Follow the link above then read below!
Again and again and again..
The angry white crowd demonstrations over opening up, are not having tear gas shot into their midst, nor is there any explosive crowd control fireworks….and some of these protestors spit on the police officers.
Why the difference between this and Minnesota? Well first of all death of a person prompted one…another difference? We lost 100,000, and the crowd shown, doesn’t care.
One demonstration is very personal, based on reaction to Black Lives Really DON’T matter…the other is based in personal concerns for return to “normalcy”.
Normalcy to a white person is way different from normalcy for an African, or Native American. Way different!
The white protesters. are from more rural areas, that mistakenly believe they are exempt from. the pandemic.
They are not! They will die at a lesser percentage….but they still will get sick as long as they believe that it is a hoax? It isn’t!
So on it goes, a double standard in the way demonstrations are dealt with.
I know I know, the protests in Minnesota are different, they are looting (a few) and violent (a few)…
But most of the demonstrations are not white, and that makes all the difference how white privilege deals with it.
A huge difference.
We didn’t get a chance to really address this phenomenon. It is in the outlines I sent you; the basic difference in the way people are treated in many ways versus the white privilege that most of us cherish.
Cherish?
You are damned right, cherish.
I am a good example…I could have been told by my parents that I was part Cherokee. My aunt, whose physical appearance betrayed her genetic background, married a white guy, had children who again inherited looking “Indian”.
I was more “fortunate” and my parents basically sheltered me from my ancestors.
Would I have gone to Stanford, with an Indian mascot, if I was a “radicalized” as I am now? I doubt it?
I would be an ex-Beaver? That is another story.
But my parents eloped, and kept real quiet about the dark black eyes and high cheek bones my father had..along with jet black hair.
He looked…well he looked like an Indian. My grandfather even more so.
Sometimes genetics pass along that 1% difference in obvious superficial dog whistle ways.
Mostly it is cultural, that I was purposefully shielded from. I mean I watched all of the Cowboy and Indian shows…and preferred acting like the cowboy.
And what does that have to do with the Minneapolis riots…along with Sacrament a few short months ago?
Is it because the depth of that social historical crime is deeper? Is it because there are fewer Native Americans (who are dying in great numbers now because of the inadequate health care they still get on the reservations)?
It is complex…the depth of the discrimination is so varied and complex; most Americans think we have developed away from the “bad times”.
We have not. The pandemic proved immediately the double standard that exists in America (people of color are dying of the disease at a far higher rate than their share of the population should..almost half again!).
And we all knew that in Sacramento…Why?
Because we know where to go and not to go. We know that safety is in living in say, anywhere east of here.
The children of poverty, the children of homelessness, don’t look, don’t see.
The most common comment about my class is, “Why didn’t they teach this when I was in school”…
Fact is the college is beginning to…but right now, I mean RIGHT NOW the state is STILL trying to “figure out” how to teach ethnic studies!
That is absolutely amazing, since ethnic studies were a hot political topic over 50 years ago when I got my credential and masters at Sac State.
Fifty years ago and we still are waking up to the sound of sirens and fires and protest and looting.
Yes, the violence hurts the cause of racial justice…it feeds stereotyping. It is self defeating.
But sometimes, and I have seen the anger up close and personal, people just can’t take it anymore. How can you be defeated any more is what they say in their actions.
And predictably they damage the very infrastructure that is their own neighborhoods…Why would they do that?
Because those neighborhoods are swamp lands of under privilege…of daily reminder that “you are an other”…”you don’t matter”.
If white people were treated like that, well they. might act like Trump supporters, who were conned into believing that Democrats don’t like their class, that they don’t matter…and that is how Trump won the election.
That phenomenon was clearly used by Trump to just to tip the electoral scale enough to win…Hillary Clinton neglected Wisconsin and Michigan and that was it.
The Electoral College once again did its preserve injustice magic!
The irony of course is the monied interests that Trump really represents care not for the white under privileged…not one bit. The pandemic proved that, rest homes were death zones, white underprivileged people die at a higher rate that rich white people by far.
In a real sense, white lower socioeconomic groups live in as much squalor as do Native and African Americans. The difference is….they are still white no matter what. And for over 100 years that has been enough….from poor white “trash” supporting the Dixiecrats to the Conservative pure political con job of Republicans.
And that is what has kept the lower middle class paralyzed to do anything about the economic, medical and political injustice that is practiced on them, and their brothers and sisters of color.
The gap between rich and poor has NEVER been wider…and it will get worse with the pandemic…
Rich people can handle a drop in the economy, in fact sometimes they do everything to make it happen, then profit off its misery!
We all are in the same boat…and when that boat gets sick, it affects those in third class a hell of a lot more than the first class.
Again, again and again…..