{"id":21555,"date":"2018-11-03T13:07:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T17:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=21555"},"modified":"2018-11-03T13:22:20","modified_gmt":"2018-11-03T17:22:20","slug":"how-america-made-me-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2018\/11\/03\/how-america-made-me-white\/","title":{"rendered":"How America Made Me White"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/supload.com\/SyExUUoh7\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i.supload.com\/HylNl8Ii3Q.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It took me a couple of seconds to get Stephen Colbert\u2019s joke line\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t see race\u201d\u2014when I first heard it.<\/p>\n<p>In the USA, the joke works because no one can seriously imagine everyone not seeing race.<\/p>\n<p>But when I first heard it, I had to work that out because I was born and raised in the UK \u2026 and I never saw race.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not because I am more evolved than any American or more \u201cwoke\u201d or more of anything at all. It\u2019s just that I was brought up in a culture and a manner in which skin color was something one paid about as much attention to as hair color. Colbert\u2019s joke simply wouldn\u2019t work in the England of my generation.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-0\"><strong>Two Englishmen in New York<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I emigrated to the States 14 years ago and within a year had moved to Harlem, where I lived for five years.<\/p>\n<p>While there, I met a gentleman at a party across the water in Hoboken, and we hit it off. His name was Jesse. We found we had a lot in common in how we saw the world, which was made all the more of a basis for a friendship by the fact that we had very little in common in how we came into it.<\/p>\n<p>We were both Brits so had all the cultural affinity that comes with that, but he had grown up in Camberwell, which, in his day, was to London as the Bronx was to New York before it became safe. In contrast, I had spent my teenage years in an old manor house that had been converted to a private school to which I won a scholarship. He \u201cgot out\u201d of Camberwell to become a music producer, while I very much \u201cstayed in\u201d education in beautiful buildings and became a student at Cambridge University.<\/p>\n<p>We started hanging out at his place and mine, and places in between, sharing the experiences of being immigrants to America and being obvious outsiders in the New York neighborhoods where we lived. As part of all that, we talked a little bit about the American obsession\u2014for that is how it felt to us\u2014with race.<\/p>\n<p>I was a white boy living in Harlem and so stood out like a sore thumb when I\u2019d go to pick up the A train on 125th Street.<\/p>\n<p>Jesse lived in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, and also stood out like a sore thumb when he\u2019d go to pick up the A train. But not because of his skin color. You see, Jesse is as Jamaican and black as all his neighbors were. But he attracted more attention in Brooklyn than I ever did in Harlem because his T-shirts were all Beatles and Bowie\u2014not a rapper in sight\u2014and his blazer was, well, a blazer.<\/p>\n<p>He used to get quite the kick as he\u2019d approach the cops on the street corner near his A train stop at Utica Ave. and watch their countenances change as the Beatles and the blazer came into their view. He might even top off the encounter with an \u201cAfternoon, mate\u201d at close approach if he was feeling particularly cheeky.<\/p>\n<p>But being the Beatles brother in Brooklyn wasn\u2019t as much fun when he was out with his white wife: at those times, the glares let him know that his skin color mattered.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that, in America, when you\u2019re around people who think you should behave a certain way because you look a certain way,\u00a0<em>choosing<\/em>\u00a0the wrong color is much less acceptable than\u00a0<em>being<\/em>\u00a0the wrong color.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-1\"><strong>Not Far from Ebenezer Baptist, Segregation<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>A year ago, I attended Netroots, which is perhaps the largest annual progressive political conference in the nation.<\/p>\n<p>The opening ceremony was held in a huge hall with well over 1,000 people in attendance\u2014perhaps double that.<\/p>\n<p><a href = \"https:\/\/supload.com\/SyExUUoh7\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.supload.com\/SJFOvIjhm.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After many speakers had shared messages of unity, the stage was given to a small group that identified as Black Lives Matter. They took up regularly spaced positions across the whole stage in a rather formal arrangement.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t remember everything they said, but I shall never forget the ominous line from one of them that made my blood run cold.<\/p>\n<p>She told us, the audience, that they would be holding meetings at the conference from which people not of color would be excluded and that those not invited \u201cneeded to understand why they weren\u2019t invited.