Yes, Black people live on Cape Cod
Canary Lee Burton,
Wellfleet, MA.
It’s hard to read to hard core hate messages, hopefully they will stay around long enough to learn something.
Cultural Gatekeepers Defile Black People’s Beauty
Deborah Sanders
New York, NY
Racism has become so deeply ingrained in our culture that we are often only able to recognize the most obvious aggressions. Even when we do recognize it, we often feel helpless to resist its powerful grip on our psyche. I think that much of the obstacles to achieving a post-racial society is the constant reinforcement of the ‘what is beautiful is good, what is beautiful is white paradigm’ being relentlessly forwarded by cultural gatekeepers such as the advertising industry and the entertainment industry.
This gatekeeper sector of society which chooses who goes on the covers of magazines, who gets the leading movie role as a symbol of beauty and who gets labeled sexy and so forth, has an overbearing and pervasive influence on the way we judge a person’s worth. According to them and the messages they espouse, first and foremost, a person and especially a woman must be beautiful to be worthy. Second, they narrowly define beauty in a way that excludes the natural features of black people. What follows, is an entire race of the people assumed to be bad by everyone, often including many of them, themselves.
I believe that the cultural gatekeepers violate the civil rights of a large segment of society by its damaging use of idealized images of beauty that influence how people value others. It impacts our ability to earn a living, to mate, attract friends and studies show that it even impacts the way teachers react to our children. When we as a society are bold enough to enforce civil rights laws and stop cultural gatekeepers from defining beauty, we will go along way towards eradicating racism.
Recite the constitution’s preamble to vote
Maggie Lewis Hubbard,
St Johns, FL
As a kid, wondered why my mom could recite the preamble to the constitution in 10 seconds flat. Later found it was a requirement for Black (colored then) people to vote when she was young. Instilled in me the value of never taking my vote for granted.
Prison made me fear black people
Anonymous,
USA
I grew up poor, not terribly poor – I was able to receive a number of things that many people much worse off than me would never be able to have. Based on where I lived, I was surrounded by many black families, I never had any reason to dislike black people. I had many black friends growing up and therefore had no issue with black people. Years later, I had a desire to join law enforcement and make a change, figured joining Corrections was a foot-in-the-door. After three years as a C.O. and witnessing more violence than I can remember, my heart races around black men walking in a group with other black men. Talking to any black man who talks like a rapper, dresses like one or whatever else sets me on edge to the highest degree. I understand we’re all people. I understand the bias I have but I can’t shake it. The sick part is that part of me doesn’t see the sense in doing so. It makes me feel safe and I feel no desire to change how I think in this regard. I work down in a city and I think that every time a black man passes me I run the possibility of being jumped. I know this is probably some level of PTSD but at the same time it still feels rational.
White People continue to disappoint me
Erin O’Connell-Morse,
Cleveland, OH
As a white woman, I am genuinely disappointed in my fellow white people. Acknowledging the terrible history of oppression of other races by white people in the past (and systemically still) doesn’t mean that anyone today is a bad person. Continuing to fight to keep systems of oppression in place, not educating themselves on racial equity issues and not even trying to listen and understand BIPOC stories does. I’m so disappointed that people are still actively racist, or don’t recognize how much they are missing out on by keeping their minds shut and their circles homogenous. I wish I could find a way to open their eyes/minds.
Hatred hurts the hated and hater
Dan Creamer,
Sandpoint, ID.
I grew up in the Jim Crow South. Being white I always felt both guilty and angry about the way black people were treated. In the Marine Corps, I accepted a bottle of wine from a black Marine and drank from it without wiping off the bottle or my mouth and he remarked on it. We talked about race some and went our separate ways. Two weeks or so later that Marine saved my life by stepping in front of another black man wanting to shoot any white man. It shames me that I have lost touch with him…
Black horse will ride white horse
Don
Pittsburgh, PA
Stated in spring of 1963 by negro at the time with no agitation or explanation. As a white person I thought comment strange not knowing the future implications to follow. Strange that statement has stayed in my conscience all these years. Always felt comfortable among black people.
I will not be an ally
Shelly Gremillion,
Hammond, LA
I lost my home in Hurricane Ida.
When we arrived home after evacuation there were kids running and riding bikes stopping to throw things through windows and keep going.
They were black, about 13 years old. I didn’t call the police. I didn’t want to be “that person”.
After spending hours putting storm damaged property in neat piles and bags so adjusters could assess my damages a couple came in the late evening and slit open the bags and scattered welt and moldy items across my lawn and my neighbors. They were throwing things in the back seat of their car. They left a giant mess. They didn’t care or consider that someone else would have to clean up the mess. They were black.
We all know to seal a refined refrigerator with tape. This family down the street didn’t and rotten food tumbled out of the refrigerator and into the street while they stood around in their yard howling and laughing. They didn’t care that rotten food was being spread all over and people were unable to walk because of the smell. They were black.
