Let’s abolish this concept now, please!
Jaime Phelps,
Philomath, OR.
This is a great idea. Thanks for your efforts.
Accused of racism because I’m white
Alice Peach,
Yuma, AZ
I was working in a public library trying to help my last customer of the day. I’m whiter than mayonnaise because of my English and Slovak heritage (though my dad could look like any ethnicity he wanted). Did I mention that it was my birthday?! And my husband was out of town? I typically try to have the customer accompany me to the reference resources because a lone librarian in the stacks is a target for people too scared or lazy to go to the reference desk, and I can only work on one reference question at a time. In this case, the resource needed was not far from the reference desk and I thought I’d return shortly with the needed information. In this section (business) there were a couple of other people looking through the resources as a I began my research. Then, a gentleman started talking to me as I tried to look up my customer’s information. I explained that I’m helping another customer and that if he went to the reference desk another librarian would be glad to help him. The gentleman decided to pull the race card and respond, “I can see won’t help me because I’m black and you’re a racist.” No, the reason I wasn’t helping him (at that moment) was because I was trying to help my first customer. I decided I needed a supervisor’s intervention, which, of course, were no where to be found. I’m not sure if my original customer or the gentleman ever got the information they were seeking. That was the second time I cried at work–the first time was for a black lady who had a miscarriage and was seeking books about grief. No one can assume–because, well, you know.
The race card has been overplayed.
Stephen M. King,
Parkville, MD
Race baiters know there is a LOT of money to be made by keeping people at each other’s throats. The military-industrial complex has been doing the same thing for 150 years. I don’t care what color you identify with. If you aren’t a good, kind, and decent person, I have no time for you.
I’m tired of Black Lives Matter (BLM)!
Chris Rochambeau,
Seattle, WA
I am ethnically “mixed”, (born in New Orleans – Spanish Creole, Cajun French and Choctaw ), but appear Anglo. I am, also, an ER RN. And, I am tired, sooooo very tired of all the BLM “protests”, (uncouth, unhygienic, rioters tearing up a county that is already struggling ), smack in the middle of this horrible pandemic! *MOST OF YOU ARE NOT SOCIAL DISTANCING, AND MANY OF YOU ARE NOT WEARING MASKS! ( When you do this, you make “work” for me and my kind! And WE ARE ALL BURNED THE HELL OUT!!! ) Do you, ( “protesters”), think you are special? Do you think the virus won’t get you? I can assure you – it can and it will!
We have ALL, ( regardless of gender, skin color, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation… ), have had hard lives, and been mistreated by others. GROW THE HELL UP and stop all this pathetic, whiny, victim-worship! You all better be concerned about this virus, that is about to eat us all alive! Be concerned about the environment, the economy, the sorry state of schools, the eviction crisis, the millions of Americans struggling on unemployment – just trying to make ends meet. Do you want to ‘get behind” something? Get behind that! Those issues affect us all.
Racism IS an important issue, but it is nothing compared to what is going on in the world right now. ( Worrying about racism in the middle of a global pandemic is analogous to a hunchback being upset about a pimple on the end of his nose! ) Get your priorities straight. If you self-serving idiots don’t wise-up, and stop wasting resources there won’t be enough to go around when it really matters! YOUR “RACE CARD” HAS BEEN CANCELED; TRY BACK LATER WITH YOUR “VICTIM CARD”. You want to beat this virus, and support front line workers? Then, do the right thing – mask-up, clean-up, keep your distance and stop all these asinine “protests”.
Race card played by the oppressor
Ximena,
USA
The oppressor will always play the “race card” in order to keep certain groups of people subjugated. I resist.
Race isn’t more legitimate than sexuality.
David Chase,
New York, NY.
Apparently some people feel that “all oppression is not equal”. My experience as a gay white man unfortunately has not always been one of solidarity with non-gay non-white people.
Growing up as a child in Woodstock, NY in the 60’s and 70’s I was brought up to be supportive of all struggles for civil rights. Of course it was racially based discrimination which was most in the news at the time. But since becoming an adult and coming out of the closet, what I’ve found is that some members of the same racial minorities whom I supported and still support in their struggles, do not support me in mine. Some of them feel perfectly free to make the most horrifying anti-gay statements in public without recognizing that if you substitute “black” for “gay” they are saying the same things as were being said about non-white people in the 60’s and 70’s.
It is very hurtful to be told that the extensive suffering of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of society which is still happening today is not legitimate, that only racial discrimination is “real” and that the LGBT community has somehow “hijacked” the civil rights movement. To be told that “You’re white so you could ‘pass’ and avoid discrimination, just don’t act gay in public” denies my human right to live an open, honest and truthful life, and denies the very real fear and hurt I and others have suffered as gay people no matter what my race.
