The Heroic Actions Of Some In Toronto Can’t Erase Canada’s Shameful Truths

‘We are comparatively free of racial, sectarian or ideological strife’? Absolutely not.

Unsplash/Pam Menegakis

“The Truth Canada Needs To Remember,” by John Ibbitson, was published in the Globe and Mail on April 24 — the day after one of the deadliest acts of terror in recent Canadian history, when a 25-year-old white man in Toronto weaponized a large van he had rented to plow into unsuspecting pedestrians, killing 10 people and critically injuring 15 others. The public is still reeling from the atrocity.

Yet despite the tragedy of the situation, much has also been made of one positive fact: The assailant was taken down without the use of force.

Focusing on the heroism of benevolent bystanders is right. But the officer simply did his job by actually adhering to his training. Moreover, most framings of this incident have failed to address a crucial fact: Lack of force by law enforcement is something rarely afforded Black and Brown people in this country.

In the Globe article, Ibbiston takes this erasure one step further, stating that in Canada, “we are comparatively free of racial, sectarian or ideological strife.” The basic premise of his article is an ode to the so-called tolerance, diversity, and benevolence of Canadian society, and how we are better for it (while touting that we are far better than our American neighbors and to a greater extent, the entire world).

Let me repeat the part which immediately pained me to read: “We are comparatively free of racial, sectarian or ideological strife.”

Ibbitson calls this a “truth.” But the truth is, I have never read such a one-dimensional white-privileged view in my life.

Yes, innocent bystanders heroically showed up to help in trying times. Yes, the officer involved did what he was supposed to by not using excessive use of force against a white man. But this does not make Canada some beacon of freedom.

How do you say that to the countless Black and Indigenous lives that have been ruined by this state?

I have never read such a one-dimensional white-privileged view in my life.

How do you say that to the hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people who have been victimized by the residential school system — the last of which didn’t close until the ‘90s?

How do you say that to the families of Indigenous youth like Colten Boushie, Indigenous girls like Tina Fontaine, and Black men like Jermaine Carby, whose lives were taken by white men who were never held accountable for their actions by a broken justice-less system? How do you say that to the countless Black and Brown people — some children even — whose lives have been taken because they were clearly never really free under this white supremacist system?

The lives of these and other victims have been deemed disposable by not only those responsible for their deaths, but a broken system that has declared their deaths somehow their own fault. Even after such tragedies, the Canadian media, investigating officers, and general public took to victim-blaming, evidence-tampering, and spewing racist anti-indigenous and anti-black hatred about these victims, instead of giving their families the dignity of fair and just trials that honored the lives of their loved ones.

Moreover, how do you say Canada is free of racial strife when there is such an alarming rate of Black and Indigenous kids in the crumbling racist foster care system? When there are so many children who have been (and continue to be) victimized as wards of the state when they are supposed to be protected? When there are cases like that of Abdoul Abdi, yet another refugee child failed by a broken racist foster care system?

How do you say that when the so-called “heroic” actions of the police officer don’t extend to people like Abdirahman Abdi, who was mentally ill and shot down like a rabid dog, instead of supported during a mental health episode in which he had harmed no one?

How do you justify such a low bar set that a police officer actually adhering to his training is somehow a heroic revelation? How do you not see that this also proves what racialized people have been protesting since Ferguson: that police are indeed capable of apprehending suspects without shooting and killing them?

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How do you explain such a fact to the countless Black, Brown, and Indigenous civilians, like Sammy Yatim, Dale Anthony Chatrie, Duane Christian, or Joey Knapaysweet, whose interactions with police have far too often turned fatal before police properly assessed the situation in which these individuals were deemed suspects?

How do you account for a litany of such staggering facts?

Like this: Black people account for 36.5% of all police-involved civilian fatalities despite representing only 8.3% of Toronto’s overall population. In the 52 instances of police-involved fatalities since 2000, nearly two-thirds (35 of the 52) were killed by being shot, while the remaining died from excessive physical force or medical complications while being restrained during their interactions with Toronto police. And yet, only seven officers have ever faced charges and only one has been convicted for their involvement in the death of a civilian.

In Saskatchewan, of the 16 people who have died in police encounters since 2000, 10 were Indigenous — accounting for 62.5% of all victims, despite Indigenous people representing only 11.7% of Saskatchewan’s population.

Black people account for 36.5% of all police-involved civilian fatalities despite representing only 8.3% of Toronto’s overall population.

I surmise these numbers are actually much higher, considering police departments have often failed to adequately collect race-based statistics about their encounters with racialized civilians.

And still, I am not done with my questions yet.

How can you say Canada is free from racial strife when it has one of the highest child poverty rates among developed countries, and when the majority of the hundreds of thousands of starving children are Black, Brown, or Indigenous?

How do you say that to the countless Indigenous families that have been devastated by the alarming rate of suicide among Indigenous youth, which our government has failed to adequately address? How do you say that to the dozens of Indigenous communities that have been under boil water advisories for decades without end, without access to basic necessities like clean water on their own land, while their resources are plummeted for white supremacist capitalist gain?

How can you say Canada is free from racial strife when it has one of the highest child poverty rates among developed countries?

How do you say that to the tens of thousands of Black and Brown people locked up in immigration detention centers across the country without basic necessities that are afforded even to incarcerated Canadian criminals — like access to basic medical care, sanitary products, internet, or access to lawyers to help them get out? As a result of Canada’s broken immigration system, hundreds still remain indefinitely held in immigration detentions at remote locations with little to no access to the outside world to even properly appeal their denied asylum applications.

