Why is America's sense of black humanity so skewed?

[gollygee]

I wish I could have posted more of this.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-americas-sense-black-humanity-so-skewed?page=0%2C1&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Part of the challenge of this moment is coming up with new frameworks of racial recognition. I am struck by the fact that it did not even occur to the New York Times writer to consider the potential of a protest that was front and center among most black people over the holiday weekend. I am struck by the ways media, other than cable news outlets, participated in making black rage and black peaceful protest invisible. I am struck by the fact that the boycotts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which I participated in alongside family, friends and comrades, registered as merely incidental to the narrative, if they registered at all.

The invisibility of black rage, black pain and black humanity are all elements of the same problem. That problem is a framework problem. Because Darren Wilson did not use a racial slur to refer to Michael Brown, our current racial frameworks are inadequate for helping your average all-American white people think through the contours of this encounter. That problem has plagued us since the beginning of this case; it dogged us throughout the Zimmerman trial, and it is helped along by the deep emotional dishonesty that characterizes race relations in the country.

Because of this framework problem, this epistemology problem, white people find black protests to be absolutely, utterly unreasonable, in light of the “evidence.” Many of these folks have never stopped to consider the fact that “reason,” and “evidence,” are not race-neutral concepts. What is a reasonable conclusion to draw for people who have never had the entirety of their lives shaped by a negative perception of skin tone, is an entirely unreasonable set of conclusions to draw for people who have.

For instance, to believe that Brown charged at Wilson in the midst of a hail of gunfire is to believe that black people are monsters, mythical superhuman creatures, who do not understand the physics of bullets, even as they rip through flesh. To white people, who co-sign Wilson’s account of events, this seems like an entirely reasonable assertion, one helped along by a lifetime of media consumption that represents black masculinity as magical, monstrous and mythic.

[kelliekat44]

1. Slavery, Civil War, and the need to feel superior...glued together by rank racism. nt

[socialist_n_TN]

3. Yep, but mostly slavery........

All of those other things play a part, but the main reason IMO is slavery. When a people are brought to another country as property, it changes the way society thinks of them. And it changes the way the owners act and react towards them. There's no inherent "evil" in destroying a piece of your property. You might be considered stupid, wasteful, and hot-headed, but not evil, if you beat your horse OR YOUR SLAVE to death.

And for a century or more, black people were property. That's a long enough time to embed an attitude in the citizenry. And that attitude towards people being property was passed down, even if only tacitly and even after de jure slavery was outlawed, to later generations.

Also livestock is property and slaves were livestock. Or domesticated animals depending on their place and situation. This leads to the attitude like Wilson's when he called Mike Brown a "wild animal". Or like when I was a kid and they called young black males, "young bucks" who could only be controlled by violence.

A LOT of things play a part in society's response to black people, but at it's base, it all stems from black people coming to this country as property or livestock.

[nc4bo]

5. My first thought was that slavery chapter left a whole lot of guilt and fear of

retribution.

Some of these bastards were probably so afraid of retribution and revenge for what they did that they were sure to teach their children/grandchildren to be afraid - but neglected to the them the gospel truth on why this should be so. They don't even teach the horrible history of slavery here in the USA. Just a quick gloss over in U.S. History books, if that. Don't think they get into the good stuff until college where you have to pay for the knowledge.

Sorry for ranting kelliekat and DU, I'm so damn disgusted and hurt and really, really pissed off all at the same time.

[GeorgeGist]

2. The rules of the game are written buy white guys.

[Recursion]

4. I believe Samuel Johnson said once (about the Irish IIRC)

"We hate the most those we have wronged."

[Chisox08]

6. America never had a sense of black humanity

We are either superhuman or subhuman but never human. A 12 year old child being described as looking like a 20 year old year man after being killed by the police.

[gollygee]

7. Very true.

It isn't a case of losing it, it's a case of never having it in the first place.

[TheKentuckian]

8. It has been so from the time the seed was put into the ground.

It is a pre - root condition.

Before the country was even founded, non - whites had been set as less than human savages and that mentality was a required precondition to the formation of the nation and exploitation of the land and resources.

It is baked into the cake, it cannot be reformed because it cannot be separated out anymore than an egg can be drawn from a finished cake.

[malaise]

9. You cannot remove centuries of racism

in 50 years - demand change and eventually you get change.
The entire system is racist to the core from the cradle to the grave.

[Odin2005]

10. It's called 4 centuries of racist ideology.