I have no doubt that every single parent on CC read to their kids, was engaged, attentive, created a stimulating environment, etc. Respectfully, you guys aren’t the demo we were talking about, for whom it would simply never occur to read to their children.
My mom was at an expensive resort and when they were checking in the women in line behind her said “I never expected to see that here” in reference to a minority couple in the lobby.
I think my mom gave the perfect response. She calmly told the women I don’t think like you do.
As a white male it would shock most of you the remarks people say to me about race, sex, sexual orientation. The response I don’t think like you do is perfect.
PG: If you have the time and interest to read, and haven’t already done so… I found this exchange of views useful.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/other-peoples-pathologies/359841/
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/obama-ta-nehisi-coates-poverty-and-culture.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/other-peoples-pathologies/359841/
I believe so. It’s certainly true for me. Yesterday, I took my son to a discount furniture store to buy him a couple of things for his apartment. A young black man helped us, then left us alone to shop and said, “Let me know when you’re ready to check out.” When I went to find him, there were THREE young black men standing next to each other, and I panicked, because I couldn’t recognize which one had helped us! Fortunately, the salesman recognized ME and spoke up. I have to do better in the future.
Well, I’m in a fairly large organization of women and when I joined I’ll have to say a lot of them looked the same to me. It’s familiarity that makes the difference in recognizing people as individuals.
I had a (white) client who’s house had three books. One was a cookbook, one was Pat the Bunny and the other was Good Night Moon. There wasn’t even a magazine in the house. There really are people who just never read for pleasure. I have several functionally illiterate clients - they sign their checks and then ask me to fill out the rest of it.
BTW I know that reading to your kids and having lots of books isn’t everything. My oldest started teaching himself to read at 2, my youngest could barely read until he was 8, when he suddenly got it overnight.
Pizzagirl, I think if you grew up in a time where books weren’t about you, and you weren’t taught well, and it’s not considered cool to read, you end up with a lot of kids who just don’t get to the point where they realize reading can be fun. In any event, I think the important thing about the barbershop project was that it came out of the community. I would never have thought to put books in barbershops.
Another organization that I think is doing great work is the Harlem Children’s Zone. I think it should be replicated in other cities.
Oh, that makes me sad that so many people don’t read. 
One of my fondest, earliest memories is of my mom taking us to the public library. We would spend hours there. I still remember the smell. I fell in love with sci fi and devoured most of the books in that section.
^Lol, MaineLonghorn, I’m pretty good if there are just a few. The Black girls in my classes I can generally sort out, as there are usually only a handful in a given semester. I have the same problem with Asians if there are a large number, as there were in my grad classes. Where I teach, there are typically not so many in a given class. Part of it seems to be the shear number, when it becomes overwhelming to try to sort them out.
I think this could even happen with white people if they are homogeneous enough, as when I see the crowds of men in the streets in some place like Baghdad, they all look alike as well. Were my class suddenly to be made up of young Arab males, I would probably be in trouble (as well as alarmed, haha).
Years ago, I won a raffle where the prize was to spend a day shadowing a prominent Asian TV anchorwoman in our city. I gave this to my son as he was interested at the time in broadcast journalism. I had to engage in some email back and forth with this anchorwoman to work out logistics. I typed in one of them something to the effect of “And I’m watching you on the morning news as we speak!” Turns out she anchored only the evening news and I was watching her also-Asian colleague who anchored the morning show. Thankfully she ignored my mistake.
I am one of those people who is great at remembering names, but I have difficulty with faces. This is not specific to any racial or ethnic group. I sometimes had a hard time with say ,two blond women who I met at the same event or with the same group of people. It can be very embarrassing.
Ouch, Pg. I would have made dh drive ds to meet her.
I have the same problem with young, white, blond women.
@poetsheart: Whole Language! The bane of early schooling experiences for sure.
@tom1944: There is shock and then there is sadness. Hats off to your mom.
Waiting2exhale. My mom and dad provided these lessons our entire lives. My siblings still remember when he explained to us that his mother was an anti-Catholic bigot and why she was wrong.