How do you say the country is free to those who have been impacted by Canada’s broken refugee claimant system, which has failed people like Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam over and over again — particularly when the claimants are Black or Brown?

How do you say that to the families of people like Skantha Navaratnam, a Tamil man at the margins of his already marginalized community, who along with other men of color like Kirushna Kanagaratnam were targeted by a serial killer because of their race, and whose lives, disappearances, and eventual murders were dismissed repeatedly, carelessly, and callously by Toronto Police Services?

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How do you say that to African-Canadians who only represent 3% of Canada’s population yet account for over 10% of the overall prison population? How do you say that when the Black prison population has grown 69% in the last 30 years despite remaining such a tiny portion of the overall state population? When Black inmates are not only overrepresented in incarceration, but also subject to nearly 15% of all use-of-force incidents, and are more likely to be placed in maximum security institutions despite being at a lower risk of reoffending? (The numbers for Indigenous incarceration statistics are even more abysmal.) How do you say that when Toronto’s Black residents are targeted in 85% of racially motivated hate crimes and 27% of carding incidents?

“Freedom” and what it means to be free seems to only be a basic right guaranteed under the premise of whiteness, on this stolen land. Those of us that fall outside of that scope were never really free — no matter the comparatively small advancements we have managed to carve out thanks to our own determination, mobilization, resistance, and resilience.

Using the instance of an extreme tragedy as fodder to push some kind of “inclusive” and “tolerance” and “diversity” propaganda, when there are thousands of us who have never seen this equity play out in our lived experiences, is disillusioned at best. For those of us facing these very real realities, this is ahistorical, dishonest, and only continuing the cycle of unchanging conditions for the countless racialized people who do not benefit from the alt-reality that privilege and whiteness affords.

We can indeed be grateful to our brave fellow Torontonians who put their safety on the line and helped during the terror attack on Yonge street, and we can speak of their benevolence and strengths. But we must be mindful to do so without blatantly erasing the many racialized and marginalized people who still suffer under this white supremacist patriarchal capitalist system — people are who are in no ways close to being “free.”

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/police-shoot-a-lot-more-people-than-previously-known-932d35e24b85/ Sat, 16 Dec 2017 15:51:12 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2784 Read more]]>

A new investigation reveals that the number of people being shot — and shot at — by police is troubling.

Jeff Sessions (Credit: flickr/Gage Skidmore)

By Kali Holloway

I n major metropolitan areas around the country over the last half-decade, police have shot — and shot at — people in numbers dramatically higher than previous tallies suggest. A new Vice News investigation finds that between 2010–2016, cops in the 50 largest police departments in the country shot more than 3,630 people, nearly double some previous estimates. Of the 4,381 people cops fired upon in that period — including the 700 people they shot at and missed — two-thirds survived those shootings.

Absent a comprehensive federal database of police shootings, the Vice report offers the most complete picture of fatal and nonfatal police shootings available.

The data analysis also found that police shot black people “more often and at higher rates than any other race,” and “two and a half times more often than white people.” Vice found that cops shot no fewer than 1,664 black people in the period studied, comprising “55 percent of the total and more than double the share of the black population in these communities.” Twenty percent of the African Americans tallied were shot following “relatively innocuous pedestrian or traffic stops,” which was true for just 16 percent of whites shot by police. Those figures are of particular importance considering that studies find black drivers are more likely to be stopped by cops based on less evidence, less likely than their white peers to be spoken to respectfully during those stops, and more likely to be ticketed and arrested than white drivers.

Police shot black people ‘more often and at higher rates than any other race,’ and ‘two and a half times more often than white people.’

While police narratives of shootings studied by Vice suggest the majority of blacks shot by cops were themselves involved in shootings or robberies, the proliferation of cell phone and body camera footage that contradicts police versions of events brings the trustworthiness of those numbers into question. Many videos made public after the fact have illustrated that shootings initially described by police as being self-defensive were in fact extrajudicial executions of African Americans. Unquestionably, some shootings of black citizens result from actual crimes being committed. But the demonstrated fallibility of police accounts shows that in a disturbing number of cases, police officers “shoot first and come up with reasons later.” The Vice News investigation finds that a significant number of people (20 percent) shot by police were unarmed. Among those, 44 percent were African American.

“It is a complex picture, but what’s clear is that black people are more likely to be unarmed, and that more of these sort of low-level incidents escalate to shootings,” Samuel Sinyangwe, data analyst and co-founder of police reform organization Campaign Zero, told Vice.

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America’s problems with gun violence across the board are reflected in its police shooting figures. A 2015 assessment found that 1 out of every 13 people killed by guns every year is killed by police. As the Washington Post notes, that’s roughly one killing “every 9 hours, or 2.5 shootings per day.” Undoubtedly, based on the number of unarmed victims, not every shooting is the result of justifiable safety fears by officers. But few cops are held accountable even for the most extreme mistakes in the field. An investigation by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review last year found that between 1995 and 2015, “[f]ederal prosecutors declined to pursue civil rights allegations against law enforcement officers 96 percent of the time.” It’s notoriously difficult to secure a conviction against cops even in unequivocal cases of police abuse.

“There doesn’t have to be a gun involved. We see these cases where somebody has a cell phone or somebody makes the wrong move,” Bruce Franks Jr., a Missouri activist who went from Ferguson protester to state senator, told Vice. “There’s a million reasons they give so it ends up being justified.”

