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Women will bring peace to the world (if men don’t destroy it first) and they shall do it through understanding and listening to each other. Listen to the power of their words.
“Ten black mothers sat on the stage in an auditorium and looked into a diverse crowd of women in the audience. They were about to share something personal and hurtful with this room full of mostly strangers.
They were going to talk about something they didn’t normally share with their white friends or colleagues.
It was about to get real in that room.
In the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager fatally shot by a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer, conversations about race in the St. Louis area have been loaded.
Christi Griffin, the president of The Ethics Project, wanted this to be different. She wanted to invite mothers of other races to hear directly from black mothers the reality of raising a black son in America. She wanted them to hear the words they each had said to their own sons, in different variations over the years, but all with the same message: Stay alive. Come home alive.
She wanted mothers who had never felt the fear, every single time their son walked outside or drove a car, that he could possibly be killed to hear what that felt like.
Griffin’s son, now grown, had never gotten in trouble nor given her any trouble growing up. But when her son was 14 years old, the family moved into an all-white neighborhood. She took him to the police department to introduce him to the staff. She wanted the officers to know that he belonged there, that he lived there.
When he turned 16, it was time for another talk. Every single time he got into his car to drive, she made him take his license out of his wallet and his insurance card out of the glove compartment.
“I did not want him reaching for anything in the car.”
He graduated from college with a degree in physics.
Marlowe Thomas-Tulloch said that when she noticed her grandson was getting bigger and taller, she laid bare a truth to him: Son, if the police stop you, I need for you to be humble. But I need more than that. I need for you to be prepared to be humiliated.
If they tell you take your hands out of your pockets, take your hands out. Be ready to turn your pockets out. If they tell you to sit down, be prepared to lie down.
You only walk in the street with one boy at a time, she told him.
“What?” her grandson said. In his 17-year-old mind, he hadn’t done anything wrong and nothing was going to happen to him.
“If it’s three or more, you’re a mob,” she said. “That’s how they will see you.”
She started to cry.
“Listen to me,” she begged. “Hear me.”
Finally, she felt him feel her fear.
If they ask you who you are, name your family.
Yes, sir and no, sir. If they are in your face, even if they are wrong, humble yourself and submit yourself to the moment.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Because I love you.”
She told him she would rather pick him up from the police station than identify his body at a morgue.
When her grandson left to go home, she called her daughter to tell her about the conversation. Her daughter asked her what she had said, because her son came home upset, with tears in his eyes.
“I hope I said enough to save his life,” Thomas-Tulloch said. “I’d rather go down giving him everything I got.”
The mothers talked about the times their sons had been stopped in their own neighborhoods because “they fit the description.” They shared the times their sons had come home full of rage and hurt for being stopped and questioned for no reason. And they told the other mothers how often they told their sons to simply swallow the injustice of the moment. Because they wanted them alive, above all.
Amy Hunter, director of racial justice at the YWCA in metro St. Louis, said it’s taken her 10 years to be able to share this story about her son without crying. She didn’t want her white friends to see her cry when she told it. She didn’t want to look weak.
Her four children are now older, but when one of her sons was 12, he decided to walk home from the Delmar Loop in University City where he had met some friends.
He saw a police officer circling him, and he knew. He was wearing Sperrys, a tucked-in polo shirt, a belt. He was 12, and he knew, but he was scared.
He lived five houses away, and he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I knew you were home,” he said to his mom when he finally made it home after being frisked. “I knew I was about to get stopped, and I thought about running home to you.”
His mother froze.
“I forgot to tell him,” she said. “I forgot to tell him: Don’t run. Don’t run or they’ll shoot you.”
Her 12-year-old cried when he told her what had happened and asked if he was stopped because he was black.
“Probably, yeah,” she said.
“I just want to know, how long will this last?” he asked her.
That’s when she started to cry.
“For the rest of your life,” she said.
It doesn’t matter about your college degree, the car you drive, the street you live on, she told the moms in the audience. It’s not going to shield your child like a Superman cape. She admitted that it was difficult to share these painful moments.
Just one of the mothers on the stage asked a single question of the audience. Assata Henderson, who has raised three children, all college graduates, said she called her sons to ask them what they remembered about “the talk” she had given them about how to survive as a black man.
“Mama, you talked all the time,” they said to her.
It made her wonder, she said. She said she wasn’t pointing any fingers, but it made her wonder about the conversations the other mothers were having with their sons, who grow up to be police officers, judges and CEOs.
