Color-blindness & Journalistic Objectivity
This is a ‘repost’ inspired by recent exchanges on the subject and question of ‘colorblindness’.
This post is about whether being “colorblind” can, or should, be equated with objectivity….
This post is not about whether Nicole Wallace is a racist…
‘Journalistic colorblindness’ is a key element in the normalization of reporting on Trump and Trumpism and his followers and supporters.
“What’s phony about colorblindness is that it involves consciousness of discrimination in only one direction.”
—-Koshersalaami in a comment on a recent post by Bitey.
The French philosopher, Descartes, once wrote:
Cogito ergo sum, : I think, therefore I am.”
In my salad days, when I heard, during a discussion or debate, someone quote Descartes, attempting to flex and brandish his /her ‘intellectual’ muscle, I would add: ut sunt, sic etiam quid. I would only recite the translation when asked, which occurred invariably:
“As you are, so also am I”
Thus, I would weaponize my often superior knowledge and rhetorical skills in the cause of self-defense.
In most cases, the silent sound of stunned disbelief and shocked incredulity was quite gratifying.
Today, when I ‘push back’ against overt racism or a subtle or nuanced exercise in ‘ white privilege’ or a manifestation of latent racism in a comment or post the sound of silence in reaction or response is as gratifying as it ever was…
Under such circumstances, It is quite often that I am labeled a ” bully”, a “reverse racist” the “black know-it-all” and an “elitist” amongst other disrespectful and insulting ,vile and obscene epithets, appellations, and invectives…
It really doesn’t take much to get some white people to stop hiding behind cute sounding screen names and misappropriated avatars to become disjointed enough to attempt to drop the ‘n’ word along with an f-bomb or two….
Here are a few of the names I can recall from the OS Snark Tank:
Nerd Cred
Terry McKenna
JerseyShore
FoolishMonkey
Rodney Roe
Art James
Also Known As
DocVega
Saturn Smith
tr ig
Steel Breeze
Theodora L’Engle Knight
Julie Johnson
Cheshyre
The Songbird
Phyllis
Robin Sneed
Keiko Alvarez
The amount and degree of psycho- babble and pseudo intellectual bullshit that these folks would exchange amongst themselves re black people, the black experience, race, racism, and racists was staggering, almost beyond belief and comprehension.
When I complained and protested the lack of adherence to scholarly or academic rules of discourse And engagement, I was told to ‘do my own research’ ..
And then one of them reminded me that this, after all, was “social media”.
Nicole Wallace, a white MSNBC anchor and commentator viewed the scenario of one the memorial services held for George Floyd, in speaking of his family as they were being escorted to their places, quite casually asked:
“Where does the strength, courage, dignity,and grace come from?”
I reflexively hollered:
“ut sunt, sic etiam quid!!!”
I instantly realized that the so-called ‘progressive’ commentator had blown a huge opportunity to bring the message home to the millions of viewers who were looking on at that time….
She and her on air colleagues blew it because they are no less racist than any other so- called ‘non-racist’ white people that I might encounter on the street or on the internet…
The problem is that MSNBC isn’t social media. It is the premier cable news voice of progressive perspective, spin, and slant in this country….
I can guarantee you that few, if any, caught the subtle hint and unintended manifestation of racism and ‘white privilege’…
In other words their so-called ‘colorblindness’ destroyed their capacity for objectivity.
The fact that the racism in the comment may have been unintended doesn’t make it any less racist.
There are those who would accuse me of being a racist for catching and commenting about it….
But then, no one mentions or talks about the young woman who video- recorded the murder of George Floyd either….
The commentator missed the moment and opportunity of her lifetime to inject and interject the salient reason and purpose of broadcasting such proceedings and goings on because, in that moment, she was being ‘colorblind’ instead of being objective.
While observing the posture and behavior of the bereaved Floyd family, she blithely asked:
“Where does the strength, courage, dignity, and grace come from?”
A ‘colorblind’ journalist would ask such a question. An objective journalist wouldn’t feel the need raise the issue…
The only real and correct response to such an inane and racist inquiry is:
“It comes from our humanity!”
No translation required….
10/19/2020 @ 11:50 am
That’s a very long list of names. At least one of them is dead: trig. I am pretty familiar with most of them, though not all. A couple I’m still in contact with. I assume you have your reasons in all cases – with an attorney’s training, I assume you have standards when it comes to accusations – though in at least one I am extremely surprised. I respectfully suggest that you exercise extreme care when differentiating the racial from the personal. Not every reaction you get is based on pure content.
Keiko has the distinction of being the only person I’ve ever seen on our sites who encountered blatant racism – I mean really blatant, so unambiguously surprising that she didn’t have an immediate response – and immediately had a roomful of other bloggers leap to her defense. That incident proved to me that it’s possible. I saw it happen to a lesser extent once with antisemitism, though at least one of the people responding was also Jewish. However, the scope of the reaction to the incident targeting Keiko is not something I’ve ever seen duplicated, to my lasting disappointment.
Regarding the question about Strength, Courage, Dignity, and Grace: That’s a mixed bag. “Dignity” is probably not a characteristic the commentator would have asked about if those she was questioning weren’t Black. Strength and courage, sure. If you lose a close family member senselessly and unexpectedly, it is natural to ask “How do you handle something like this without falling apart? If it were me, I would be incapable of handling this as well as you are.” That part of the question doesn’t relate to race at all.
10/19/2020 @ 12:04 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“Under such circumstances, It is quite often that I am labeled a ” bully”, a “reverse racist” the “black know-it-all” and an “elitist” amongst other disrespectful and insulting ,vile and obscene epithets, appellations, and invectives…”
There is no liability re the compilation of the names of people who collectively engaged in snark or did so as individuals…
I must say that you did better with your comments on the original post…
10/19/2020 @ 2:34 pm
“Thus, I would weaponize my often superior knowledge and rhetorical skills in the cause of self-defense.”
“When I complained and protested the lack of adherence to scholarly or academic rules of discourse And engagement, I was told to ‘do my own research’ “
To be fair Ron, this is a blog site with a handful of participants, all of them quite smart. Academia it is not. We’re talking about racial equality here, not intellectual superiority. I live in academia also, and if we thought of one another as inferior intellects lacking in rhetorical skills, there would be no one to eat lunch with.
P.S. sorry not sorry for hogging up the bandwidth with the list
10/19/2020 @ 3:54 pm
@Greenheron;
“Thus, I would weaponize my often superior knowledge and rhetorical skills in the cause of self-defense”.
This refers to attitude and behavior while still a student…
Re the other quote, it may well have been you that reminded me on OS that this is social media…
However, the degree of snark was enough for me to avoid statements of fact without appropriate citations and links…
A double standard that I found to be disrespectful, insulting, and annoying…
10/19/2020 @ 7:06 pm
Ron,
I suppose I should ask what is racist about an accusation of being a bully or an elitist. Those strike me as personal criticisms – or epithets – rather than racial ones. I may have witnessed some of these epithets, but if so I remember neither the sources nor the circumstances, lest you suspect I am defending someone in particular. People have a right to criticize all of us personally.
As to “where do you get the…” That’s perhaps a more normal question than you seem to think, and it’s a respectful question, not a “where the Hell do You get the…” kind of question. There have been times I have been asked questions like that, both under the circumstances of raising a kid with a severe disability and losing him.
10/19/2020 @ 8:38 pm
@Koshersalaami;
Saying that they exhibited exceptional strength and dignity under such extreme circumstances is quite different from openly pondering where does such strength and dignity come from.
While in law school, I worked two jobs to support my family.
My wife didn’t resume working until our son was in 1st grade…
The year I graduated…
I was often asked where and how I got the energy and stamina to work and study as I did…
Not nearly as fraught as the; “were you allowed to transfer in from Howard Law School because of affirmative action?” inquiries…
At the time, there were no blacks in the 3rd year class, and only 4 in the 1st year class…
I was one of 2 in the 2nd year class at UCONN LAW School…
Both of us transferred in from The Howard University School of Law…
10/19/2020 @ 10:40 pm
How is it different? Wondering about the source of one’s strength during extreme adversity is normal.
If anything, being Black under the circumstances of George Floyd’s death is harder than being White under whatever passes for analogous circumstances. His family had to deal with his death, the fact that he was murdered, the fact that the cop felt free to murder him because he was Black, the fact that the cop wasn’t arrested for murder immediately, the fact that he was killed slowly while his pleas were ignored. That’s a long, horribly difficult list. How the Hell do you maintain your calm and your cool and your class in the face of that without losing it? Where do you get strength for that? That kind of strength is exceptional for any human being. The answer might be Faith. But it’s a reasonable question. It’s also a question born of admiration and respect.
I was wrong about dignity. Yes, it’s a question more likely to be asked of someone Black but that’s because having dignity attacked in the first place is something far more likely to happen to Blacks than to Whites and the police certainly did in this case. For Floyd’s family, maintaining dignity was an extra difficulty that Whites wouldn’t have faced.
10/20/2020 @ 1:05 pm
Ron, Know that I have no idea if this response will show up anywhere in the vicinity of your response that I am responding to :-/
Have you read How to Be Antiracist? It might seem unneccessary, a book written to educate white people, and it is, but I was sort of surprised when Ibram X. Kendi went into great depth about what he described as his own racist thinking, influenced by his family and that he held growing up and in college. It surprised me, in part because I firmly believed that Black people can’t qualify as racist. That was even argued many times on the various OS incarnations. Kendi has a convincing perspective though that you might appreciate. As a scrawny old white woman, it is not my place to get into his details with someone who is black, but you’re a scholar and so is he, and a chunk of the book is about his time at Howard, so you might be interested.
Something I liked about him, and the book, was that he described difficult truths for his reader before presenting his beliefs about being an anitracist, which he feels gets conflated with racism, and wants to clarify what he sees as the differences. He puts the reader in his corner, which I appreciated, making it easier to remain open to his views.
10/20/2020 @ 5:40 pm
Ron,
Where is the implication that the difference is in physical capabilities? We don’t have evidence of that, but we know that there is a difference in burden, so why are you attributing it to what is not obvious rather than what is?
Perhaps as a White person (racially at least, not how I identify culturally) I can provide a perspective: Yes, we would ask most of that of each other. We might not ask about dignity because our dignity is less likely to be under attack.That’s a cross we’re less likely to bear and so we admire someone who under those circumstances could carry it.
10/20/2020 @ 6:07 pm
@Greenheron;
I attended Howard from 1964 to 1968 during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout that period Howard was at the academic and ideological epicenter of the struggle…
I graduated 13 years before Kendi was born….My son is 14 years older than Kendi…
Kendi’s rejection of the argument that blacks cannot be racist because they lack power is a product of two or three generations of variance in experience and an abject lack of depth in perspective…
There are those who have criticized his book for being “sloppily researched, insufficiently fact-checked, and occasionally self-contradictory…”
Kelefa Sanneh noted Kendi’s “sacred fervor” in battling racism, but wondered if his definition of racism was so capacious and outcome-dependent as to risk losing its power.
