, I just refuse to agree on the “why” without some sort of proof) I myself had the same sort of mentality in school, and suffered the same sort of consequences, from teachers of all races. However, as I’ve said before, I trust that my black teachers treated me that way for the same reason that my white teachers did: because I brought it on myself through my actions. Your situation may very well have been an act of racism, but how would you know this for sure without an admittance of some sort?

“The supervisor always finds some kind of way to make sure that the work is judged with a bias, but then that of the white counterpart is somehow judged better. ”

The above quote is by far the biggest stretch, though. In this post, you seem to have come to this conclusion without anything to back it up, other than an opinion which, quite frankly, appears more to be a snap judgment and generalization rather then something formed with careful consideration for both negatives AND positives. I’m sure you have your reasons, which may have been irrelevant to the discussion, or took away from the message above, but it comes off as a sweeping generalization here.

I never have and never will say that these things do not happen in our country every day. Rather, my stance is that by assuming that EVERY action is motivated by a racial prejudice is a recipe for failure. Not failure in a financial sense necessarily, but certainly in a moral sense as it applies to our society as a whole. Please don’t rely solely on your cynicism to paint the picture of your life.

“Once we get past this point, and only once we get past this point, not a point of labeling one side victim and the other side of victimizer, but rather both sides attempting to repair the wrongs that have been done, then we can move to this idea of a dream that King so eloquently stated.”

This I would agree with whole-heartedly, though to be honest it doesn’t really fit with the theme of your message.

I should have reveiwed the Al Sharpton video clip from Rosa Parks’ funeral service before my response for the request for clarification re indentured servitude vs chattel slavery.

Your ‘Rosa Resolution’ is obvious in most of your posts.

Uppity Radicality, right on!

PLEASE clarify this statement in your narrative. Did you intend to say, ‘indentured servitude WAS as bad as chattel slavery…’? Can you edit your own blog?

Thank you for sharing your Y2K perspective on why we are only (maybe) headed in the direction of a ‘post-racial’ society. We have a long way to go and a short time to get there. And of course we never ‘be there,’ we consciously go there, dragging the comatose along with us.

Stay uppity!