Black Lives Matter

I appreciate everyone that's in here.

This forum looked dead today and I realized what people were ... kind of... doing.. I've been nothing but entrenched in this, so to me, it didn't make any sense to go cold on social media. All I post is ABOUT THIS, specifically. But, the fact that the forum is so dead also feeds into my concerns about the black out. People want to do the right thIing and don't want to be viewed as social justice scabs. Obviously, other people recognized this wasn't a day for the discussion to stop and decided to show up in this thread, instead.

As a brown man that feels solidarity in seeing everyone finally addressing these issues that fall on deaf ears so often, a lot of these black boxes feel more like silence than a statement.

I just keep having white people ask me what they can do. I don't know what to tell them. Communicate with people. Listen to people. Share information, be open to it and seek it out.

The sad reality is that most people aren't angry about what happened to George Floyd, simply because it happened. It happens every day. They are angry because they saw irrefutable evidence of it. They hate overt racism, but don't seem as troubled by systemic racism that hurts people every day. I've told them this was happening forever and it's usually all crickets. So, keep making sure that this info spreads. Today isn't the day to feel like your voice doesn't matter, because you might be white. Use your voice and platform to amplify the voices and information that need it. This isn't about optics. Racism didn't just resurface because every took off their safety pins.

Last month, I was imploring people to watch 13th. I think one friend did. Maybe, two. Overall, not many.

I jumped in a little late here, so if this has already been mentioned... I guess I'm mentioning it again.

You can watch it on NETFLIX, but here should be the entire film. I honestly believe that everybody should have to watch this film. Anyone serious about wanting to help and gain more information about racial struggles and the system that we live in that hasn't seen this, should watch it now.



Thanks a lot for sharing the video to 13th. ❤️
I've just watched it, it's very educational and enlightening regarding America's history and the current situation.
 
And another I found on Instagram with table of contents and easily searchable

 
I'm so happy to hear my little town of about 9000 has two peaceful protests planned; one this afternoon and one Sunday. I plan on attending Sunday.
But wow, the Nextdoor app comment section has about 10% of these types of comments...
"Why here?"
"Why do "they" need our help?"
"I heard pallets of bricks have been dropped off"
"I called the police"
"We should bus people to Detroit and away from our town and into the real protests"
"I'll be there with my American flag in one hand and my gun in the other"
and a later reply "IT'S MY RIGHT!"

Why did I say 'wow'? I should know this, I see this crap on Facebook and Twitter every day.
Just anchoring to your post @ranbalam

If you do interact on nextdoor or anywhere this might be a useful thing to share. In our neighborhoods we are having to watch out for each other literally because the police won't or can't do it and there are immediate threats coming in the form racist threats. It won't take much googling to see the threats of harm being posted on people's doors just here in St. Paul, MN...but there are folks who seem to gravitate towards things like next door who are behaving unproductively by imitating the police.

South Minneapolis folks put this document together as a guide to help people come together, look out for each other, protect each other but do it responsibly. The google doc is at the bottom of the article. Please read it and please share it with your neighbors.

 
I'm really tired and super busy at work today. I'm going to be sparce for the day. Please don't let me being distracted today halt any progress we're making.

You all can totally feel free to form groups with team leaders or anything. I do not need nor necessarily want to be a leader in this. I have done the exercise and yes, I'll be doing it again, but I don't want my previous experience to influence any group I'm in.
 
The cynic in me sees everyone sharing links and resources and thinks "is everyone actually following those links and donating or educating themselves and buying things? or is it just virtue signalling?" I hate that I have that thought but we do see it constantly. People (myself included) are guilty of putting in minimum effort, throwing up a black box, putting a frame around your facebook profile photo for whatever the cause of the month is.

I think it's good to follow through obviously, but also to let people know that they watched a video or read a book or donated to a fund, or bought a product with black owners. It's good to see that acknowledgement and reinforces that there is some purpose of all these resources being shared for other than it being a "good look". I think everyone in this thread is already doing this, but it might be good to practice here and elsewhere nonetheless.

In one of the many link threads I saw on twitter yesterday someone was sharing black owned businesses and I came across this black owned coffee company BLK & Bold Specialty Beverages - Premium Coffees & Teas. I'm getting low on coffee and this makes logical sense for me to contribute in a meaningful way to their business. They also donate 5% of all profits to youth organizations. It's so easy to support black owned businesses where you can!
 


Some people might have skimmed past this video, but it's only a few minutes long and I'd say that it's essential viewing. Color Of Fear is essential viewing, in general and I'm trying to find a longer clip, but that one is REALLY important to understand.

Here is more to it.