I expect that there are many who will read this Race Card and say “There they go again, gay people hijacking the conversation about race” but I can’t hear the word “race” without thinking about discrimination, and I can’t think about discrimination without thinking of myself. All I can say in closing is that until we are all free from discrimination, none of us are truly free.
Wrong race, Wrong day for fun
Reginald Leroy Johnson,
Randallstown, MD.
On my birthday in June 1963 my mother decided to take me to Gwynn Oak Amusement Park as birthday gift…
We rode on the #28 bus…leaving the city the air was so sweet and clean, I saw ducks, and trees.
I was so overwhelmed by this beauty…that I thought we where in “heaven”
the park was was nice. A miniature train ride, carrousel, and Ferris Wheel..this is where “race card” plays in.
I insisted that my mom put me on the Ferris wheel…I get on board and I’m the only one riding alone on the wheel.
all the other kids (white) was in the the other seats two and three across.
When my seat on the wheel arrived to the top it stopped for about 5min (it felt like 5 hours)…I panicked and called for my mother and as I looked down she was aggravated at the operator…she was so animated in her actions that I knew she was after the operator to let me down.
He did eventually let me down(at his own pace and and speed), no hurry whatsoever.
As I got off the ride I heard him say to my mom …”this ‘ant ya’ll’s day”.
We left the park in silence…all these white people looking at us…I was scared all over again but, I did know why. My mom held me so close to her if she could fit inside her skin she would have that day.
We stood in silence as we waited for the bus to take us back into the city.
We got on the #28 and rode into town…we were the only ones on the bus for a while before we got to the city line.
All this time, my mom held my hand. Then her grip loosened, I looked up to her and saw her crying…not making a sound..it was a waterfall of tears so deep…drenching her blouse to her underwear. Her mouth open …no sound not a peep. By the time we got into town…she stopped crying.
She told me, as we got on the packed and hot #15 bus, that she was sick and that we could go another time she promised.
We never went back…ever.
READ MORE
REPOST: 50 years later, desegregation of Gwynn Oak Amusement Park celebrated
Former protesters, and child who broke color barrier by riding merry-go-round, return
July 07, 2013|By Lorraine Mirabella, The Baltimore Sun
Civil rights activists from the ’60s and others sing freedom… (Algerina Perna, Baltimore…)
The wooden roller coaster and the Dixie Ballroom are long gone.
Gone, too, from Gwynn Oak Park is the merry-go-round where a toddler in a pink dress took a historic spin on a summer afternoon a half-century ago.
That simple pleasure, a first for a black child at the formerly segregated Gwynn Oak Amusement Park, had become possible just weeks earlier in 1963 when hundreds of black and white protesters thrust Baltimore into the national spotlight and succeeded in integrating the park.
On Sunday, several hundred people filled the grassy Baltimore County park where the rides once stood, toting chairs and picnic lunches and sipping water in the sweltering heat, to mark the 50th anniversary of July 4 and 7 protests in 1963. Until then, nothing at the 64-acre park with picnic tables, playgrounds and a volleyball court hinted at that defining moment in Baltimore civil rights history, when nearly 400 people were arrested for trespassing, including nearly two dozen Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy members.
“I feel like we are righting a wrong by being here,” Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said shortly before locking arms with clergy members and former protesters and leading a march to unveil a commemorative plaque.
“Opening the Gates,” sponsored by businesses, foundations and Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups, drew many of the original protesters who were jeered at by hecklers and jailed when they tried to enter the old amusement park.
Sharon Langley, now a Los Angeles resident who broke the Gwynn Oak racial barrier as a child, came back, too. And on display was the original wooden horse where Social Security Administration supply clerk Charles C. Langley Jr. had perched his 11-month-old daughter on Aug. 28, 1963, the same day Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech. The horse’s private owners brought it to Gwynn Oak from its spot on the carousel, a ride on Washington’s National Mall since 1981.
Sitting at a shaded picnic table, Sharon Langley recalled coming back to the amusement park after that first time, playing skee-ball and learning to ice skate on the pond in winter. Sunday was her first time back since her family moved out of state after elementary school.
“So many ordinary people were part of civil rights,” said Langley, an elementary school administrator. “I’m glad my family felt this was an important thing to do. Every person has a part to play. Every person can do something in her community to move her community forward.”
Langley said she grew up knowing the Gwynn Oak visit was an important family event, but “I didn’t necessarily know it was still important to people.”
She found out otherwise, spending much of the day posing for pictures with people eager to meet her.
“That must have been some ride,” one woman said, shaking her hand.