One of the few positive trends in the numbers Vice examined is a 20 percent downturn in police shootings since 2014, the result of Obama-era reforms in response to Department of Justice recommendations. Of the 10 cities that saw the largest drops in police shootings, seven complied with changes proposed by the federal government.

Cities that voluntarily adopted DOJ-recommended reforms saw a 32 percent decline in officer-involved shootings in the first year. The police departments that were forced to take on reforms through binding agreements with the DOJ saw a 25 percent decline that year, including Baltimore, whose agreement began this year. In Chicago, shootings by cops dropped by more than 50 percent after McDonald’s death, an incident that prompted a DOJ investigation and a package of recommended reforms.

That downturn is likely to end. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has characterized the DOJ’s work with local police departments as “federal intrusion,” and ordered a review of all reform agreements aimed at curbing civil rights violations and police abuses. “It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies,” Sessions stated in a two-page memo issued earlier this year.

The Vice investigation of the country’s 50 largest police departments was met with some resistance by the forces being scrutinized. Just 47 departments ultimately responded to Vice’s stats request with numbers that offered enough data for proper examination. “Many [law enforcement departments] fought hard to keep the information secret,” Vice claims, “and some responded to our requests only under threat of legal action.”

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Despite dozens of high-profile police killings in recent years, the FBI still doesn’t mandate that local police departments around the country report to a centralized data-keeping mechanism. Just 35 of the 18,000 local police departments in the U.S. participate in the Police Data Initiative, an Obama administration program to increase transparency around policing that will likely also be diminished under the Trump administration and the Sessions DOJ. Yet, this is critical information about the state of justice and civil rights in this country.

“We should know about how often it happens, if for no other reason than to simply understand the phenomenon,” David Klinger, an ex-LAPD officer and professor of criminal justice, told Vice. “How often is it that police are putting bullets in people’s bodies or trying to put bullets in people’s bodies?”

[h/t Vice News]

This article originally appeared on AlterNet. Republished here with permission.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/who-gets-to-have-a-good-death-201c29badb3c/ Thu, 28 Sep 2017 21:33:45 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2950 Read more]]> A good death is often a privileged one. The bad deaths — violent, patterned deaths — are disproportionately experienced by the marginalized.

In 1973, anthropologist and writer Ernest Becker posited a theory on life. Human civilization, he reasoned, is simply an extravagant and emblematic mechanism against the terrifying knowledge of our own mortality. Living with the fear of inevitable death, we are compelled to achieve greatness, to do something meaningful, in order to preserve a piece of ourselves in history.

As we well know, the quest for “greatness” throughout time has often led to atrocity. Our fear and denial of death have done damage on a global and personal scale, damage that, today, a growing movement is attempting to reverse and quell. Called “death positive,” this movement is an informal amalgamation of activists, historians, writers, artists, and death professionals working within various industries and projects to change our relationship to mortality and, essentially, drive us to accept the inevitability of death.

While death positivity takes many forms, a major tenet of this movement is the advocation for a “good death,” a death that is in line with one’s own individual values. While this means something different for everyone, the basic principle of a good death is that it’s been planned; this means the dying person is aware of their approaching demise, has come to terms with it, has legally prepared for it, has chosen their plans for interment, and can die at peace without pain, easing the mourning process for those left behind.

But it’s not always this simple. It’s true that categorizing any death as “good” is radical in our death-fearing society, but lurking behind this movement is a complicated disparity and dichotomy: A good death is often a privileged one, and the bad deaths — the violent, untimely, unexpected and patterned deaths — are disproportionately experienced by the country’s most marginalized people.

Human civilization is an extravagant survival mechanism against the terrifying knowledge of our own mortality.
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“From so many levels, death is political,” said Sarah Chavez, director and co-founder, respectively, of the death-positive collectives Order of the Good Death and Death and the Maiden, at Death Salon, the annual death positive conference that brings together an interdisciplinary cohort of thinkers on the issue of mortality. (This year’s conference in Seattle occurred the weekend of September 8.) “And I find that the ways that we react to death are very similar to the ways we react to civil rights and social justice issues: Some have the privilege of denying or ignoring death because it has not touched them.”

For those without this privilege, death is a regular fixture of their identity. And these people, of course, more often than not are black, brown, gay, trans, nonbinary, female, and/or poor, and are at a higher risk of being denied a good death.

While the average life expectancy in the U.S. is 79, for black people, it’s 75. A 2012 study by the Center for Disease Control found that white men with 16 or more years of schooling have a life expectancy of 14 years more than black men with fewer than 12 years of education. For white and black women with the same educational differences, that gap is 10 years.

More than that, the incidence of violent death is much higher for marginalized groups. Black people — particularly black men — are three times more likely to die at the hands of police than white people, and eight times as likely as white people to be victims of homicide. And while nearly three women are murdered every day in the U.S. due to domestic violence, black women are murdered at a rate more than twice that of white women.

Additionally, women in the U.S. are more likely to die during or shortly after childbirth than women in any other developed country. But black women in the U.S. die in childbirth at a rate 3.5 times that of white women, and black infants die at twice the rate of white infants.

In 2016, the Human Rights Campaign tracked at least 22 deaths of transgender people in the U.S. due to fatal violence—the most ever recorded—though this year is on track to surpass that: We’ve already seen 20 transgender people fatally shot or killed by violent means in 2017, 14 of whom were trans women of color.