In short, Kendi’s book and thesis, while useful as a vehicle of introduction and comprehension for uninitiated white folks, is not the Holy Grail of the Black Perspective on the subject…
For that, you must begin with James Baldwin and move on to Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Ellison and, Frantz Fanon, among others…
Kendi doesn’t scratch the surface of the issue he purports to address…
I’m sure that the notion that American black people can be racist is a point of interest and comfort to the white folks who will take great pains to reference that fantasy and, of course, the idea will sell a lot of books…
10/20/2020 @ 7:02 pm
@Koshersalaami;
You ask,
How is it different?
There’s a difference between qualities of character and qualities that might be attributable to physical capabilities…
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that black people were incapable of manifesting fundamental human qualities and emotions as a means of justifying the regarding and treating black people as being unequal to whites as human beings…
“Destroying families didn’t bother Jefferson, because he believed blacks lacked basic human emotions. “Their griefs are transient,” he wrote, and their love lacked “a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.”
The Real Thomas Jefferson https://nyti.ms/VbnPzp
This ‘Jeffersonian’ sentiment persists to this day…
10/20/2020 @ 10:12 pm
Why does it make sense to attribute the wonder to physical abilities when emotional resilience makes more obvious sense? As a White person (racially, I don’t identify that way ethnically), we would ask each other most of that. We might not ask about dignity for the simple reason that part of White privilege is that dignity isn’t as threatened for us. That’s lifting Black people have to handle a lot more and those of us who have less cause to do that lifting can’t be sure of our ability to handle it so it makes sense to wonder at those who can under awful circumstances. This is a respectful question, in a way an admiring question, not a “most of you couldn’t do this in a million years” question.
10/21/2020 @ 12:21 pm
Ron,
I decided to only read books written by Black people a couple years ago. For lots of reasons, one being that my workplace has an active chapter of BLM, so it’s mostly been the influence of my students, and as a result, a large proportion of what I’ve been reading is by younger (well, young to us) Black authors.
I’ve read Baldwin (you know I have), but I’m also enjoying fiction, in addition to non-fiction, have read all of Colson Whitehead, all of Toni Morrison (3x thru), Maya Angelou, Jessamyn West, Natasha Trethewey, all of TaNehisi Coates (whose voice I like just a bit better than Kendhi). If you’ve read these authors, it would be fun to have a book discussion. Not many of my white work colleagues have. Before it began to suck, I read the daily news at The Root, for several of its top notch Black journalists. As you know but I didn’t, Black journalism covers different news topics than white journalism. I learned the difference between a Becky and a Karen and hope I’m neither.
Ennyhoo, except for Toni Morrison and Maya A, these writers are relatively young to middle aged authors, and so yes, they were brought up in a different time than we were. They came of age in the supposedly post racial society. They have lots of White attention–I was on a 6 month wait list at my library for Between the World and Me. Also, I like women writers, so they are on my list….how about yours? 😉 The period you’re speaking about, there weren’t many Black women writers, white women writers either.
I can’t possibly sum up Kendhi’s views, and it isn’t my place to try, but it sounds like maybe you read reviews, and not his book? I suspect you’d really like him! He’s become kind of a superstar scholar in Boston, is the director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. Last month he called Amy Coney Barrett a white colonizer who uses her two adopted Haitian children as props, and now his resignation from BU is being called for. He is also surviving stage 4 cancer and writes about racism using the cancer metaphor, so yes, I love him 🙂
The Howard thing, I suspect you’d enjoy that more than you think. He talks about how his middle class educated family viewed Black people who lived in the projects, who sold drugs, who carried guns on the bus and threatened other Black people. He talks about colorism, something I knew nothing about. When he arrived at Howard, he found that many other Howard students shared his views that unfolded from intellectual elitism. In an extraordinarily painful process of discovery and falling on the sword, he came to recognize his views as racist, then began to do something about it. He asked a radical Black lesbian professor to be his thesis advisor and she knocked some sense into his head. It’s a thoughtful read, not just if you are white.
P.S. I am utterly confused by how to post a response in the right place on this site. Also, responses seem to take a day to load? Is it me, or the site?
10/21/2020 @ 11:45 pm
Greenheron,
There is more than one definition of racism. The definition Ron uses, and in talking to him it is the definition I now use on the site, is (I’m not quoting directly, just expressing the gist as I remember it) racial bigotry toward a racial population that occupies a subjugated position. In other words, it is a phenomenon perpetrated by a powerful population on a relatively powerless population. Because Whites hold pretty close to a monopoly on power, how Black people feel about Whites doesn’t have much of an effect on White lives. it doesn’t affect White wealth, employment, promotions, education, access to capital. Aside from crime, with that crime being defined and mostly enforced by the dominant population, Black bigotry has next to no power over White lives. In this sense, bigotry and racism are not interchangeable. As an example, Louis Farrakhan is by this definition bigoted but not racist.
I don’t know if this applies to Kendi. I just know a lot about Ron’s views on the subject.
In point of fact the dictionary definition of racism uses both meanings, though the primary one from what I’ve seen is Ron’s and as far as I’m concerned he can set the standard for which way the term is used on the site. To argue about this would be to waste a tremendous amount of time on semantics, in addition to which his use of the term introduces a valuable perspective which no other word fits. Nothing else means “racial bigotry of the powerful toward the powerless,” and that’s a useful phenomenon to be able to refer to in a single word.
I also know from experience that using multiple definitions can be used to obscure the truth rather than to promote it. In my case the germane word is Genocide. There’s the traditional definition, which is the killing of a race, pretty much a direct translation from the Greek. There’s also the UN definition which is way broader and encompasses efforts to make an ethnicity leave a place. In the arguments over Israel in which I’ve participated, I’ve found that the UN definition is applied to Israel and the traditional definition is applied to everyone else. The UN definition is so broad that it encompasses what parts of the French Arab population has done to the French Jewish population, many of whom have emigrated to Israel for physical safety as a result. I have found that those who use this tactic are more married to their mission of vilifying their target than they are to analytical ethics. I try to avoid double standards because I hate them. If used intentionally, they’re supremely hypocritical and even intellectually cowardly. So, in part to avoid this phenomenon, and in part because Ron should be more of an authority on racism than I am, I use his definition.
10/22/2020 @ 2:02 pm
KS,
My comment was to Ron. Why don’t you let Ron respond for himself?
It sounds like you haven’t read any of Kendi’s writing. No disrespect to your definition, or what you think is Ron’s definition, but IXK was awarded the National Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on racism. He’s also on the BU faculty and the Director of The Center for Antiracist Research, which is receiving a good deal of attention. His book was at the top of the NYTImes best seller list and I had to wait two months to get it from my library. A LOT of people are reading it. IXK has some significant cred, way too much to dismiss when you haven’t read his book.
I found his thoughts about racism, racists, and antiracism compelling. His goal is to change the conversation about racism, not to keep having the same conversation we’ve been having. Imho, he does this beautifully. I did not attempt to summarize his thinking in my comment because 1. that would feel arrogant and 2. IXK’s perspective cannot be summarized in a comment, even a long one. I’ve been reading IXK and other Black writers because I want to learn. Curious if you’ve read anything written by any Black activist writers recently?
10/22/2020 @ 8:49 pm
@Greenheron;
I can live with Kosh’s assessment re my definition of racism….
Re your comments about Kendi’s body of work and creds…
He, and others of his generation, are the progeny of those of us who labored in the trenches of classrooms and courtrooms without acknowledgement or the benefit of recognition.
Back then, to speak or write with the fervor of critical militancy was to be characterized as a threatening or dangerous radical and often be shunned or shunted….
I don’t read much fiction by any author. Too much unbelievable reality to cope with…
Re the Howard experience and colorism:
There’s a good deal to unpack.
My experience and exposure at Howard was not unlike his, a voyage into self discovery…
I suggest reading “Black Bourgeoisie” by E. Franklin Frazier and a review and study of the debate between W.E. B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington re what might be misconstrued as racism which is in fact an argument about ‘colorism’ and/or the Stockholm Syndrome …
Reading? I have lived and am living what the young people are writing…
What’s new is white folks are reading even if they don’t completely ‘get it’…
For me, it’s kind of like rehashing the same old conversation…
There isn’t anything that Kendi or Skip Gates or the others can write that I can’t discuss at length and in detail…
So, whenever you’ve finished reading, I’m ready….
10/23/2020 @ 5:07 pm
Ron,
I can appreciate what you’re saying about age and the trenches. Many young women I work with take their reproductive rights for granted. They have no idea what was involved before abortion was legal. Yet you’d be surprised at their activism. You told me once they’d never get in the streets. Then this summer happened.
I think all voices are important and worth listening to, not just those of people our age. Just because someone is young, doesn’t mean they have nothing important to say, or that they can’t bring about change. Greta Thunberg is just as much my hero as RBG. I don’t think of IXK, Coates et. al. as radical militant anomalies, or as particularly young. They are of the generations since ours, and seeking change same as we did, just with more ancestor shoulders to stand on.
Re: white people reading books by Black authors. Seems like progress to me, same as men reading books written by feminist authors. I don’t claim to get it right. I feel obligated to learn more. Something I liked about IXK is that he welcomes the ignorant white reader. He seeks to educate allies he feels people of color need, rather than allies white people think they need, e.g. that OSer who posted about an afternoon he spent making art with kids in a city park, and was amazed at their ‘hand skills’, felt proud of himself for ‘helping’ them.
I’m not sitting quarantined in my comfy chair tearing through books written by Black authors. It takes me a fair amount of time to get through a book, so the authors I posted earlier amount to about two years of reading. After a lifetime of reading mostly white authors, I have a lot of catching up to do. I’m still on the library wait list for Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste–your rec I think. It was a six month wait back when you recommended it, so hopefully I’m near the top of the list by now. Would enjoy reading and discussing with you since you’ve already read it and it’s a book we agree on. I saw her interviewed on PBS News Hour and am excited to read it. Warning: she looks about 50 something, younger than us 😉 !
10/23/2020 @ 10:45 pm
Greenheron,
I responded because I didn’t want to watch a conversation develop where the two of you were erroneously assuming a shared definition of racism. If you assumed a different definition of racism than Ron does and made observations or a case or whatever based on that definition, you’d head straight into a pointless argument, quite possibly an angry one.
I’ve learned from experience that the most important thing to take into consideration in almost any discussion about anything is what the other party assumes. Assumptions are way more important than questions.
By the way, which BU? My wife teaches at BU but I don’t think it’s the same institution.
10/23/2020 @ 11:01 pm
Greenheron,
[Note: I just wrote a comment that hasn’t published. If it publishes in the meantime, I’m sorry for the duplication.]
