A must-read blog post on racism
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Please read this incredible blog post, “Do you understand where you are?,” at Group News Blog.
It begins with a discussion of the Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit,” the Jena Six case, and then a story about what happened when the African-American author’s family decided to host their family reunion in a small town in North Carolina:
…one of the note’s points of interest got some of the young people going. It stated, that after 8:00 P.M., NO ONE WAS TO GO DOWN ACROSS THE RAILROAD TRACKS, PAST THE GREEN HOUSE (an actual green-colored house), AS THAT WAS THE DEMARCATION LINE BETWEEN FREE-GOING COUNTRY, AND KLAN TERRITORY.
Doing so was, according to the note, “tempting fate” and “taking your life into your own hands”.
Many of the assembled—particularly the younger ones, were agog at this special note, thinking it was a.) a joke, b.) a silly wive’s tale, and worst of all, c.) an open provocation to their God-given right to flex their northern-bred muscle and “rights”. After much clamor, older relatives prevailed upon the upset youngers, and implored them to please observe the warning. It was not a frivolous one.
Of course, you can guess what would happen that night. While many of us went into Wilmington to celebrate, bringing big-city, New York, New-Jack “Swang“-style to the Carolina backwoods, a clutch of the set opted to cross those tracks—to saunter past that “green house”, and park alongside a stretch of road, with a nice, expensive car providing the music, a trunk cooler full of drink, and parrrrrrrr-taaaay!
My Uncle A. rushed into the Wilmington club, got on the mic, and requested that all family members leave immediately to get back to the main homestead.
As we left, we were told that shots had been fired at the brazen revelers who had line-stepped that aforementioned threshold. “Sigh.”
The author then goes on to discuss racism in America today:
It is the year 2007. And as much as we may try to think otherwise, we live in a country where White teenagers will still fight over who can, and who can not sit under a fucking tree during recess at school, based on the color of their skin. For all the crowing about the “browning of America”, and how the kids are un-learning the racism inculcated in the American fabric, this incident should give every one of us pause.
Pause because it speaks to the reality of what we’re actually confronting here.
If these kids…these supposedly, rapidly blind-to-color kids will fight over a scraggly patch of grass, don’t stand here and try to tell me that their fathers and mothers—the generation presently in control of this country—aren’t actively fighting Black folks’ inclusion in the more important arenas of participation in the American mosaic.
It’s a must-read.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Free wrote:
In 1980 my mother moved “back home” to Louisiana to do what she always said she would do, “be with my sister before I die.” On July 4, she died in a little town called Jonesville. She ran away from home, from the south to the north when she was teenager to get away from the Jim Crow South and didn’t return until the early 1970s. Not until Civil Rights were in place did she feel free to take me and my brother to visit her sister in Mississippi. Our father, a white man, stayed home.
My mother stopped drinking socially when I was very young and was a church going woman. So imagine my surprise when I found beer cans in her bedroom in that house in Jonesville. One night I wanted to walk around the town and was warned by my brother and his friends to not walk past the white house lit by a corner street light. “They’ll sick their dogs on you.” Fear was in their voices and their eyes. I’d never seen my brother like that before.
“It [racism] is quite simply…akin to a living, festering parasite that feasts on the very soul of the country, and what makes it work. It’s a vicious tapeworm.”
Yes. But I think of it more like a thread: pull on it and the entire fabric of the country will unravel. It’s the thread woven through the flag. The Civil Rights Movement pulled on that thread, unraveled a few inches, and no more. Read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” or download the audio book to truly understand. Or read this article about Reality TV:
It’s not Amos & Andy, but reality TV has image problem
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20041006/ai_n12565596
I live in Cairo, Egypt where I am supremely happy. Two weeks ago I returned from a three month visit to the States and couldn’t wait to leave. Chicago is a fantastic city with a fabulous night life, but if you’re downtown all of the clubs are white: customers, staff, musicians. And Seattle, where I used to live … someone should commission a study on how institutionalized racism is perfected. In Seattle, it’s an art and a science. In Minnesota my sister-in-law touched my hair and remarked, “it’s so soft.”