On top of that, the LGBTQ community as a whole is at a disproportionately high risk of suicide. According to the Trevor Project, 40% of transgender adults report having made a suicide attempt, and 92% reported making an attempt before the age of 25. Additionally, the rate of suicide attempts is four times greater for lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth, and two times greater for questioning youth, than that of straight youth.

Bad death is not just defined by the violent or oppressive means by which the death occurred, however. It’s also the potential objectification and/or disdain for the body and the death itself that follows.

“The dead black body is familiar in a particular way,” Angela Hennessy — artist, assistant professor at California College of Arts, and Death Salon speaker — said in an interview. “We know it because we have witnessed it time and time again. It is embedded in the legacy of white supremacy which has fed off the labor, the commodification, the use, the violent abuse, and the subsequent death of black bodies.”

A major way this manifests today is in the sharing and viewing of videos of police brutality against black men — and women — which works to desensitize and normalize the occurrence of violent black death, according to a study from Georgetown’s academic journal, gnovis:

“The recurring images of police brutality portrays it as a normalized practice, which feeds into perceptions that are used to rationalize discrimination. Spreading social awareness in this technologically advanced age has led to the dehumanization of the black body. Sharing these images is not the problem, rather the casual manner in which these representations unconsciously reinforce and perpetuate the ideology that the black body is less than.”

Additionally, trans and nonbinary folks run the risk of being misgendered or having their identities erased after death: Because the law dictates that next of kin gets the right to your body and funeral arrangements after you die (unless you have an advance directive that states otherwise), these people are often turned over to the families that rejected their identities in life and continue to do so in death.

The violent deaths of women, too, are often trivialized. In the case of the highly publicized recent death of Kim Wall, a Swedish journalist whose body washed up on shore days after she went missing after stepping onto a man’s submarine, the news coverage largely focused on the “mad scientist” character who allegedly murdered her, as well as the similarities in Wall’s death to a Danish TV crime series, The Bridge. Many also chastised Wall posthumously for being brazen enough to step onto a man’s submarine alone. In other words, her death was diminished, and the fault was placed on her instead of the man who murdered her.

“When violence against women occurs, the conversation is frequently focused on a woman’s body and her actions rather than the overwhelming threat — serving as a subtle normalization of masculine violence,” journalist Alice Driver wrote in response to the coverage of Wall’s death.

All of which makes it clear: The intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and economic standing conspire to create a society in which “bad” deaths and “good” deaths are largely determined by demographics. In the face of this, it can seem like the idea of death positivity isn’t big enough to fix the underlying issues that cause this disparity.

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How can the societal acceptance of mortality not just teach people to better come to terms with tragic death, but actually stop the unjustified killing of black men, or trans women, or female journalists?

“The idea that death is universal and that we are somehow united in this shared experience at the end of life is somewhat false,” Professor Hennessy says. “Yes — we all die, no doubt. But we do not die for the same reasons or in the same ways, and our deaths signify very different narratives in the history of this country. The risk of these notions of a good death, a natural death, or being death positive, is that many people will be set up for failure.”

Since Becker’s theory on life and subsequent book, The Denial of Death, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, others have taken his philosophy a step further. In 1986, social psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski and Sheldon Solomon developed the Terror Management Theory (TMT) as a continuation of Becker’s ideas, which purports that humans “manage” their debilitating terror of death by developing and adhering to cultural worldviews that promise, in some sense, an idea of immortality in the form of either an afterlife, offspring, or the sense of belonging to something greater than the self.

‘Bad deaths’ and ‘good deaths’ are largely determined by demographics.
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All of these things lead to disagreement with and fear of those who aren’t like us. (TMT has been used to explain the rise of Trump and the passing of Brexit.) And this leads, ultimately, to the preservation of one set of ideals by the extermination of another.

“The roots of inequality, racism, and social marginalization are all grounded in our fear of death,” Chavez said.

In other words, our fear of death is what causes bad death.

With this in mind, the tenets of death positivity and good death could be a step in the right direction towards equalizing access to a good death: Without fear of dying, our world views can open up to include all of humanity. That means simply talking about mortality — getting people to think about and prepare for their own mortal fate — can help put an end to bad death.

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This, of course, is a theory that requires a longview, and may not resonate as we watch the phobias and -isms that cause bad deaths progress. But still, idealistic as it may be, our ability to give everyone a good death ultimately lies in our ability to see each other’s humanity. And as Hennessy believes, death itself can facilitate this compassion.

“If death is a condition of being human, can’t it make us more human in a way that we see and feel the humanity of others, and then make decisions based on that shared humanity?” she asks. “In this way we might recognize the vulnerability of others and understand how we implicate each other in the process.”

By Michal “MJ” Jones

When she returned one evening from what I thought was a routine dog walk around the neighborhood, my partner was nearly in tears. Perplexed and concerned, I probed for an answer.

She explained the sinking feeling of watching her hometown of Oakland, California, become unrecognizable: The urban farm and playground that recently popped up on Peralta Street had not a person of color in sight. Tent encampments with dozens of newly shelterless black people sprawled out beneath freeway overpasses. White neighbors shot quizzical or fearful looks as she passed. Walking the dog — a practice that once brought her joy and rejuvenation — now left her feeling deflated, angry, and seemingly powerless. Her home, her community, had vanished. It had all been building up over the past few years, and in those moments as she walked, it became too much to take.

