Insecurity over my skin color has been tempered by progress over racism since my youth

[bigtree]

...it always gets a jolt when I see regressions like this.

Eugene Scott @Eugene_Scott
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said Tuesday that he would be open to the Supreme Court overturning its 1967 ruling that legalized interracial marriage nationwide to allow states to independently decide the issue.
twitter.com/Eugene_Scott/status/1506395091363057668

How does it feel to not be a target for abuse and neglect? I've felt like a target most of my life. Not just paranoia, but a sense of deepening disenfranchisement which permeates my confidence in many endeavors with an almost certainty of unfairness.

It's definitely worsened in the past few years, and I'm now resigned to what might be my final chapter (a long one, I hope), fighting ghosts of the civil rights era which had always before presented themselves to me as past transgressions of this nation, now threatening to become a permanent fixture in the remainder of my life.

There's always been a very fine line drawn between me and full citizenship, even though I was born in Brooklyn. I felt that divide distinctly in the past, when Rodney King took that beating and prosecutors initially failed to hold the police responsible accountable. Felt it again when Mike Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson.

No explanation needed for what's stirring up the acrimony in me today. We can all see the diminution of comity and respect that had been conditionally extended by this nation to it's minority inhabitants over the decades since Reconstruction; since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts offered the protection of the federal government to ensure those rights afforded by the Constitution and in subsequent amendments.

Equal opportunity and equal protection are two important challenges we struggle with, but what about public accommodations like transportation, housing or medical care? All of these are diminished along with the degradation of decency and mutual respect.

Long route to this news report today, but it speaks to every fear I have about this nation including me (and now my white wife) in its promises. My mother was an African American with very light skin due to albinism.

She and my father went through a lifetime of animosity, banned from public amenities together in their young adulthood, like Sugarloaf Mountain (Md.) where I visited weekly in my own young adulthood with my white wife.

I'm quite used to statistics which predict an earlier demise for me than my white counterparts and compatriots. What's unsettling today is the weakening of protections I believed were sacrosanct. I feel pretty much like I've felt most of my adult life. Like a big target on my back.

[underpants]

1. What? Some marriages won't be recognized in certain states??

Great post by the way.

[Celerity]

6. IF Loving v Virginia was overturned, then yes, individual states could ban interracial marriage.

The same for same sex marriages if Obergefell v. Hodges was overturned.

That is exactly what the RW wants to do. Not only that, but I can easily see them try to continue on and attempt to nationalise the bans, as they will likely try to do someday with Roe v Wade and abortion.

This theory of cascading and spreading diminutions of rights is a fundamental part of the leading up to my dissolution of the Union scenario, which could occur when the Blue States refuse to come under the RW nationalised whip hand of tyranny and start to look hard at secession.

[Demsrule86]

7. It won't happen. That senator was forced to walk back his racist comments very quickly.

[bigtree]

10. backtracked, lied

...same thing IYAR.

Link to tweet

[Doc Sportello]

2. Truly eloquent

Thanks for posting.

[orwell]

3. Very moving post...

...thank you.

[panader0]

4. I have a granddaughter who has a mixed heritage.

I'm Irish, English and Native American. My kids mother is half Hispanic. My daughter married
a guy who is half Filipino. Their daughter, my granddaughter, is a mix of all of the above.
I'd like to ask Braun what race she is and who she would be allowed to marry.
I always enjoy your writing big.

[Tennessee Hillbilly]

5. In my view the election of President Obama in 2008 ...

triggered the current wave of more open white racism. Previously most of the white racists in this country hadn't displayed their hate so openly because until then white people had always been in almost full control of affairs. His election in 2008, and again in 2012, broke the white stranglehold on power and thereby revived the racists' feelings of hate and anger. Then trump stirred them up even more with his racist campaign in 2016.

More recently white racists know that it was mainly the support of black voters that enabled Joe Biden to win in 2020. His victory was also their victory. They hate it when the black community in this country wins.

[bigtree]

8. in my own time, the devolution began earlier

...I remember watching affirmative action attacked, and subsequently dismantled in the days of William F. Buckley Jr., Charles Krauthammer, Newt Gingrich, and George Will with his screeds about 'identity politics' and 'tribalism'.

Also back when some in the Democratic party, and others who had advantaged their politics off of the civil rights era and black votes, decided to give fealty to conservative, white resentment and agree with republicans to dismantle the affirmative action which I felt had just barely afforded me opportunity in the workplace, and elsewhere, like apartment hunting, and in many other instances of normal life.

It took the form of challenges in the DNC to Jesse Jackson's candidacy, by altering primaries to lessen the impact of southern states where black voters had more influence, and front-loading states which had less minority participation.

We saw Pres. Clinton acquiesce to rhetoric on crime which penalized minority communities, and we also saw Democrats behind him bend to rhetoric about the 'welfare state' and demagoguery about 'lazy' minorities who didn't want to work, weakening social protections in the name of 'personal responsibility' for a state of poverty deliberately placed upon them by a white majority.

I think many folks could see the diminution of protections and support, and assumed blacks could just compete and overcome because of some distant progress that had never ceased to be challenged, and never became fully realized.

I saw all of that in the early 80's when I went out to find work to support my young family and found open racism from a majority of employers in a supposedly progressive town - a paltry few blacks in management, and black workers relegated to roles without advancement or opportunity. I actively fought against those ALL of my working life to keep those negative influences from grinding me under.

So, much longer in my life than the election of our first black president, with all due respect and appreciation for your assessment of the effect of the Obama years.

[Caliman73]

13. The worst part of it is ...

wins for the Black community do NOTHING to diminish the economic and social lives of White people. If Black people are doing better, then typically EVERYONE is doing better.

What White people have been sold, is that they should be singularly rewarded, as the "makers of society", when society is a product of everyone's labor. This country was built on the work of poor and working class people, immigrants from England, Germany, Poland, Italy, Ireland, The Balkans, Spain, Mexico, China, Japan, India, etc... all working to make their lives better. The concept of "White" just threw up a barrier between working people so that there would not be any solidarity.

I want Black people to do better, to have the same opportunity, to feel a part of the community. It helps EVERYONE to have all people living comfortably. It makes society better.

[Demsrule86]

9. My middle daughter dated a young Black man...nice young man. We liked him very much.

She lived with him for a couple of years. One day she called sobbing that they had broken up...I am not sure why. she moved back in with us when her lease was up. I felt so sad for her. And we missed him. The kids date someone but then they break up and you never see that person who had become part of the family again. I get attached easily. She was heartbroken. Well, time passed and she met another young man who is kind of a geek like her.

I think she is going to marry this young man. But the point is, her generation is not going back to our racist sexist past. Hell, she dated people of all colors, nationalities, and gender. She considers herself bisexual. Many young people do these days. The blatant racism is selling right now in right-wing circles because Trump made it acceptable...but in the end, it won't work. He is a sick nasty old man and represents the past, not our future. Look how fast that asshat Indiana Senator recanted.

I was very moved by your story by the way.

[bigtree]

11. how did we make so much progress on the streets

...but fall back so far in the institutions that govern us (and our money)?

Rhetorical...

[Demsrule86]

12. I agree...and I have no answer...but I still believe the majority especially of young people have

changed...oh sure you will always have the idiots...the birchers, the klan, and all the other loser groups. But the country has moved forward. Look at the idiotic Senator from Indiana forced to recant almost immediately.