One of my fellow bloggers, Hammer, left the following comment for me yesterday in response to my post on racism and voting:
Race isn't an excuse. I went to a poor school with broken toilets, teachers who read the paper, 20 year old text books and no lab equipment. But we had no gangs or drugs and pretty much everyone graduated got a job or went to public college.
Declaring racism as an excuse for violent and criminal behavior when is counter productive.
My whole family was poor and or mexican and we got out of the projects despite most white people hating our guts.
I think just as many blacks are voting racism as whites.
So much came to mind in response to this so I figured I'd just post my thoughts right here. (I was going to write about how Madonna's holding dance auditions four blocks from my house but maybe I'll fill you in on that tomorrow. I know, you're
sooo disappointed.)
Anyway, I think Hammer's definitely overcome a whole lot and I wish more people had the ability to do so, but it doesn't always work that way. More often, people end up being stuck in a cycle of generational poverty. And instead of focusing on whether the poor have realistic opportunities to get out of the situations they're in, our society is trained to instead blame those who need our help. I am all for individual accountability but when it involves children, I just want there to be a real solution that allows them to be able to have real choices about their lives.
People excuse racism in this country and behave like it's just people saying mean things to other people. I can deal with name calling. I've been called a zebra, an
Oreo, and a crispy, critter, burnt up ni**er.
So, I suppose I could pat myself on the back and say, "Whatever, and now I've got a graduate degree!" I suppose I could also pat myself on the back for not being an addict saying, "I'm addicted to crack because people called me bad names." But it's not about me.
There are plenty of other people I've known over the course of my life who didn't make it. It's not just about one person pulling themselves up. How can I celebrate when others still suffer?
No, race should not be an excuse. But, just because it shouldn't be an excuse doesn't mean that racism isn't alive and well. We like to think it's just name calling, but unfortunately racism involves power. Mortgage lenders can decide whether or not to grant a loan. Landlords can decide whether or not they want black folks renting apartments in their building. My landlord never met me before he rented this apartment to me. All he saw was my nice Irish last name on the application I faxed to him. I know it worked in my favor.
Power means journalists can spin stories a certain way and influence the masses. And before we know it, you and I don't know the truth.
City officials have the power to decide whether or not they're going to let gangs take over a neighborhood. We can "conquer" Iraq but we can't root gangs out of Los Angeles?
Um, yeah. Okay.
Hammer mentions that he didn't have gangs back when he was in school. Well, if only we could be so lucky these days. As you all know very well, here in LA, gangs are no joke. They start recruiting when the kids are in 2
nd/3rd grade. The kids with no fathers think the gang members are cool guys that are just trying to protect the neighborhood, even if everyone is terrified of them. Those guys have the cars, the cash, and all the cool tattoos that everyone from ball players to rockers have these days. It's all very appealing to a young mind.
Even for me, in high school I talked to gang members all the time. I thought they were just cool, misunderstood guys. The reality is that they were the guys who didn't know how to read past a 3rd/4
th grade level. They were the guys who only knew basic math. And they were the guys who'd never been given leadership opportunities because teachers were so busy labeling them as bad and sending them to the office for random crap.
A few years ago, before rents in my neighborhood went
pscyho, two Latino guys with all the requisite tattoos and wife beater shirts started sitting on my front porch. And then this kid that lived next door would be out there with them. Now, where's his mom? She's at work because she's gotta pay her rent and she has no one to watch her son after school. She figures her boy's in 4
th grade, he can come home and stay in the house after school. Where's dad? Who knows, but you know, that's only a bad thing if you're poor. Rich people are single parents too and no one's shaking their head at them, even if they should.
One day I came home and these guys are on the porch with this kid, Anthony. I went to get the mail and they told me to get them a glass of water. You'd best believe my ass went to the kitchen and got them a glass of water. I was just as nice and sweet to them as could be. If I called the cops, guess what? They're going to know I called and did I really want to deal with that? Um, nope. Especially since I'd seen some of the other stuff they did to people in our neighborhood.