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Walking the dog — a practice that once brought her joy and rejuvenation — now left her feeling deflated, angry, and seemingly powerless.
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A news search of “gentrification” will land you with thousands of perspectives both for and against. Though the debate has emerged most vocally in the past several years, for residents born and raised in major cities, the ongoing loss of home is felt deeply.

“It is a feeling of powerlessness,” says Bie Aweh, who was raised in the Roxbury and Brighton neighborhoods of Boston. “You’re already vulnerable because of poverty, and it makes you feel like you have no power because capitalism talks the loudest.”

While many in support of urban renewal and development cite decreased crime rates and increased revenue as benefits, long-term residents from coast to coast echo concerns about the impact of gentrification on historically poor, predominantly of color neighborhoods.

Each of the people I spoke to were raised in historically black, poor communities now experiencing continued or more recent waves of gentrification. Noni Galloway, of Oakland, defines gentrification as, “when an environment or culture is taken over or redefined by another culture.”

On a surface level, the changes that come with gentrification are physical — new beer gardens, condominiums and bike lanes — and happen seemingly overnight. Many residents are left to grapple with what, where and whom to call “home.”

1. Shifts in demographics: ‘White people jogging was the first sign.’

When I first moved to Berkeley as a teenager in the early oughts, my peers had endless warnings for me about the neighboring city of Oakland. People living outside of Oakland, many of them white and/or middle to upper class, generalized it as “sketch,” “dangerous,” and “crime-infested.”

The neighborhoods they cautioned me against visiting are now, over 10 years later, spaces where young professionals are flocking to, often describing them as “up-and-coming.”

When asked to reflect on the first signs of gentrification they saw in their cities, three of four interviewees specifically mentioned “white people jogging,” especially in areas they previously would not have set foot in. The influx of white and middle-class newcomers on its own is not the issue; rather the loss of culture and diversity that comes when a city’s long-term inhabitants can no longer afford to stay.

“We used to be a Mecca for black home ownership. Now illegalforeclosures.org reports that thousands of illegal foreclosures take place in Wayne County,” said Will, an activist from Detroit. “The discussion of so-called ‘improvement’ should not be separated from the misery being created for tens of thousands of Detroiters.”

Much of the conversation in support of gentrification is coded in a racist and classist belief system that blames the residents themselves for crime rates, rather than lawmakers, local politicians, and complicit newcomers who are disinvested from solving the causes of poverty.

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Much of the conversation in support of gentrification is coded in a racist and classist belief system.
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The increase of white and/or middle-class new residents to traditionally poor neighborhoods tends to follow or reflect changes in infrastructure, another highly discussed symptom of gentrification.

2. Shifts in infrastructure: ‘Government housing began to disappear.’

“Government housing began to disappear and the projects were being torn down,” said Crystal Lay, of Chicago. “People were being displaced to other areas and put in these quickly built homes.”

The shifts that happen to city landscapes undergoing gentrification are more than physical, they are symbolic of efforts to “improve” an area for incoming residents.

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The shifts that happen to city landscapes undergoing gentrification are more than physical, they are symbolic of efforts to ‘improve’ an area for incoming residents.
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For those who have called these cities home since childhood, there are some strange contradictions: new bike lanes and rent-a-bike programs on streets riddled with potholes; sleek, market-rate apartments popping up beside historic Victorians; urban gardens and beautification in prior dumping grounds.

Oakland’s Noni Galloway summarizes the complex feelings that arise from witnessing these shifts overtime: “I have mixed emotions because… there were much-needed upgrades to the area that I feel didn’t happen until the gentrification started,” she said. “But it hurts to see my old neighborhood turn into the hot spot for someone else to enjoy.”

Another undeniable impact of the skyrocketing housing market is the increase in individuals without shelter, some of them former residents who have been recently evicted. In Oakland, homelessness increased by over 25%, and complaints went up by 600% between 2011 and 2016.

When developers are allowed to build housing starting at $3,000 a month in a neighborhood with a median family income of $35,000, what is being improved? Where can a family call home after their house becomes unrecognizable and unaffordable? What is the cost of gentrification? And who pays?

“Whites and the rich benefit the most,” said Crystal Lay. “I believe poor people and people of color lose. I think any mom-and-pop businesses also lose their customer base and those familiar faces.”

3. Shifts in safety measures: ‘Police make areas safer for suburbanites.’

“We saw blue lights go up in high-crime areas; it was like a sign for people to stay out of those areas. I feel like it was the early 2000s when they began,” said Lay.

Creating the perceived sense of safety associated with suburban areas, including policing, is part of what facilitates the process of demographic changes in major cities.

Sites such as Nextdoor and SeeClickFix encourage residents to report various issues, from car break-ins to graffiti, for resolution. These methods rely heavily on collaboration with law enforcement and public works officials, but also limit community members’ ability to resolve and express concerns together.

The desire to live in an environment that is free of violence, building decay and trash is obviously not unreasonable. I am certain that many long-term residents in urban areas have long wanted to see these changes. The issue is that local governments only invest in these changes when the demographics shift, and that the strategies of “safety” fit the new demographic as well.

The presence of law enforcement does not equal safety in many inner cities, but in urban environments undergoing gentrification, it is common to witness increased policing.

