We all face adversity in life. Whether we chose the challenges or not, they are in our life so we should deal with them. How do we deal with race in America – specifically regarding black Americans? We treat black Americans wrongly every day. Overtly and in subtle ways. You can refer to the fact we so casually use words like ‘ghetto’. Below is one definition.
I find it interesting that there is a notion of pride and loyalty when one is from ‘the ghetto’ – even fierce pride and loyalty. “I’m from the ghetto.” It’s like a verbal certificate or stamp that says my life was / is not easy, but here I am. I respect that. One thought is, okay, you know where you are from, but why are you there? If you were creating the United States, would you sit in an office and say, “…and black Americans, they will mostly live in these impoverished areas called ghettos.” It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. These things are not okay. You were placed there, and you were placed there by the values and standards of America. At some point, a collective “we” let it happen. So that’s on all of us, and that’s only one of the ways in which we treat you wrongly.
Even for those black Americans that have had the benefit of climbing socioeconomic ladders, I know from personal relationships that they don’t get a pass on their dark skin. When does it end? It doesn’t really. The way society is today, you can’t continue to level up and eventually reach this status of equality that holds true everywhere you go. Suppose your coworkers / superiors come to respect you for who you are as a person. Okay, cool. What about the ‘important people’ at the other firm, or even on a different floor in your own company? When they hear about you, are they holding you to higher standards? Will you get the benefit of the doubt the same way as other professionals with the same qualifications (but don’t forget, lighter skin)?
I’m not saying black Americans need validation to be happy and successful, but we should still care about shifting our societal perspective. Also, the examples I gave would fall more in the subtle category of injustice. I thought it more appropriate to focus here since it’s where the average American might find a more palatable starting point to approaching race issues. I don’t think the reminder is needed, but to be clear when we get into the overt category of injustice – people die. Literally life and death. For being black. I won’t list names of black Americans that have been killed, but if you’re curious it’s a pretty easy Google search.
In case you’re curious why I’m writing about this (a not black American), I’ve thought about race a lot in the past and the short answer is I wanted to say something. Sometimes I get as far as having rough ideas of what might help the issue, but upon further inspection it’s never a silver bullet. There probably isn’t one. In terms of why now, I was actually inspired by a recent monologue by Dave Chappelle.
I liked the spirit of the solution he proposed for race issues in America: the Kindness Conspiracy. “Do something nice for a black person just because they’re black, and you gotta make sure they don’t deserve it.” At first, I thought here Dave goes again, but he was only half kidding. “It’s a very important part of it, they can’t deserve it. The same way all them years they did terrible things to black people just because they’re black – and they didn’t deserve it.” Don’t take it at face value.
Copyright © 2020 Erick Meza
