racism in America

Today is MLK Day, and I am at home.

These takes on the very tricky and constant topic of racism in America have really stuck with me,
because I keep circling back to my place in the conversation.

I keep wondering why so little seems to change,
and what is blocking that change.
Systemic racism, institutional segregation is not just a mile marker of the past.
It is so very alive today.


"The way we talk about race and racism in the United States is wrong. In short, we think of “racist” as an insult rather than as an adjective. And we have narrowed down the concept of racism to an almost ludicrous extent, in effect often excusing real racism — such as that espoused by people like King — and its impact on nonwhite Americans because it is not literally wearing a hood or setting a cross alight on a lawn. [...]

“I think that the way a better part of America defines what a racist is someone who self identifies as a white nationalist or a white supremacist,” said Ibram X. Kendi, a historian at American University and author of Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. “Someone who is in the Ku Klux Klan, someone who says the n-word, someone who engages in racial violence. Anything else, according to them, is not racist.”

We tend to define racism in a way that will not implicate our own views or ideas. “I think people define racism in a way that exonerates them. If they can narrow [the definition of racism] as much as possible to things they are not saying or doing or are about, that leaves them off the hook,” Kendi continued.

In his view, rather than “racist” being “a descriptive term with a clear-cut definition,” we have turned it into a “fixed derogatory putdown,” an insult. He told me that “by conceiving it in this way, we create a culture of denial in which everyone denies being racist but very few people know what a racist is.”

In effect, the term “racist,” which has an actual meaning, has now been turned into a schoolyard insult.

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And this...
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White people assume niceness is the answer to racial inequality. It's not.
by Robin diAngelo

"I am white. As an academic, consultant and writer on white racial identity and race relations, I speak daily with other white people about the meaning of race in our lives. These conversations are critical because, by virtually every measure, racial inequality persists, and institutions continue to be overwhelmingly controlled by white people. While most of us see ourselves as “not racist”, we continue to reproduce racist outcomes and live segregated lives.

In the racial equity workshops I lead for American companies, I give participants one minute, uninterrupted, to answer the question: “How has your life been shaped by your race?” This is rarely a difficult question for people of color, but most white participants are unable to answer. I watch as they flail, some giving up altogether and waiting out the time, unable to sustain 60 seconds of this kind of reflection. This inability is not benign, and it certainly is not innocent. Suggesting that whiteness has no meaning creates an alienating – even hostile – climate for people of color working and living in predominantly white environments, and it does so in several ways.

If I cannot tell you what it means to be white, I cannot understand what it means not to be white. I will be unable to bear witness to, much less affirm, an alternate racial experience. I will lack the critical thinking and skills to navigate racial tensions in constructive ways. This creates a culture in which white people assume that niceness is the answer to racial inequality and people of color are required to maintain white comfort in order to survive."

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And this...
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On the Front Porch, Black Life in Full View
A look at how a simple architectural fixture has played a role in African-American culture.
By Audra D. S. BurchPhotographs by Wayne Lawrence
DETROIT — It is a place to gather after Saturday night dinners and after the church doors open on Sunday afternoons. A dais upon which to sing lullabies and honor memories, to weave folklore and family stories, the kind carried from greats to grands, from one generation to the next.

In its framed simplicity, the front porch has been a fixture in American life, and among African-Americans it holds outsize cultural significance.

From the narrow shotgun homes of Atlanta to the dormer-windowed bungalows of Chicago, the front porch has served as a refuge from Jim Crow restrictions; a stage straddling the home and the street, a structural backdrop of meaningful life moments. It is like the quietest family member; a gift where community lives and strangers become neighbors.

Zora Neale Hurston, an exquisite chronicler of black Americana, understood the magic and necessity of the porch as a gathering place to witness and soak up history. Her prose cast the porch as a setting for storytelling.
The porch has also inspired scholarship. Germane Barnes, a black architecture professor at the University of Miami, has traveled the country studying its role within black vernacular. “Architecture and identity go hand in hand,” said Mr. Barnes, 33, who grew up in Chicago.

His research took him to Detroit, where he found a historical city undergoing an economic rebirth and black homeowners eager to share memories of watching life unfold on their front porches.

The porch is where a retired teacher witnessed a race riot. It’s where a nurse and her mother sat on a swing, morning after morning, until their relationship blossomed into a friendship. It’s where a community organizer chose to tell stories, full of richness and hope, to help preserve her worn but proud neighborhood. [...]

The Stage:
‘You sit on the porch and tell stories. Porches are built for storytelling.’
For Cornetta Lane, Core City was the childhood neighborhood where she fell in love with weeping willows. Four years ago, she came across a description of her Detroit neighborhood in a news article, but it was called something different from Core City. To Ms. Lane, a community organizer, the new name felt like erasure. “It was just so upsetting,” she said. “I knew then I needed to find a way to preserve the historical identity of my neighborhood.”
For this rescue mission, Ms. Lane chose porches, people and powerful storytelling, the kind that could carry this tattered but resilient neighborhood to a new vibrant chapter as the city rebuilds. Ms. Lane, 31, coordinated a bike tour through the community. It’s called Pedal to Porch. At each stop, the residents use their front porch as a stage to share intimate stories about their neighborhood.

“I never considered doing this without the porch,” Ms. Lane said. “It is a natural place for convening. You sit on the porch and tell stories. Porches are built for storytelling.”

via {vox}
2nd article via {the guardian}
3rd article via {the ny times}