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By the time they were done, the sentiment clearly delivered was, to me at least, \u201cif you\u2019re not with us, you\u2019re against us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d been active in American politics for about seven years at that point, but that moment was the first that I felt threatened\u2014apparently because of the amount of melanin in my skin, which is not a variable that has ever caused me to take a stand for or against anyone.<\/p>\n<p>The audience was applauding the giving up of a very basic,\u00a0<em>progressive\u00a0<\/em>principle: don\u2019t treat people differently based on an immutable characteristic.<\/p>\n<p>What shook me to the core was to be told that if I didn\u2019t concede that principle, I was someone\u2019s enemy.<\/p>\n<p>No. I won\u2019t get comfortable with your racial segregation. And no, I\u2019m not your enemy, whatever you tell me. In fact, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever been anyone\u2019s enemy. Or are you just trying to tell me that you\u2019re going to make me your enemy by enforcing my segregation\u2014my otherization?<\/p>\n<p>I was shocked but determined not to generalize from a single experience from the words of a few people at a single event to a whole conference\u2014or a movement, or a country.<\/p>\n<p>That would just be silly.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-2\"><strong>A Very Limited Perspective<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>One fundamental difference between my adoptive country, the USA, and my home country, England, is what seems to be the absence of \u201cproportionality\u201d as a principle in law enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>As a big proponent of civil rights, I have long been disturbed by the apparent acceptance in America of an all-bets-are-off approach to dealing with people who are deemed to have transgressed a line. In other parts of the world, the violence associated with enforcement and punishment is much more constrained, it seems to me, to be proportionate to the violation.<\/p>\n<p>Accordingly, while at the conference, I was keen to attend a panel on police violence and a wonderful program that involved (from memory) bailing young men who had been imprisoned for non-violent crimes out of prison for Fathers Day. The panel included a judge, a young man who had been imprisoned for a non-violent crime, a mayor, and a civil rights activist.<\/p>\n<p>After extremely moving presentations from all of them, I got to ask the first question from the floor.<\/p>\n<p>I prefaced it with the observation that \u201cproportionality\u201d seemed not to be an important value in American culture\u2014especially when it comes to law enforcement. Moral determinations in America, I ventured, seemed more binary than in my home country of the UK.<\/p>\n<p>My question then went something like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Help me understand the thinking of the culture of law enforcement in this country. Specifically, how can a cop arrest a young man for a victimless crime, such as jaywalking or spitting on a sidewalk (the &#8220;crime&#8221; that had resulted in the imprisonment of one of the young panelists) knowing that the legal process is likely to end up with the young man in a cage\u2014and the cop not think that he\u2019s doing anything other than an act of violence against him?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The civil rights activist on the panel most clearly accepted the premise of the question and provided me in some ways the most satisfying answer; so afterward, we had a private conversation, which lasted for the better part of two hours.<\/p>\n<p>My new acquaintance gave me the rest of the answer to my question\u2014the bit that, I suppose, he couldn\u2019t give me in public. The real reason why the typical cop goes to work thinking it\u2019s okay to do violence to young black men is, and I quote, \u201cwhite supremacist colonialism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was confused by this new suggestion that the average cop scarfing down his Cheerios before work is looking forward to another day of building an empire in which people with white skin get to control people with other skin in some form of vassaldom, so I asked him to elaborate. He didn\u2019t give me any causal link between this abstraction and the cop getting ready for work, but he said something interesting nonetheless: an indifference to violence arises from an absence of \u201chistorical redress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Something of an amateur historian as well as a trained scientist, I am a lover of big general ideas with a power to explain myriad specific human phenomena, so I was genuinely interested. He began to compare and contrast cultures in which groups that had been oppressed had a historic moment of violent uprising against their oppressors with those that had not, explaining that the violence we see meted out against young black men by white cops in the States is a direct result of the fact that black people hadn\u2019t had their \u201chistorical redress.\u201d His examples of successful redress were mostly violent. They all involved the violation of the rights of innocent people, as far as I could tell.