I remember there being a clip where that white man actually breaks and absorbs the message, but I can't find it right now
 
Here is the youtube video that is being linked to, where all of the ad revenue is going to support BLM orgs.

Be sure to follow the directions so the full amount of ad money is given to the creator to distribute.



Below the video is some tips from K-Pop fans on how to ensure your view counts as ad revenue.

There are other videos posted for the same thing but I have not done research on them.
 
This article highlights the problem with the "a few bad apples" theory. Some of you may remember in
2018, when a police officer decided not to shoot a black man, and instead attempted to de-escalate the situation. Then another officer showed up and fatally shot the man.

Guess which officer the Police department fired.

 
Thanks for coming back to this, because I did skip past it the first time. These clips combine 3 things I've been thinking about over the last few days: Hollywood, the Old West, and the question of white culture.

There's been some talk about the racist history of police vis-a-vis protection of wealth, but I think in the imaginations of America, the policeman's heritage is that of the Wild West, or at least Hollywood's version of it: a literal savior who arrives to bring order to an otherwise lawless place. Sure, they usually end up in town because a bank or a train keeps getting robbed, but their noble quest also chases off the murdering thieves from the nearby ranch, secures the purity of the rancher's daughter, guards the young men from the ruthless natives, and turns the town into a peaceful Eden for all who remain. Why else would Chuck D equate John Wayne with the power if not because he lives in our minds as a proto-policeman?

The other part of the conversation that grabbed me was the brief implication in the video that white people have no ethnicity, no culture (outside of pockets of preserved Old World culture, let's assume). Part of that is the thing in white supremacy that centers whiteness so much that it's the default culture, the proverbial "what's water to a fish?" But The Wild West and the white male archetype have a role here too. I think the great contemporary stand-in for that figure is Jon Hamm in Mad Men. Don Draper is essentially a metaphor for America (and by extension consumerism), right? A man of no means who becomes untethered from his shameful past and who, through stolen valor, and lies, and relying on people who know they're lies but don't care, invents an identity that carries no history, no heritage, no meaning, is only of the present. I've felt that, to some degree -- my family has no 'heritage.' I'm not in touch with any cultural touchstones, any genealogy, any family tree. I don't know where I "come from," or who my people are. So how can I know who *I* am? I am no one except me, an American, and I carry no burden of any ethnic culture with me.

Except that's not true, is it? I'm white. And that may not mean anything in terms of my heritage from the Old World, but it's everything in the New one.

That's a swirl of thoughts and I'm still struggling to make them coherent, so I apologize if they aren't to any of you, either.

There's a lot to unpack here and I've been having a lot of conversations about this, so I might get a little exhausted. I apologize ahead of time. I'm going to try to get through some of this, though. I do have a view on everything you've just said.

I interviewed a painter once that was very ethnically focused with her art. She had a pride that I never did and it was something amazing to take in, because where her culture expanded her with her Mexican identity, my ethnicity was always something that I was taught limited me, or othered me. I had to prove that I was MORE beyond my appearance, not that my culture and appearance added to my identity. It only stole from it. I needed to find a way to connect to that more and I still do. Being mixed race has given me hardcore imposter syndrome throughout my life. It wasn't until recent years that I began to view being mixed race as an experience all it's own. It's an incredibly important issue to discuss, but I can get more into that later, because, otherwise, this comment will never end. But, the point is that, when your culture excludes you in a society, you are encouraged to abandon it. If you don't, it will be beaten out of you in one way or another.

You have to be the Huxtables to be accepted. You have to literally show people, "Hey. They're just like us" by adapting to become as much like them as possible. Those are the "good ones" the people who assimilate to you. A lot of white people will view a black or brown person in a dress shirt or at their place of business as evidence of "good" examples of minorities. They aren't gang members. To them, that's becoming open minded and woke. "I know they aren't all bad, because Jamal or Jorge at work are just like us." And by "like us" that's not about human, but assimilated. They don't wear sagging pants and they don't have khakis and hair nets. The inherent issue there is that they are still able to create those two compartments and divide things in a way where Looks Like Me = GOOD and Doesn't Look Like Me = BAD. They can't look at those other examples and simply not assume anything. They can't see that humanity. Another level to that is the fear/shame/risk of selling yourself and your own community out to where you risk losing that space with it/them, as well. That's where code switching comes in.

This is a bit of an aside, but I just watched this TED TALK by Lee Mun Wah, the director who made The Color Of Fear and he speaks about racism and how it has affected his life. He began to hide his food and other aspects that represented his culture as a kid, because it became evident that it was an obstacle. It's worth adding to the pile of materials that we already have going on in here. It's not my main point here, but there's a lot here and it's worth checking out at some point, so I'm just going to post it. The next part after this video is more relevant to what I'm really trying to get at. I guess this is too, but... I don't know. The next part was my intention.



