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A “sense of black grievance”

By Carmen D. on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008, 8:04 am Comments

Sorry for the slow down in original posting just now. I am setting up a move and it’s got me all topsy turvy. In depth posting will resume tomorrow.

But in the meantime, I wanted to make sure you saw this thought provoking New York Times editorial: Color Test – Where Whites Draw the Line by Marcus Mabry. Here’s an excerpt:

But whether Mr. Obama captures the White House in November will depend on how he is seen by white Americans. Indeed, some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as “postracial.”

In other words, Mr. Obama was black, but not too black.

But where is the line? Does it change over time? And if it is definable, then how black can Mr. Obama be before he alienates white voters? Or, to pose the question more cynically, how black do the Republicans have to make him to win?

Social observers say a common hallmark of African-Americans who have achieved the greatest success, whether in business, entertainment or politics — Oprah Winfrey, Magic Johnson and Mr. Obama — is that they do not convey a sense of black grievance.

Clearly, Mr. Obama understands this. Until his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, forced race into the political debate, Mr. Obama rarely dwelt on it. He gave his groundbreaking speech on race only in response to the Wright controversy.

Indeed, after he effectively won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, he left it to the media to point out the racial accomplishment, and the relative he thanked most emotively was the woman who raised him: his white grandmother.

There is a reason for this. Race is one of the most contentious issues in American society, and, as with many contentious issues, Americans like to choose the middle path between perceived extremes. “In many ways, Obama is an ideal middle way person — he is just as white as he is black,” said Alan Wolfe, a political science professor at Boston College. New York Times, Color Test – Where Whites Draw the Line, Marcus Mabry

There’s more and it’s good reading. But, what do YOU think? Do you believe MOST white people are offended by a “sense of black grievance?” Please share YOUR thoughts in comments.

  • pteranodon
    Long ago the most evil racists in America met to discuss how to keep the black man down now that it was unfashionable to do so overtly. After days of wailing, gnashing teeth, and hitting their heads on the walls, one finally got an idea. "All we have to do is instil in blacks a sense of eternal grievance and entitlement, and the rest will take care of itself."

    Farfetched? Ever wonder why it was so easy for Johnson to talk the southern (racist) Democrats into supporting his welfare system?
  • Donalea
    As a 60 year old white woman I've seen a lot. My only privilege (and is a lot) is due to my white skin and what education I have managed to acquire from books. But I think my perspective can add something to this discussion.

    You ask the question if whites are offended by a sense of black grievance. From my experience as a white woman, I must say many are. They don't want to be held accountable for the past (slavery, Jim Crow). They don't want to be held accountable for now (rampant racism). Black grievance implies that something needs to be done. If they have done nothing wrong why should they be held accountable for those grievances?

    Having never examined the concept of privilege in self, many white people want to be able to call their self "not a racist" because they never commit acts of racism. They don't use the N word, they don't talk about being superior. They aren't racist and so why should they have to listen to someone whine about how rotten it is to be black. Unfortunately I have heard it all too often and gotten into arguments all too often about it.

    How well I remember the racism that permeated my childhood. It was not easy to learn about my own privilege and my responsibility to help make wrongs right. There are many in the south, many who are my relatives I hate to admit, that more and less fit the stereotype of the "Southern poor white trash" who have nothing but their whiteness to feel superior about and do so regularly.

    But in the cities and suburbs and businesses there are the ones who are "not racists" who are offended by black grievance. These are the ones I don't know about when it comes to the election. How deep does their racism go? Is it enough to cause them to cut off their nose to spite their face. Will they turn their back on change because the same is good enough for them?

    I certainly veered off point enough here. I almost hesitate to post in the face of such intelligent, and educated persons who have fascinated me with their conversation.
  • macon:
    "you should look it up–"

    It's just condescending, isn't it.
    Either you are taking my ignorance for granted, or I am coming across as just that ignorant.

    I cough up nuggets of my prejudices all the time. My recurring favorite is that I expect pretty people to be equally gifted intellectually. I am amused at myself on the occasion that they aren't. In my fawning admiration of beauty, I always forget that the two gifts are unrelated.

