SERENA WILLIAMS LOSING IS NO MORE THE POINT THAN WHETHER OJ SIMPSON DID IT OR NOT

....WHEN IT COMES TO THE RACIST OR SEXIST MOTIVES OF THE WHITE FOLKS IN AUTHORITY

Serena lost a match everybody wanted her to win yesterday. But that's not really the point. The point is that there was an attempt to cheat this black woman --again. 

A lot of people want to talk about how she was going to lose anyway.  Then they want to imply that she wasn't cheated out of anything. Then they want to talk about her behavior.  But you know what?  

Serena's playing badly, appearing destined to lose 

and 

the attempt to cheat her 

**are no more mutually exclusive than the ideas that**

OJ Simpson did it 

and 

white cops also tried to frame him

The thing that matters is not who won or lost but that two black women were cheated during the U.S Open -- and that a black woman's behavior in the face of what looked like an attempt to cheat and disrupt her is getting equal time in the news instead of the blatant unfairness of a referee.
I read an entire article at SLATE that discussed Serena's behavior when she's stood up for herself over the years, against racism more often than not -- and instead of identifying each "behavioral" incident as potentially racism, there's a general statement that Serena faced racism while playing tennis near the end, not attached to any specific incident. I'm thinking the racism the writer remembered to recognize at the end of article is only the n-word being lobbed from the stands -- which Serena has had to face in the past too. 

But let's get back to THE CHURCH OF WHAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW:

Chair umpire Carlos Ramos managed to rob not one but two players in the women’s U.S. Open final.

Nobody has ever seen anything like it: An umpire so wrecked a big occasion that both players, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams alike, wound up distraught with tears streaming down their faces during the trophy presentation and an incensed crowd screamed boos at the court. 

https://www.thestar.com/sports/tennis/opinion/2018/09/09/sexist-power-play-ruins-powerful-us-open-final.html

BACKGROUND:
First, Ramos enforced a tennis rule that is almost never enforced period, must less enforced during a U.S. Open. He accused Serena and her coach of trading hand signals.  The coach later admitted he tried to but also stated -- backed up by Chris Evert-- that all coaches do it. (ESPN played a tape that seems to show Serena didn't see the gesture.) 

Then,  angry at herself for not playing well during the second match, Serena smashed her racket. That was worthy of a penalty.

Thirdly, Serena still angry over the referee basically calling her a cheat --same as repetitively drug testing her more than they do other white athletes accuses her of being a cheat-- Serena called the referee a "thief" for penalizing her for cheating. Ramos took the unprecedented step penalizing her for talking back and being sassy(?) by taking an entire game from her too.

All three of these calls --two of them "questionable" calls-- happened during the second match. So the third match never took place due to it haven being given to Naomi Osaka as part of Serena's punishment.

Ramos took what began as a minor infraction and turned it into one of the nastiest and most emotional controversies in the history of tennis,
Williams abused her racket, but Ramos did something far uglier: 

He abused his authority.

Champions get heated — it’s their nature to burn. All good umpires in every sport understand that the heart of their job is to help temper the moment, to turn the dial down, not up...Male players have sworn and cursed at the top of their lungs, hurled and blasted their equipment into shards, and never been penalized as Williams was in the second set of the U.S. Open final.

https://www.thestar.com/sports/tennis/opinion/2018/09/09/sexist-power-play-ruins-powerful-us-open-final.html

Compare: Another male player has admitted he's said much worse without it costing him a match:

Compare: Last week a chair umpire got down from his chair to comfort a pale male player instead of penalizing him. 

The career of Nick Kyrgios -- who has been criticized for his attitude and on-court behavior in the past — is under renewed scrutiny after the Australian tennis star received a "pep talk" from the umpire during his match against Pierre-Hugues Herbert at the US Open on Thursday. 

After Kyrgios let two serves pass him by while he was a set and 3-0 down to the Frenchman and reportedly threatened to quit the match, umpire Mohamed Lahyani climbed down from his chair and said he wanted to "help" the 23-year-old Aussie.
"I want to help you," Lahyani could be heard telling Kyrgios from TV microphones, "I know this is not you."

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/31/tennis/nick-kyrgios-pierre-hugues-herbert-us-open-mohamed-lahyani-roger-federer/index.html 

Compare: Ramos' own behavior with a brown-skinned, latino player.