As church and synagogue choirs sang, former protesters reminisced about the events of 50 years ago. Todd Gitlin had been a recent college graduate and activist with Students for a Democratic Society when he came to the July 4 protest, was arrested and spent the night in a packed jail cell. He returned for the July 7 protests and with others crossed a stream in the rear of the park to get in. Singing, the nonviolent demonstrators were met by angry mobs, recalled Alison Turaj Brown, another protester. A woman with a child threw a rock, which hit Brown in the head.
“All I know is I couldn’t see because of the blood,” said Brown, who lives in Sarasota, Fla.
The amusement park was different from the restaurants and theaters that the Congress of Racial Equality was pushing to integrate in the early 1960s, said Leo W. Burroughs Jr., 71, then a Morgan State College student and activist leader with CORE’s Baltimore chapter.
“That was the only large amusement park in the area,” said Burroughs, of Bolton Hill. “It was one of a kind. There were many restaurants, but there was only one amusement park of size, and that was Gwynn Oak.”
During the protests, he said, “a lot of people went to jail. … That was the strategy, to overwhelm the facilities.”
Protests that had begun nearly 10 years earlier ended after then-County Executive Spiro T. Agnew negotiated a settlement with the park’s owners to end segregation on Aug. 28, 1963. That day, Charles Langley visited with his wife, Marian, a nurse, and Sharon, not as members of a civil rights group but on a family outing, according to Baltimore Sun reports.
They “strolled through the midway, examining the different arcades until they reached the merry-go-round, where Sharon got her first ride,” a Sun report said. The privately owned park stayed open until 1972, when Tropical Storm Agnes washed much of it away. The county eventually acquired the property.
Ashamed and embarrassed to be black.
Nobody,
Durham, NC.
I would change my race to anything non-black if I could. I don’t think white people understand how limiting it is to only be seen as a color and not as a person. When you’re black you can be the Scary Black Person, the Angry Black Man/Woman, the Thug, the Smart/Articulate Black Person, the Funny Black Guy/Girl, etc but you are never just a person. You spend your whole life trying to make other people feel comfortable and you never get to just be. It’s tiring but if you mention it to anyone then you are pulling the “race card” and you are “whining.” I would do just about anything to not be black anymore.
Why Pull Out The Race Card?
James Laquindanum,
Eastvale, CA.
Don’t do it! Be intelligent and show some class. Happens quite often to me, especially when having random heated discussions about sports & politics. More often online, folks tend to feel comfortable talking smack behind their smart devices. I don’t use the card, even when it’s used on me because I am bigger than that. Do not fight hate with more hate. ONE LOVE!
A BIG SHOUT OUT TO CBU HIS311 & prof. Alexander.
Learned your culture you not ours
Michael Greene,
Philadelphia, PA.
Kudos to Ms, Norris for bringing the kindling for when it comes to race there have been, are, and will be fires figurative and literally of every imaginable combustion. Growing up I watched and was part of the Civil Rights Movement from the first time I was stopped and frisked by a white cop at 8 years old to watching my family grow and expand into a multi-racial AND ethnic polyglot so diverse as to believe that my family is more representative of America than America herself is represented by the white controlling media and political factions that attempt to keep the oppressed suppressed. I would love to check back as often as possible and I will attempt to shake the branches of said tree to get them to play their cards.
My race card is my racecar
Finn Hurtado,
Eugene, OR.
I am biracial, half Mexican and half white. I don’t have a racial group I identify with or feel proud to be a part of. However I do feel a sense of community with the local car scene. I own my dream car, it is my prize possession. Thus these six words seemed simple to me: “My race card is my racecar.”
Unwillingly passing, race card isn’t mine.
April Faye Weathers,
Los Angeles, CA.
I’m light skinned and have always felt self-conscious about my skin tone. Growing up, my white mom taught my brother and I to be proud of our black identity and feel comfortable in our own skin. She embraced our father’s culture and made it part of her own, blending our family even when my father wasn’t around. Nonetheless, we dealt with the “Are those really your kids?,” and the “Do you know your father?’s” plenty. Being some of the own mixed people, let alone people of color, in our rural Eastern Oregon community was confusing enough, but being often pegged as the “black” kids was another thing entirely. Especially when we didn’t hold the typical black visage, myself pale and my brother chocolate, neither of us had quite the “right” look, at least not for a lot of people. My sense of identity shifted in college when I realized there were more, many more in fact, people of mixed backgrounds. I was thrilled to meet more people to relate to, but confused when presented with people, both white and black, who felt or acted like I wasn’t dark enough or black enough to hold the title. I never realized it was a title to win, or be doled out, but it certainly can be. I may continue to struggle with my pale skin and light eyes and dirty blonde curly hair, but more and more I let the race card that others want to play for me be played, and I keep my own rules to the game.
Please stop playing the race card
Peter Moorman,
Syracuse, NY.
The race card as in the term not the physical cards
The race card is the Joker
Karen Michel
Pleasant Valley, NY
Faceted, on the move, always changing the rules; what rules?