    Not particularly hairy, and not race-related. Just the latest lesson I can't seem to learn. But years and tears and years of being a special ed. teacher in the projects has provided me with ample opportunities for the hairy list. I'm not going to write on them here, tonight.

    Notice how berating your tone? The natural reaction? shame. The reaction to shame? defiance, anger, condescension (the "YOU carry the shame bucket flanking maneuver).

    What do I, as a person of privilege feel when faced daily by children who must listen to my egalitarian USA rap, and then watch me drive out of their neighborhood at the end of the day? I feel the bucket, baby.
  • Wow, Carmen. I felt quick to answer, but then I started thinking...

    I was gonna say my adoring fans.
    No foolin'

    I've had a year of being under the magnifying glass at a new campus, very different from the neighborhoods I'm used to working in. Short story, I did well. I'm a donkey, and kids dig that. The parents like it when their kids are happy. I was popular at the other schools too.
    For one simple reason...

    That's what I could say. I have access to that almost megalomaniacal ego stimulation.

    But the truth is that I am a far more ruthless judge, as I know more about me than anyone. I use a lot of self-deprecatory remarks to agitate myself out of my penchant for complacency, but, truth be told, I have reason to be proud of myself and I prefer to stay in that room.

    So the long answer is that I listen to me, and that my psychological survival depends upon my own positive evaluation. I fear that self-punishment is relegated to the sub-conscious, and hard to see in the mirror. My evals. are thus skewed toward, "I like me."

    I wrote this before I read macon's excellent questions. So I'm gonna let go of this one and marinate.
  • No, QJ, I'm not offended by black grievance. Instead, I respect it. Black people are of course not right about race all the time, and I do weigh what I hear them say on the basis of what I've already learned so far (mostly by listening to other non-white voices). But as I think I've said here, I know that as a white person, I've been trained to ignore and/or misunderstand realities of race in America, and I also know that given those realities (that is, since America continues to be a white supremacist society), non-white people suffer from them and are endangered by them more than me. And so when I have a chance to hear their grievances, I'm grateful, and full of hope that I can help somehow, and not at all "offended."

    As I say that, I feel no walls of resistance going up against what you're trying to get me to understand.

    It seems to me that what you're basically saying is, people are people, whether black or white--they're all pretty much the same. They all feel shame, for instance, and it's a disabling emotion.

    Is that kind of universalist stance what you're saying?

    You haven't answered my question about what hairy shit you've pulled out of your specifically white self. You've simply thrown it back to me by saying, "You're responding to it, my friend." Thus, I still have no idea what you mean by "hairy shit," especially in terms of race, and I still have no idea what your being classified as white means to you.

    So that's how I can answer your question about what I mean by "power evasive." If what you're basically saying is that people should get past or transcend race (a move you yourself continuously seem to be performing here), then you're avoiding acknowledging, much less dealing with, the fact that your whiteness empowers you in all sorts of ways, relative to non-white people. Just as your masculinity does. Why are you so uninterested in that, and so focused on "shame" instead?

    It's nice that you think we're on the same page, but so far, given the way you've been explaining yourself, it doesn't seem to me that we are.

    Finally, you wrote, "We become what we judge ourselves to be. Some of that does come from what we’ve been told we are. Some of it comes from what we believe ourselves to be. Don’t you think shame plays a role here?"

    Yes, shame does play a role, but a different role for black people than it does for white people. You say you're no expert on groups of people, just on you yourself. So I ask you, again, what's significant about your WHITE self? And what does your racial status as white have to do with how shame is a part of your life? Surely that's different in some ways from how it's a part of a black person's life, isn't it?

    For instance, do you know what "internalized racism" is? If not, you should look it up--it has a lot to do with shame. Also, has it ever occurred to you that you as a white person have been encouraged to internalize an opposite sense of superiority, and an attendant, relatively higher self-esteem and self-confidence?
  • This thread is fascinating to me. And I don't want to intrude, but I am compelled to ask QJ, who is/are the one(s) telling you who YOU are? Not your ancestors, but YOU. Who is telling YOU who you are?
  • quakerjew
    Also macon,
    "I'm making progress, but I don't know if that work will ever be complete since, to such a powerful degree, we become what we've been told we are."

