Tag: white privilege

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

NCRM Hosts Webinar on Dismantling Racism

CREDIT: Courtesy of National Civil Rights Museum

The National Civil Rights Museum is hosting a webinar featuring Diane J. Goodman, Ed.D., educator, trainer, and consultant on diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice issues.

Recently on The Dr. Pat Show, a talk radio program, Goodman spoke with guest host Dr. Mariangela Maguire discussing “The Challenges & Benefits committing to Equity & Inclusion.”

Goodman stated about current times, “It is hard for anyone to be watching the news and not to have a response. How do we not focus on the violence?”

Courtesy of National Civil Rights Museum

Diane J. Goodman

Of course, for members of different communities, watching the unrest in the news can create different responses. Goodman prefers to focus on the hopefulness of what society is trying to express, acknowledging that we have laws and remedies that didn’t exist before and people of color in power who haven’t been in power before.

Discussions of racism generally focus on the systemic disadvantages and harm to Black, indigenous, and people of color. The other side of the dynamic is how white people are systematically advantaged or privileged. Through historical and contemporary examples, Goodman will explain what white privilege is, how it operates, ways it is experienced in everyday life, and how it can be used to create more racial justice. This webinar particularly invites white people to examine white privilege in order to more effectively engage in dismantling racism.

“Understanding White Privilege: A Key to Dismantling Systemic Racism,” Wednesday, Sept. 16, 3-4 p.m.
civilrightsmuseum.org, free with registration.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

On the Moon

CREDIT: Creative Commons | Adam Turner

I can’t pay no doctor bill.

(but Whitey’s on the moon)

Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.

(while Whitey’s on the moon)

The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.

(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)

No hot water, no toilets, no lights.

(but Whitey’s on the moon)

— “Whitey on the Moon,” Gil Scott-Heron, 1970

Imagine pledging allegiance to a nation that would rather you not exist, would gladly deny you the rights that you have earned for yourself 20 times over. Imagine being forced to watch from your hovels and tenements as the machine of progress trampled over any hope you had of an equitable future. Imagine being a citizen of a country or state or city that prioritized the feelings of some of its citizens over the realities of its majority. Imagine living in a “land of the free” that elected a national leader whose driving purpose seems to be to strip away the limited freedoms that exist for people unlike him and his family, all while fattening his pockets off the blood of the land. Imagine that this “land of the free” replicates these types of leaders at almost every level.

Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 poem “Whitey on the Moon” was a symbolic questioning of American achievement in the face of the social crises listed above. At the time he wrote this poem, our country’s goal was to win the Space Race, in part to establish our military supremacy and deflect any threats against our nation’s greatness. We funneled billions of taxpayer dollars, thousands of hours of labor, and tons of resources toward low-orbit supremacy, an undertaking that ran side-by-side with anti-racist, anti-poverty social movements. Civil rights movement leaders and poor black people alike wondered how America could devote so much time and effort to sending astronauts to space but not make any attempt to do right by oppressed populations.

Well, the answer is simple. Whitey’s always been on the moon.

When I say this, I don’t mean that American whites are actually on the moon. I mean that they are detached from earthly reality, and every bit of progress or protest by nonwhites shoves them further into space, where logic doesn’t exist. This is especially true now, when the halls of power are populated by white men who feel comfortable pandering to the most bigoted of populations and creating policy that reflects their oppressive beliefs. For too long in America, too many white Americans have believed that white people are the vanguards of progress, technological information, culture, and freedom. Only the moon-addled can look at our world and continue to think like this.

Creative Commons | Adam Turner

Gil Scott-Heron

The number of white nationalist hate groups has spiked since November. The vast majority of hate crimes are now perpetrated against non-whites, immigrants, religious minorities, and members of the LGBT community. Every day it seems like there’s a video of a Muslim woman going to do her grocery shopping and being accosted by a soccer mom with the rage-flames of xenophobia in her eyes. People of color are being murdered by random, racist whites every other day in extremely violent ways. Bystanders and good samaritans are being slashed and stabbed by white men who armor themselves in the flag and see themselves as defenders of white American ideals. Corporations — many of them led by moon-addled white folks and enabled by white politicians — make it their policy to destroy access to wealth from workers, to keep them laboring and sick and fearful.

Other groups in this country — the groups who are often on the receiving end of white folks’ moon-borne oppression — are made to feel like they are the problem with American culture. If they didn’t practice their heathen religions, if they didn’t have those weird cultural traditions, if they would just be white, then these problems with oppression wouldn’t exist and everyone would be free.

What really sucks about this condition of white moon-blindness is that you’re always prepared for it, but it can still catch you unawares even though it is innocuous, and any white person can simply decide to let it rip, leaving you either stuck wishing you had said the right thing, facing the judgmental stares of your peers, or even, sometimes, dead. And with one of the mooniest white men in the United States currently occupying the position of president, every moon-wild bigot in the country — and even some moon-wild non-bigots — will be in rare form. They’ll be invading your neighborhoods and communities, getting you arrested and moving their friends into your grandparents’ homes. They’ll be following you around, yelling racial slurs at you, and then trying to kill you when you fight back. They’ll be casually offensive toward you or pass laws to disenfranchise you or consume your culture until there’s nothing left, but you’ll be sure that you’re the problem and not them.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphis writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis magazine, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Vendor in the Grass

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. — William Shakespeare

Is there such a thing as “bad activism”? I’m asking because I’m seeing a lot of criticism of the folks who are protesting the Memphis Zoo’s encroachment onto the Greensward at Overton Park.