One thing addressed in these color of fear videos is the idea of pillaging other cultures for artifacts. It's about taking for yourselves; not respecting the source, but often inspecting it like an autopsy. I just got into that over in the VMP exclusives thread. There is zero acknowledgment of hip hop and where it came from, how it was anti-violence and about people being brought together. These days, a lot of people -- some, even around here, it seems -- just want to listen to a beat. The pain that birthed that music doesn't matter. They don't want to hear it, unless there's a beat under it.

Here's a fascinating and relevant example of that for me that directly relates to the idea of John Wayne. One Be Lo made this post a little while back about how someone tried to mix John Wayne with his music



Lo seemed to see some validity in what I interpreted from it, because he responded to my comment with KABOOM!!! You could scroll through to find it on IG, but here's what I said


"To me, this just sounds like the internet age, straight up. The mentality itself isn't new, just the format and platforms. This dude felt like he made something and he can't take criticism. Someone he knows probably even told him it was dope. The act of using a program to put sound on video was the extent of the "art," like taking a painting & photoshopping impact font on it. It's their bad suburban graffitti.

I've asked people to credit work that wasn't theirs before and they are willing to battle like crazy to avoid doing that. They want likes. They want acknowledgement & are perfectly content getting it unwarrantedly from other people's work. If there's one thing people will defend with everything they have it's their identity and ideas of themselves. If they haven't cultivated or discovered a real personality or identity, they hold onto what they believe they do have, even when that's the actual barrier holding them back. They don't want that jostled.

I mean, if he's claiming there's no greater meaning or thought to what he did than sticking 2 things together, the biggest thing he did was block out and avoid introspection. He's chasing flashes of color. He even told you that, to him, the song is the beat. The rhythm. The film is just the action. The violence. He's not questioning where his visceral reactions come from. The source doesn't matter to him. The why is insignificant. You aren't into it, because that film and imagery is racist. This cat doesn't want to explore why he reacts positively to it, but rejects why you react less than positively to it. Taking your work like that is a form of speaking for you & I'd assume that messaging you is a way to ask if he was on point with it. He didn't like the answer.

I don't know man, but this is kind of fascinating & I really appreciate you sharing it. We love you for your craft and lyricism and integrity. This dude hears you like a top 40 jam. You even inject your IG with more depth & dimension when you address stuff like this. Plus that verse is bananas. As for Russia & freedom of speech, I'd wager that Pussy Riot would disagree with that dude."


So... basically, it's about identity. It's about how we want to be seen, or how much humanity we might be willing to afford those who we take from and how much responsibility we may want to hold or recognize while doing that.


I seriously have about 30 different things I can get into here, but I want to offer one exercise that I've "created" and done with my son, lately. He is essentially white and needs to learn some hard truths because of that -- or, mostly, because of the fact that he looks like a white male, so society will let him benefit from those hard truths while ignoring them.

it's in the comment below
 
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...


For anyone that's open to entertaining this, I'd like to try something, and I ask that you to be completely honest with yourself in doing this. I'm going to type a word and I'd like you to ask yourself what you visualize when you read/hear it; almost, as if you expected that you'd have to draw it.



PERSON



Child



Boy



Woman



Girl



Man






So... the interesting thing here is that, when I hear "boy," I actually imagine a little white boy. Red cap and frog in the pocket style. But, I was never a little white boy, myself. So, the fact that I even see that in my own mind is something to examine. Why is that? Why is a little girl white with blond pigtails. My son saw the same thing and he told me that he doesn't even know anyone that looks like that. Why is a "person" a white man. A white man is the default HUMAN. Anything after that, you have to specify. Everything you add on to it to specify, as far as altering the gender or race -- or even age, really -- makes it less. Strips a little humanity away. You even have to draw a skirt on the stickman to make it female. I already automatically assume that everybody on this forum is white until I see an indicator that they aren't. Even worse, is a lot of people who aren't, might prefer you to believe we are, because our opinions would be more valued. Those assumption are thrown at the women, too. Why else would someone be on here collecting records and knowing all about music and shit?