Anthony ended up getting kicked out of two elementary schools. Two schools, that are about .1% white and almost 100% low income. No one can tell me that the level of ineptitude and lack of academic focus that went on in his schools would be tolerated in a middle-class white neighborhood. And of course, teachers have the power to decide whether they want to believe that the kids they're teaching can really achieve or not.
In my own life, I had guidance counselors tell me I didn't need to take the SAT and I should just consider going to community college. Counselors told me I should take auto shop because I might be a great mechanic. They weren't telling any of the white kids in my Advanced Placement physics class that they should be mechanics too. Nope. Just me. And that's racism.
Now, whether I believe I should be a mechanic or not is another thing, but when you have people who've been systemically told for generations, you're inferior, well, not everyone has the ability to hear what the guidance counselor is saying and know that something in the milk ain't clean.
I've seen teachers sit around and say, "Let's face it, these kids just aren't that smart and at the most, they're going to be flipping burgers or cutting lawns." Why do these teachers say these things? Quite frankly deep down inside, they believe the kids aren't smart because they're not white.
Disagree with me if you will but I have my sister calling me last week telling me how my nephew's math teacher split up the class into a low group and a high group and all the kids in the high group are white and Asian. Guess what color all the kids in the low group are? They're the black kids. There's not
one white child in the low group. And my nephew is
frickin' gifted, okay? He's one of the smartest kids I've ever seen and I'm not just saying that because he's related to
my brilliance!
My sister asked the teacher about this situation and the teacher got mad and did the, "How dare you call me a racist?" thing. Well, what the heck else is it when my nephew is getting an A but gets put in the low group? Just a friendly mistake? I don't think so.
My sister has the social and cultural skills to address the situation. But what happens if people are poor and uneducated and that the child comes home and says they got put in the low group for math? Well, that parent might do what my sister did and talk to the teacher and principal. But if that parent has limited English ability, they may feel incompetent. If that parent hated school and didn't do so well he/she may feel uncomfortable talking to a teacher and may think that the lack of math ability is inherited. That parent may have addiction issues or be abusive and so may not even care. Regardless of the reason, if the child is allowed to remain in the low math group, guess what? He falls behind. I don't care what teachers tell you, as someone who's been a teacher, the low group never catches up to the high group. Never.
So that kid Anthony that used to be in my building? His family ended up moving to a different building a few blocks away and I haven't seen him although I see his tag, "FACTS" all over the neighborhood. I ran into his mom the other day. Anthony's been kicked out of middle school, has been arrested several times, and is in a juvenile detention home -- where he, of course, is probably learning how to be a better criminal. His mom's just trying to hold it together for her younger daughter. She's given up hope on Anthony because, as she said, the gang owns him now.
Should she have moved heaven and earth to make sure her child didn't end up in that gang? Yes. Should Anthony have had some sort of intrinsic motivation that made him, "Just Say No," to those gang members? Some sense of right and wrong that made him say no to that pressure. Absolutely. But sadly enough, fourth graders don't always have the resources to make that decision on their own.
The only other thing I have to say is as far black folks voting racism...well, I know a lot of black people who used to love Hillary Clinton and are now are choosing to not vote for her precisely because of the racial games her campaign has played. She brought that on herself. But people voting for
Barack only because he's black? Sure, some people probably are, and even though whites have done it for forever, two wrongs don't make a right. I actually think most black people voting for him are voting for him on issues and because they're inspired by him, just like all the other Obamaniacs of all colors out there.
So Hammer, thank you for sparking all these thoughts. I think about these kinds of things all the time. These issues hit me in a certain place because I look in the eyes of my sons every single day and know what this world has in store for them. I always say that people think my boys are so cute and adorable now, but in about ten years, they're going to be scared of them. I'm going to have to worry about cops pulling them over because they look suspect. I'm going to have to worry about a new generation of teachers telling them they're nothing. And I plan to fight it all tooth and nail.
I wish I didn't have to.