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The presence of law enforcement does not equal safety in many inner cities, but in urban environments undergoing gentrification, it is common to witness increased policing.
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Not only does gentrification push residents out of their homes, it can make them feel unwelcome, or even feared, on their own streets. “

I’m going to have a shirt made,” my partner said, once again returning from walking the dogs, “that says, ‘I’m not a criminal, I’m just from here.’”

Although interview participants overall were not optimistic about the possibility of stopping gentrification, they did have words, advice and requests for new residents.

“Are you moving into the community with the intentions of contributing to the existing culture, by supporting our businesses, or are you coming to disrupt it?” asked Bie Aweh of Boston. “If the answer is disrupt, then please don’t move here.”

“Consider the history of the neighborhood; understand the relationships that are among the neighbors,” Oakland’s Galloway concluded.

This story originally appeared on AlterNet. Republished here with permission.

This morning I woke up to a few messages sharing the internet’s latest attempt at racial-feel-goodism — a viral video of Black Lives Matter protesters speaking at a Trump rally. The video, which already has 13 million views in less than a day, shows BLM protesters at a Trump rally called “The Mother Of All Rallies” (which…is kind of hilarious when it’s reported that fewer than 1,000 people showed up, but I digress). The protesters are at first insulted and dismissed by the speakers onstage, but then one speaker decides to give them two minutes on stage to patronizingly “show them what patriotism is all about.”

In a short and very pandering speech, Hawk Newsome, president of BLM New York, explains that BLM isn’t “anti-cop,” that they “aren’t asking for a handout,” and that they want to get rid of “bad cops” just like Trump supporters want to get rid of “bad politicians.” After the speech, Newsome is shown taking pictures with Trump supporters as he talks about how some of them came up to him after and said that they agreed with him. He says that he wanted them to see that a member of BLM was a “Proud American and Christian.” And that BLM members were “educated.”

The Abuse Of ‘Feel-Good’ Cop Videos

Newsome says, “I think we made some substantial steps, without either side yielding anything.”

Record scratch — Um, excuse me? Someone come collect your man Newsome. Please.

My gawd, where do I even start with the things that are wrong with this? Because… well absolutely everything is. I guess we’ll just start a list.

The Framing

Yes, the primary speaker is a black man, but who is really being centered in this video? Who is being humanized? Who do you walk away from this video saying, “see — they aren’t as bad as we think?” It’s not the BLM activists being humanized — they are having to showcase a certain set of behaviors in order to even be seen as human. They are having to highlight how they aren’t “like other black people” in order to even be heard. They have to be proud Americans, Christians, eloquent speakers, willing to shake hands with White Supremacists — all while White Supremacists in the audience scream that Eric Garner was a criminal who deserved to die.

What do the White Supremacists at the rally have to do? Patronizingly give two minutes of stage time, out of an entire day of hate speech, to BLM activists, and pose for a few photos with black people who just bent over backwards to appear nonthreatening to them.

The Pandering

“We don’t want handouts. We don’t want anything that’s yours.” Yeah, about that. White America: I, and many other black activists, DO want something that is yours. We want what you have that you stole. We want the profits you’ve made from the exploitation of our labor and the destruction of our bodies and souls. We want our fair share of space in your school textbooks. We want some of your congressional seats and city council seats. We want a bigger chunk of college admissions and job interviews.

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White America: I, and many other black activists, DO want something that is yours. We want what you have that you stole.
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Some of what you have, you stole. Some of what you have, you’ve maintained by shutting us out. Some of what you have, you don’t deserve. You know this. We know this. And this is why you hate Black Lives Matter so much. This is why you hated Dr. King and Malcolm X so much. Let’s not lie. Let’s not act like in a world of finite resources, if we correct a deeply unjust system, those who have profited off of that inequality will not lose out. It is this unspoken reality that has sustained White Supremacy — the knowledge that if white people do what is right, they will lose what they never had a right to. Let’s call it what it is, and let those allies who say that they are willing to fight against racism actually put their privilege on the line. We are who we pretend to be. And if we pretend that we are only here for hugs, and not for socioeconomic justice, all we are going to get is hugs. Like Dr. Martin Luther King said, “We’re coming to get our check.”

The Lesson

What is the moral of the story this video tells? That if we just talk peacefully, we’ll find common ground and we’ll recognize the humanity in each other? That if we just prove to those who have voted open White Supremacy into our highest offices that we are no threat to them, that they will…ask to get a picture taken with us?

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If we pretend that we are only here for hugs, and not for socioeconomic justice, all we are going to get is hugs.
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It should not be shocking to you that a White Supremacist at a Trump rally would get his picture taken with a black man. It should not seem revelatory that a White Supremacist at a Trump rally would let a black man hold his kid. Trump supporters are not evil monsters. They are human beings. And human beings are capable of having black friends, even black spouses, and still voting for policies that get black people killed. Human beings are capable of taking a friendly photo with a black stranger one minute, and explaining why Trayvon Martin deserved to die in the next. And that should not make you feel good. It should not give you hope. It should scare the fuck out of you.

I know that a lot of people — especially white people — have relatives who voted for Trump. I know that for many liberal white folk, it has been very painful to reconcile the relative they have known and loved, with the hatred and violence that that relative has chosen to support.

Know that this is how White Supremacy works. That you can go to church on Sundays, volunteer with your PTA, and vote for a man who is openly courting actual neo-Nazis. You can attend a rally and proudly stand next to someone holding a sign saying that Obama is a Muslim terrorist and still be considered a valued member of your community. You can love a black person, even give birth to black children, and still think so little of them that you would vote away their safety and security. The problem isn’t that we don’t see how Trump supporters are “people just like us” — the problem is, that is all we want to see. In our efforts to not reevaluate what whiteness actually means in America, we will absolve those who are actively strengthening racist hate of any responsibility for their actions.