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the first half of the ensuing conversation was me listening hard for any causation between the absence of this historical general event and the minds of cops, or anyone else, today.<\/p>\n<p>I gave the gentleman as many benefits of as many doubts as I could; as many \u201cfor the sake of arguments\u201d and \u201ccan you help me understands\u2026?\u201d I never got my answer, but he did explain that police violence followed directly from the British crown subjugating black people on instruction from the Pope and that the first part of the solution to cop-on-black violence was, therefore, reparations to be paid by the British Crown\u2014specifically, Prince William. Takings from other people with young Bill\u2019s skin color would follow, presumably.<\/p>\n<p>The problem (and I\u2019m not sure if it was for me or for him) was that, being an educated Brit who has developed a significant interest in history these last few years, I do know something of the history of my native land. And I knew that the claims my conversational partner was making about the relationship between the British Crown and the Holy See were not only wrong but impossible for so many reasons following Britain\u2019s turning away from the Holy Roman church under Henry VIII. But I really did want to hear whatever facts he had that I didn\u2019t know. After all, there\u2019s an infinity of fascinating history that I\u2019ve not yet discovered.<\/p>\n<p>So I would indicate, in the most qualified and tentative way that I could, where my understanding of history differed from his, and I\u2019d ask him time and time again what his sources were or how a particular claim was consistent with a well known historical fact. And whenever I did so, I got the same condescending answer. It was more of a refrain:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s a very limited perspective,\u201d he\u2019d say. Time and time again.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019d say that even if I wasn\u2019t offering a perspective but asking for a clarification, or just letting him know what I believed to be the case, or asking him to point out where my understanding was wrong. And after the refrain, he would continue the conspiratorial narrative between the British Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, utterly lacking in any specific evidentiary facts.<\/p>\n<p>And every now and then, he\u2019d come back to the need for this historical redress, at a price to be paid by people who were hundreds of years away from the white supremacist colonialist story he was telling.<\/p>\n<p>It made no sense at the time.<\/p>\n<p>It would take a friend to help me make sense of it a few weeks after my return home.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-3\"><strong>Going Down<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In the hotel elevator on the last day of the conference, I witnessed a campaign worker for Stacey Abrams, a Democrat running for governor in the state of Georgia, hand out fliers for her candidate, \u201ca person of color.\u201d The older woman who took her flier thanked her for it. Then another lady, bunched tight in the elevator with the rest of us, asked the older woman if she also knew about the other Stacey, Stacey Evans, also Democrat, also running for governor. \u201cNo,\u201d she responded. \u201cWhat is she like?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s a great Democrat with a solid progressive record.\u201d A list of some of her achievements followed.<\/p>\n<p>The older woman asked, \u201cIs she a person color?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d replied her fellow conference-goer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen I shall vote for Abrams.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stephen Colbert wouldn\u2019t have noticed, of course, but this time I did: the lady who had just made her choice for governor had the same skin color as I.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-4\"><strong>Punch More People<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The elevator ride prepared me strangely for the happy group of guys and gals who caught my eye in the bar off the lobby, where I got out.<\/p>\n<p>One of their number was distributing his latest creations\u2014t-shirts sporting the slogan \u201cPunch More Nazis.\u201d As someone who is English only because his Austrian Jewish grandfather fled from Hitler, I figured I had a fair basis to inquire, and so I sat down with them all and chatted. A friendly quarter of an hour passed, but I never found out who these Nazis, who need more punching, were.<\/p>\n<p><a href = \"https:\/\/supload.com\/SyExUUoh7\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.supload.com\/r12cDLo3X.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The ones that murdered my great-grandfather in Dachau were, after all, long dead, thanks in small part to his son, the Austrian Jew, who joined the British army as soon as he turned 18 to fight his own countrymen who were responsible for killing his dad.<\/p>\n<p>Despite that history, my granddad kept his German accent and his German name, which is now mine. And why shouldn\u2019t he have? My granddad was never defined by any of the groups to which he belonged, even when one of them was engaged in organized mass murder against another.