I answered because I didn’t want to witness a discussion where you and Ron were using different definitions of racism while assuming you were using a shared definition. That assumption could lead straight into an argument.
I learned years ago that addressing assumptions is more important and useful than addressing questions. I’ve often found that by addressing someone’s assumptions I can answer their real question better than by directly answering their asked question.
My point has nothing to do with Kendi, whom I haven’t read. It has to do with talking to Ron about racism.
10/24/2020 @ 9:51 am
@Greenheron;
“…that OSer who posted about an afternoon he spent making art with kids in a city park, and was amazed at their ‘hand skills’, felt proud of himself for ‘helping’ them…”
That ‘OSer’ was Terry McKenna, who Koshersalaami insisted on defending rhetorically when it was clear the the man didn’t have the chops or perspective to defend himself.
10/24/2020 @ 8:13 pm
I’m confused as Hell. I’ve answered Greenheron’s question to me twice, my first answer being missing, so my second contained an apology in case the first appeared. This morning I saw both published. Now I see neither.
10/25/2020 @ 8:07 am
@Koshersalaami;
Both of your comments have ‘published’ and are visible…
The BindleSnitch gremlins are hard at work disrupting the conversational flow of this thread.
Something must be done about this annoyance….
10/26/2020 @ 9:40 am
I’m hoping the site is taking comments again, so this is both a comment and a text. I’ve been trying to answer Greenheron for a couple of days, then I have an answer for Ron.
Greenheron,
The reason I gave Ron’s definition of racism rather than leaving it to him is that I wanted to avoid your entering into a discussion with him using different definitions of the term. I have learned from experience that addressing assumptions is more critical than answering questions, so I thought I’d make sure we didn’t have an erroneous assumption on the table. It would have led to an argument.
Ron,
I have a response about Nicole Wallace you may find unexpected. Her asking about not only strength but dignity was an acknowledgment that Black people carry the extra burden of having their dignity attacked by events like these and expressing wonder that Floyd’s family could handle an extra burden on top of the extremely heavy one they were already handling. For her not to acknowledge this would have been to have been colorblind.
10/26/2020 @ 10:35 am
Ron,
The grounds on which I defended Terry were that his post was about minority kids getting the short end of the stick. He was not writing the post for credit with his audience for egalitarianism because he didn’t care enough about the opinions of this audience to do that. When you have someone conservative writing about the consequences of bigotry, or maybe I should say when you have someone conservative choosing to write about the consequences of bigotry, you don’t have the equivalent of a Trump supporter, you have someone who has some core values in our camp in spite of the fact that he does not have habits in our camp, nor language in our camp. He displayed the most important raw material for conversion you can display. You had a conservative guy writing, without encouragement, not about reverse discrimination but about actual discrimination. Further than that, you had a conservative guy essentially volunteering with minority kids. I would kill to get any Trump supporter to where Terry was.
Thinking that how he wrote was more important than what he wrote about was a mistake. Yup, the guy had some stereotypes, and chances are those stereotypes were not self-made but picked up by his background and surroundings. But the source of those stereotypes doesn’t lead to consciousness of artificial obstacles to minorities.
Yes, the two of you had personal antipathy. That was more than obvious. It was also, given your personalities, completely predictable, in fact inevitable. You’re both very set in your ways. You love to school, he hates to be schooled. You think you’re old enough for people to listen, he thinks he’s old enough not to be lectured to. Neither of you are exactly retiring wallflowers. Both of you firmly believe that whomever you offend should just deal with it, but neither of you deal well with being offended, particularly if that offense includes an apparent lack of respect. Neither of you believes in backing down at all.
I think it’s a bad idea to let how you feel about someone make you miss things, particularly now. As you put it, all hands on deck.
10/19/2020 @ 12:12 pm
I didn’t want this post to pass without comment.
I frankly don’t recall the specific conversations on OS in which the people you mentioned made comments that you considered racist in effect if not in intent. I was surprised that I wasn’t included on that list. This may be the only list I haven’t made.
Contextualizing Nicole Wallace’s comment may be more difficult than it appears. Certainly, asking that question about a black family that has suffered a horrific experience in the full glare of the world’s media might suggest that Wallace is amazed that a black family could exhibit such fortitude. On the other hand, had George Floyd been white (in which case, of course, this conversation wouldn’t be happening) and she said the same thing of a white Floyd family, I think it would be understood in the context of wondering how any family has the strength to cope with such horrific experiences but I doubt that there would be any concerns expressed about the implicit racism of THAT remark because it wouldn’t be deemed racist since a white woman was making the comment.
So, then, I ask, “If a black reporter had made the same comment, would you have the same reaction to the same comment?”
This establishes that the very same question, in the same context, would have dramatically different effects according to the race of the people referenced in the remark and the race of the person making the comment.
The way it works out, Wallace’s comment about a black Floyd family comes back as unconsciously racist because the implication is that a black family would not be expected to behave in such a dignified manner.
I obviously don’t know Wallace, so I can’t speak to her attitudes about race, but I will say that while racism is implicit in the speech of many people who do not think of themselves as racist, I am much more concerned about actions than words, even admitting that words create the environment in which unacceptable behaviors are granted tolerance.
I will say that when I originally heard Wallace’s comment, I did have a similar negative reaction to it. I remember saying to Sayta, “Why would she expect anything different?” but I didn’t make the conscious distinction marking the comment as intrinsically racist.
10/19/2020 @ 12:56 pm
@Alan;
“If a black reporter had made the same comment, would you have the same reaction to the same comment?”
To my knowledge no black reporter asked that question, and I doubt that any black reporter would…
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that black people were incapable of manifesting fundamental human qualities and emotions as a means of justifying the regarding and treating black people as being unequal to whites as human beings…
“Destroying families didn’t bother Jefferson, because he believed blacks lacked basic human emotions. “Their griefs are transient,” he wrote, and their love lacked “a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.”
The Real Thomas Jefferson https://nyti.ms/VbnPzp
“The way it works out, Wallace’s comment about a black Floyd family comes back as unconsciously racist because the implication is that a black family would not be expected to behave in such a dignified manner.”
This sums it up fairly well…
10/19/2020 @ 12:59 pm
Two major points and I’m not re-reading the whole thing.
1. When JFK died similar statements were made about Ms. Kennedy’s dignity and fortitude. I, at least, never heard it attributed to her race. For just one example. I imagine Wallace’s comment was in the same vein and had nothing to do with race.
2. As nearly everyone knows, I am nerd cred and, while deeply honored to be assigned the first spot on any list, and while I admit to being a prolific dropper of “f bombs,”, as it is said, in this case I must decline the honor because I have never spoken the n word in my life and if I’ve typed or written it, it’s only been in a quote. Ron Powell, if you think you are right and I am wrong you are welcome to show proof.
Additionally, Nicole Wallace isn’t known as a “progressive.” She is a reformed republican and would probably still be one if it weren’t for the current tone of the GOP. She was W Bush’s communications director and Sarah Palin’s chief handler, for fucks sake and Al Sharpton is one of her most frequent panelists. I doubt he would suffer a racist so gladly.
There’s enough racism around that no one should have to imagine it where it isn’t.
(I know, I know, I may be forgetting to consider that everything is about Ron Powell, first and last, but sometimes I just do that.)
10/19/2020 @ 4:46 pm
“When JFK died similar statements were made about Ms. Kennedy’s dignity and fortitude. I, at least, never heard it attributed to her race. For just one example. I imagine Wallace’s comment was in the same vein and had nothing to do with race.”
The comments re Jackie Kennedy’s dignity and strength were about the magnitude of her comportment in regard to her posture as the tragically widowed 1st Lady, not a query or quandary as to how, or from whence or where she drew such qualities of character…
I didn’t know that you are/were Nerd Cred…
I didn’t intend to suggest that you were guilty of gratuitous usage of the ‘n’ word…There are others on the list who were guilty of such transgressions…
While MSNBC is a bastion of liberal spin, slant, and perspective, there are several Republicans in the broadcast rotation as commentators, contrubtors, analysts, and anchors…
“There’s enough racism around that no one should have to imagine it where it isn’t.”
Racism is deeply ingrained in the American psyche and subconscious.
Systemic and institutional racism are as prolific and as ubiquitous as the oxygen in the air we breathe…
It’s baked in to virtually every aspect of human endeavor, engagement, and interaction of the American social, political, and economic environment…
Yes, there’s enough racism around that no one should have to try to imagine that it isn’t where it is. (Which is everywhere.)
This post is about whether being “colorblind” can, or should, be equated with objectivity….
This post is not about whether Nicole Wallace is a racist…
10/19/2020 @ 2:33 pm
She might have spoken to the unspoken part of the question. For example:
“Where does the strength, courage, dignity, and grace come from, given that you must be utterly exhausted from burying your loved ones who were unarmed yet killed by law enforcement for petty non-violent crimes, or no crime at all, over and over and over for decades, with no end or change in sight?”
Maybe that makes the question too long for a sound byte. If more white people were aware of the shocking number of unarmed Brown and Black people killed by police, they might want to do more to evoke change.
