"I had a Sarah Palin button on backpack" Who is BLMS's Marissa "Johnson" Jenae?

[Turn CO Blue]

50. food for thought - a quote she posted on her FB

Here is a quote she has as one of her photos and she posted it June 24. I am trying to absorb this quote, the context of the original author and sentiment of those sharing it currently. But I thought it might offer a glimmer into her mindset (her very young mindset, from photos and observation she was in high school just a few years ago).

The quote is from James Baldwin from an article in Esquire in the July 1960 issue and re-run in 2007:

Northerners indulge in an extremely dangerous luxury. They seem to feel that because they fought on the right side during the Civil War, and won, that they have earned the right merely to deplore what is going on in the South, without taking any responsibility for it; and that they can ignore what is happening in Northern cities because what is happening in Little Rock or Birmingham is worse. Well, in the first place, it is not possible for anyone who has not endured both to know which is "worse." I know Negroes who prefer the South and white Southerners, because "At least there, you haven't got to play any guessing games!" The guessing games referred to have driven more than one Negro into the narcotics ward, the madhouse, or the river.

So my take is this - that those of us whites who say that we "get it" will rarely be just accepted as having "gotten it", that we are indeed not only part of the problem, but that we are more responsible than the actual overt, open racists.

That we are more responsible because we are silently complicit in the racist system, and benefitting from the racist system, all the while feeling smug about our "liberal" credentials and being the ones not only saying we have black friends, but actually having black friends, whether we admit it or not we have a benevolent arrogance about us that we "get it" while not admitting that we are all being so passive, without digging in the back-breaking ditch of making drastic changes -- and this smugness is what does more harm than good. It is more insulting in the long run than the overt racist. And my guess is that occasionally marching/protesting at our convenience is enough to make a dent and bring us street cred as "getting it".

So maybe we should forget about telling anybody that we get it, and just go about the work of fixing the systemic racism, or perhaps we get out of the way until what? I am not sure. I read the demands on the official BLM site, and some of them are the same things everybody would openly want to tackle such as body cams, dash cams, better screening and training of police, stronger auditing, stricter investigations of racial profiling, etc.

The only thing I can say with every earnest feeling from the depths of my heart and mind -- is that I want to get it.

But my problem is my work history and my old Vice President. I like to fix things. My VP had a very long saying and a tough expectation from us all. She would say

Don't come to me with an issue. Don't come to me with an issue and a list of possible solutions. Don't come to me with an issue and an analysis of which solution will work the best. Take the initiative, do not ask permission - come to me only after you have tried two of your best solutions and then show me the data on the incremental changes made with each solution you tried.

But "fixers" like me may be part of the problem. I want to help. I want to march and protest alongside. If I shouldn't want to help, let me know. If I should want to help, but then not help, because helping is less helpful than just supporting from afar, I want to know that too.

[link:http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207121360255689&set=a.1074679150513.13056.1332215538&type=3&theater]

link:http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207121360255689&set=a.1074679150513.13056.1332215538&type=3&theater