2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The one thing that will stop Bernie Sanders.....his supporters [View all]bravenak
(34,648 posts)This has been the best few days of race conversations I have ever seen on DU. I think America avoids these discussions because they are just so damn uncomfortable to start. It is realky hard to be honest about how I feel about these things, but sometimes I just gotta jump in feet first.
I was born in Los Angeles. 5557 Adams Blvd, you can see it on google earth. We lived above an appliance shop when I was born in a 2 bedroom apartment with 2 of my aunts, my grandma, my mom, dad, sister, 5 cousins, and 3 uncles. Yes. We were THAT poor. People used to laugh because they said we were poorer than the hispanics and we have a hispanic name and talk funny.
I actually faced MORE racism in Cali than here in AK. I lived in Frazier Park too, you know it? Up near the grapevine? Never been called so many names or been beat up so much in my life just for being black as I have been there. I felt safer back in L.A.. Nobody would even call me by my own name. There were just a few black people, me, my mom, and a couple kids at school who were mixed. They joined in the taunting and abuse too because were were BLACKER than they were.
The teachers did it too. Anything I did, even just not putting my hand up to nswer a question was grounds for detention. Getting too high of scores caused me to have to retake tests to prove I was not cheating. I had to start missing answers and letting at least ONE of the white kids score higher just to stay out of trouble. It was hard to do for me. I was always in the top 99th percentile. How do you teach yourself to cheat yourself?
Ahh, life! I think racism in America is a product of slavery and white supremacy. Not money. Not that black people are inherently bad. Just people who are trained to think they are better and others are less human. Gives people an outlet for their hate and violence. It will be in our history books. The oligarchy did not invent racism, it just uses the tool provided by the masses.
I don't think black men get the worst. Women get the sexism plus the racism and get left to support the kids while all the men get locked up. They get cut iff from services and watch their sons and daughters get murdered. No. Equal, I'd say, but black men get more attention. Until Sandra Bland the focus was on black men's lives.
Is your grandchild a black child? I had to tell my mother in law recently that she treats her white kids much better than her black son, my husband. It was very difficult. She constantly judges me for my life before I met my husband. But my uncle, who is white, married her daughter and she loves him to death, even though he is a lazy sad sack of shit. I had to tell her. I yelled, I screamed, and she cried. But she fucking heard me. And she acknowledged that she does do that. Her parents were racist. She is too. She doesn't want to be but she is. People cannot change unless they are told what they are doung and accept it as true.
As far as your grandson; Inam glad he has another place. But be vigilant! You may even have to tell peope what they are doing, warn them to stop, and get wild and threaten lawsuits. People must be aware of how they treat children. Our kids suffer ALOT of ptsd just from living their day to day lives, being black. Damages kids. Racism causes behavioral problems, outbursts and violence. Being treated unfairly causes anger to build up, no wonder they say we are violent! Pick at and picked on until you just explode!
See how the police try to force people into bad behavior? How they follow black peopke for MILES until they get so nervous they forget to signal? That is why we are cinstantly arrested. They will firce us into making an error just to harass and target us. It needs to stop. White folks need to get on those juries and vote not guilty and send us home.
I think as the leaders of the free world we have to work on racism to get the rst of the world to do it. I know of nowhere that has a mix of people that has no racism. We pretty mich invented the concept of race based slavery, which lead to skin color racism. Others learned from us. Even Hitler learned from our genocide of the native americans.