Ramos has put up with worse from a man. At the French Open in 2017, Ramos leveled Rafael Nadal with a ticky-tacky penalty over a time delay, and Nadal told him he would see to it that Ramos never refereed one of his matches again.

https://deadspin.com/serena-williams-hit-with-17-000-fine-for-her-part-of-u-1828920901

Ramos is to blame for this debacle. And his motives need to be questioned. 

White folks are entirely certain Ramos motives were purely sexist. But I'm not so sure. Serena is always black and female at the same time. And the "back talk" fits into the same anti-black female stereotype that got Sandra Bland put in jail.

Then again, it could be that Ramos motive was simply that he wanted to take somebody that's always winning down. Some people are like that. I remember the Dallas Cowboys being on a winning streak. I don't even watch sports and I remember that a bunch of folks just wanted them to lose -- they didn't care WHO won.

Again ultimately, the biggest thing Ramos stole was not a win from Serena. 

Most people are telling me she was going to lose no matter what the way she started out. But that's still not the point. Carlos Ramos stole was a victorious moment from Naomi Osaka. He may also have stolen her assurance that she 100% deserves the trophy she won. 

And maybe he stole an honest loss from Serena too. She's old by tennis standards. It will hurt many of us deeply if she doesn't go on from here -- and lose in an clean honest way when her body won't cooperate anymore.

Some people have cried foul because Serena dared to get angry when damn near anybody would have gotten angry in the same situation -- especially after the repeated attacks via drug testing and about her freaking BLACK PANTHER outfit being called "disrespectful" of all things

DEAR WHITE GIRLS OF TENNIS PLEASE SHOW ALL THE ASS YOU CAN

https://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2018/08/dear-white-girls-of-tennis-please-show.html

And it wouldn't surprise me if Carlos Ramos or his supporters insert her lack of being "respectful" into this conversation as well. Black folks not just submissively taking bullsh** is often called "disrespect" by the white supremacist who doesn't want to admit he or she is a white supremacist.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins

White expectations of peaceful acquiescence in the face of their repeated insults and assaults need to die today. What happened during the Civil Rights Movement, the peaceful responses in the face of violence, lying, and cheating wasn't owed to white folks then. 

And it's certainly not going to happen again.

Even so, I wonder if Serena had known for sure that Osaka was going to win, if she would have spoken to people later. Maybe. Then again, she's too competitive to ever believe it's over until it's over. That's what makes her a champion.  

And nothing Serena woulda, coulda, shoulda done changes the fact that Carlos Ramos made two bad calls and penalized Serena in a way he has not penalized others in the same situation. 

Serena has had to fight for fairness from the white folks of tennis her entire career.

One example of many: In 2004, a line judge "mistakenly" ruled against Serena over and over again --when line mistakes are generally more random. The white gatekeepers of tennis decided to get line cameras to use in the future, but the possibly racist motives of the judge were never really discussed.  

Serena's behavior was though --thoroughly by the white press.

In the end, I'm thinking Osaka, as a brown-skinned woman herself, will be better off for Serena's having spoken up against someone who may have penalized her for being black when he saw her coach making gestures then penalized her for being female (and black)while being willing to talk back to pale male authority.

A lot of white people think this is just about gender and sexism. And it might be. But the white folks of tennis have been coming for Serena all along. And there aren't too many black people in this country who haven't experienced a rule that's never enforced  for white people suddenly being enforced when a black person does it. 

There's a lot of focus on the chair ump's last penalty. But I say we should be looking at the first penalty because that set off everything that came after.  

If the kind of gesture Serena's coach made is standard and never penalized when the coaches of white players do it, then it's the referee that should have been fined. And he should lose his job permanently as well if it's found that it his decision was race based.

I have no idea if his motive was race based. I'm saying nobody else knows whether it was or wasn't, we to know, and that this is worthy of investigation.

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM 

HOW RACISM WORKS

Feeling Rebloggy

See Full Interview of Ta Nehisi Coates Here
http://on.cc.com/2hGAUYc

A&E CANCELS KKK DOCUMENTARY OVER PAYMENTS TO DOCUMENTARY PARTICIPANTS

The documentary ‘Escaping the KKK’ (originally titled 'Generation KKK') was intended to serve as a close look at anti-hate extractors focused on helping people leave the Ku Klux Klan—the racist hate group with a long history of violence against African Americans and others. Our goal with this series has always been to expose and combat racism and hatred in all its forms.

