My aim through this blog is to begin conversations about events, trends, demographics, economics, culture, sports and social commentary in an attempt to untie the Gordian knot of racism, marginalization and resource control within a modern, global context. If done well I'll engage the man in the mirror as often as projecting, and will invite my core group of academic, professional, artisan, manually talented, grass roots, and service oriented friends to add much needed depth and perspective to these conversations.
I want you to be honest - yes as in don't cheat! - and try to fill in the blanks of the passage below;
"The first batch of rs, 40 young men and women from , arrived at the Toy Factory here in May, bringing their buoyant music and speaking a language that was incomprehensible to their fellow workers.
[“We exchanged cigarettes and smiled at one another, but we couldn’t really communicate,” said , a 29-year-old assembly line worker who had come to this north eastern city from southern . “Still, they seemed shy and kind. There was something romantic about them.” The mutual good will was fleeting.
By June, as the r contingent rose to 800, all recruited from an impoverished rural county, disparaging chatter began to circulate. Taxi drivers traded stories about the wild gazes and gruff manners of the rs. Store owners claimed that r women were prone to shoplifting. More ominously, tales of sexually aggressive r men began to spread among the factory’s 16,000 workers. Shortly before midnight on June 25, a few days after an anonymous Internet posting claimed that six r men had raped two women, the suspicions boiled over into bloodshed.
But the biggest challenge may be open hostility from co-workers, who like so many hold unapologetic-ally negative views of rs. Many say they believe that rs are given unfair advantages by the government, including a point system that gives r students and other minorities a leg up on college entrance exams. , a 20-year-old resident, described rs as “barbarians” and said they were easily provoked to violence.
“All the men carry knives,” he said after dropping off a job application at the toy factory, which is eager to hire replacements for the hundreds of workers who quit in recent weeks.
Still, Mr. acknowledged that his contact with rs was superficial. When he was a student, his vocational high school had a program for students, although they were relegated to separate classrooms and dorms.
If he had any curiosity about his r classmates, it was quashed by a teacher who warned the students to keep their distance. “This is not prejudice,” he said. “It is just the nature of their kind.”]
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Come on Man!!.....So who'd you see in your mind's eye while trying to complete this article? What did you write? You can be honest here it's just me and you! 99% of the people I share this exercise with invariably say the story is about White workers having to deal with a sudden influx of new Black (and in a very few cases, Mexican), arrivals.
In fact, this snippet is from an article is written by Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times and comes from halfway around the world. The article is about a group of ethnic Chinese called Uighur (rhymes with n$#*s). Uighurs are an ethnic people who live in north western China and are Muslims. As a group they are relegated to secondary status by the dominant Ethnic Han.
What I find fascinating about the article is the ease with which the dominant Han have marginalized and begun implementing their own form of Structural Violence against the appealing, yet dangerous, newcomers with their loud music and loose women. What I find incredibly frustrating is how wedded we are to our local version of this story. So wedded in fact, that we're blinded to the fact that this scenario plays itself out throughout the globe. It is almost as if our collective American Exceptionalism reigns even here; no one could out-marginalize their "fill-in-the-blanks" better than us, so this article must be about those we've relegated to the bottom of our socio-economic ladder.
For Japan's Burakumin, France's Roma, Afro-Peruvians, Pakistan's Ahmadi's and Kalash, Ethiopia's Oromo, Australia's Aborigines, Zimbabwe's Ndebele, Israel's Negev Bedouin, Appalachia's Scots-Irish, Italy's Tunisians, Libya's Tabou, Greece's Albanians, and Gujarat's Siddis, this must be an interesting concept. Yet, as 1.3 billion refugees and internal migrants are on the move globally to find safe harbor, and over 1 billion humans find themselves simultaneously obese and starving, we in America stay locked in our simplistic black/white dialectic still struggling to address the hard truths related to the systemic nature of our homegrown forms of marginalization.
Engaging in these difficult conversations in the US often raises the specter of either white guilt, or black victimization; both of which provokes anger, courts danger, invokes silence, and almost universally shuts down true engagement and dialogue. The result - constant physical, spiritual, intellectual, financial, professional and emotional violence against one other; continued residential, educational and economic segregation; a diminished opportunity for true meritocracy; and a proclivity to appoint charlatans to represent extreme interests on either side of this divide.
For Japan's Burakumin, France's Roma, Afro-Peruvians, Pakistan's Ahmadi's and Kalash, Ethiopia's Oromo, Australia's Aborigines, Zimbabwe's Ndebele, Israel's Negev Bedouin, Appalachia's Scots-Irish, Italy's Tunisians, Libya's Tabou, Greece's Albanians, and Gujarat's Siddis, this must be an interesting concept. Yet, as 1.3 billion refugees and internal migrants are on the move globally to find safe harbor, and over 1 billion humans find themselves simultaneously obese and starving, we in America stay locked in our simplistic black/white dialectic still struggling to address the hard truths related to the systemic nature of our homegrown forms of marginalization.