    After reading your first-person introspective on your trip to Indonesia, and this comment of yours, I feel like we may be talking about the same thing.

    Hear me out. We become what we judge ourselves to be. Some of that does come from what we've been told we are. Some of it comes from what we believe ourselves to be. Don't you think shame plays a role here?
  • quakerjew
    macon,
    I guess I could ask again.
    Are YOU offended by a sense of black grievance?
    That'll slam those walls back up so you will resist understanding me ;}

    What hairy weird shit? You're responding to it, friend.
    You're stuck on telling me what what most of these sorts of people, or those sorts of people...

    I'm stuck on telling you that I'm an authority on no-one but me. "This is how I feel when..."
    How can we bridge this chasm?

    I think shame affects the psyche in profound ways. The human psyche.

    Just like lack of oxygen affects the "lizard brain" in profound ways. The struggle for survival will be different if you're drowning than it would if you were being strangled, but the brain's energetic reaction comes from the same source.

    I'm not with scales here saying, "Tie game! Let's all go home!" (your "white shame, non-white shame")

    I'm also not saying that lizard brain's reaction to drowning is exactly the same as the rational brain's reaction to shame. Shame is more intricate.

    What is power evasive? Maybe I am being like that. Please explain what you mean.
    thanks
  • QJ, since you want self-exposure, I'm a white guy who's studied and work with racial issues for over a decade, including not only matters related to POC, but also, very intensively, "whiteness," and all that it entails. Does that help to decrease my invisibility?

    It sounds like you're sincerely trying to work out something for yourself in terms of race, maybe so you can then move on from there? If so, I applaud that effort--as long as it doesn't remain all about you.

    Your shame bucket metaphor is still murky to me, especially since you seem to equate white shame with non-white shame. You seem power evasive. Surely whites and non-whites, in general, have different shame buckets?

    Non-white forms of shame are so, so different from white forms of shame.

    When you write, "Yes, WE have to listen if WE want to learn," who's this "WE"? Do you mean both white and non-white people?

    If so, I think that's messed up. Non-white people have been basically forced to listen to white people for a long, long time. And most white people are still terrible listeners when non-white people are trying to say something about race that they consider important. And non-white people in general already know a lot more about white people and what they usually have to say than white people know about them.

    I'm wondering, what sort of "hairy weird shit" have you pulled out of your white self and examined, in terms of race? What did you come up with?
  • Lori,
    I guess what bugged me most was macon's invisibility. He wrote of what others must be thinking/feeling, but no real exposure on his part.

    As a writing teacher, I reach inside and pull out hairy weird shit, put it on the table and say, "Look at this hairy weird shit!" - encouraging my students to do the same. They learn to recognize by attempting to apply specific language to difficult-to-define feelings.

    Yes, WE have to listen if WE want to learn.
    I'm assuming that among your colleagues everyone speaks about our racist society freely, and plans jointly for taking real steps to change how particular students may experience this debilitating handicap.

    I'm sorry, that was sarcastic and shitty.
    It's probably a reaction to being misunderstood.

    Being able to speak/write honestly about something is not an indication that I'm wallowing in it. It's a perspective on it. I've watched shame wreak it's magic. I'm aware of it's power. I believe it was an intended consequence of Jim Crow (and whatever his Yankee brother was called).

    The indignation that undeserved shame creates is intense. I don't think that the human brain easily handles undeserved shame. I believe the brain will shirk it. "This bucket is too damn heavy." I think the brain can go to great lengths to not own it.

    Macon's example of a white person rushing forward to tell someone that they did not just experience what they just DID experience, is a shame bucket moment.

    I think pimply-faced white kids standing in front of a swastika is a shame bucket moment.

    I'm on the cusp of something here. It's late and this is not fully thought out, but I believe the bucket to be the impediment. There are tremendous gains in dumping out someone's shame bucket, their armory.

    I also believe Jim Crow was so insidiously taught that in many ways, he is alive and well.
    I feel compelled to detail my tiltings at the windmills of injustice, because I don't want you to dismiss my ideas, but I think it would ring hollow and weak. Scribblings on the shame bucket will do.
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