However, A&E learned last night from the third-party producers who made the documentary that cash payments — which we currently understand to be nominal — were made in the field to some participants in order to facilitate access. While we stand behind the intent of the series and the seriousness of the content, these payments are a direct violation of A&E’s policies and practices for a documentary. We had previously provided assurances to the public and to our core partners – including the Anti-Defamation League and Color of Change – that no payment was made to hate group members, and we believed that to be the case at the time. We have now decided not to move forward with airing this project.

Read More:

http://shadowandact.com/2016/12/24/ae-cancels-generation-kkk-docuseries-after-learning-that-some-of-its-subjects-were-paid/

WANNA FIND OUT HOW BIASED IN FAVOR OF WHITENESS YOU ARE?

In the United States, that's pretty much what's being measured in Havard's Implicit Bias test. Most people, regardless of skin color, find out that they are biased in favor of whiteness.

This is an ugly discovery for most black and brown people.

But let me say this again: 

We are all being bombarded by messages of white supremacy everyday.  Even being erased in movies, television, books, etc is a form of saying "white people are the only good people here." Therefore it shouldn't be a surprise when bombarded black and brown people express white supremacy.

Furthermore, the higher some climb on the success ladder constructed in one of white supremacy's most successful workshops, the United States, the more beneficial some black and brown people find it to believe in white supremacy's low view of other black and brown people. Therefore, the words coming out of the Bill Cosbys, Whoopi Goldbergs, and Anthony Mackies should not surprise you.  

But it may surprise some average black and brown folks to learn just how biased in favor or whiteness they themselves are. 

I took the test and scored well, only slightly in favor of whiteness. I scored better than a black sociology professor of mine. But I've always tested well and had a job where I have to think very fast -- and the fast part is probably the key to scoring well. I had ample time to think about what the answer SHOULD BE rather than give a true, heartfelt answer. So my score doesn't mean much since I've studied sociology extensively. 

But maybe you should take the test to get a ballpark idea of where you stand?

HAVARD'S IMPLICIT BIAS TESThttps://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

THE NEW "TARZAN" MOVIE IS A RACIST MOVIE AND WATER IS WET

In the 1914 book “Tarzan of the Apes,” the character introduces himself to Jane by declaring, "This is the house of Tarzan, the killer of beasts and many black men.” In the black-and-white films anchored from 1932 to 1948 by former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, black African characters were routinely depicted as background bumblers who needed Tarzan to solve their problems. More recently in Disney’s 1999 animated “Tarzan” movie, the filmmakers dealt with their hero’s cringe-worthy history by focusing narrowly on Tarzan and the animals, somehow managing to make a movie set in Africa without showing a single black person.

“When I was 8 or 10, I was watching this Tarzan character on TV and in the background all the people looked like me. I asked my dad, ‘Is that where you come from?’” said Warner, whose father had moved to England from the Caribbean country of St. Lucia. “As far as I was concerned, I didn’t want to be African. From what I could see on TV, there was nothing good about being black. There was nothing to aspire to or identify with.”

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-tarzan-colonial-stories-feature-20160621-snap-story.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/tarzan-ridicules-black-characters-incredibly-racist-movie-article-1.2697242

MASS STABBING AT NEO-NAZI RECRUITMENT RALLY IN CALIFORNIA

Feeling Rebloggy 

At least five people were stabbed, with some injured critically, during clashes between rallying neo-Nazis  (Traditional Worker's Party) and counter-protesters at the Capitol in Sacramento on Sunday, fire officials said.

Five patients were transported to local hospitals with stab wounds, said Chris Harvey, public information officer for the Sacramento Fire Department. Several other people suffered cuts, scrapes and bruises but were not taken to the hospital, Harvey said.

~LA TIMES

So far, none of the victims is listed as being in critical condition. Now, we can compare the deadliness of a mass shooting and a mass stabbing and explain the obvious to those who still think "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is a  legitimate reason to not get assault weapons off the street. 

