4 ms·

I grew up in a mostly black county in Virginia, and at one point lived temporarily in the household of a family of socially prominent black Christians. The fat

by JPKab 6y ago

I grew up in a mostly black county in Virginia, and at one point lived temporarily in the household of a family of socially prominent black Christians. The father was a police officer, the mother a public defender in a neighboring county. The father was not quick to anger, but the angriest I ever saw him was when a bunch of white anchors in NYC on MSNBC brought on Al Sharpton, and asked him questions about what "black America" felt about an issue. He pointed out to me that they would never bring a white person from NYC on to a channel and ask him what white people in Virginia thought about an issue. He made a good point.

throwaway894345 6y ago
My general impression is that the portrait we get from the media about "black America" is actually only accurate for something like 10-30% of black Americans (i.e., progressive black Americans). For example, the "defund the police" movement was marketed by the media (question #1 might be "why is the media marketing anything?" but ignoring that for now...) as a movement that black Americans wanted, but subsequent polling suggested that only a small minority of black Americans wanted less policing. I would bet that these beloved-by-the-media, "pro-black" policies are supported by a smaller share of blacks than wealthy progressive whites. It's interesting (or it would be were it not tragic) because there seems to be an increasingly popular belief that there is some "true Black" way of seeing the world. Some people will call a black person who deviates from the stereo-type, "not 'politically black'" or suggest that they have "internalized white supremacy" or "minority whiteness". They argue that "worship of the written word", "objectivity", "wester civilization", etc are traits of white supremacy as though there is some force of nature that compels blacks toward a certain set of experiences and a certain way of processing those experiences which ultimately results in a very homogeneous, narrow set of "black opinions"--and deviations from that narrow band of opinions are regarded as pathology. It's almost as though they see blacks and people of color as a distinct species from whites, that white people are so incapable of understanding black people that, on the basis of race alone we are compelled to preclude whites from volunteering with a school board or translating the work of black poets (although it's fine for a white person to translate Shakespeare or ancient Greeks, suggesting the experiences of contemporary whites and blacks is more divergent than two white people separated by centuries or millennia). Personally, I don't understand how this sort of ideology is supposed to get us closer to a post-racial world.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  > Personally, I don't understand how this sort of ideology is supposed to get us closer to a post-racial world. It isn't. These organizations exist because they have money, not because they actually want to solve legitimate social issues.

by JPKab 6y ago

throwaway894345 6y ago

My general impression is that the portrait we get from the media about "black America" is actually only accurate for something like 10-30% of black Americans (i.e., progressive black Americans). For example, the "defund the police" movement was marketed by the media (question #1 might be "why is the media marketing anything?" but ignoring that for now...) as a movement that black Americans wanted, but subsequent polling suggested that only a small minority of black Americans wanted less policing. I would bet that these beloved-by-the-media, "pro-black" policies are supported by a smaller share of blacks than wealthy progressive whites. It's interesting (or it would be were it not tragic) because there seems to be an increasingly popular belief that there is some "true Black" way of seeing the world. Some people will call a black person who deviates from the stereo-type, "not 'politically black'" or suggest that they have "internalized white supremacy" or "minority whiteness". They argue that "worship of the written word", "objectivity", "wester civilization", etc are traits of white supremacy as though there is some force of nature that compels blacks toward a certain set of experiences and a certain way of processing those experiences which ultimately results in a very homogeneous, narrow set of "black opinions"--and deviations from that narrow band of opinions are regarded as pathology. It's almost as though they see blacks and people of color as a distinct species from whites, that white people are so incapable of understanding black people that, on the basis of race alone we are compelled to preclude whites from volunteering with a school board or translating the work of black poets (although it's fine for a white person to translate Shakespeare or ancient Greeks, suggesting the experiences of contemporary whites and blacks is more divergent than two white people separated by centuries or millennia). Personally, I don't understand how this sort of ideology is supposed to get us closer to a post-racial world.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
> Personally, I don't understand how this sort of ideology is supposed to get us closer to a post-racial world. It isn't. These organizations exist because they have money, not because they actually want to solve legitimate social issues.