David McAtee, August 3, 1966 – June 1, 2020 Louisville, Kentucky Shot: June 1, 2020, Louisville Metropolitan Police Officer
George Perry Floyd, October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020 Powderhorn, Minneapolis, Minnesota Knee on neck/Asphyxiated: May 25, 2020, Minneapolis Police Officer
Dreasjon “Sean” Reed, 1999 – May 6, 2020 Indianapolis, Indiana Shot: May 6, 2020, Unidentified Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officer
Michael Brent Charles Ramos, January 1, 1978 – April 24, 2020 Austin, Texas Shot: April 24, 2020, Austin Police Detectives
Breonna Taylor, June 5, 1993 – March 13, 2020 Louisville, Kentucky Shot: March 13, 2020, Louisville Metro Police Officers
Manuel “Mannie” Elijah Ellis, August 28, 1986 – March 3, 2020 Tacoma, Washington Physical restraint/Hypoxia: March 3, 2020, Tacoma Police Officers
Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, November 28, 1990 – October 12, 2019 Fort Worth, Texas Shot: October 12, 2019, Fort Worth Police Officer
Emantic “EJ” Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., June 18, 1997 – November 22, 2018 Hoover, Alabama Shot: November 22, 2018, Unidentified Hoover Police Officers
Charles “Chop” Roundtree Jr., September 5, 2000 – October 17, 2018 San Antonio, Texas Shot: October 17, 2018, San Antonio Police Officer
Chinedu Okobi, February 13, 1982 – October 3, 2018 Millbrae, California Tasered/Electrocuted: October 3, 2018, San Mateo County Sheriff Sergeant and Sheriff Deputies
Botham Shem Jean, September 29, 1991 – September 6, 2018 Dallas, Texas Shot: September 6, 2018, Dallas Police Officer
Antwon Rose Jr., July 12, 2000 – June 19, 2018 East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Shot: June 19, 2018, East Pittsburgh Police Officer
Saheed Vassell, December 22, 1983 – April 4, 2018 Brooklyn, New York City, New York Shot: April 4, 2018, Four Unnamed New York City Police Officers
Stephon Alonzo Clark, August 10, 1995 – March 18, 2018 Sacramento, California Shot: March 18, 2018, Sacramento Police Officers
Aaron Bailey, 1972 – June 29, 2017 Indianapolis, Indiana Shot: June 29, 2017, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officers
Charleena Chavon Lyles, April 24, 1987 – June 18, 2017 Seattle, Washington Shot: June 18, 2017, Seattle Police Officers
Fetus of Charleena Chavon Lyles (14-15 weeks), June 18, 2017 Seattle, Washington Shot: June 18, 2017, Seattle Police Officers
Jordan Edwards, October 25, 2001 – April 29, 2017 Balch Springs, Texas Shot: April 29, 2017, Balch Springs Officer
Chad Robertson, 1992 – February 15, 2017 Chicago, Illinois Shot: February 8, 2017, Chicago Police Officer
Deborah Danner, September 25, 1950 – October 18, 2016 The Bronx, New York City, New York Shot: October 18, 2016, New York City Police Officers
Alfred Olango, July 29, 1978 – September 27, 2016 El Cajon, California Shot: September 27, 2016, El Cajon Police Officers
Terence Crutcher, August 16, 1976 – September 16, 2016 Tulsa, Oklahoma Shot: September 16, 2016, Tulsa Police Officer
Terrence LeDell Sterling, July 31, 1985 – September 11, 2016 Washington, DC Shot: September 11, 2016, Washington Metropolitan Police Officer
Korryn Gaines, August 24, 1993 – August 1, 2016 Randallstown, Maryland Shot: August 1, 2016, Baltimore County Police
Joseph Curtis Mann, 1966 – July 11, 2016 Sacramento, California Shot: July 11, 2016, Sacramento Police Officers
Philando Castile, July 16, 1983 – July 6, 2016 Falcon Heights, Minnesota Shot: July 6, 2016, St. Anthony Police Officer
Alton Sterling, June 14, 1979 – July 5, 2016 Baton Rouge, Louisiana Shot: July 5, 2016, Baton Rouge Police Officers
Bettie “Betty Boo” Jones, 1960 – December 26, 2015 Chicago, Illinois Shot: December 26, 2015, Chicago Police Officer
Quintonio LeGrier, April 29, 1996 – December 26, 2015 Chicago, Illinois Shot: December 26, 2015, Chicago Police Officer
Corey Lamar Jones, February 3, 1984 – October 18, 2015 Palm Beach Gardens, Florida Shot: October 18, 2015, Palm Beach Gardens Police Officer
Jamar O’Neal Clark, May 3, 1991 – November 16, 2015 Minneapolis, Minnesota Shot: November 15, 2015, Minneapolis Police Officers
Jeremy “Bam Bam” McDole, 1987 – September 23, 2015 Wilmington, Delaware Shot: September 23, 2015, Wilmington Police Officers
India Kager, June 9, 1988 – September 5, 2015 Virginia Beach, Virginia Shot: September 5, 2015, Virginia Beach Police Officers
Samuel Vincent DuBose, March 12, 1972 – July 19, 2015 Cincinnati, Ohio Shot: July 19, 2015, University of Cincinnati Police Officer
Sandra Bland, February 7, 1987 – July 13, 2015 Waller County, Texas Excessive Force/Wrongful Death/Suicide (?): July 10, 2015, Texas State Trooper
Brendon K. Glenn, 1986 – May 5, 2015 Venice, California Shot: May 5, 2015, Los Angeles Police Officer
Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., August 16, 1989 – April 19, 2015 Baltimore, Maryland Brute Force/Spinal Injuries: April 12, 2015, Baltimore City Police Officers
Walter Lamar Scott, February 9, 1965 – April 4, 2015 North Charleston, South Carolina Shot: April 4, 2015, North Charleston Police Officer
Eric Courtney Harris, October 10, 1971 – April 2, 2015 Tulsa, Oklahoma Shot: April 2, 2015, Tulsa County Reserve Deputy
Phillip Gregory White, 1982 – March 31, 2015 Vineland, New Jersey K-9 Mauling/Respiratory distress: March 31, 2015, Vineland Police Officers
Mya Shawatza Hall, December 5, 1987 – March 30, 2015 Fort Meade, Maryland Shot: March 30, 2015, National Security Agency Police Officers
Meagan Hockaday, August 27, 1988 – March 28, 2015 Oxnard, California Shot: March 28, 2015, Oxnard Police Officer
Tony Terrell Robinson, Jr., October 18, 1995 – March 6, 2015 Madison, Wisconsin Shot: March 6, 2015, Madison Police Officer
Janisha Fonville, March 3, 1994 – February 18 2015 Charlotte, North Carolina Shot: February 18, 2015, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer
Natasha McKenna, January 9, 1978 – February 8, 2015 Fairfax County, Virginia Tasered/Cardiac Arrest: February 3, 2015, Fairfax County Sheriff Deputies
Jerame C. Reid, June 8, 1978 – December 30, 2014 Bridgeton, New Jersey Shot: December 30, 2014, Bridgeton Police Officer
Rumain Brisbon, November 24, 1980 – December 2, 2014 Phoenix, Arizona Shot: December 2, 2014, Phoenix Police Officer
Tamir Rice, June 15, 2002 – November 22, 2014 Cleveland, Ohio Shot: November 22, 2014, Cleveland Police Officer
Akai Kareem Gurley, November 12, 1986 – November 20, 2014 Brooklyn, New York City, New York Shot: November 20, 2014, New York City Police Officer
Tanisha N. Anderson, January 22, 1977 – November 13, 2014 Cleveland, Ohio Physically Restrained/Brute Force: November 13, 2014, Cleveland Police Officers
Dante Parker, August 14, 1977 – August 12, 2014 Victorville, California Tasered/Excessive Force: August 12, 2014, San Bernardino County Sheriff Deputies
Ezell Ford, October 14, 1988 – August 11, 2014 Florence, Los Angeles, California Shot: August 11, 2014, Los Angeles Police Officers
Michael Brown Jr., May 20, 1996 – August 9, 2014 Ferguson, Missouri Shot: August 9, 2014, Ferguson Police Officer
John Crawford III, July 29, 1992 – August 5, 2014 Beavercreek, Ohio Shot: August 5, 2014, Beavercreek Police Officer
Eric Garner, September 15, 1970 – July 17, 2014 Staten Island, New York Choke hold/Suffocated: July 17, 2014, New York City Police Officer
Dontre Hamilton, January 20, 1983 – April 30, 2014 Milwaukee, Wisconsin Shot: April 30, 2014, Milwaukee Police Officer
Victor White III, September 11, 1991 – March 3, 2014 New Iberia, Louisiana Shot: March 2, 2014, Iberia Parish Sheriff Deputy
Gabriella Monique Nevarez, November 25, 1991 – March 2, 2014 Citrus Heights, California Shot: March 2, 2014, Citrus Heights Police Officers
Yvette Smith, December 18, 1966 – February 16, 2014 Bastrop County, Texas Shot: February 16, 2014, Bastrop County Sheriff Deputy
McKenzie J. Cochran, August 25, 1988 – January 29, 2014 Southfield, Michigan Pepper Sprayed/Compression Asphyxiation: January 28, 2014, Northland Mall Security Guards
Jordan Baker, 1988 – January 16, 2014 Houston, Texas Shot: January 16, 2014, Off-duty Houston Police Officer
Andy Lopez, June 2, 2000 – October 22, 2013 Santa Rosa, California Shot: October 22, 2013, Sonoma County Sheriff Deputy
Miriam Iris Carey, August 12, 1979 – October 3, 2013 Washington, DC Shot 26 times: October 3, 2013, U. S. Secret Service Officer
Barrington “BJ” Williams, 1988 – September 17, 2013 New York City, New York Neglect/Disdain/Asthma Attack: September 17, 2013, New York City Police Officers
Jonathan Ferrell, October 11, 1989 – September 14, 2013 Charlotte, North Carolina Shot: September 14, 2013, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer
Carlos Alcis, 1970 – August 15, 2013 Brooklyn, New York City Heart Attack/Neglect: August 15, 2013, New York City Police Officers
Larry Eugene Jackson Jr., November 29, 1980 – July 26, 2013 Austin, Texas Shot: July 26, 2013, Austin Police Detective
Kyam Livingston, July 29, 1975 – July 21, 2013 New York City, New York Neglect/Ignored pleas for help: July 20-21, 2013, New York City Police Officers
Clinton R. Allen, September 26, 1987 – March 10, 2013 Dallas, Texas Tasered and Shot: March 10, 2013, Dallas Police Officer
Kimani “KiKi” Gray, October 19, 1996 – March 9, 2013 Brooklyn, New York City, New York Shot: March 9, 2013, New York Police Officers
Kayla Moore, April 17, 1971 – February 13, 2013 Berkeley, California Restrained face-down prone: February 12, 2013, Berkeley Police Officers
Jamaal Moore Sr., 1989 – December 15, 2012 Chicago, Illinois Shot: December 15, 2012, Chicago Police Officer
Johnnie Kamahi Warren, February 26, 1968 – February 13, 2012 Dothan, Alabama Tasered/Electrocuted: December 10, 2012, Houston County (AL) Sheriff Deputy
Shelly Marie Frey, April 21, 1985 – December 6, 2012 Houston, Texas Shot: December 6, 2012, Off-duty Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy
Darnisha Diana Harris, December 11, 1996 – December 2, 2012 Breaux Bridge, Louisiana Shot: December 2, 2012, Breaux Bridge Police Office
Timothy Russell, December 9. 1968 – November 29, 2012 Cleveland, Ohio 137 Rounds/Shot 23 times: November 29, 2012, Cleveland Police Officers
Malissa Williams, June 20, 1982 – November 29, 2012 Cleveland, Ohio 137 Rounds/Shot 24 times: November 29, 2012, Cleveland Police Officers
Noel Palanco, November 28, 1989 – October 4, 2012 Queens, New York City, New York Shot: October 4, 2012, New York City Police Officers
Reynaldo Cuevas, January 6, 1992 – September 7, 2012 Bronx, New York City, New York Shot: September 7, 2012, New York City Police Officer
Chavis Carter, 1991 – July 28, 2012 Jonesboro, Arkansas Shot: July 28, 2012, Jonesboro Police Officer
Alesia Thomas, June 1, 1977 – July 22, 2012 Los Angeles, California Brutal Force/Beaten: July 22, 2012, Los Angeles Police Officers
Shantel Davis, May 26, 1989 – June 14, 2012 New York City, New York Shot: June 14, 2012, New York City Police Officer