“You’re the mothers,” she said to the crowd. “What are the conversations you are having with the police officers who harass our children?”[
[Source]
When one turns to the word “propaganda” images of totalitarian states come to mind – Pravda, The North Korea Times. We envision an army of Winston Smith’s carefully scrubbing the news of improper thoughts and meanings, carefully crafting the government approved message of the day. Of course we don’t have that here in North America, we have freedom of speech, we have a free press, we have liberty! We also have institutionalized self-censorship,demarcated areas of approved debate, and a media establishment that tends to take the government’s word at face value. These factors contribute to a media system that appears to be free and without censure, but in reality, craft obsequious stories that pose no threat to power or the norms of society. Essentially, the (self)censorship we have in the West is on autopilot, it is subtle, unremarkable, but yet *very* effective (for more detail on our system, see my post on Manufacturing Consent).
All this being said, sometimes our subtle system of media control goes a little haywire, it loses its subtle sheen, and becomes a little more transparent in how it operates. Stories slip through the net and give the status-quo a good shake. The recent furor caused by Maclean’s naming “Winnipeg: Where Canada’s Racism Problem is at its Worst.” is a prime example of such a happening. The article pokes many holes in white Canada’s notion of a vibrant multicultural society. Some highlights:
“One in three Prairie residents believe that “many racial stereotypes are accurate,” for example, higher than anywhere else in Canada. In Alberta, just 23 per cent do, according to polling by the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration (CIIM). And 52 per cent of Prairie residents agree that Aboriginals’ economic problems are “mainly their fault.” Nationally, the figure drops to 36 per cent.”
***
“Earlier this fall, Robert Falcon-Ouellette, director of the University of Manitoba’s Aboriginal focus programs, hit the Grant Park Shopping Centre in Winnipeg’s south end to hustle for signatures for his mayoral nomination form. The 37-year-old was a late entrant to the election. He’d cobbled together a campaign staff—idealistic political neophytes he knew from academia and activists he’d met at last year’s Idle No More rallies.
It was an ugly entry into politics. “I know you,” a shopper told Falcon-Ouellette, approaching him shortly after he arrived at the mall. “You’re that guy running for mayor. You’re an Indian,” he said, pointing a finger at Falcon-Ouellette. “I don’t want to shake your hand. You Indians are the problem with the city. You’re all lazy. You’re drunks. The social problems we have in the city are all related to you.”
***
“Tyler Henderson, a 28-year-old Ojibway nursing student at the University of Manitoba, says he feels racism every time he walks out his front door. Henderson says Winnipeg police stopped him 15 times last year. “You fit the description,” police tell him when he asks what he did wrong. Once, police claimed he’d pulled to a stop a few inches beyond the stop line. “It makes me mad,” he says. “But there’s nothing I can do.” Some young indigenous men are stopped twice per month in the inner city, according to University of Manitoba criminologist Elizabeth Comack. “
***
“Don Marks, a Winnipeg writer, recently visited an ER with an indigenous friend. They’d dropped a painting, and the broken glass had cut his friend. “Aw!” a nurse exclaimed in greeting them. “Have we been drinking and fighting again?” The nurse’s assumptions were harmless, says Marks, who edits Grassroots News, an Aboriginal newspaper. “But this was someone responsible for treating Native people in our hospitals. We all know racism exists in our health care system.”
I would go read the entire article at Maclean’s as it touches many important points and different facets of the racist experience going on in Winnipeg. But the lowlights sampled here are enough to show that punches were not pulled in writing this article.
Response from the Mayor of Winnipeg was predictable.
“We have come together to face this head-on as a community,” Bowman added, noting that Winnipeg exists on what is traditional Treaty One territory. We have to shine a light on it. Without the light, we can’t see what we’re fighting. We’re not going to end racism tomorrow, but we’re sure as hell going to try.”
Way to go Mr.Mayor. Ending workplace inefficiency with enhanced system synergies is also on his “to do” list. I find the reactions of Robert-Falcon Ouellette and Rosanna Deerchild to be much more interesting.
Ouellette ran for Mayor in the last Winnipeg Civil election and of course faced racist comments on him an his campaign. He is no stranger to the ugly tide of racism in Winnipeg, but when asked of the Maclean’s article he said this:
“The cover treatment Maclean’s gave the story is sensationalist, he said. The cover features a quote from a Winnipeg resident who says,”They call me a stupid squaw or tell me to go back to the rez.”
“They used the word ‘squaw,’ which is very, you know, derogatory type of comment,” Ouellette said. “But at the same time, I understand they need to be selling magazines and getting people interested to buy the magazine.” Ouellette has experienced racism, including during his campaign, but it’s not something he sees on a daily basis. He said he believes the majority of people in the city aren’t racist, but that there’s always the loudmouth that stands out.”
