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Friday, October 06, 2006
Seeing Beyond the Mirror
Yesterday I met with a man who woke up a part of me that has been slumbering recently - the part of me that is used to being a White woman in a White-dominated culture and thinks that my life is the way that life is for everyone. Okay, I haven't forgotten that people in Iraq are suffering thanks to the violence that my country is perpetrating on them. And I haven't forgotten that people in many places in Africa are suffering horrendously. But it's easy to forget about the experience of those who don't have the same privilege that I do in this country of "freedom and opportunity".
This man is a person of color who does a lot of work to bring about awareness and justice regarding police brutality. He told me things that I hadn't heard before. Who do I believe? This man who says that many of the police shootings in the last year were preceded by police brutality? Or the reports from the media that give me the picture of innocent good-guy cops mowed down by criminals? Maybe it is a mixture of it all. Maybe not. We don't know - we never get the maybes in the news. In fact, we don't get the facts. What we get is black and white - literally. An all-around White hero is shot by a low-life, drug dealing Black.
I get uncomfortable when thinking of the strategies that people implement in order to survive living in oppression. I have a very hard time with the idea of killing a cop in retaliation for police brutality. I have a hard time thinking that shoplifting in order to sell products in order to make a living is the right thing to do. I have a problem considering drug dealing an excusable way to earn a living to feed and house yourself (okay, let me qualify that - I have a problem with drug dealing of the hard stuff).
AND putting myself in another's shoes, what would I do if I were not a member of the ruling class/race? What would I do if I came from a culture whose not-too-distant relatives were considered property, and I was unemployed or working for wages that come close to qualifying as slavery? I just might do whatever I could to make it - and to make it in a way in which I didn't have to feel a slave to those that have the power.
Black unemployment rates are double the over-all U.S. unemployment rates. And don't go telling me that other minorities, such as Jews and Asians, have better unemployment rates and prison statistics because of this judgment or that. It is not the same story!
One last thing. The man that I spoke with yesterday told me that gentrification is one of the problems that lower income people are having to deal with.
I remember watching as the Belmar development was brewing in Lakewood, Colorado. The old Villa Italia Mall was allowed to run down and, at the same time, people of color were moving into the area, until the lily whiteness of the mall was no more. So they tore down the mall, and now, in its place, are stores and condos that only middle to upper class people can afford. The same thing happened with the Stapleton area. We displace people who don't look and live like us, and then we wonder why they do what they need to do in order to survive. We take away their community and then we wonder why they have no support systems to help them achieve the "American Dream".
I'm just sittin' with all of this...
Martin Luther King had this to say:
I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
This man is a person of color who does a lot of work to bring about awareness and justice regarding police brutality. He told me things that I hadn't heard before. Who do I believe? This man who says that many of the police shootings in the last year were preceded by police brutality? Or the reports from the media that give me the picture of innocent good-guy cops mowed down by criminals? Maybe it is a mixture of it all. Maybe not. We don't know - we never get the maybes in the news. In fact, we don't get the facts. What we get is black and white - literally. An all-around White hero is shot by a low-life, drug dealing Black.
I get uncomfortable when thinking of the strategies that people implement in order to survive living in oppression. I have a very hard time with the idea of killing a cop in retaliation for police brutality. I have a hard time thinking that shoplifting in order to sell products in order to make a living is the right thing to do. I have a problem considering drug dealing an excusable way to earn a living to feed and house yourself (okay, let me qualify that - I have a problem with drug dealing of the hard stuff).
AND putting myself in another's shoes, what would I do if I were not a member of the ruling class/race? What would I do if I came from a culture whose not-too-distant relatives were considered property, and I was unemployed or working for wages that come close to qualifying as slavery? I just might do whatever I could to make it - and to make it in a way in which I didn't have to feel a slave to those that have the power.
Black unemployment rates are double the over-all U.S. unemployment rates. And don't go telling me that other minorities, such as Jews and Asians, have better unemployment rates and prison statistics because of this judgment or that. It is not the same story!
One last thing. The man that I spoke with yesterday told me that gentrification is one of the problems that lower income people are having to deal with.
I remember watching as the Belmar development was brewing in Lakewood, Colorado. The old Villa Italia Mall was allowed to run down and, at the same time, people of color were moving into the area, until the lily whiteness of the mall was no more. So they tore down the mall, and now, in its place, are stores and condos that only middle to upper class people can afford. The same thing happened with the Stapleton area. We displace people who don't look and live like us, and then we wonder why they do what they need to do in order to survive. We take away their community and then we wonder why they have no support systems to help them achieve the "American Dream".
I'm just sittin' with all of this...
Martin Luther King had this to say:
I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
posted by Carol at 9:38 AM
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