“…Philando Castile’s trouble with traffic stops began when he still had his learner’s permit. He was stopped before his 19th birthday. From there, he descended into a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, late fees, revocations, and reinstatements in various jurisdictions…”
“…An NPR analysis of those records shows that the 32 year old cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, MN, suburb, was stopped by police 46 times and racked up more than $6000 in fines…”
“…was the “classic case” of what criminologists have called “net widening” or the move by local authorities to criminalize more and more aspects of regular life…”
Positive steps to fight racism? Get involved in local government. Show up at city council meetings. Be aware of the local ordinaces, and any incentives for the police force in your community to put numbers on the board (traffic stops).
We had an ordinance passed in a nearby community where if an officer stopped a vehicle and the driver had no drivers license or proof of insurance, the tow truck was called and the car was impounded. The driver and passengers were left on the curb to fend for themselves. Not only did the traffic stop trigger an expensive ticket ($500), but it was costly to get the car out of the yard, and the fees racked up for every day the car was left in the yard. Two licensed drivers were required to be present at the yard, at the same time, with payment, to remove the vehicle.
This was a GOLD MINE for the city and the tow truck company and yard. There was no forgiveness for “forgetting your purse at home” or “forgetting to swap out the old insurance card for the new one”. No, your family member could not drive over and present the proper ID for you and save your car from being towed.
The trouble was, at that time, undocumented people were not allowed to get valid driver’s licenses. The ordinance disproportionately hit the Hispanic working poor in the community. Eventually, community activists organized and worked to get the ordinance changed. Then, at the state level, finally, undocumented people were allowed to get special driver’s licenses (and then insurance).
The serial traffic stops & escalating fines of the working poor is something that is likely under the radar for many people of different socio-economic classes. It seems to me that people who are skilled in dealing with organizing, the law, dealing with city government can do a lot of good by shining a bright light on these punitive laws that do little towards increasing public safety.
The criminal justice system is increasingly seen as a profit center for the government. It’s very troubling.
“I hear all the time about negative experiences people of color have had with white people. Totally acceptable.”
Those negative experiences you’ve been hearing about…are they with white people, or are they with white people in positions of power over those people of color? Like police, employers, owners of stores, politicians, etc. Because it’s the power aspect that’s got people so incensed. If we were just talking about peer-to-peer interaction like white classmates asking to touch black people’s hair, or even white people leaning out of their trucks to scream slurs at black students in Missouri, we wouldn’t be having a nationwide crisis right now.
“You really think there is some black person out there with whom I could discuss a negative experience I had? How would that be seen? Even to hold the view that something was a negative experience is racist.”
- Are those negative experiences with people who have power over you, like police, employers, owners of stores, or politicians? Are they screaming racial slurs at you while you walk down the street? If not, maybe the situations aren't comparable. If so, I'm curious to hear about them.
- Who is calling you a racist for saying "X worker was rude to me at the DMV and then nice to a black customer"? And what would be the purpose of discussing this incident with an unrelated black person? There isn't any systemic pattern of oppression of white people that all the black people need to confront, as far as I can tell. But yeah, white people who have relationships of trust with black people can talk about everyone's experience of race and racism with those black people. So can white people who enroll in courses exploring black history, sociology, etc. where cross-racial discussion of these issues is part of the point. If you don't have any relationships of trust with black people, maybe that's a reason to think about the forces that are keeping groups of Americans apart and question whether any of your choices have contributed to that pattern. (Some of my choices have.)
Oh, facepalm, Hanna, you are so missing the point.
I’ve been thinking about this and have a theory, which seems to go along with what they say in this article. Maybe you have seen one of those paragraphs where they block out more and more letters and you can somehow still read it. Or think about the acquaintance you have not seen in awhile who you see and realize that something is different, but you can’t quite place what. Did they loose weight? Change their hair? Get glasses?
Maybe, our brains only store as much information as we need in the particular context. If there is only one Asian student in the class then I only need one piece of data to fix them <>. But if there are two dozen Black guys, then I’m going to need a lot of data points - black, male, stocky, wears glasses, facial hair - maybe still not enough. So it’s like trying to recognize the reading passage but it’s in a language only somewhat familiar. We would have to stare at the words and try to guess the context.
And maybe our brains are accustomed to collecting that data for other people if we commonly have to distinguish between them in a more fine-grained way - i.e. other white people in my case.
Maybe you can explain better what the point is. I’m listening.