 

READ MORE
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-neo-nazi-stabbed-20160626-snap-htmlstory.html

Matthew Heimbach, Traditional Worker's Party, recalls pushing a black woman at Trump Rally

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/matthew-heimbach-recalls-pushing-black-woman-trump-rally-article-1.2550304

VIDEO
ON THE INTERRACIAL GROUP THERE TO STOP NEO-NAZI RECRUITMENT

A protest leader talks about "militant tactics" & "self-defense" to shut down "Nazi recruitment rally" @ABC10 pic.twitter.com/fpIcIKrz1X

— Frances Wang (@ABC10Frances) June 26, 2016

Video Source: https://twitter.com/ABC10Frances

BEING ALIVE WHILE BLACK, A WHITE REASON TO CALL THE POLICE

Feeling Rebloggy

"A black person fishing in a community pond, two black people jump-starting a car and ‘someone from the Middle East looking mean’ – these are all ‘suspicious’ scenes that have prompted members of the [pale] public to dial 911.

These calls were revealed by serving and former police officers who took to the internet to air their astonishment at white people panicking sometimes simply at the mere sight of someone with different racial lineage being nearby.

Dozens have joined an online discussion thread to share their experiences."

Read More, See Video

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3071957/It-s-not-illegal-black-Cops-complain-online-white-people-getting-freaked-black-neighbors-wasting-police-time-911-calls.html

TWITTER ESSAY on MICHELLE OBAMA VS MELANIA TRUMP

A POST RACIAL RACISM LIST

Feeling Rebloggy

In post-racial 21st-century America, no one actually wants to admit to being racist.



They’ll do racist things, say racist words, think racist thoughts, support racist business, vote for racist politicians and even willingly benefit from racist policies and business practices, but the moment you actually bring up racism, they’re like, “Who, me? Never! I can’t be racist. Andre Iguodala is my favorite athlete, and my best friend almost had a black girlfriend in 2004!” And they do this because owning up to it and letting everyone know exactly who they are could be social suicide...

[Post-racial racism] is an evolved form of racism that allows people to exist ensconced within racism’s confines while never having to complete a registration form ...

I then listed 13 examples of this type of racism. But there are so many more that I decided to extend that list to 35:

Read The List Here
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/03/_35_types_of_post_racial_racism.html

ON WHO IS AND WHO IS NOT ALLOWED TO CLAIM BLACKNESS

The other thing that's "not okay" in 2016 are the black people who are getting more and more vocal about declaring mixed-race people as "not black."

I'm not saying I believe in supporting the one-drop rule, but it ought to be obvious by now that race is not biology but a choice of identity.  One person doesn't get to tell another person what their racial identity is. Most black people are mixed race because most of us have white rapists in our families due to slavery but being black is not about having one drop of black blood.  Being black is about a culture, a shared history, shared experiences, a variety of styles, etc.

Art by Minjae Lee
http://www.grenomj.com/

Recently mixed people (one white parent and one black/POC parent for example) may not have similar oral histories in their homes. They may not be experiencing the wide ranging possibilities that is black culture in their homes. And since recently mixed people are the only ones that know what's going on inside their house, inside their hearts, and inside their heads, they get to choose their own racial identity and tell the rest of the world what that is-- just like everybody else.

Sometimes the recently mixed choose the identity of "Biracial" And that's okay. But this means that there might be one or two places where  the "Mixed Raced People Are Not Black" chanters may have a point.

Being biracial is a fact of your birth and not necessarily the same as your racial identity, unless you choose to call yourself "Bi-racial." Again, racial identity is always a choice.

However, if a biracial person chooses to identify as "biracial," because that is in line with their apparent biology of their parents, that's fine. But when the call goes out for "Black Americans" to come hither, don't answer.

Halle Berry can come when the call goes out of black actresses because she's taken her stand as a Black American. President Obama can come too when the call goes out for black people to be on an Ebony Cover, because he's taken his stand too.  But Tiger Woods cannot. Mariah Carey, who did her level best to be non-committal about her racial identity for decades, can't either in my opinion.

I don't care how dark or light you are. I don't care what race each of your parents is. It's not your biology that concerns me. Biology of race is a weak concept at best, if it exists at all. It's your choice of racial identity that concerns me.

And your choice concerns me because that's connected to your attitude and understanding of what it is to be black like me, like us.  We are not monolithic be we are connected. We get to say who that those who do not identify as "us" don't get to be treated 100% like "us."

If you don't understand what it is to be black, if you choose not to become part of  "us" or "we" because you've chosen to be bi-racial, then be in the group called "bi-racial."