So, outside of the context of this conversation, if you heard that a policeman killed a child, I suspect that most of us would immediately imagine that young white boy and be horrified. If we heard that a policeman slammed a little girl to the ground, or an 11 year old girl to the ground, we would see that girl in the pigtails and be mortified. That action is WRONG. SO, how come when we actually find out that it's Tamir Rice or a black girl, nobody seems to give a shit? The black girls pigtails actually add to her racial identity and disgust people even more. Why do they begin to find excuses for why it must have happened? Or how this black girl in her desk or at a park deserved it, or talked back? Then people claim that others are pulling the race card or that "it's always about race." But racism doesn't work that way. It's not about how we see ourselves, it's always about how others see us. I still see a child being murdered. EVERY TIME. So, when others aren't responding proportionally or appropriately by seeing a child being manhandled or slaughtered, the question has to be why? What's changed? What's the difference? Why don't you see them as children or even as people? The one defining difference is race.

Racism actually works backwards than the way that a lot of people present it. We don't know that there is anything wrong with us until someone else tells us that. We are told that we are ugly or fat or less. It doesn't matter why. So this are things coming from the outside and why so many work so hard to present themselves in a way they want to be seen for others. We can't see us. I've been in situations where I've dealt with things and then looked at my arm and my skin and thought, "Oh yeah! Totally forgot." I'm not walking around brown, I'm walking around human. I'm just always reminded.

Now here's another twist. My son saw all of the same things I did in the exercise, except he saw a black child. Then he admitted he first saw a white boy for a split second and it switched. That was the one that wasn't static. But he also watches the show Captain Underpants where the two main characters are a pair of friends where one is black and one is white. They are equal in every way. THere's even a hero they like named Viper Chai who is black and does martial arts. THIS is why representation is important. We are dealing with these Dick and Jane images of "BOY" "GIRL" "MAN" "WOMAN" The white man on the door of our restrooms that not only separates race, but gender. The white crossing figure. We're programmed this way. It's a flashcard with a dad in a tie.

A white man is human. They can be anything. You will be judged on your interests and personality. You can be a hippie or a business man. A police officer or a burglar in a striped longsleeve and lone ranger mask. You can be whatever the fuck you want. An astronaut or a magician. There are many types of white person. Women are much more limited in what people will allow themselves to believe they can achieve.

What can a brown or black person be? Black people invented rock music, but if they play it today it's a novelty. You literally have to refer to yourself as Afro Punk or as part of the "black weirdo" movement, if you're like my friend who is a black woman that likes groups like H09909 or The Prodigy, along with Ghostface and Aesop Rock (oops! WHITE RAPPER!). She's not down with that bullshit. She's not down with those tags. We both think its bullshit. We can't simply have dimension and without that, we aren't afforded humanity. And without being viewed as a full human, it's a lot easier to rationalize our murders, whether that refers to indigenous people, the murder of black and brown people at the hands of the police, or if we're considering regime change wars overseas. We drop bombs on children constantly. And that's why white feminism is also dangerous. There's no intersectionality and that is also incredibly oppressive, but... that is also another post.
 
There's a lot to unpack here and I've been having a lot of conversations about this, so I might get a little exhausted. I apologize ahead of time. I'm going to try to get through some of this, though. I do have a view on everything you've just said.

I interviewed a painter once that was very ethnically focused with her art. She had a pride that I never did and it was something amazing to take in, because where her culture expanded her with her Mexican identity, my ethnicity was always something that I was taught limited me, or othered me. I had to prove that I was MORE beyond my appearance, not that my culture and appearance added to my identity. It only stole from it. I needed to find a way to connect to that more and I still do. Being mixed race has given me hardcore imposter syndrome throughout my life. It wasn't until recent years that I began to view being mixed race as an experience all it's own. It's an incredibly important issue to discuss, but I can get more into that later, because, otherwise, this comment will never end. But, the point is that, when your culture excludes you in a society, you are encouraged to abandon it. If you don't, it will be beaten out of you in one way or another.

You have to be the Huxtables to be accepted. You have to literally show people, "Hey. They're just like us" by adapting to become as much like them as possible. Those are the "good ones" the people who assimilate to you. A lot of white people will view a black or brown person in a dress shirt or at their place of business as evidence of "good" examples of minorities. They aren't gang members. To them, that's becoming open minded and woke. "I know they aren't all bad, because Jamal or Jorge at work is just like us." And by "like us" that's not about human, but assimilated. They don't wear sagging pants and they don't have khakis and hair nets. The inherent issue there is that they are still able to create those two categorize and divide things in a way where Looks Like Me = GOOD and Doesn't Look Like Me = BAD. They can't look at those other examples and simply not assume anything. They can't see that humanity. Another level to that is selling yourself and your own community to wear you lose that space, as well. That's where code switching comes in.