Sharmel T. Edwards, October 10, 1962 – April 21, 2012 Las Vegas, Nevada Shot: April 21, 2012, Las Vegas Police Officers
Tamon Robinson, December 21, 1985 – April 18, 2012 Brooklyn, New York City, New York Run over by police car: April 12, 2012, New York City Police Officers
Ervin Lee Jefferson, III, 1994 – March 24, 2012 Atlanta, Georgia Shot: March 24, 2012, Shepperson Security & Escort Services Security Guards
Kendrec McDade, May 5, 1992 – March 24, 2012 Pasadena, California Shot: March 24, 2012, Pasadena Police Officers
Rekia Boyd, November 5, 1989 – March 21, 2012 Chicago, Illinois Shot: March 21, 2012, Off-duty Chicago Police Detective
Shereese Francis, 1982 – March 15, 2012 Queens, New York City, New York Suffocated to death: March 15, 2012, New York City Police Officers
Jersey K. Green, June 17, 1974 – March 12, 2012 Aurora, Illinois Tasered/Electrocuted: March 12, 2012, Aurora Police Officers
Wendell James Allen, December 19, 1991 – March 7, 2012 New Orleans, Louisiana Shot: March 7, 2012, New Orleans Police Officer
Nehemiah Lazar Dillard, July 29, 1982 – March 5, 2012 Gainesville, Florida Tasered/Electrocuted: March 5, 2012, Alachua County Sheriff Deputies
Dante’ Lamar Price, July 18, 1986 – March 1, 2012 Dayton, Ohio Shot: March 1, 2012, Ranger Security Guards
Raymond Luther Allen Jr., 1978 – February 29, 2012 Galveston, Texas Tasered/Electrocuted: February 27, 2012, Galveston Police Officers
Manual Levi Loggins Jr., February 22, 1980 – February 7, 2012 San Clemente, Orange County, California Shot: February 7, 2012, Orange County Sheriff Deputy
Ramarley Graham, April 12, 1993 – February 2, 2012 The Bronx, New York City, New York Shot: February 2, 2012, New York City Police Officer
Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., April 12, 1943 – November 19, 2011 White Plains, New York Tasered/Electrocuted/Shot: November 19, 2011, White Plains Police Officers
Alonzo Ashley, June 10, 1982 – July 18, 2011 Denver, Colorado Tasered/Electrocuted: July 18, 2011, Denver Police Officers
Derek Williams, January 23, 1989 – July 6, 2011 Milwaukee, Wisconsin Blunt Force/Respiratory distress: July 6, 2011, Milwaukee Police Officers
Raheim Brown, Jr., March 4, 1990 – January 22, 2011 Oakland, California Shot: January 22, 2011, Oakland Unified School District Police
Reginald Doucet, June 3, 1985 – January 14, 2011 Los Angeles, California Shot: January 14, 2011, Los Angeles Police Officer
Derrick Jones, September 30, 1973 – November 8, 2010 Oakland, California Shot: November 8, 2010, Oakland Police Officers
Danroy “DJ” Henry Jr., October 29, 1990 – October 17, 2010 Pleasantville, New York Shot: October 17, 2020, Pleasantville Police Officer
Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones, July 20, 2002 – May 16, 2010 Detroit, Michigan Shot: May 16, 2010, Detroit Police Officer
Steven Eugene Washington, September 20, 1982 – March 20, 2010 Los Angeles, California Shot: March 20, 2010, Los Angeles County Police
Aaron Campbell, September 7, 1984 – January 29, 2010 Portland, Oregon Shot: January 29, 2010, Portland Police Officer
Kiwane Carrington, July 14, 1994 – October 9, 2009 Champaign, Illinois Shot: October 9, 2019, Champaign Police Officer
Victor Steen, November 11, 1991 – October 3, 2009 Pensacola, Florida Tasered/Run over: October 3, 2009, Pensacola Police Officer
Shem Walker, March 18, 1960 – July 11, 2009 Brooklyn, New York Shot: July 11, 2009, New York City Undercover C-94 Police Officer
Oscar Grant III, February 27, 1986 – January 1, 2009 Oakland, California Shot: January 1, 2009, BART Police Officer
Tarika Wilson, October 30, 1981 – January 4, 2008 Lima, Ohio Shot January 4, 2008, Lima Police Officer
DeAunta Terrel Farrow, September 7, 1994 – June 22, 2007 West Memphis, Arkansas Shot: June 22, 2007, West Memphis (AR) Police Officer
Sean Bell, May 23, 1983 – November 25, 2006 Queens, New York City, New York Shot: November 25, 2006, New York City Police Officers
Kathryn Johnston, June 26, 1914 – November 21, 2006 Atlanta, Georgia Shot: November 21, 2006, Undercover Atlanta Police Officers
Ronald Curtis Madison, March 1, 1965 – September 4, 2005 Danziger Bridge, New Orleans, Louisiana Shot: September 4, 2005, New Orleans Police Officers
James B. Brissette Jr., November 6, 1987 – September 4, 2005 Danziger Bridge, New Orleans, Louisiana Shot: September 4, 2005, New Orleans Police Officers
Henry “Ace” Glover, October 2, 1973 – September 2, 2005 New Orleans, Louisiana Shot: September 2, 2005, New Orleans Police Officers
Timothy Stansbury, Jr., November 16, 1984 – January 24, 2004 Brooklyn, New York City, New York Shot: January 24, 2004, New York City Police Officer
Ousmane Zongo, 1960 – May 22, 2003 New York City, New York Shot: May 22, 2003, New York City Police Officer
Alberta Spruill, 1946 – May 16, 2003 New York City, New York Stun grenade thrown into her apartment led to a heart attack: May 16, 2003, New York City Police Officer
Kendra Sarie James, December 24, 1981 – May 5, 2003 Portland, Oregon Shot: May 5, 2003, Portland Police Officer
Orlando Barlow, December 29, 1974 – February 28, 2003 Las Vegas, Nevada Shot: February 28, 2003, Las Vegas Police Officer
Timothy DeWayne Thomas Jr., July 25, 1981 – April 7, 2001 Cincinnati, Ohio Shot: April 7, 2001, Cincinnati Police Patrolman
Ronald Beasley, 1964 – June 12, 2000 Dellwood, Missouri Shot: June 12, 2000, Dellwood Police Officers
Earl Murray, 1964 – June 12, 2000 Dellwood, Missouri Shot: June 12, 2000, Dellwood Police Officers
Patrick Moses Dorismond, February 28, 1974 – March 16, 2000 New York City, New York Shot: March 16, 2000, New York City Police Officer
Prince Carmen Jones Jr., March 30, 1975 – September 1, 2000 Fairfax County, Virginia Shot: September 1, 2000, Prince George’s County Police Officer
Malcolm Ferguson, October 31, 1976 – March 1, 2000 The Bronx, New York City, New York Shot: March 1, 2000, New York City Police Officer
LaTanya Haggerty, 1973 – June 4, 1999 Chicago, Illinois Shot: June 4, 1999, Chicago Police Officer
Margaret LaVerne Mitchell, 1945 – May 21, 1999 Los Angeles, California Shot: May 21, 1999, Los Angeles Police Officer
Amadou Diallo, September 2, 1975 – February 4, 1999 The Bronx, New York City, New York Shot: February 4, 1999, New York City Police Officers
Tyisha Shenee Miller, March 9, 1979 – December 28, 1998 Riverside, California Shot: December 28, 1998, Riverside Police Officers
Dannette “Strawberry” Daniels, January 25, 1966 – June 7, 1997 Newark, New Jersey Shot: June 7, 1997, Newark Police Officer
Frankie Ann Perkins, 1960 – March 22, 1997 Chicago, Illinois Brutal Force/Strangled: March 22, 1997, Chicago Police Officers
Nicholas Heyward Jr., August 26, 1981 – September 27, 1994 Brooklyn, New York City, New York Shot: September 27, 1994, New York City Police Officer
Mary Mitchell, 1950 – November 3, 1991 The Bronx, New York City, New York Shot: November 3, 1991, New York City Police Officer
Yvonne Smallwood, July 26, 1959 – December 9, 1987 New York City, New York Severely beaten/Massive blood clot: December 3, New York City Police Officers
Eleanor Bumpers, August 22, 1918 – October 29, 1984 The Bronx, New York City, New York Shot: October 29, 1984, New York City Police Officer
Michael Jerome Stewart, May 9, 1958 – September 28, 1983 New York City, New York Brutal Force: September 15, 1983, New York City Transit Police
Eula Mae Love, August 8, 1939 – January 3, 1979 Los Angeles, California Shot: January 3, 1979, Los Angeles County Police Officers
Arthur Miller Jr., 1943 – June 14, 1978 Brooklyn, New York City, New York Chokehold/Strangled: June 14, 1978, New York City Police Officers
Randolph Evans, April 5, 1961 – November 25, 1976 Brooklyn, New York City, New York Shot in head: November 25, 1976, New York City Police Officer
Barry Gene Evans, August 29, 1958 – February 10, 1976 Los Angeles, California Shot: February 10, 1976, Los Angeles Police Officers
Rita Lloyd, January 27, 1973 New York City, New York Shot: January 27, 1973, New York City Police Officer
Henry Dumas, July 20, 1934 – May 23, 1968 Harlem, New York City, New York Shot: May 23, 1968, New York City Transit Police Officer
******************************************************
UPDATE: OCTOBER 12, 2020
Jonathan Dwayne Price, November 3, 1988 – October 3, 2020 Wolfe City, Texas Tasered/Shot: October 3, 2020, Wolfe City Police Officer
Dijon Durand Kizzee, February 5, 1991 – August 31, 2020 Los Angeles, California Shot: August 21, 2020, Los Angeles County Police
Rayshard Brooks, January 31, 1993 – June 12, 2020 Atlanta, Georgia Shot: June 12, 2020, Atlanta Police Officer
Carlos Carson, May 16, 1984 – June 6, 2020 Tulsa, Oklahoma Pepper Sprayed/Shot in Head: June 6, 2020, Knights Inn Tulsa Armed Security Guard, former sergeant and detention officer with the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office
Tony McDade, 1982 – May 27, 2020 Tallahassee, Florida Shot: May 27, 2020, Tallahassee Police Officers
Daniel T. Prude, 1979 – March 30, 2020 Rochester, New York Asphyxiation: March 23, 2020, Rochester Police Officers
William Howard Green, March 16, 1976 – January 27, 2020 Temple Hills, Maryland Shot: January 27, 2020, Prince George’s County Police Officer
John Elliot Neville, 1962 – December 4, 2019 Winston-Salem, North Carolina Asphyxiated (hog-tied in prone position)/Heart Attack/Brain Injury: December 2, 2019, Forsyth County Sheriff Officers
Elijah McClain, 1996 – August 30, 2019 Aurora, Colorado Chokehold/Ketamine/Heart Attack: August 24, 2019, Aurora Police Officers and Paramedic
Ronald Greene, September 28, 1969 – May 10, 2019 Monroe, Louisiana Stun gun/Force: May 10, 2019, Louisiana State Police
Sterling Lapree Higgins, 1982 – March 25, 2019 Union City, Tennessee Choke hold/Asphyxiation: March 24-25, 2019, Union City Police Officer and Obion County Sheriff Deputies
Javier Ambler, October 7, 1978 – March 28, 2019 Austin, Texas Tasered/Electrocuted: March 28, 2019, Williamson County Sheriff Deputy
Anton Black, 1999 – September 15, 2018 Greensboro, Maryland Tasered/Sudden Cardiac Arrest: September 15, 2018, Greensboro Police Officers
Dennis Plowden, 1992 – December 27, 2017 East Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Shot: December 27, 2017, Philadelphia Police Officer
Bijan Ghaisar, 1992 – November 27, 2017 George Washington Memorial Parkway, Alexandria, Virginia Shot: November 17, 2017, U.S. Park Police Officers
Aaron Bailey, 1972 – June 29, 2017 Indianapolis, Indiana Shot: June 29, 2017, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officer
Tyree Woodson, 1976 – August 2, 2014 Baltimore, Maryland Shot: August 2, 2014, Baltimore City Police Officer https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcpnews-intro-20170523-htmlstory.html http://baltimorebeat.com/2020/08/05/what-happened-to-tyree-woodson-intro/
Nelson Martinez-Mendez, 1977 – August 8, 2001 Bellevue, Washington Shot: August 8, 2001, Bellevue Police Officer
10/19/2020 @ 4:49 pm
@Greenheron;
Thanks for the compilation…
10/19/2020 @ 4:01 pm
We seem to get along better these days.