There are plenty of mostly black movies and people of color movies where bi-racial people can be and should be welcomed---as "biracial." But things like that Ebony Cover? That's for black people that identify as black.

Harry Belafonte, Jesse Williams, and even Janey-Come-Lately, Ever-Lip-Curling Zendaya deserves to be on the cover of a historically black magazine cover --- just not all at once AS IF they are representative of all black people.

But somebody like Zoe Saldana does not deserve a place on our historically black magazine covers.

My opinion is not set in stone, but I strongly feel that Zoe Saldana's choice to identify as bi-racial or something other than Black, Black American, or African American is Zoe telling us a truth about herself. I'm thinking this whole Nina Simone movie scandal is Saldana communicating to us that

1) She has not experienced much black culture in her home.

2) She has not had black oral history passed down to her in her home.  

3) She has not had the news, movies, and television interpreted for her through the lens of black culture, black history, and black experience by a black adult

This almost has to be why Saldana thinks it's okay for a white actor to play a Native American, a white women to play Cleopatra, and a Laurence Olivier to play Othello in black face -- unlike 99.5% of the black people I've ever met. 

Zoe Saldana has been, in essence, telling us that she is not black AND that the the sociologists are correct, that race is a social construct, and that she is not constructed in such a way that she should play Nina Simone EVEN IF she had come out of the uterine oven darker with West African facial features.   

Black people should be upset if somebody who does not identify as black shows up on the cover of Ebony, Essence, Jet etc unless the main story being done involves all people of color or the main story is about another ethnic group with issues parallel to our own, one of those other ethnic(?) groups being the "bi-racial" ethnic group. 

DENIAL OF PRIVILEGE, IT ISN'T JUST FOR WHITE FOLK ANYMORE

AND IT NEVER WAS

Continued From Part 1

Racism Is Not Illogical Neither is Colorism

http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2016/04/racism-is-not-illogical-neither-is.html

Did you know that if you ask men if women are discriminated against, and are victims of oppression that a lot of men, not all, will acknowledge things like women getting paid less and say "Yes, women are oppressed"

But if you ask the same men if men are privileged because men are oppressors of women, have more opportunities at leadership, and get paid more than women, the same men will disagree. They will say, "Men are not privileged."

These two same statements, stated different ways, are the same. Men will acknowledge that things are vaguely unfair for women. But they will not acknowledge that they have more than their fair share and they are sharing in the benefits of men, as a group, taking more than their fair share of power, money, etc.

I thought that was really interesting when I heard it. It's one of those things you don't know you already know until somebody puts it in sentences and paragraphs and presents it to you, ya know?

And then I realized, long before I read Patricia Hills Collins, that we all do this. We all grab hold of our sites of oppression and use them to deny that our sites of privilege exist.

When you add race and colorism into that mix, things get real ugly, really quick.

White women are oppressed by white men but can't see their privilege over black people and also cannot see that their refusal to see their privilege is part of their being oppressive.

Black men are oppressed by white people (men and women) but can't see their privilege over women, especially over black women, and also cannot see that their refusal to see their privilege is part of their being oppressive. 

Light women are oppressed by white people (men and women) but can't see their privilege over darker-skinned women and also cannot see that their refusal to see their privilege is part of their being oppressive.

Dark-skinned Christian women are oppressed by White Christian women but can't see their privilege over atheist people and also cannot see that their refusal to see their privilege is part of their being oppressive.

White atheists are oppressed by Christians (black, white, latinx, asians, and others) but cannot see that their white privilege trumps damn near everything in this country and that most of their resentment probably stems from the perceived loss of absolute white power and privilege. 

I keep hearing that light men are aware of and speak of their privilege easily. And that may be so --as far as talking goes. But the movie captioned below is the second time I've seen Jesse Williams show up in a questionable setting.



I don't think it was magic that Uncle Lee Daniels picked Jesse Williams, Lenny Kravitz, and Cuba Gooding Junior to be supporting actors in "The Butler." That's too many mixed race people in one spot for it to have been happenstance -- especially after seeing Daniel's color stuck casting of Precious (and probably "Empire" too)
But here we are again with this Ebony Magazine Cover. Two mixed race black men and one mixed race black woman being put forth as representative-- and Jesse Williams is right there again.