Some people mock the protesters for making such a fuss over “grass.” These folks don’t understand that parks are public spaces, created as a natural and necessary escape for uban dwellers who spend their lives negotiating streets, parking lots, and traffic. This city has plenty of asphalt already, and it can make more. Green space? Not so much. Turning an historic and beautiful lawn into a parking lot is foolish, when so many other options are possible. It’s not about “grass.”

The “misplaced priorities” argument is also getting a lot of play on social media (often from people whose Twitter feeds are filled with commentary on such vital issues as the Grizzlies, barbecue, and craft beer). It goes something like this: “With all the problems this city has, why are people wasting time and energy (and space on my social media) on the Greensward? There are bigger issues.”

Well, of course, there are bigger issues. Lots of them: Poverty, illiteracy, crime, rampant obesity, income inequality, to name a few. But why would you presume that the folks protesting the zoo’s takeover of the park only care about one issue? Because the other issues are not showing up on your social media?

How do you know that some of these park activists aren’t mentoring underprivileged youth, giving their time and money to fight poverty and racism, working to spread the arts to the underprivileged, trying to change our transit system, fostering children, volunteering for literacy, delivering meals for MIFA, fighting for a living wage, cleaning up our rivers and streams, or opposing our stupid gun laws? You don’t. In fact, I know that many of them are doing these things. But those activities don’t often lend themselves to television coverage.

People who have been working for years to improve Memphis Animal Services hear a variation of the same criticism: “If only they cared about people as much as they do puppies.” It’s a specious slight. People care about what they care about, and they can care about many things. You may not have the same priorities, but recognize that every activist is working to improve something or to right a perceived wrong — which helps your city and helps you. They should be applauded for caring enough to work for change, not criticized.

Then there’s the criticism that the Greensward is a “white people” crusade, that this squabble is about Caucasians exercising their privilege. And I get it: If you’re poor and black and struggling, spending your Saturday protesting parking on the Greensward is not a priority. But if you visit Overton Park on a weekend — the playgrounds, the picnic areas, the dog park, the trails, and the Greensward, you’ll see that the users are diverse — old, young, black, white, Hispanic — a classic city park crowd. These activists are not working to save Memphis Country Club.

Maybe those protesting the zoo’s ever-growing encroachment into Overton Park would get less criticism if a private entity — controlled by a board of wealthy white folks and the city’s largest corporation — were filling Riverside Park or Tom Lee Park or Audubon Park with hundreds of cars several days a week. I don’t know.

I do know that we’re ill-served as a city by sniping at each other for caring passionately about something — no matter the issue. And we need more people willing to put themselves out there for a cause. We’re all in this together.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (July 2, 2015) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ cover story, “Engaging the Big Muddy” …

Toby Sells and Brandon Dill captured the mystery, the magic, and the majesty of the big river, not to mention the good-time fun. And Joe Royer is the Mississippi’s greatest Memphis protagonist!  

The only thing not covered were details about safety, e.g., when to go and when not to go — and the myriad considerations paddlers need to make when approaching such a powerful force of nature. Fortunately, there is an excellent guide available on the internet: The River Gator’s Paddler’s Guide.  

Anyone considering safe paddling in the Memphis area (and beyond), please visit the River Gator. Some of the Memphis routes described in the River Gator were pioneered by Joe Royer and his wife Carol Lee. Many Memphians were consulted as experts for the River Gator (including the editor of the Flyer!).

There are dozens of pages covering the many choices for paddlers in between Shelby Forest State Park and Memphis, including the main channel, and enticing alternate back-channel routes such as those behind Brandywine, Hickman, Loosahatchie, and Redman. There is a very detailed safety section describing the specific skills paddlers should know before attempting the challenges of the biggest river in North America.

John Ruskey

About Bianca Phillips’ post, “State Bill Would Allow Religious Clergy to Deny Same-Sex Marriage” …

I’m trying to remember anywhere in all of the arguments over this where gay people said they wanted to force ministers and other clergy members to marry them. Everything I’ve seen has been they wanted the government to allow them to marry and for the government to recognize it. That is all.

Charlie Eppes

I am pretty sure that religious clergy already have the freedom to refuse to marry two individuals regardless of the reason. The only purpose of this proposal is to score political points.

Barf

Today’s ruling clearly stated that no minister was going to be forced to marry a same-sex couple if they did not choose to do so. Again, this is a way of wasting Tennesseans’ taxpayer money on frivolous bills rather than working to decrease our uninsured or create jobs, neither of which the Republican majority has shown any interest in.

Lane Scoggins

This is just the first step toward man-turtle unions and the death of Christianity. I firmly believe that although Christianity survived the Roman empire, it is helpless in the face of gay marriage.

Jeff

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter From the Editor, “Black is the New White” …

VanWyngarden conveniently failed or refused to admit the lost war on poverty has much to do with the policies of the Democratic Party. Poverty, strife, and divisiveness will continue to swell until politicos stop rewarding bad behavior.

By his own admission, President Johnson’s “Great Society” entitlement programs were created to cement constituents to the Democratic Party. This nefarious scheme damaged the African-American communities most. Instead of the government concentrating on how to get citizens out of ghettos, the entitlement programs too often kept them there.

Victimization has become the key to successful Democratic election results. President Obama’s policies and that of most democratic strongholds in American cities have resulted in the greatest degree of black poverty and black-on-black crime in recent history.

There are no easy answers, but a strong economy fueled by less taxation and a healthier business climate will go far toward creating opportunity for all.

William Pollack

Many whites exist in a poverty of compassion that is compounded by the illusions created by what Douglas Adams called the “Somebody Else’s Problem” effect (SEP). SEP is a psychological effect where people choose to dissociate themselves from an issue that may be in critical need of recognition. Such issues may be of large concern to the population as a whole but can easily be a choice of ignorance by an individual.

Scott Banbury