This is a bit of an aside, but I just watched this TED TALK by Lee Mun Wah, the director who made The Color Of Fear and he speaks about racism and how it has affected his life. He began to hide his food and other aspects that represented his culture as a kid, because it became evident that it was an obstacle. It's worth adding to the pile of materials that we already have going on in here. It's not my main point here, but there's a lot here and it's worth checking out at some point, so I'm just going to post it. The next part after this video is more relevant to what I'm really trying to get at. I guess this is too, but... I don't know. The next part was my intention.



One thing addressed in these color of fear videos is the idea of pillaging other cultures for artifacts. It's about taking for yourselves; not respecting the source, but often inspecting it like an autopsy. I just got into that over in the VMP exclusives thread. There is zero acknowledgment of hip hop and where it came from, how it was anti-violence and about people being brought together. These days, a lot of people -- some, even around here, it seems -- just want to listen to a beat. The pain that birthed that music doesn't matter. They don't want to hear it, unless there's a beat under it.

Here's a fascinating and relevant example of that for me that directly relates to the idea of John Wayne. One Be Lo made this post a little while back about how someone tried to mix John Wayne with his music



Lo seemed to see some validity in what I interpreted from it, because he responded to my comment with KABOOM!!! You could scroll through to find it on IG, but here's what I said


"To me, this just sounds like the internet age, straight up. The mentality itself isn't new, just the format and platforms. This dude felt like he made something and he can't take criticism. Someone he knows probably even told him it was dope. The act of using a program to put sound on video was the extent of the "art," like taking a painting & photoshopping impact font on it. It's their bad suburban graffitti.

I've asked people to credit work that wasn't theirs before and they are willing to battle like crazy to avoid doing that. They want likes. They want acknowledgement & are perfectly content getting it unwarrantedly from other people's work. If there's one thing people will defend with everything they have it's their identity and ideas of themselves. If they haven't cultivated or discovered a real personality or identity, they hold onto what they believe they do have, even when that's the actual barrier holding them back. They don't want that jostled.

I mean, if he's claiming there's no greater meaning or thought to what he did than sticking 2 things together, the biggest thing he did was block out and avoid introspection. He's chasing flashes of color. He even told you that, to him, the song is the beat. The rhythm. The film is just the action. The violence. He's not questioning where his visceral reactions come from. The source doesn't matter to him. The why is insignificant. You aren't into it, because that film and imagery is racist. This cat doesn't want to explore why he reacts positively to it, but rejects why you react less than positively to it. Taking your work like that is a form of speaking for you & I'd assume that messaging you is a way to ask if he was on point with it. He didn't like the answer.

I don't know man, but this is kind of fascinating & I really appreciate you sharing it. We love you for your craft and lyricism and integrity. This dude hears you like a top 40 jam. You even inject your IG with more depth & dimension when you address stuff like this. Plus that verse is bananas. As for Russia & freedom of speech, I'd wager that Pussy Riot would disagree with that dude."


So... basically, it's about identity. It's about how we want to be seen, or how much humanity we might be willing to afford those who we take from and how much responsibility we may want to hold or recognize while doing that.


I seriously have about 30 different things I can get into here, but I want to offer one exercise that I've "created" and done with my son, lately. He is essentially white and needs to learn some hard truths because of that -- or, mostly, because of the fact that he looks like a white male, so society will let him benefit from those hard truths while ignoring them.

it's in the comment below

This is one of the best, most well stated posts I've read in awhile. Thank you for saying all of this and giving your perspective. As a mixed race person, I never really analyzed my inherent ability to adapt quickly from one culture to the other and why it was necessary growing up.
 
@Dead C - thanks for sharing. I'm going to dive into those posts tomorrow when my brain is more ready.

Everyone interested in Me and White Supremacy, get yourself ready to complete Day 1 on Monday. I think there is some pre-work and introduction material - so do that please between now and Monday. :)

I'll start a DM soon. But if people have thoughts/questions or whatever before hand, please don't wait for me.
 
This is one of the best, most well stated posts I've read in awhile. Thank you for saying all of this and giving your perspective. As a mixed race person, I never really analyzed my inherent ability to adapt quickly from one culture to the other and why it was necessary growing up.

My friend Dave lives in Japan. His wife is Japanese. When they moved back there, people began referring to his son as "half." They'll say it right to him. They tell him he's "half."

It's pretty heartbreaking, but I realized that I had a voice and perspective that could help. Being mixed, you can sometimes feel like an imposter on both sides and question if you have any right to speak as/for either. I realized that I did have a unique experience and perspective in that way.

So, what I encouraged him to do is to make sure his son knew that he wasn't "half" anything, but rather 2 whole things.

I also sent him this. This might resonate with you.

 
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