Jesse Williams may admit his privilege readily. I don't read everything he writes. But it seems to be within his character to admit light-privilege readily. But he's not stepping back from that privilege when he can profit from it so far.

Still, I can't put Jesse down too much.  Know why?




Because as hard as I am trying to pay attention to colorism in the black community, I did not notice that these people on the Ebony Cover were all mixed race. My learning to ignore color is bone deep. And one decision or repeated decisions to pay attention isn't going to cure it for me

The thing that disturbed me even more
than my  own failure to notice
that there were three mixed race people
put forth as entirely representative on a FUBU magazine,
--but a white run magazine,
run by white people who often cannot see black beauty
unless it is watered down by whiteness --
was that some of the black people who saw this magazine cover
were actually proud of themselves for not noticing.

This black tendency to be proud to not notice skin differences (which is the same as not noticing colorism effects on darker brothers and sisters) isn't any different from white colorblind ideology. 

Black people who pride themselves on not seeing color are nearly exactly the same as white people who don't see color. In fact, they're worse. How can some of us reproduce something so very much like the colorblind version of white supremacy and not notice it?

When I was a kid, I lived in an environment with a lot of different races then went to school in predominantly white environment with those same children. I figure that's why I missed team light-skinned against team dark-skinned battles altogether while in school.  There were too few of us, as people of color, to really separate into different color camps. The white people were hostile and violent with us encroaching on what they felt was their territory during the latter half of the 20th century.  (Nowadays? Schools are pretty close to being as segregated as we were in 1969)

The boys preference for light-skinned, longer haired girls did come up somewhat routinely once we hit puberty. Most of us were trained to not notice it for as long as possible, though. When some dark-skinned girl eventually accused a light-skinned girl of "you think you're better than us!" the light girl denied it. And her friends of various shades defended her because it was true, she did not think she was better than us....when we were young.

By the time I hit college, however, there was an entire sorority of light-skinned girls who thought they knew that they were better than everyone else--- exactly like the movie "School Daze" by Spike Lee.

Dark-skinned jealousy is real because there are real things to be hurt and jealous about.

And light-skinned superiority becomes as real as white superiority when light-skinned people claim they do not see light-skinned preference....then have the audacity to brag about not noticing (along side some dark-skinned people who hate talking color as much as white people hate talking race)

No, I did not grow up with team-darkskinned and team-lightskinned but I am catching up on the resentments fast.

Some light-skinned, especially mixed race women, spend their large chunks of their lives trying to prove that they are black too and are so focused on this that they can't see anybody else's pain but their own. I understand that because there's usually a very real somebody somewhere telling them their black experiences are not legitimately black

So I kinda get that but it's still not okay to deny your privilege exists--- no more than it is for white people.

TOMORROW
"On Who Is And Is Not Allowed To Claim Blackness" 

RACISM IS NOT ILLOGICAL, NEITHER IS COLORISM

AND THEY NEVER WERE


We weren't allowed to talk about light-skinned and dark-skinned in my family for the most part. Actually, the message I really got was that I wasn't even supposed to see it much less acknowledge it.

That has to sound awfully familiar to a lot of black people if they're paying attention to the subtle workings of their own mind. I hear black people make noise about "We're all black" nearly every single time the subject of light-skinned and dark-skinned comes up.

Just stop talking about it and it'll go away. We'll be united if we pretend

1) Light-skinned people and dark skinned people are having the very same experience AND

2) Black women and black men are having the very same racial experience, AND

3) Black people of different classes are all having a homogenous experience of race in this country,

OR IF ALL ELSE FAILS

4) Each experience of being black is completely individualistic, so there's no point in trying to figure out patterns and different pains and triumphs that various groupings of black people might be experiencing. 

These deny-ers, the black people who want to scream "We're All Black. We're All THE SAME!" sound just like white people who claim "There's one race, the human race! If you stop talking about race, it'll go away!"

Well, all of the above is a lie. White people who hate talking about race and the black people who hate talking about color are so very, very alike but hate another

Bele and Lokai, guest characters in the Original Star Trek
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"

The image above is from an episode of the original "Star Trek" The two characters hate each other because they are different in appearance. When the stars of the show, the"good" characters,  can't see how they are different. Each of the black and white men essentially point out that they are black and white on different sides. The left side blacks have been at war with the right side blacks forever.

