Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy: Part I

The poor—the indentured Europeans, the enslaved Africans, and the enslaved Native Americans—all labored alongside each other for rich European landowners.

Instead they saw human beings whose skin tones were shades of ivory, beige, tan, and brown. Not distinct groups separated by a physical trait, a phenotype.

Scared that their plantations and profits were about to go up in smoke, rich Virginia landowners schemed between themselves. They wanted to devise a plan to keep the poor from ever uniting together again in revolt.

It covers all the black people in the United States and also joins them with people of African descent in Brazil, the Caribbean, Mexico, and other countries where the transatlantic slave trade spread Africans (the diaspora).

When asked why, the school's principal, a white woman, told the mom that the omission of African civilizations from the time line wasn’t about race.

According to the mom, the principal went so far as to say, “We’re not talking about whether people are white or black,” when they studied ancient cultures, to which the black mom shot back, “The children have eyes, and they can see. And I’d like them to see that our [African] culture was a strong, viable culture.”

The long answer involves something called implicit, or unconscious, bias.
Let me first point out that everyone has implicit biases, including me.

Now, on the one hand, you could say they were enamored by the apostrophe in his name or thought giving him that nickname was an act of friendship.

But as with “equal opportunity” employers, once bias informs our thinking, it can lead to explicit racism and bigotry.

Like, have a look at these findings from a report by the Center for American Progress titled Eliminating Racial Disparities in Maternal and Infant Mortality.

Those factors create a chain of biological processes known as weathering that undermines black women's physical and mental health.

The first way to end racism is for my white counterparts to get out of denial, to understand that, hold up, maybe you’ve been lying to yourself about the existence of racism this whole time.

We can’t let these ideas fester in silence.

Instead of being color blind, be introspective.

Try to identify your prejudices and hold them up to scrutiny.

As much as you can, try to imagine you’re me—consider things from the perspective of someone you know is susceptible to discrimination or stereotyping.

It’s having an advantage that’s been intrinsically built into your life.

McIntosh defines white privilege as “an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”

It’s the ability to turn on the TV and see people that look like you represented in nuanced and affirming ways.

If you’re accused of a crime, it’s the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the presumption of innocence sometimes even when proven guilty.

Donham recanted her story in 2017.

So just when does something move from homage, creative influence, or flattery into the bad kind of copycatting—the realm of cultural appropriation?

So just when does something move from homage, creative influence, or flattery into the bad kind of copycatting—the realm of cultural appropriation?

After witnessing a formerly enslaved person singing a song called “Jump Jim Crow,” he created the character that would make him famous: a fictional caricature of a clumsy, dim-witted enslaved person named Jim Crow.

The exchange of ideas, styles, and traditions is one of the tenets of a modern multicultural society.

Conversations must be had about what is and isn’t cultural appropriation, about the history of what is being appropriated, about how it makes people who have long been disenfranchised feel.

Think of how long black people have been demeaned in America.

Finally, make a point to engage with cultures on more than an aesthetic level.

How do you see these three young men in dress, appearance, and demeanor?

Cassidy, who identifies herself as a middle-aged white woman, admits that she’d be “apprehensive” in the above scenario.

Indoctrination is what happens when someone is taught and fully accepts the ideas, opinions, and beliefs about a particular group without weighing other viewpoints about that same group.

And none of these stereotypes are more pervasive, and more harmful, than the myth of the Angry Black Man.

This myth was used as a convenient excuse to harm any black man or black neighborhood white people deemed “too uppity” (i.e., successful) for their comfort.

She’s also Jennifer Schulte, dubbed “Barbecue Becky,” who called the police on two black men legally barbecuing in an Oakland park.

Names aside, they’re all Karen, the meme: an entitled white woman who throws tantrums, asks to speak to the manager, and sometimes calls for the cavalry against a supposed angry black man.

You’ve likely heard of Karen and recognized the name as derogatory.

Yet the term got picked up again as hip-hop became a cultural juggernaut in the late 1980s.

The [word] was created to divest people of their humanity.

No one can or should tell you what you can call someone with whom you have an established relationship that they are not privy to.

It seems that Buck’s initial takeaway was as much that he’d made the mistake of posting his feelings publicly as it was that his sentiments were wrong in and of themselves.