Sort of.
10/20/2020 @ 10:59 am
Great work, compiling this list. I have wanted to see such a list for a long time. Here’s a project idea: insert links to each person’s story (assuming you can find them.) When you have done that, you can post links on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets to draw readership to the article, or I can do that for you if you want. You may have noticed that we are having some problems with the website right now. We’re working on it.
10/20/2020 @ 12:47 pm
Hi Alan,
I didn’t make this carefully compiled list. You can find out more about it on Renee Ater’s blog here: https://www.reneeater.com/on-monuments-blog/tag/list+of+unarmed+black+people+killed+by+police
I found her list simply by googling “unarmed black people killed by law enforcement” and her blog was the first return. There were many others though. The format was lost in the copy and paste, but the sheer visual mass of it is effective.
One of my former colleagues is now on the faculty at Pratt, and has made art with the list. One piece was exhibited at the MFA in Boston a couple years ago, every name written on a vast wall, powerful shades of the Vietnam War Memorial. He also had a highly viral post about when he was profiled by the Boston police that made the msm. https://www.stevelocke.com/
I’m a founding member of the Facebook Resistance, have never even seen it, as they won’t allow plebes to look without joining, which is fine 🙂
10/22/2020 @ 3:17 pm
No.
I’d walk down the toughest road with NW. Your well-tuned innuendo of MSNBC’s poster child
approaches a sublimable critique & quest toward what (with all due respect & empathy) jolts me
into a ‘1984-ish preoccupation’ with the stale-dated enthusiasms for Herbert Marcuse’s
‘One Dimensional Man’ [ISBN 0-415-07429-0]. A Charlie Rose interview with Marcuse & Mailer for the many here among us seeking edification (peace on earth down/up in the ghetto) coupled with progressivism without prognostication. Right now, I don’t know if I should vet the backroads of my mind with Sinatra’s ‘High Hopes’ or challenge the amps with another marathon-play of Eddie Grant.
Mulligan of the United States is beyond the pale!
Tea & oranges all around Professor Powell!
!T.Y.!
10/23/2020 @ 9:26 am
@JPH;
This post is about whether being “colorblind” can, or should, be equated with objectivity….
This post is not about whether Nicole Wallace is a racist…
10/25/2020 @ 10:27 am
I’ve had a ton of trouble commenting on this thread. I’ve had comments not appear, then I duplicated it, then both appeared, then both disappeared. I was initially trying to respond to Greenheron as to why I presented your definition of racism rather than leaving you to do it. I did it to avoid the two of you using different definitions and trying to talk to each other while assuming you were operating with a shared definition. I’ve learned over time that addressing assumptions is critical, more critical and more useful (on both ends) than addressing direct questions.
You know my feelings on colorblindness and objectivity. You were kind enough to quote me on it.
Regarding Nicole Wallace: For whatever it’s worth, whether or not she is racist, I don’t think her question to the Floyd family indicates that she is. “Where do you get the strength/dignity?” is an admiring question, not an accusing question. I just don’t see “you obviously get it from a racial advantage” as implied here. The difference race makes here is how it increases adversity, and so the ability to deal with increased adversity is admired and, in including dignity, that increased adversity is acknowledged.
And here I’m going to flip the discussion: To fail to acknowledge that extra adversity by acknowledging dignity would be to practice inappropriate colorblindness.
I sure hope this comment publishes and stays up.
Alan, if it doesn’t and you see this, I’ll need some help. Thank you.
10/24/2020 @ 10:24 am
This statement appears at the very beginning of this post:
“This post is about whether being “colorblind” can, or should, be equated with objectivity….
This post is not about whether Nicole Wallace is a racist…”
Beginning with the very first comment by Koshersalaami you wouldn’t be able to glean the nature, purpose, and intent of this inquiry into the issue or question of
‘Journalistic colorblindness’ as a key element in the normalization of reporting on Trump and Trumpism and his followers and supporters.
Is it possible to return to the main theme or has it been lost in the sauce of social media gobbledygook?
10/25/2020 @ 10:28 am
Ron,
Just so I know: Are you screening comments?
10/25/2020 @ 11:17 am
@Koshersalaami;
No, I am not screening or vetting comments…
10/26/2020 @ 10:38 am
The site wasn’t taking comments for a couple of days. Technical problems. It wasn’t my comments, it was everyone’s.
10/25/2020 @ 9:04 pm
No comments have published on the site in two days as of right now, 9:03 PM EDT Sun. 10/25. This is a test.
10/26/2020 @ 7:08 pm
On the subject of Nicole Wallace and racism, I find it is more complex the more you look at it. I remember seeing the comment that you referenced, but can’t about whom she was referring. I think she meant to say, how does someone manage to gather the grace to conduct themselves in such a way, but she said it in a way that can be plausibly interpreted to have vastly different meanings. Your analysis, Ron, check me if I am wrong, says that her meaning is based upon an assumption of otherness and superiority. It is a solid analysis, although I do not agree. Mind you, I don’t have a solid refutation. My only thought on it was that I dont think she meant to make such an egregious statement. Of course, that depends entirely upon perspective too, and that makes your analysis entirely plausible.
This year has been exhausting and excruciating. The social fabric is tearing, and these wounds will be slow to heal. I think we are learning a great deal about fairy tales that we have told ourselves and the world about what a wonderful place this is. It isn’t. It is pitiful. Part of that pitiful-ness is the foundation that makes Ron’s interpretation of Wallace’s comment quite plausible. We are that callous and that stupid.
I believe Wallace to be a very good person. I kind of like her…what I know of her. But, I have been way wrong before. After a year like this one, I dont trust my own view of her as I might have a few years ago. At the very least, the way she worded her comment was foolish.
10/28/2020 @ 7:14 am
@Bitey;
“This post is about whether being “colorblind” can, or should, be equated with objectivity….
This post is not about whether Nicole Wallace is a racist…”
“Your analysis, Ron, check me if I am wrong, says that her meaning is based upon an assumption of otherness and superiority…. I dont think she meant to make such an egregious statement.”
That said; What makes my analysis entirely plausible is that the racism that is manifest in the remark is entirely unintended.
However, the fact that it was unintended doesn’t make it less racist…
She didn’t intend to make “such an egregious statement”. She intended to be color blind in her reporting…
To my knowledge, no black reporter asked that question, and I doubt that any black reporter would…
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that black people were incapable of manifesting fundamental human qualities and emotions as a means of justifying the regarding and treating black people as being unequal to whites as human beings…
“Destroying families didn’t bother Jefferson, because he believed blacks lacked basic human emotions. “Their griefs are transient,” he wrote, and their love lacked “a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.”
The Real Thomas Jefferson https://nyti.ms/VbnPzp
This subconscious sentiment persists to this day. If you’re paying attention, you can see it in police and prosecutorial policies, practices, procedures, and protocols re black people.
And, you can hear it in the so-called colorblind news reports and broadcast commentary that purports to be otherwise ‘fair’, ‘balanced’ or ‘objective’
It’s the unintended, but very subtle and nuanced, racism that is baked into such attempts at being “colorblind” that is the focus of this post…
Manifestations of racism are not limited to police choke holds, race based voting laws, images of firehoses and police dogs, or gratuitous use of the ‘n’ word…
Manifestations of racism needn’t be overt, purposeful, or intentional to be called out…
10/28/2020 @ 7:32 am
I don’t disagree with that analysis. I think I am past the point of being able to expect decency from…I dont even think I know how to express it. I am beyond exhaustion from the past 4 years. I dare not type or speak some of my own thoughts about it. They offend me. So, you’re probably right.
10/28/2020 @ 5:57 pm
Ron,
There may be another reason no Black reporter would ask that question, and I already alluded to it. The dignity question could be exactly the opposite: it could be an acknowledgment of extra obstacles Black people face. White people in a situation anything like this don’t face the same kinds of attacks on their dignity. In other words, Wallace may have asked that question because she wasn’t being colorblind.
A long time ago, years ago, Bitey and I had a conversation about peoples, I think I was alluding mostly to ethnic groups, valuing the scarce commodity. I find this to be a very useful analytical tool, not just nationally but worldwide. I observed that probably the scarcest commodity to the American Black community is respect. That’s why dissing can be dangerous, because you don’t play with a scarce commodity – it’s too valuable. Dignity is a successful dealing with the attempted theft of that commodity. As such, it is an appropriate question specifically for a Black family under these circumstances. How can you handle this myriad of assaults at once? I have doubts over whether I could.
I don’t know Wallace well enough to know why she is likely to have asked. Perhaps Bitey does. I’m just pointing out that this could go either way, either unconscious racism or a lack of colorblindness.
10/28/2020 @ 7:49 pm
@Koshersalaami
Why do you persist in ignoring the following:
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that black people were incapable of manifesting fundamental human qualities and emotions as a means of justifying the regarding and treating black people as being unequal to whites as human beings…
“Destroying families didn’t bother Jefferson, because he believed blacks lacked basic human emotions. “Their griefs are transient,” he wrote, and their love lacked “a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.”
The Real Thomas Jefferson https://nyti.ms/VbnPzp
This subconscious sentiment persists to this day.
Inadvertent racism is racism nonetheless…
Re Bitey, take another look at his 1st comment and cipher the last sentence:
“At the very least, the way she worded her comment was foolish.”
