His Point of View

Whether you are male,female,black, native american, asian, young, or old we all have issues as a result of of categories we fall into.  Since we can only experience the issues related to the categories we are a part of  we often develop tunnel vision and start to believe that our issues are the most important issues.  And we are 100% correct, our issues are the most important issues… to us.  But on a large scale nobody else really cares about your issues until you give them a reason to, or unless they happen to observe you being a victim to some injustice based upon your category.

We should not ignore our issues if we expect things to change, but two things we can’t do are; let the issue(s) consume us to the point that we are immobilized, and we can’t let the views of other people (especially those outside the category we are a part of) become our own definition of ourselves.  Every person we encounter on our journey through life forms some sort of impression or opinion of us.  People often have a particular motive associated with the image they have developed of each of us.  I argue that we can not (continue reading…)

Since the election of our first Negro/African American/Black/Brotha/Nigga/Nigger President the phrase post racial society has been tossed around.  Its bologna. Racism is live and well.  The issue of the day is this advertisement by Nivea which depicts a man of  African descent throwing away mask of an afro wearing, facial hair having black man for a clean shaven “civilized man”.

This ad is just the latest of a series of monthly, if not weekly examples of how racism is still bubbling up in every corner of society.  Last week it was the so called expert blaming the societal ills of the city of London on “black male culture.”  Oh let us not forget the movie “The Help”, which was written by a white woman.  Many say that the movie was a white washed version of the reality of black house servants in the mid 1900′s in America.  The week before that is was the use of the word “nigga” by white female rapper V-Nasty (who?) and all of the black male producers and rappers (also a few white celebrities) who came to her rescue, attempting to give her a “pass” to use the word freely because she was reportedly raised in a primarily black neighborhood(as if that means she can’t be racist, although I am not saying she is racist, I don’t know enough of her to make that claim ).  The week before that we had riots in London started by the alleged wrongful killing of a black man by the police.  I will stop there, as  this post might never end if I continue.  The point of it all is that racism is not something that no longer exists simply because we may chose to ignore it. We don’t have many social movements or rallies against racism anymore, and people who accuse others of racism are quickly ostracized as “pulling the race card” simply because the non-minority may not see or understand the way race factors into that particular event.  The term most appropriate is “white privilege.”  You may very well not be overtly or consciously racist, hell you may not be racist at all, but the fact that you don’t acknowledge or understand how the racism of the government and your ancestors has given you a huge leg up on minorities is a major cause of what many call racist actions or thoughts today.  If your great grandfather owned a business 100 years ago and that set the foundation for your family to be upper middle class and it allowed you to attend a particular University you may not realize that you are benefiting from a privilege.  In most of the country 100 years ago a black man (continue reading…)

Recently I was out with a friend and we visited a bar that has a diverse group of patrons. While at this bar I met a young lady who was born and lived until her teen years in a South American country. We had a decent conversation and then I was asked a question I have never encountered while out socially, or even from someone I have dated. ‘You aren’t a racist, are you?’ I stopped for a second to think about what I could have said to trigger such a question, and I came up with nothing. She indicated that I had not said anything out of line, but it was something she felt the need to ask since she had experienced problems with racism in the past since arriving in the US. (continue reading…)

As many of you know, I took a trip to Cape Town, South Africa in March, 2009.  If you don’t know, South Africa was under a system of legalized racism called Apartheid until 1994.  Apartheid ended just 15 short years before my visit, and it was clear to me that the racism is still alive and well in South Africa ( I can only speak of Cape Town and its surrounding region, as this was the only metropolitan area I visited during my stay.  Please see my previous post regarding my interactions which some of the citizens of South Africa here)  I saw that darker colored people held very few client facing jobs (such as waiters, hostesses, cashiers, etc).  I saw that coloured people drove nice cars, while most of the black people walked or took public transportation, I experienced hesitation to serve me in retail establishments until the shop keepers realized that I was not a local black or coloured person.  I won’t even mention the German owned book store which featured writings by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi (continue reading…)