<\/p>\n<p>Like so many actual Nazi-punchers of his generation, he never talked about any of it\u2014except to say one thing: \u201cRemember, the Nazis were socialists.\u201d I couldn\u2019t help wondering in that bar in Atlanta if that advisory might have been of any interest to those new acquaintances who were looking for more Nazis to punch.<\/p>\n<p>I also wondered if Stephen Colbert could have seen the t-shirts\u2014what with their being white on black \u2018n\u2019 all.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-5\"><strong>Target on My Back<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The plural of anecdote isn\u2019t data, and more to the point, the singular of data isn\u2019t anecdote. I took my experience in Netroots in that vein.<\/p>\n<p>Not long after returning to my home city, I shared my experiences with a friend called Geoffrey. Geoffrey is also something of an amateur historian, so I thought he\u2019d appreciate the bizarre two-hour conversation that I had had about historical redress and the spooky implication of the justification of force to deliver it.<\/p>\n<p>I was, of course, expecting a surprised reaction; but what I got only a few sentences into explaining this strange alternative history in which centuries of British royals were acting as vassals of the Holy See to enslave black people, was a lot of knowing nodding and smiling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, yeah,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the standard narratives. I used to hear that one a lot as a kid. You people don\u2019t realize it, but I\u2019m telling you, there\u2019s a target on your back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You see, Geoffrey\u2014like Jesse and the historically-creative civil rights activist\u2014is also of the high-melanin persuasion. He explained about how growing up in a community of folks with the same skin tone, for that was the determining factor, he used to hear this narrative justification (among others) for the coming battle against people with my skin tone by people with his skin tone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA target on my back.\u201d It\u2019s almost absurd. I\u2019d never have believed it if I\u2019d not attended one of the most progressive conferences in America and heard a few people assert\u2014and hundreds applaud\u2014differential treatment by virtue of color, and if, as well, I didn\u2019t have a friend who\u2019d grown up with many like them and let me in on that secret. For a \u201csecret\u201d is exactly what he told me it was.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-6\"><strong>You Can Force People to Play, But You Can\u2019t Force Them to Lose<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The folks in Jesse\u2019s neighborhood liked the novelty of having in their midst one of their own\u2014a black Jamaican who nevertheless had a foreign passport and a funny accent. In an act of neighborly solidarity, no doubt, they kindly invited him to join them for a regular local event to discuss the issues facing their community.<\/p>\n<p>Jesse listened to their grievances, for grievance is what the meeting turned out to be about. Jesse, a black man who had been brought up by his single mother in\u00a0Camberwell, had never heard anything quite like it.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019d not have said anything if he\u2019d not been called on specifically at the end. But he was, so he did. Someone asked him what he thought of what he\u2019d witnessed. He told them his truth: that he thought their problem wasn\u2019t their problem. Their actual problem, he thought, was what they were doing right there\u2014a faulty self-diagnosis of victimhood. It wasn\u2019t the physical segregation of those who died long ago that had as much impact on them as the mental segregation of those in the room.<\/p>\n<p>His evidence? \u201cEngland,\u201d he told them, \u201chad slavery too, but we don\u2019t do this\u201d\u2014and he felt just fine in his skin and his dreads.<\/p>\n<p>Does that story prove anything? No. No more than my anecdote from Netroots.<\/p>\n<p>But Einstein did point out that you can\u2019t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created the problem.<\/p>\n<p>So why would anyone think that any problem could be solved by the same attitude that created it, regardless of the justification?<\/p>\n<p>There are plenty of corollaries to choose from. You can\u2019t defeat racism with racism just by changing the target, hate with hate just by changing the target, bigotry with bigotry just by changing the target, or victimization with victimization just by changing the target\u2014even to oneself.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t need a movement to make me aware of my privilege. I certainly don\u2019t need a skin color. Before I moved to America, I was always deeply aware, delighted, and humbled by the huge privileges I\u2019ve enjoyed. They include having enough to eat, a roof over my head, parents who loved me and made me secure both physically as a child and emotionally as an adult, and a wonderful education. They also include living in a part of the world where I have the freedom to speak my truth and pursue the best version of myself without fear.