His restraint and decorum in the face of such ugliness is impeccable. At the same time, troublesome because he’s just being so darn nice about the entire situation. We see the same pattern with Rosanna Deerchild, here is what she says:
“They call me a stupid squaw, or tell me to go back to the rez,” the quote reads. But on Friday, Deerchild recorded a segment for Saturday’s Unreserved, saying she does not want to be racism’s cover girl.
“I am far from the angry Indian complaining about being hard done by,” she says.
“Let me be clear. I love my city, my community, my home: Winnipeg, North End, Canada. But neither will I quantify, qualify or pacify racism in this place, or any place it rears its ugly head.”
I’m scratching my head a little over what she said. I applaud her for being so diplomatic in the face of injustice, but I think that she has every right to be royally pissed off over the state of affairs regarding Winnipeg and racism.
Her choice of words speaks volumes to how the concerns of aboriginal woman have been treated in white Canada in the past. She makes it very clear that she is not an “angry Indian complaining about being hard done by”. Deerchild, even in her respected position in society (broadcaster for the CBC), is keenly aware of the stereotypes and negative tropes arrayed against her. She is aware of what I was alluding to earlier in this post – the system of self censorship/censorship that marginalizes dissident views such as hers, in favour of the comforting white feel-good multicultural narrative that is an acceptable “truth” in Canadian society.
I applaud all those quoted in the articles, they are speaking directly to the problem of racism in our society. The fact that this article is creating so much noise and buzz in Canada is a testament to how adept our media is at maintaining the status-quo most of the time and for generally not allowing articles of this calibre to be published within the mainstream news establishment.
[Source: Macleans.ca]
Ouch.
“White people get so angry at the phrase, “You cannot be racist towards white people.”I will never understand why. Why are you so angry that you are being treated as actual human beings? You are not reduced to caricatures, but portrayed as characters. You are treated fairly, judged not by your skin tone, but by the ways that you carry yourselves, by your actions.
Why do you want to experience racism so badly? It is not fun to be mocked, dehumanized, attacked, killed, incarcerated simply for daring to exist. It is not fun to know nothing of your history or family because it was torn apart, whether through distance or death. It is not fun to hear, at every turn, comments reminding you of your lesser status as humans.
Do you really want to turn on the tv, open a magazine, watch a movie, play a video game, and not see yourself? Or, even better, to only see yourself as a criminal, as a drunk, a mocking stereotype, or as someone to be killed off? Or would you rather see fleshed out, well-written characters with lives and personalities and feelings? I know which I’d rather pick.
If I were a white person, the phrase, “You cannot be racist towards white people,” would be the best thing I could ever hear.”
— i finally put some thoughts into words // thedeathcats
Fifty seven years ago seems like a long time, but in term of changing cultural norms it was mere minutes, we still have such a long way to go. Three cheers for Ms.Counts and her steely determination, courage and perseverance in the face of such ugly human behaviour.
In 1956, forty black students applied for transfers at a white school. At 15 years of age, on 4 September 1957, Dorothy Counts was one of the four black students enrolled at various all-white schools in the district; She was at Harry Harding High School, Charlotte, North Carolina.
Three students were enrolled at other schools, including Central High School. The harassment started when the wife of John Z. Warlick, the leader of the White Citizens Council, urged the boys to “keep her out” and at the same time, implored the girls to spit on her, saying, “spit on her, girls, spit on her.” Dorothy walked by without reacting, but told the press that many people threw rocks at her—most of which landed in front of her feet—and that many spat on her back. Photographer Douglas Martin won the 1957 World Press Photo of the Year with an image of Counts being mocked by a crowd on her first day of school.
More abuse followed that day. She had trash thrown at her while eating her dinner and the teachers ignored her. The following day, she befriended two white girls, but they soon drew back because of harassment from other classmates. Her family received threatening phone calls and after four days of extensive harassment—which included a smashed car and having her locker ransacked, her father decided to take his daughter out of the school. At a press conference, he said:
It is with compassion for our native land and love for our daughter Dorothy that we withdraw her as a student at Harding High School. As long as we felt she could be protected from bodily injury and insults within the school’s walls and upon the school premises, we were willing to grant her desire to study at Harding.
The family moved to Pennsylvania, where Counts attended an integrated school in Philadelphia, and later earned a degree from Johnson C. Smith University. She has spent her professional career in child care resources.
In 2008, Harding High School awarded Counts an honorary diploma. In 2010, Counts received a public apology from a member of the crowd which harassed her in 1957. In 2010, Harding High School renamed its library in honor of Counts-Scoggins, an honour rarely bestowed upon living persons.
[Source:Wikipedia]
Great video, bad comments section automatically confirming the necessity of said video.
Another grand video –
Racism is not going away. Discrimination is not going away. Ignoring this problem does not make it better. If you see racism in your friends or family, call them on it if it is safe to do so, the change must start with you.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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