The Lack Of Accountability

Let’s go back to this awful sentence that Newsome thought was a good idea to say — “I think we made some substantial steps, without either side yielding anything.” What the actual fuck does that even mean? Right now, we have a president who has already tried to ban Muslims from this country, declared war on free press, pardoned an abusive and racist cop who was targeting and torturing people of color, endangered the futures of millions of undocumented immigrants, equated anti-racist protesters with murderous swastika-wearing White Supremacists, brought us to the brink of war with North Korea, banned trans people from serving in the military, and basically more evil and oppressive shit than I thought it was possible for one president to fit into nine months of presidency. Not only did the people at this rally vote this horror into office, but after seeing what it has wrought, they are showing up to cheer it on.

When I Said All Trump Supporters Are White Supremacists, I Meant It

These are people who are, right this very moment, upholding staggering amounts of hate and oppression. And instead of being shown the reality of what they have done to this country…instead of being held accountable… instead of being told to own up to their racism, xenophobia, sexism, and transphobia…instead of being asked to help clean up the godforsaken mess they’ve created…instead of being made to feel the actual regret and shame that is absolutely necessary for growth when you have committed regretful and shameful acts…

…they get to fast-forward to feeling good. To proving to themselves and others that, because they can listen to a black person speak for two minutes and take a picture with him, that they are not racist. Then they get to go back to being racist as fuck.

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You can love a black person, even give birth to black children, and still think so little of them that you would vote away their safety and security.
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The Goal

Is this what we’re fighting for? For individual racists to want to be our friends and give us hugs? It’s sure as hell not what I’m fighting for. I’m fighting for the destruction of the system of White Supremacy. I’m fighting to make it so that, even if you hate me because of the color of my skin, you don’t have the power to ruin my life because of it. I’m fighting for political and cultural representation, economic justice, the destruction of the prison industrial complex. You are on a stage in front of people who are consistently voting to uphold the very systems you are trying to destroy, and instead of explaining to them how their choices are upholding these systems, you….beg for them to not see you as someone who doesn’t hate cops? What a waste.

The system of White Supremacy is vast and complex, but it is a system. And all systems have parts that we interact with, and can destroy. Instead of doing the real, and sometimes very unsexy work, of destroying this system, we are instead reinforcing White Supremacy by once again agreeing to try to prove our humanity to those who are actively working towards our destruction?

Let’s stop trying to take the easy way out. Let’s stop trying to feel good about a system that nobody has any right to feel good about. Let’s stop allowing ourselves to not only be distracted, but to be derailed by feel-good narratives that have us begging for the hearts and minds of individual racists instead of fighting the system that empowers them. Instead of finding a way to feel good about your Trump-supportive friends and relatives, let your love for them push you to see them as they are, and demand better from them. Demand that they act like the good, kind people that you thought they were — in real, quantifiable deeds, not empty words or photo ops. Every day that we delay in doing the work that is necessary to destroy White Supremacy, countless lives are crushed beneath its feet. Stop falling for lazy and manipulative “feel-good” racial narratives, and get to work building a reality that actually IS good.

‘I am more confident when I’m surrounded by other writers who are pushing boundaries.’

When we asked Bellamy to summarize writing in a series of GIFs, the last one she chose was the classic meme of Obama kissing his fingers before dropping the mic.

It was an apt choice — as this is, in fact, exactly what reading a Bellamy piece is like.

When exploring fraught issues surrounding racial justice, Bellamy writes with so much piercing clarity and brazen honesty that when her stories are complete, you can’t help but feel the urge to applaud —as one is wont to do when the mic has been dropped.

At the same time, Bellamy writes with extraordinary nuance and thoughtfulness, meaning her words don’t just create an immediate impact; they stay with you, sometimes days or even weeks later.

Take “Why I Didn’t Call The Cops When I Saw A Teen With A Gun,” a piece that details not wanting to involve law enforcement in a potentially dangerous situation, due to the looming threat of police brutality against black bodies. It’s an essay that demands your attention, then your deepest consideration and thought.

Why I Didn’t Call The Cops When I Saw A Teen With A Gun

Or “When My Cute Black Kid Becomes What You Fear Most,” an essay in which readers are asked to contend with their basest prejudices, turned against the innocent children of loving mothers.

When My Cute Black Kid Becomes What You Fear Most

In these and other pieces, Bellamy drops the mic — but, more importantly, she also asks that you pick the mic back up, and continue the conversation. And that’s the mark of a very worthy Writer of the Week.

Below, read Bellamy’s thoughts on predatory publishers, Charlottesville, and the enduring wonders of pie.

I think “paying writers in exposure” is mostly predatory bullshit, particularly in the case of publications run by large, wealthy corporations.

The coolest thing I’ve bought from money made writing is probably food for my babies’ bellies, because not starving is always in style.

My most listened to song of all time is “I Don’t Want to Be” by Gavin DeGraw.

I like writing for The Establishment because I feel like my stories are understood and valued, not brushed off because an editor can’t relate. Also, I am more confident when I’m surrounded by other writers who are pushing boundaries and when I don’t have to contend with a comments section.