Race is not a card game.
J.C. Dade
Houston, TX
When I listened to the President of the United States speak of having being profiled because he was Black, I recalled the experiences that people had shared with me over the course of my lifetime as well as some of my own. My father often spoke of being pulled over on his way home from his sister’s house. His sister lived in Maryland and drove a nice car. When he would back through the country roads to his house, he would almost always get pulled over…never mind that his family owned a significant amount of acerage in the county. All the police saw was a black man driving a nice car at night. Nothing about that scenario could be good right?
As I write about that, I can virtually see the Internet comments exploding with people feeling that the police are justified. They go on and on about crime statistics and how the police are just doing their job. But my father wasn’t a criminal. He was driving his sister home in her car. Minding his business.
I remember in college a male friend accompanying me to the store. After a while he became extremely agitated. Then angry. He asked me to hurry along and said that when we got back to campus he would explain. When we got back to campus he began to explain how he was being followed around the store. Not long after we arrived, the store made an announcement…you know…Code Blah-blah, aisle 10… Almost immediately store clerks appeared in our area. They kept asking him if he needed help. The entire time we were in the store, clerks followed, watched and checked on us until we left. At the time I was mostly oblivious to this because at the time I was unfamiliar to the layout of the store and having trouble finding things. But I understood what he meant. This in a town where Russian immigrants are said to outnumber Blacks, black people were followed in the stores as though we were the only possible contributors to whatever crime happened in the vicinity. I understood what he meant because when I went back home and went into stores it happened to me too. I walked out of stores I had shopped in my entire life because clerks follwed me around as though I were stealing. When people became tired of being treated like that, that store lost business and it’s staff had to be replaced.
That being said, I get angry when I hear people say, “oh they played the race card.” My race is not a card (neither is my gender for that matter), and my life is not a game. When the quality of people’s lives and their ability to relas in their own environments is hampered by the someone else’s negative view of their race, life becomes challenged. It’s not in our heads. It’s a fact that these things are happening.
I grew up in Virginia in the 1980s, holding my breath while Richmond searched for the Briley Brothers, watching the Atlanta Child murders unfold in the news and reading about Bensonhurst in New York Magazine. At the time I didn’t understand that Bensonhurst was not a historical essay, that it was happening in real time. And I wouldn’t understand that people would continue to assume that they could feel justified in treating Black people however they wished because there were some criminals out there who happened to be Black. I did know that treating someone wrong because of their membership in a particular group was not a good thing. I knew because I had experienced some things. Racism hurts people. It hurts in the way it hurts when someone makes fun of you because of your nose, or your speech impediment or because your parents are poor or because you’re a woman or a man or any other targeted attack. It’s demoralizing. It’s harmful. And people should speak up when they’ve been attacked…and not just if that particular type of victimization is being protected. Don’t attack me because I’m black, blame me for the attack and then say, “you played the race card.”
When I was younger, was this notion that because we had made an end to segregation, that we had overcome and that America was somehow ‘becoming post-racial’. Looking back, that seems so naive. As an adult, it seems almost comical to suggest that this country will ever be post-racial, because as long as people have eyes to see, they will see and compare. It’s human nature. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like a lot of things about my culture, just as I would espect others to respect and appreciate theirs. What’s awesome is when people can respect and celebrate those similarites and differences. When we don’t tell our friends and neighbors not to play with someone because they’re black (as someone did about me)…or white…or….whatever…
ANYONE can play the ‘race card’
Carl Poole
Norfolk, VA
I am sick of seeing so many people (primarily white people) on the news, in books, and on social media sites saying that people of color (primarily black people) always ‘play the race card’ to win points on issues of race. This thinking assumes that once a person of color falsely decries another of racism, there’s nothing they can say or do about it. I’ve even seen incidents where these co-called ‘victims’ of false accusation weren’t even called a racist, but somehow still felt slighted.
I’m sorry, but I have to question this insanity. Don’t these people know that falsely accusing others of playing the race card, in and of itself, is PLAYING THE RACE CARD? Please understand that I am not saying the people of color never cry ‘racism’ falsely. I am only saying that whites do it just as often. All of us need to learn to take our fingers off the trigger a little in discussions of race.
“Race card” is no longer disrespectful.
Lisa Stiles Drummond
Taylor, TX
I have been listening to Michele Norris on NPR for years. I have been uplifted and encouraged by listening to Michele describe different “race cards.” I love the way the connotation of “race card” has changed in my mind these last couple of years. It isn’t a term that conjures up visions of manipulation or repression. The expression “race card” is now an artistic challenge for me.
I have another six words. Daddy, different race isn’t different species.
Thanks for this project. Thanks for encouraging the conversation.