In my view, her comment was a “foolishly racist” attempt at being ‘colorblind’ and not at all objective…
I could argue that re black people, white journalists are incapable of objectivity. This is especially so when they attempt to be color blind…
10/29/2020 @ 11:38 am
Why do I ignore Thomas Jefferson when trying to figure out if Wallace was being sensitive or insensitive? Because I doubt Wallace checked with Jefferson before she asked the Floyd family that question.
Why do you ignore what I actually say and just notice that I seem to be arguing? That’s a much more reasonable question than yours. I brought forward the possibility that Wallace’s question might or might not be an indication of a lack of colorblindness in that she may have tailored her question specifically to their circumstances. Note the “might or might not” here. Why didn’t you address what I actually said?
10/29/2020 @ 2:42 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“Because I doubt Wallace checked with Jefferson before she asked the Floyd family that question.”
My reference to Jefferson is a means of establishing that racism is in the American societal DNA…Wallace needn’t check with Jefferson re the racism that is deeply ingrained in her subconscious mind…
The question was not posed to the family as part of an interview. It was raised as a rhetorical element of her observations about the family during a televised broadcast of a memorial service for Floyd.
Wallace was in a remote, off site, control room, she was not doing an up close and personal interview.
Perhaps this fact will help you to rethink the ambiguity and ambivalence of your two-way, “might or might not”, inquiry…
10/30/2020 @ 12:14 am
Ron,
Do you think I am unaware that racism is in America’s DNA?
10/30/2020 @ 1:04 am
@Koshersalaami;
There are times when your comments can make me wonder where, or what, your historical perspective is….
E.g.;
“Because I doubt Wallace checked with Jefferson before she asked the Floyd family that question.”
10/30/2020 @ 6:08 pm
That was sarcasm based on your irresistible urge to lecture me. If I potentially disagree with you about Wallace’s statement, it should be abundantly apparent to you that I do not do so based on a lack of awareness of the pervasiveness of racism in America, and lecturing me about Jefferson in this context is inappropriate, not to mention insulting. If you want to lecture someone about Jefferson who denies racism wherever they see it, go ahead, but I’m nowhere near that category. All I am saying is that I find some ambiguity about the ramifications of what Wallace stated. When I see substantial ambiguity or credible ambiguity, I keep my eyes open, hold my fire to a certain extent, and I might observe that such ambiguity exists – in both directions, meaning I’d both advise being careful about issuing an accusation and about assuming there is no accusation to be made.
If you want to make the case that “dignity” is a dog whistle, make it, but discuss your experiences that lead you to this conclusion, as in tell us where you’ve seen the term used disparagingly or perhaps even how you’ve seen it used disparagingly. I’m perfectly willing to be educated. I’d certainly do the same for you about antisemitism. I would also expect you not to be aware of all antisemitic dog whistles and I wouldn’t hold against you what you haven’t been exposed to.
If “dignity” is a dog whistle, most of the rest of the people who are at all active here don’t seem to be aware of it, as I am not. You will notice that you have been at least questioned on your point about Wallace by everyone who normally comments on your threads who is an ally. Does that mean everyone here who is an ally needs to hear about Jefferson?
10/30/2020 @ 10:41 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“Does that mean everyone here who is an ally needs to hear about Jefferson?”
No, it means that the people who purport to be allies need to stop looking for evidence of intent, purposefulness, conciousness,
or scienter on the part of Nicole Wallace re my calling out the racism expressed and contained in her utterance…
Scienter is a legal term for intent or knowledge of wrongdoing. An offending party then has knowledge of the “wrongness” of an act or event prior to committing it
I have stated repeatedly that unintended or inadvertent racism is racism nonetheless…
People here want ‘proof’ that Nicole Wallace is a racist…
Beyond stating that she’s a white American, what ‘proof’ is there that should be offered when the post is not about whether Nicole Wallace is a racist…
This post is about whether being “colorblind” can, or should, be equated with objectivity….
Nobody has undertaken to address the issue raised because they’d rather go down the name calling rabbit hole…
I DID NOT CALL NICOLE. WALLACE A RACIST.
Yet, folks here want me to ‘prove ‘ that she’s a racist as a means of substantiating the notion that her utterance re the Floyd family was racist…
If folks here can’t distinguish between that which may be perceived as racist, whether intended or not, and that which is an overt manifestation or expression of racism, the question or issue of colorblindess v objectivity goes nowhere…
10/31/2020 @ 3:45 pm
I have raised the possibility, complete with rationale, that what Wallace said may be an indication of the opposite of colorblindness.
Part of what colorblindness consists of is Anatole France’s quote about how it is equally illegal for rich and poor people to sleep under bridges.
The other part of colorblindness consists of blindness toward consistently exceptional injustice faced by Black people.
How does Wallace fit into this?
I’m not trying to get you to prove she’s a racist. What I have pointed out is there is a lot of ambiguity here, and that one interpretation of what she said indicates the opposite of colorblindness and instead makes a specific reference to extra difficulties faced by Black people. I might be right about that or I might be wrong about it, but you haven’t addressed it at all. You’re far more worried about the fact that I entertained that possibility in the first place. Why you aren’t addressing my point specifically I don’t know.
What about wondering aloud about extraordinary resilience in the face of an extraordinarily awful sequence of events is racist?
This is a reasonable question.
You’re acting like the link between Wallace and colorblindness is obvious. Not to me it isn’t. I don’t know what I’m missing here, but I’m reasonably sure it has nothing to do with whether I recognize that racism is pervasive. You are not talking to someone who reflexively denies that racism is involved in any given action. That’s not who I am, you know that’s not who I am, but that’s how you’re talking to me.
11/01/2020 @ 11:04 am
@Koshersalaami;
You wrote:
“What’s phony about colorblindness is that it involves consciousness of discrimination in only one direction.”
Your posture here is doing damage to the rectitude, veracity, validity, and value of the observation and assertion you made which is a quoted cornerstone and motivation for this post…
Try to keep in mind that while I am responding to you, I am also writing for the benefit of a wider audience many of whom don’t share your mind-set and/or don’t agree with or acknowledge my perspective as accurate, valid, or legitimate…
11/02/2020 @ 1:12 am
I still don’t understand what makes you sure this is disparaging and I really don’t understand how Wallace’s question relates to colorblindness
11/02/2020 @ 7:53 am
@Koshersalaami;
Not disparaging, self contradictory…
“I really don’t understand how Wallace’s question relates to colorblindness.”
If you were me you would…
Just as you have provided me with a heightened degree of sensitivity and awareness re antisemitism…
Suffice it to say that if the Floyd family were white, the question doesn’t arise as an effort to be ‘colorblind’ and a subconscious manifestation of the racism that is baked into the relationships between white and black people in this country…
You can’t or don’t see it because you, like so many others, reflexively tend, and prefer, to see racism as a intentional act and a concious choice in perspective and attitude….
11/02/2020 @ 10:32 am
Particularly if you are writing for a wider audience, you need more of an explanation of exactly how Wallace’s comment is racist and how it plays into colorblindness, which are actually two different questions. If I were talking about something being antisemitic, it would come with an explanation, probably even some sort of history, something to indicate what kind of pattern it fits. If someone were to post, for example, a rumor that the Rothschilds owned controlling interest in every major nation’s international bank, including those of Iran and China, the first thing I’d tell you is that there is a common antisemitic theme over centuries that “the Jews control the banks” and tell you that the Rothschilds were the original Jewish banking family. I’d then explain why the rumor couldn’t be true factually, which would indicate that its origins could only be based on antisemitism because there is no other candidate for an origin to this story. Complaining by itself doesn’t do it unless we’re talking a serious level of obvious, like when I was a couple of people stating years ago that Trump scared me more than Pence did (and explaining why), then being told the only reason I could possibly think that was because Pence was more reflexively pro-Likud than Trump was. Anyone not Jewish sharing my opinion of course didn’t have their opinion attributed to the same cause. This particular ostensible cause was extra problematic (and way untrue) because it attributed my putting Israel’s interests over American interests in American politics, and as an American I don’t like my loyalty questioned because I’m Jewish. That’s another antisemitic theme. This is similar (not about the patriotism) to what happened to Bill Beck years ago when he was told on Open that the reason he supported Obama was that he (Bill) was Black, even though others of us supporting Obama were not Black. When I called that offender on this, saying “you might not want to say this, and here’s why,” much to my surprise he doubled down, and his views were far more Left than Right, so his doubling down was really surprising. Until this showed up as a pattern.
I’m not arguing for the sake of arguing. I read this question of Wallace’s, I’m actively looking for racism, I don’t know her so I have no reason to defend her on those grounds, but I don’t see a clear case. I don’t see either clear case, and there are two cases being made here. The first is that the remark is racist. Maybe “dignity” is a code word, but the fact of the circumstances is that their dignity really was attacked in a way White peoples’ wouldn’t have been. If I’m wrong here I could use an explanation as to how, and anyone else reading this could presumably use the same explanation. You might notice in your comment stream that the first reaction of everyone reading this, without exception, is that they didn’t see this. That tells you loudly and clearly that your message is not getting across. If you want to get it across, make the effort. It’s time to teach.
The second thing I don’t see is what this has to do with colorblindness. Exactly what Black obstacle is Wallace assuming doesn’t exist?
Put on your lawyer hat or your professor hat and lay out your two cases. As I told you in a previous comment, I am perfectly willing to be taught about this. I am not looking to refute you, but as things stand I won’t recognize this the next time I see it because I don’t recognize it this time (as is true of most of your commenters) and I don’t know what to look for or why.
11/02/2020 @ 1:13 pm
@Koshersalaami;
The remark is racist:
“Maybe “dignity” is a code word, but the fact of the circumstances is that their dignity really was attacked in a way White peoples’ wouldn’t have been.”
I can accept your shorthand or truncated assessment and explanation of this issue.
“Exactly what Black obstacle is Wallace assuming doesn’t exist?”
Correctly stated:
Exactly what obstacle for black people is Wallace (white people) assuming doesn’t exist.
The obstacle faced by black people that white people assume doesn’t exist is the failure of white people to see black people as human beings.
Or, the failure of white people to see black people as they see themselves.
My references to the Jefferson comments about the nature of black people creates a historical context for the attitude reflected in the Wallace remark…
If you’re looking for something that is overt or something that may be characterized as intentional, you won’t see it because it isn’t there…
Re a pattern of racial insensitivity and lack of awareness. I place her inquiry in the category of questions and comments I’ve had directed at me all my life:
“I didn’t know that black people combed their hair.”
—–Men’s room in a dorm at Yale University…
“Black people can live on less than white people.”
—–Explanation for why I didn’t receive standard increase in salary given by department head at the University of Hartford….
“What are you all dressed up for?”
—–Inquiry of a subordinate re my attire when I was head of a division in the Connecticut State Treasury Department….