My home was uninhabitable, so I rented a home in a quiet neighborhood. A few months passed and new family moved in. Instantly there was screaming and loud music all hours. People parked all over the streets and stood in the road. They didn’t care that people could not get into their own driveways or get out of their driveways. I saw a fight and a woman throw a gallon of water at a man and knock him out of a chair. They were all black.
We decided to buy a house in a nice neighborhood instead of rebuild. We looked at one and there were cars on blocks and people standing in the street and music being played through open car doors and men screamed over the music to be heard. They laughed and blocked traffic. They looked over their shoulder unbothered by the line of cars forming in a residential street. They were all black.
We chose a new development. Everyone has excessive trash when they move in so we took all our trash to the landfill. Now there are piles of trash and garbage food containers, used diapers, shoe boxes (most is not in bags) down the street. Total disregard for civil code and disrespect for neighbors. They are black.
There is a family down the street with two dogs who run loose and have started chasing cars an barking as people walk or bike in their vicinity. The family is black.
When whites move it and property values increase it causes rage. The rage is that whites can cause a property value to increase. Gentrification “forces them to sell”. No. It doesn’t. It gave them an opportunity to make money and they took it.
Any honest objective person can see how people hanging around in a front yard smoking weed with loud music and piles of trash would drive down property values.
I will not be an ally anymore. I will not see your “struggle”. I will not notice. Black people have chosen not to notice the devastation they cause and the burden their “culture” of noise, road blocking, piles of trash and destruction is to society.
Black people do not want to be an ally to society. They want to dominate and subjugate.
Black people are their own enemy
Adam,
USA
Black people are creating racism by endlessly making everything about race, by ignoring the massive problems within their own communities like the outrageously high rate of criminality, by refusing to join the civilized world and choosing instead to revel in degenerate behavior and calling it culture, by blaming white people for their problems and playing the victim at every opportunity.
Black people are not disadvantaged by the system, in fact they enjoy numerous advantages not afforded to others, if blacks want to ensure they are the target of hatred that will eventually lead to their own demise all they have to do is not change anything.
Everyone else is literally sick to death of blacks peoples bullsh**
Never got sh** for being white
Tim Murphy,
Sandia Park, NM
White people take this for granted, I hope to live to the day ALL races could say this. At 66, I’m not hopeful.
Azel Praer,Listen to Black People about RACISM
Kenyel Clark,
Wayne State,
Detroit, MI
If you are privileged, you do not feel the effects of what socially going on.So, if you want to understand racism talk people of color, listen to them and STOP talking over them.
I always wanted to be black
Angela,
Manchester, NH.
Since I was a small child, I have thought black people were more beautiful, more brave, more…everything than whites. I am white and grew up in a very white state. I always felt other than everyone else, and thought that being black must be wonderful. I didn’t realize until I was older that being black in America is very difficult. I don’t know if that makes me racist or not, but it’s not my intention at all.
Some black people are prejudiced too.
Carolyn
Lynchburg, VA
I have met more black people who hated other races and were very open with it, but maybe white people just don’t admit to racism as openly. I always believed in MLK’s dream and the utopian vision of the star trek series. I was very surprised when I got bussed to an all black school— no one was waiting to hold my hand. I remember being so shocked, I thought all that racism stuff got straightened out in the 60’s. And here it is 2012 and people are still acting ugly. people thought education would end racism. Sadly this has not proven true in all cases. I wish people would just stop hating.
I know rap, not black people
Toby Johnston
USA.
I grew up in Los Angeles the 80’s, rabid fan of all things rap. I am white and for many of my friends (Mexican, black, white, lower/middle/upper class, whatever) rap was the music of rebellion. I got called ‘wigger’ by my white(r) friends and heard a lot of hate spewed. And yet at the same time, through the love of the music, I came to understand the African-American & immigrant experience through very narrow lens.
I see this myopic perspective from a generation of kids who were grew up with rap. Rap created icons of disenfranchisement easily accessible by our teenage angst and yet simplified the narrative of what ‘race’, and in many ways ‘gender’, could be.
I think this myopia is easiest to identify in the bias of those who hated rap, called it ‘jungle music’ in the pejorative, but the misinformation worked both ways. Rap elevated a struggle but also define an individual’s potential in a very dangerous way.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love rap but I don’t confuse my love the music with an understanding of those peoples and neighborhood that it came from. I understand rap, and its later corporate sanitized little brother ‘hip hop’, as only a single voice in the discussion and not the whole choir.
Why do white people fear us
Anonymous,
Warren, MI.
Why do white people hate and fear black people to such a point that white people set a global system of a racism against black people in every way? Are white afraid of losing to black in some way or is it something deeper and hidden?