<\/p>\n<p>I am all too aware of all of it. But the only way I can leave any of it \u201cat the door\u201d is if, just as the BLM folks at Netroots would have it,\u00a0<em>I\u2019m\u00a0<\/em>left at the door.<\/p>\n<p>If you want my help to build a country where more people can enjoy more of the privileges I enjoy every day, just ask me. Don\u2019t threaten me. I\u2019m already in; not out of guilt or because a group that you\u2019ve defined me into owes something to a group you\u2019ve defined me out of.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, I\u2019m in because there\u2019s only one group, and we\u2019re all in it.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the way to guarantee that good people won\u2019t build that world is to tell them that they have to because they owe something to folks whom they took nothing from in a room that they\u2019re not invited into.<\/p>\n<p>That game has a name\u2014and a hell of a history. The Nazis played it. The Communists played it. And every day, in much smaller ways, it\u2019s being played all over America.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s nasty. And I won\u2019t play it.<\/p>\n<p>The Nazis who played it in the 1930s and 40s kept very good records. That\u2019s how I know exactly when, where and how the game ended for my great-grandfather, Maximilian Koerner, in 1938. There he is, third from the bottom in this record retrieved just yards away from the ovens where they burnt his body in the concentration camp at Dachau.<a hef = \"https:\/\/supload.com\/SyExUUoh7\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.supload.com\/HJ_jDIinX.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"E1193\"><span id=\"E1194\">The Nazis\u2019 justification\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1195\">for it was, as\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1196\">it\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1197\">always<\/span><span id=\"E1198\">\u00a0is<\/span><span id=\"E1199\">,\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1200\">redress for past wrongs, which required material compensation from a supposedly privileged group.<\/span><\/p>\n<p id=\"E1204\"><span id=\"E1205\">And it\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1206\">was all perfectly moral<\/span><span id=\"E1207\">,<\/span><span id=\"E1208\">\u00a0you see, because the Nazis weren\u2019t\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1209\">punching\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1210\">Jews\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1211\">because<\/span><span id=\"E1212\">\u00a0of their physical characteri<\/span><span id=\"E1213\">stics: those<\/span><span id=\"E1214\">\u00a0characteristics were just a way to spot who belonged in the\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1216\">privileged,<\/span><span id=\"E1218\">\u00a0and therefore\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1219\">the\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"E1220\">guilty<\/span><span id=\"E1221\">,<\/span><span id=\"E1222\">\u00a0group.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yet, today in America, there are plenty of people trying to force others to play this game again, despite all the lessons of history. They shouldn\u2019t make the mistake of thinking they can guilt everyone else into playing to lose. Some, like the old lady in the elevator, may do so\u2014but she\u2019s the exception, not the rule.<\/p>\n<p>When you make people play a game like that, and they work out what its organizers think losing should look like, if they\u2019ve got any sense, they\u2019ll play to win.<\/p>\n<p>Before I came to America, I didn\u2019t see color. Now, alas, I do.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, I\u2019m white. America told me.<\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/how-america-made-me-white\/\">How America Made Me White &#8211; Foundation for Economic Education<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It took me a couple of seconds to get Stephen Colbert\u2019s joke line\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t see race\u201d\u2014when I first heard it. In the USA, the joke works because no one can seriously imagine everyone not seeing race. But when I first heard it, I had to work that out because I was born and raised in the UK \u2026 and I never saw race. That\u2019s not because I am more evolved than any American or more \u201cwoke\u201d or more of anything at all. It\u2019s just that I was brought up in a culture and a manner in which skin color was something one paid about as much attention to as hair color. Colbert\u2019s joke simply wouldn\u2019t work in the England of my generation. Two Englishmen in New York I emigrated to the States 14 years ago and within a year had moved to Harlem, where I lived for five years. While there, I met a gentleman at a party across the water in Hoboken, and we hit it off. His name was Jesse. We found we had a lot in common in how we saw the world, which was made all the more of a basis for a friendship by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2300,1411],"class_list":["post-21555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics","tag-progressivism","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}