Engaging in these difficult conversations in the US often raises the specter of either white guilt, or black victimization; both of which provokes anger, courts danger, invokes silence, and almost universally shuts down true engagement and dialogue. The result - constant physical, spiritual, intellectual, financial, professional and emotional violence against one other; continued residential, educational and economic segregation; a diminished opportunity for true meritocracy; and a proclivity to appoint charlatans to represent extreme interests on either side of this divide.
The reality is simple folks. Marginalization looks, smells, and feels the same globally. From Thomas Jefferson to Malcolm X, our history is replete with Americans who woke up from the fog of parochialism to realize these strategies of structural violence look the same in every corner of the globe; the more aggressive, dominant group exercises control over others, and withholds access to the essential elements of a quality life; food, water, clothing, shelter, the right to assemble, education, medicine, the right to participate, knowledge, justice, opportunity, hope, the right to self determination, and sometimes even the right to one's freedom.
Personally, I've traced my family's roots back to Alabama in the early 1800's, and have lost a brother to the desolation and planned abandonment of the South Bronx of the 1970’s. I harbor no romanticized illusions about Black suffering in this country. From Slavery through the failures of Reconstruction, White Christian crucifixions (lynchings), rampant beatings and arrests during the civil rights era, redlining, restricted covenants, urban industrialization, the rise of the Prison Industrial Complex, systemic k-12 breakdowns, and a host of other forms of structural and economic violence - I am all too painfully aware of the multiple instances in which this country has repeatedly asked its marginalized Black citizens to once again re-define what it means to be an American.
My point however remains constant. Racism Bores Me....seriously, precisely because it was, is, and always will be a surrogate; a poor doppelganger for the disproportionate accumulation of financial, political, and social capital. Although we constantly find our selves having to dig out from under the mountain of white, black, and brown sacrifices to this disparity in America, as well as from underneath the violent, and crazy ideas (eugenics, the curse of Ham, Venus Hottentot, etc.), that accompanied those bodies we've thrown into the chasm, lets be clear; that pit was created and filled because we lacked the capacity to build bridges. They are massive, soul crippling distractions allowing our group of ethnic "winners" - amorphous Whites - to maintain control, power and dominance in our environment.
I have been fortunate enough to attend the Horace Mann School, Binghamton University, and Cornell Law School, and have professionally dabbled in law, corporate business development, philanthropy and entrepreneurship. Yet as I've travel the world I try in vain to breathe freely - the ever present “Smog of Race” lining the atmosphere like a fine volcanic dust. Yes, even now, as the US' first Black President presides over our nation.
Unfortunately for us all, the lack of depth, the shrill tone, and the sheer ignorance of our modern conversations, do nothing to move us forward. This then is my small contribution to hopefully helping make sense of this tangled web.
Hopefully you’ll join me on a ride that promises to make us laugh at times, yet at others be unwaveringly sober, caustic and brutally honest.
Come on Man...let's start the conversations!
My point however remains constant. Racism Bores Me....seriously, precisely because it was, is, and always will be a surrogate; a poor doppelganger for the disproportionate accumulation of financial, political, and social capital. Although we constantly find our selves having to dig out from under the mountain of white, black, and brown sacrifices to this disparity in America, as well as from underneath the violent, and crazy ideas (eugenics, the curse of Ham, Venus Hottentot, etc.), that accompanied those bodies we've thrown into the chasm, lets be clear; that pit was created and filled because we lacked the capacity to build bridges. They are massive, soul crippling distractions allowing our group of ethnic "winners" - amorphous Whites - to maintain control, power and dominance in our environment.
I have been fortunate enough to attend the Horace Mann School, Binghamton University, and Cornell Law School, and have professionally dabbled in law, corporate business development, philanthropy and entrepreneurship. Yet as I've travel the world I try in vain to breathe freely - the ever present “Smog of Race” lining the atmosphere like a fine volcanic dust. Yes, even now, as the US' first Black President presides over our nation.
Unfortunately for us all, the lack of depth, the shrill tone, and the sheer ignorance of our modern conversations, do nothing to move us forward. This then is my small contribution to hopefully helping make sense of this tangled web.
Hopefully you’ll join me on a ride that promises to make us laugh at times, yet at others be unwaveringly sober, caustic and brutally honest.
Come on Man...let's start the conversations!