These are but a very few examples of the kinds of comments, remarks, and questions black people hear and get from white people every day…
Inadvertent or unintentional manifestations of racism are no less disrespectful, insulting, damaging, destructive, or hurtful than the overt and intentional variety…
“If you can’t see, hear, or feel, the racism that a black person says that is extant in a statement or scenario, accept that it is there whether you can see it or not…”
—–Tim Wise
11/02/2020 @ 6:18 pm
As things currently stand, I’d never recognize this myself because I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m not telling you I wouldn’t recognize someone White not treating Black people as human beings; there are plenty of circumstances where I would. But I wouldn’t here because I don’t see how this fits that pattern. And even knowing this about what Wallace said I’d never be able to explain to another White person how this fits that pattern. All I can say is “It fits because Ron says it does.” But I can’t help in the future if I don’t get it.
Usually a rationale presents itself. I’ll give you an old example from Open Salon: Someone there once made a reference to Bill Beck’s “patois.” A White friend of mine asked me in a private conversation: “What’s racist about patois?” And I had an answer that my friend agreed with when I pointed it out: “Look at Bill’s writing style. It’s very correct, very articulate, almost formal. There’s no way to get from Bill’s writing style to patois. The only way you can get from Bill to patois is to look at his photograph. That’s what makes it racist.”
I want an explanation I can understand like that. “How do you maintain your dignity, in the face of your grief and your anger, when a police department treats your family member like garbage?” To be able to pull that off is exceptional. If it weren’t exceptional, there would be no reason to include dignity in the question – “after all, anyone Black can handle that. They’re used to it. “ That would be colorblind. From what I can see, it would be more colorblind to assume that Of Course a Black family could handle that than not to assume that.
And this is my other question: Not only how is this racist, but how is it colorblind? I don’t see the mechanism whereby an assumption of extra difficulties isn’t being made.
I need help here. I can’t make this work in my head. I want to see it. It is obvious to me that you hear something, something familiar and unwelcome. Something is making you think “Here we go again.” What is it, and whatever it is, what makes it specifically an example of colorblindness rather than just an example of racism?
11/03/2020 @ 2:44 am
@Koshersalaami;
I didn’t say that this is an example of being ‘colorblind’. I said that the comment was a failed attempt at being colorblind which by your own reckoning is “phony”….
Hence her comment is a “phony” attempt at being “phony”…
White people can’t and don’t acknowledge the humanity of black people, so when there is an utterance phrased as a compliment to that which hasn’t been acknowledged in the first place, the red flags go up in my mind…
You and others must learn to accept the wisdom of Wise’s advice…
When, NY Mayor, Bill de Blasio attempted to make a Joke about CP time, Obama countered by saying that there are certain things that white folks shouldn’t say, much less find humor in…
Here, I will borrow from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who said of obscenity in a Supreme Court ruling:
“I know it when I see it.”
Wallace’s comment is racist because my 74 years of being black in this country and society tells me that it is…
Re racism: I know it when I see it…
The phrase “I know it when I see it” is a colloquial expression by which a speaker attempts to categorize an observable fact or event, although the category is subjective or lacks clearly defined parameters. The phrase was used in 1964 by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio.[1][2] In explaining why the material at issue in the case was not obscene under the Roth test, and therefore was protected speech that could not be censored, Stewart wrote:
“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…..”
11/03/2020 @ 9:02 am
While observing the posture and behavior of the bereaved Floyd family, she blithely asked:
“Where does the strength, courage, dignity, and grace come from?”
If it is an accepted given that all humans are equal, why even ask this question? Wouldn’t human strength/courage/dignity/grace come from the exact same place, regardless of color? Or perhaps, does it assuage white guilt to attribute Black strength/courage/dignity/grace when facing horrific loss to arising from some unknown extraordinary place? It seems a little like how healthy people complimented my courage during cancer treatment, when in fact, I had no choice except to put one foot in front of the other every day. Calling that courage seemed to make them feel better. I made a number of friends who were also dealing with cancer. None of us ever called one another courageous.
Re: those nebby-nosey questions. Such questions come from a sense of entitlement that assumes the questioner’s curiosity trumps your comfort with a response. This can be a clueless white privilege thing, but these same people might ask a gay couple which one is the woman, or someone who is trans about their genitalia, or they reach out to put their hand on a pregnant stranger’s stomach without asking. My boilerplate response to these kinds of questions has always been why do you ask that? If they are embarrassed, good!
If a Black person is willing to tell me about their experience of racism, I am obligated to listen, not to argue and judge their response as correct or incorrect. Being an ally means being supportive, open and aware, trying to understand things that by birth luck I was not forced to know. KS, you self-identify as a skilled debater. However, arguing with Ron about nuances of racism seems anti-ally to me. No matter how well you think you know Ron, when you jumped to explain Ron’s perspective to me, you made it all about you, not Ron, or the website, or the possibility of my cluelessness. I’ve been reading Ron for as long as you have, so please allow me to reach my own conclusions. And btw, Ron is right here, reading and responding all by himself.
Note to Allan. When I logged in to the website to leave this comment, I got a message that I was already logged in as ‘Ron Powell’. Rather than read all Ron’s private acct. stuff, which I could have, I logged out and got another message asking if ‘Ron Powell’ wanted to log out. So irony aside, maybe you want to look into that. Also a couple weeks ago I left some comments that didn’t seem to post.
And again, apologies for having no idea how or where to place my comment in the stream, so this response is my voice in the general discussion
11/03/2020 @ 9:36 am
@Greenheron;
“If it is an accepted given that all humans are equal, why even ask this question? Wouldn’t human strength/courage/dignity/grace come from the exact same place, regardless of color?”
You’ve nailed it….
Thanks for ‘listening’ and paying attention…
11/03/2020 @ 12:52 pm
🙂
11/03/2020 @ 3:19 pm
Ron,
So you’re telling me that you know it when you see it but you can’t explain it? OK. That’s an answer. I don’t get the colorblind link (referencing the title of this post) but I’ll just assume I won’t.
GH,
Thanks for that explanation. Relating it to your own experience works.
As to my giving Ron’s definition of racism:
I gather you think I was speaking for Ron, as in giving an explanation he was capable of giving. Of course he’s capable of giving it. That’s not why I did it. Why I did it certainly had nothing to do with making this about me. I don’t need to do that; it wouldn’t buy me anything I want. I was, strangely enough, doing you a favor. If you had entered into a conversation with Ron using an alternate definition of racism, it would have pissed him off, regardless of what source you cited, particularly if your source was younger. This is not a probability, it is a certainty. Ron would not have started this conversation with his definition of racism as he views that as a given, so you could easily have walked into an argument neither of you needs. This was my version of “You’re walking up to a low beam. Duck.” You’ll notice Ron didn’t object to my doing so. If I was coopting him he would have.
11/03/2020 @ 7:04 pm
@Koshersalaami;
If social justice is to be achieved it won’t be because black and brown people persuaded or convinced conflicted and ambivalent white people of anything at all.
It will be because white people make the case to reluctant and recalcitrant white folks that a just society and more perfect union isn’t about bestowing the benefits of freedom on black and brown people at the expense of white people, it’s about “liberty and justice for all…
“This past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful.
I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering – enough is certainly as good as a feast – but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth – and indeed, no church – can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable.
This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worse that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one’s bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry.”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Tim Wise:
At 10 min 45 sec
11/04/2020 @ 1:38 am
I know that, you know that, both of us have said that in one form or other. But based on the thread in your more recent post, that leaves me with a question. We could assume that Miguel Hernandez is Robert Pannier but let’s say he isn’t. Do you want me to engage him? Understand that if I try to make any headway it won’t be by taking him to the woodshed. That means I’d be civil to this guy. You’ve pretty much seen the tone by the one answer I committed to. Can you handle my doing that? If not, I’ll leave it alone.
When it comes to this crap I’m a pragmatist. I’ve noticed that with politics in general you’re a hardassed pragmatist who totally gets that the perfect is the enemy of the good but that’s not your approach to race, possibly because you’re too close to it and it’s just too personal. Let me again state in case there’s any ambiguity here whatsoever that I am NOT, repeat NOT, in favor of policy concessions, something you think I am in favor of but I’m not; policy concessions is not what I’m talking about. I am not talking about accepting racism. But pragmatism means being prepared to talk to racists without berating them, not because they don’t deserve to be berated but because the only thing berating will accomplish is cathartic self-expression, not change. I am not expressing any disapproval of how you handled the thread, but if I’m going to engage I need to know that you can stomach watching me try to refrain from berating. It won’t be easy, there will be things you want me to talk about that I won’t, and I may very well look disloyal. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you know my flight path by my angle of takeoff. But if I’m going to do that I need to know you’re cool with it. Yes, I know, you think White people should talk to White people to get anything done, but that means you have to have faith in my ability to talk to White people. “Say this!” No, I don’t think it’s a good idea, not because I think “this” is wrong but because I think that saying it will cost us more than it buys us. And I am focused first and foremost on what it buys us and not at all on how I look doing it. I am not going to say things to guys like Hernandez (or perhaps “Hernandez”) to get them off my chest. For my purposes, that would be self-indulgent. I can’t make this about me.
Your call. I will understand either answer.
So, if this continues to come up,
11/04/2020 @ 1:22 pm
@Koshersalaami
I believe that it’s Pannier…But you may handle him in any persona you choose to address.
Of course you may engage him by any means you feel necessary and appropriate.
As long as I am not misquoted, misinterpreted, or misrepresented in any way, you may go to the post where he appears and have at it…
11/04/2020 @ 1:58 pm
I am not remotely interested in misrepresenting you. I would find that both personally and intellectually abhorrent.
It may all be unnecessary. I don’t know if “Hernandez” is returning.
12/31/2020 @ 2:25 pm
existentialism (n.)
1941, from German Existentialismus (1919), replacing Existentialforhold (1849), ultimately from Danish writer Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), who wrote (1846) of Existents-Forhold “condition of existence,” existentielle Pathos, etc. (see existential), and whose name means in Danish, literally, “churchyard” (compare Middle English cognate kirrkegærd (c. 1200), dialectal church-garth).
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rant shout
scream
gleam twinkle twinkle little $tar
‘polo;} Gs avante gard yamas skinny as those wires on paper poppies…x
STUCK HEREintheground
UTshot
02/26/2021 @ 5:00 pm
And I am free at last, what a blast
—Peter Allen
01/07/2023 @ 12:54 pm
Comment 71:
This post is about whether being “colorblind” can, or should, be equated with objectivity….
This post is not about whether Nicole Wallace is a racist …”
— Ron Powell 10/23/2020 @ 9:26 AM
” Wallace’s comment is racist because my 74 years of being black in this country and society tells me that it is…”
— Ron Powell 11/03/2020 @ 2:44 AM
Sustained irony. Really?