a repost
Let me begin this post a few uncomfortable truths:
1) Respectability politics works.
2) Automatically trusting black faces in high places is a mistake
3) Freddie Gray was beaten to death. Period.
He was beaten to death no matter when his spine went from 30% broken (before the van?) to 80% broken to beyond repair, no matter where he drew his last breath.
Again, respectability politics works.
But it doesn't work thoroughly or for very long. It also requires you take a chance on compromising your own sanity. A good many of our black heroes of history believed in it and used it with varying degrees of success before some gave it up. W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T Washington, Ida B Wells are but a few examples that at least tried it on for a while, long before phrase "respectability politics" came to be.
In fact, there was a long time within black history, at least through the 1960s and 70s(?) where black people would open chastise other black people with the phrase "stop showing your color." While my family hated that phrase, conforming with "respectability politics" was expected of me, especially in front of white people.
Some of what I remember as playing at respectability politics is part of wearing the white mask in white dominated circles, but that's a different story for a different time.
Today we're talking about the outcomes of respectability politics for the black people who play the game well without even knowing they are playing it. Today we're talking about the people who may have become their mask.
Respectability politics played well and played with finess before a white audience can and has moved a fair percentage of our elites, our black black one percent into the "You're a credit to your race" zone. And while that zone is a white supremacy constructed zone, it is a zone within which some black people prosper. Some black people that prosper within the "Credit To Your Race" Zone know they are wearing the white mask that allows them past the white gatekeepers where promotions, power, and profit are to be had. And they take it off when they go home,
Barack Obama, for example, during his first run for president said a few things I knew he couldn't possibly believe as a black man.
And for the most part, black voters recognized the dance he was doing and shut up when he had to side step this mess or that one. That's why most of us didn't get too ugly when presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, did not spend too much time explaining to **racism deaf, dumb, and blind white voters** what kind of truth, disappointment, and justifiable anger his pastor Jeremiah Wright was expressing in his sermons.
Yet, other black people become confused in their use of respectability politics, internalize white racist ideation, and attempt to become their mask.
Bill Cosby (pre rape accusations) and his Pound Cake Speech was a clear bid to be in the "credit to your race" zone. A whole host of people like Pharrell Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and Don Lemon, those we've been calling "the new blacks" are really the black one percent. They've made "colorblind" race statements that discerning people of color despise and un-discerning colorblind racism loving white people adore.
I don't know if Marilyn Mosby, prosecutor of those responsible for the death of Freddie Gray, is wearing her mask or has become one with her mask. I don't know her so I'll never know one way or the other. But I can look at her behavior But I do know that black people are divided by gender, skin shade, status, income levels, and class -- just like white people are. So I know that I might observe that there are different behaviors and life experiences among black people because of their gender, skin-shade, status, income levels, and class. And, I know that the powerful seeking more power make choices for personal gain, even when they are black. And I'm guessing that Marilyn Mosby is one of the black 10% if not the black 1%. (Talking power, not just money in this case) And I'm guessing that this matters in the same way that it usually does. A black person who becomes one of the Black One Percenters does not get there by accident. These are people that seek power, just like the white one-percenters, Latinx one-percenters, and Asian one-percenters. Unlike the white one-percenters, the black, brown, and asian one-percenters often have an ethnic or race based choice to make:
"How far into the white defined status quo do I move in order to get powerful and/or rich?"
Oprah's Choice - Her magazine is mostly white. When people talk about "black magazines," like "Essence," "Ebony," and "Jet." Her magazine is not mentioned.
Don Lemon and Bill Cosby's Choices - They have made statements that indicate that they lean heavily into respectability politics.
Pharrell, Common, and a whole host of "new blacks" have made choices - They have chosen to believe in a white view of race, a view that race is not significant factor in life chances (because "I got mine. Now you get yours.") They often say things that indicate they believe in a predominantly white colorblind racial theory which has been accurately identified, in my opinion, as the newest form of racism.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be rich or powerful. But when one is not rich and one is also black, one has to keep ones eyes open and realize that "All your skin-folk are not your kinfolk"
You have to acknowledge that some black people are not having the same range of life experiences as someone middle class. And middle class black people have to realize that poor black people are having different experiences as well.
We talk about colorism too infrequently and in shallow ways in the black community. But we talk about status, class, and power divisions between us even less. And we, as black people have the same divisions among us that white people do, as all people do. We need to stop being ashamed of being divided. Shame shuts down the brain.
BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER
THE FREDDIE GRAY TRIALS
That is, black people who seek power sometimes (or often) seek to satisfy the status quo because that's where more power is often located.
And the status quo in this country is constructed by white supremacy even when white people are not even very present in positions of power
In 2015, I kept hearing rumors that black folks had never had that much use for the mayor, Stephanie Rawling-Blake but they loved and trusted Marilyn Mosby.
But I've been thinking that this trust was misplaced from the very first time she started communicating that Freddie Gray's death was not about race. And believe me, though she never used those words, that is what she's been shouting over the last year.
In 2015, when Marilyn Mosby pulled three black police officers from out of nowhere and effectively ended the protests Baltimore by presenting an image to the world that screamed,
"FREDDIE GRAY'S DEATH WAS NOT ABOUT RACE"
 |
| Officers arrested for Freddie Gray's death
Alice White, Brian Rice, William Porter
Edward Nero, Garrett Miller, Caesar Goodson |
Making statements that Freddie Gray died as a result of injuries sustained in the van, operated by an all black crew, due to the lack of a seat belt screamed what the white created status quo wanted to hear a second time, FREDDIE GRAY'S DEATH WAS NOT ABOUT RACE