Like most metaphors about race endorsed by white people, this Star Trek episode simplistically dismissed the logic and advantage of racism. A lot of people want to think that racism (and colorism) is a silly disagreement about skin color. But it's not.

Racism is about
- a group of people looking around and seeing there are limited resources or limited sources of power then...

- deciding that "I can have a larger share of the resources/power if  I don't have to split the resources/power as many ways, then....

- looking around then saying my group (a grouping based on some observable difference) is better and deserves a larger share. This enables one to say,  'It's fair that members of the other group get less or nothing' without feeling ashamed, feeling greedy, or feeling that principles have been compromised.

That is, racism precedes race.

Identifying the members of the other group as significantly different than you, finding an observable characteristic, then calling one group "the white race" and that group "the black race" or "the red race" then saying "those people" deserve less is a way of grabbing more without guilt. When you follow up by creating fake science to say that there's more to the observable difference, that those people of a different skin color really are bigger brained but dumber or smaller brained and dumber, have less hormonal control, etc. Once your fake science is in place, you can tell yourself you have been bestowed with "more" because it's "natural" and "fair"

This is how racism (a form of greed for resources, money, or power) creates race. 

In this original Star Trek episode the point is made that the guy on the left represents a group that got to the resources, power, and authority first (representing white people) and that the guy on the right was in the group being stomped on (representing black and brown people). But the overall message of the episode was still crammed, by the end of the episode, into that white cookie-cutter mold that shapes racism as just a minor physical difference that stupid people battle over when racism is as logical as it gets.  

Prior to The Civil War, during what I call "Slavery Part 1" the one-percenters were, in actuality, the white 5 to 10 percenters. I've read various articles that say 5 to 10 percent of white people ever  owned slaves. What most of those books don't say is that the white  5 to 10 percent couldn't control slaves on their own so they convinced most of  the rest of white people that they were better human beings just because they were white.  They convinced the non-slave owning white people that they would get a larger share of everything because they deserved it --even when they were probably eating more poorly than the black slaves the white massa was trying to keep picking his crops. 

White status claims, with promises of getting-more-than-those-n-words, is why most poor white people --some of them so poor that they were eating grass off the front lawn for breakfast, lunch, and dinner-- would report catching a glimpse of a runaway slave even when there was no financial reward for having captured him or her.

The poor white person's elevated status above non-white people was all the payment he or she needed.

During "Slavery Part 2," a slavery created by the black codes and Jim Crow, the poor and middle class white people took over the lead in policing, fencing in, and abusing of black people.

Slave masters of old, who owned black people were afraid of losing their investment if they were but so harsh with a slave. They were trying to keep black slaves intimidated but alive, healthy, and working in most areas. And during Slavery Part 2, the white 1-to-10-percenter was forced to turn to things like sharecropping and made black people debt-slaves.

And it was the poor and emerging middle class white that put black people in prison for loitering for the fun and status off it. Then the same rich white 5 to 10 percent was able commandeer prisoners during crop picking season  --another way the white rich commanded practically free labor with the help of the white poor.

When the white poor wasn't helping the white rich stay rich, they were looking to get a feeling back-- and they were more dangerous to black and brown people than the rich white people ever were. The white poor and white emerging middle class wanted their higher status back once official slavery was done. And creating the KKK, the black codes, and Jim Crow laws did just that.

 Racism is as logical as it gets. It always has been. And there are tons of white people trying to re-write history in such a way that whiteness, all whiteness, is not privileged. There are tons of white people who say, "My family was poor and didn't own slaves" in order to deny white privilege.

You tell these white deny-ers of privilege for me that, unless their parents worked along the Underground Railroad, their ancestors were slavery enablers that were twice as vicious and deadly as the richer slave masters and sharecropping plantation owners through the 1960s. 

So the central problem of this old Star Trek episode, which is very symbolic of white racial attitudes to this day, is that it attempts to make equal

those with the habit of sneering superiority,  domination, and destruction of lives

AND 

those with the habit of resenting those with powerful one that has a boot over your neck 24/7.


Making both parties, the oppressed and the oppressor, equally responsible and equally damaged in a racism, sexism, homophobia battle is why so many individual people cannot see the areas where they live comfortably as an oppressor among other oppressors.