In the United States I always know where I am, knew it all my life in racist Denver and its suburbs. Egypt is not perfect, but I feel free from racism in Africa. I am free.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 10:30 am ¶
La - msviswan wrote:
You know, many young men and women are dying in a war abroad to end “terrorism”. Yet, we have the worst terrorist groups right here in America and the powers that be don’t care.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 11:57 am ¶
gatamala wrote:
I remember trying to explain to my ex that there are just some places that “we just don’t go.” The obvious sign is the rebel flag. Sometimes you just know. This was around 1999.
About a mile down the road from us, a house erected a cross with the hood, sheet and insignia across from my high school. Thankfully some of our students knocked it down. These people had black neighbors 2 houses down.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 1:14 pm ¶
Kimi wrote:
Great Post! Actually I didn’t have to read it completely, because I know it’s true. I am from Eastern North Carolina (2 hours from Wilmington on the Coast), and ppl in my hometown always knew where the Klan was stationed. In 1993, when I was 12 years old, The Klan had a march down our main street, which ended in a rally at our courthouse steeps. I am not surprised when I hear about these things anymore, I am surprised when ppl are surprised. When you grow up around an environment like that, it is hard to believe that some ppl are still ignorant to the reality the P.O.C, especially Black ppl are subjected to everyday.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 4:47 pm ¶
Angela wrote:
My family and I visited Virginia City, NV for a family reunion and lo and behold, we were the only blacks in that tourist town. There was this store that sold antique guns and bullets and as we were browsing (didn’t even register that the owner didn’t acknowledge us at all!), my eye caught on the big, honking Confederate flag hanging on the wall and we cut out.
My grandmother, born in the ’40s, refuses to even set foot in the south because of her experiences as a child(and she was quite dark-skinned), and it’s really humbling and chilling–as was the primary account I was reading the other day about black nurses in France during WWI and how the American Gov’t sent pamphlets to the French informing them on how barbaric and sub-human blacks were (one even claimed that whites had captured blacks from jungles ten years prior and were only tamed under the hand of whites). It really makes me glad to be born now, but also makes me wonder how far have we really come?
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 4:49 pm ¶
LM wrote:
Great analogy in the full article… about how racism isn’t a cancer in this country but a “tapeworm”…
(BTW, I’m not the LM who wrote the piece.)
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 9:46 pm ¶
parisa wrote:
The second part of this post really caught my attention. I’m a teacher in New Orleans, as are many of my friends. Many of us have been told by out students (myself included) that “You don’t act white.” This is the highest compliment one can receive from a student, because it means you don’t treat them like most white people in this stoen treat them. I like to think that children these days have rejected their parents’ and grandparents’ racist attitudes, but that does not seem to be the case. It breaks my heart, beause the vast majority of my students are bright and hard-working, and I worry about all the bullshit they still have to deal with.
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 12:22 am ¶
parisa wrote:
where it says “stoen” in that paragraph, i meant “town.” oops!
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 12:23 am ¶
Lucile wrote:
What is happenening in Jena almost happened a couple of years ago in the town in which I live. The police here harrassed a group of black males and charged five of them with loitering. The only problem is they were standing in the yard of a friend who invited them to visit. o one had called the police. Most people did not even know the young men were there. Two of the five charged were at home. The parents of these young people tok the problem to city council. The city council acted swiftly and fired the police chief for upholding the citations for loitering in the yard. The parents also opted to not allow the trial to be tried in city court.They opted for a jury trial. The D.A. moved that the casewould be dismissed.
The sad thing about our town is that no whites believed there was a racial problem in our town. I guess people feel that as long as it does not affect them directly then it does not exist. Funny thing though, if you ask most black people if racisim exists, you will get a resounding YES!
Posted 20 Sep 2007 at 11:21 am ¶