Again, the oppression is made invisible to the oppressor doing the oppressing so they can feel good about themselves as they acquire more than their fair share of money, resources, power, recognition, etc.

When the oppressor makes his or her own membership 
in an oppressive group 
invisible to themselves, 
they can tell themselves, 
"I worked for every single thing I have. Nobody gave me a thing."

I wish I could say that it is only white people that have this habit of denying privilege and their sites of oppression. But that's not true. All of us do it. White people, especially white males, are just the ones doing it most effectively as far as taking more than their fair share.   


To be continued in

"DENIAL OF PRIVILEGE, IT'S NOT JUST FOR WHITE PEOPLE ANYMORE"

http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2016/04/denial-of-privilege-it-isnt-just-for.html

RECORDER HIDDEN IN BRAIDS REVEALS DOCTOR'S RACISM DURING SURGERY, ETHEL EASTER'S STORY

When a doctor treated her fear, pain, and tears with disdain then anger, Ethel Easter decided hide a recorder in her braids in case her Texas surgeon "accidentally" killed her.




DURING EASTER'S HERNIA OPERATION

"After Easter was sedated, the surgeon recounted their dispute to the other doctors. “She’s a handful,” he said in the recording. “She had some choice words for us in the clinic when we didn’t book her case in two weeks.”

“She said, ‘I’m going to call a lawyer and file a complaint,'” he recalled with a laugh. (Easter said she never mentioned a lawyer.)

“That doesn’t seem like the thing to say to the person who’s going to do your surgery,” another male voice retorted.

After repeated jokes about her belly button and peals of laughter at one point in the procedure, referrred to Easter as “always the queen,” The surgeon responded, “I feel sorry for her husband.”

The surgeon also used the name “Precious” several times in a manner that Easter interpreted as racial.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/07/patient-hid-recorder-in-her-hair-as-surgeons-operated-on-her-their-words-left-her-deeply-distressed/ 

In case you've forgotten, "Precious" is a 2009 movie 

about a fictional girl named "Precious" who is 

poor, black, & illiterate that winds up being 

saved from sexual and physical abuse 

by the light and white people 

in Lee Daniel's 

Uncle Tom's Cabin Treatment 

of an excellent book called "Push" by Sapphire .

So yeah. Easter isn't confused.

The "Precious" references had racial content and can be estimated to be racist in intention--especially after the Who-Do-You-Think-YOU-ARE-N-WORD when she insisted she couldn't take the pain for two months before he decided to fit her in and do her surgery

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that all the "Precious" comments were about body shaming. Precious was a big girl and white beauty aesthetic says white, rail thin, and doggone near ass-less is beautiful.

But the racism that is the name calling, stereotyping and body shaming is just icing on the cake. The racism cake itself is made up of the disregard for the pain caused by the hernia. The racism cake is almost made up of the disregard for the words that came out of her mouth in regards to her drug allergies.

Easter's breathing problems may have been the result as of something prescribed for her. When somebody tells you that a medication gives them a rash, you don't give the medicine to them anyway unless there's no other choice or you just don't care about the potential side effects....for....some....reason.

Make no mistake. Racist doctors with this level of contempt likely kill people regularly.

The number of black people slaughtered during The Tuskegee Experiment is probably minuscule compared to the unrecorded deaths of black and brown patients at the hands of careless white surgeons who barely saw them as human

You simply cannot have this much disrespect for another person's being and then be expected to work just as fast and just as hard as you would for a person you see as an equal human being when something unexpected happens during surgery.

I have anecdotal evidence that this is true.  I have family members that weren't nearly as lucky as Ethel Easter

Some of my relatives have seen the same contempt in the eyes of their white doctors that Easter saw in the eyes of hers. So these family members of mine refused to go to the doctor when they were pain. They wouldn't go until symptoms like coughing up blood appeared, despite incessant badgering from others, not until it was too late. As a result, instead of being my mother's age they're dead.

Don't you ever let anybody convince you that race isn't real, that racism isn't real, and that racism is damn deadly.

Remembering my cousin Garfield today.

A man was recently awarded $500,000 after recording what was said during his operation. I hope that sets precedent for this woman. If she's at a county hospital she could probably use the money. And she deserves a lot more than $500,000 after feeling forced by the pain to go under the knife of a doctor she knows does not see her as a human being.

I hope she gets millions of dollars and that this story gets nationwide attention.  

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