If I could only have one type of food for the rest of my life it would be pie. I’m pretty sure it covers most food groups.

If I could give the amazing people who sponsor stories anything in the world to express my gratitude, it would be a personalized poem…and maybe some pie.

The story I’m working on now is about the role parents play in securing a diverse and harmonious future for their children.

The story I want to write next is about what we can learn about ongoing activism from the organizers here in Charlottesville and avoiding complacency.

If I could summarize writing in a series of three GIFs, it would be:

Beginning:

Middle:

(Oh So Humble) End:

Read about all our amazing Writers of the Week here!

Why Your Criticisms Of Intersectionality And Identity Politics Sound Ridiculous

Why do so many frame demands for accountability and sociopolitical inclusion as ‘divisive?’

“Demilitarize the Police, Black Lives Matter” (Photo credit: Johnny Silvercloud)

I remember the first time I was called a nigger.

I was in the 4th grade. I remember being in a classroom, joking with a friend (a white girl) and calling her a nincompoop. She looked to me, her smile melting into a look of contempt, and replied, “You’re wrong…you’re the nigger.”

She had obviously misheard me, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about yet I understood, on a visceral level, the underlying message and how it made me feel: small, ugly…less than.

Since that unwitting attempt to “put me in my place,” I’ve endured countless scenarios — sometimes casual, sometimes hostile — that made me feel one or more of those things throughout my life, a consequence of navigating a white-dominated society with an anti-black value system woven into the tapestry of its white-oriented culture.

The thing is, I’m not just Black: I’m also an atheist. While far more benign compared to anti-blackness, being an atheist tacks on a more uncommon layer of prejudice that I contend with given our Christian hegemonic society, even within the Black community.

While far more benign compared to anti-blackness, being an atheist tacks on a more uncommon layer of prejudice that I contend with given our Christian hegemonic society, even within the Black community.

Since most are reared in a social environment that constantly encourages and reinforces some type of religious or theistic belief, many view these normative ideas as being identical to truth. This view results in thinking something traumatic must have happened to those who reject these normative beliefs, or that they must hate god (which is misotheism, not atheism), or that there must be something wrong with them mentally — because, somehow, we’ve been conditioned to believe that no sane individual would reject the idea of an invisible yet omnipresent supernatural being we’ve never seen and are only familiar with through primitive stories and hearsay.

But I’m not just an atheist. I must deal with a wide range of animus, fear, bias, ignorance, microaggressions, alienation, and erasure reserved not just for atheists, and not just for Blacks, but for the intersection of blackness and atheism.

I’ll always be an outspoken atheist as well as unapologetically Black (that is, I despise respectability politics, readily speak to the real-lived texture of Black life, and choose to not diminish issues disproportionately impacting Black America). Those who suggest I ignore either of these essential pieces of my being, depending on which space I occupy, are really asking me to deny who I am for their comfort and their allegiance to social norms declaring those aspects of my identity matter less.

Being a Black atheist within white-centered atheist spaces that satiate the concerns and interests of white atheists really helped me realize the importance of the questions, “Who’s being left out — and why?” Thinking deeply about this also helped shape my appreciation of the ways I hold many social advantages as an able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual male in a society that confers a surplus of meaning to those occupying these identities while delegitimizing the humanity of those who do not.

So, for me, the reason why intersectionality is vital is apparent: it’s both a metaphor and frame of understanding that acknowledges multiple “avenues” of prejudice and marginalization exist, and that these “avenues” intersect. Intersectionality reminds us to consider how we are all impacted differently due to the complex, intersecting nature of social power dynamics.

Intersectionality reminds us to consider how we are all impacted differently due to the complex, intersecting nature of social power dynamics.

Still, there remain many who disparage or otherwise question the need for intersectionality. This usually happens for three reasons.

1. Naysayers don’t understand identity or its impact on our shared social reality

There are many assumptions we take for granted when it comes to identity and the patterned social arrangements of society. Before speaking further about the significance of an intersectional analysis, it’s necessary to unpack some fundamentals of what identity does and does not entail.

Identities are systematized descriptors that reference objective and causally relevant characteristics of a shared reality.

Identities are based on specific cultural contexts, social histories, and lived experiences.

Identities are the conditional products of social interaction and social institutions, subject to occupying particular locations within time, social space, and historical communities.

Identities are not an attempt to reduce an entire group to an essential, coherent monolith. To share an identity with others is to share in only one facet of a multifaceted reality. There is no contradiction between identifying with specific social groups and being a complex, unique individual.

When discussing common identity — separate from individual identity — we’re describing what’s imposed on us by an established history of social standards, stratification, controlling images, and stereotypes.

To affirm that we have an identity, or to state that we’re a part of a particular identity group, is to simply agree that we have a location in social space informed by the interlocking social structures we inhabit.

It’s necessary to increase awareness regarding the ways in which this complicated social reality impacts people differently if we want to build a society where the most vulnerable among us are recognized and listened to in hopes of alleviating (and ultimately, eliminating) their vulnerable status.

Thank God For Identity Politics

This is why Kimberlé Crenshaw, scholar and civil rights activist who coined the term intersectionality, once described intersectionality as being “an analytic sensibility” and “a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power.” She’s also articulated how intersectionality helps us increase attentiveness to identity-based “blind spots” when it comes to aspects of unequal social power dynamics we don’t ourselves experience.

2. Naysayers associate intersectionality with their favorite bogey monster: “identity politics”

The phrase “identity politics” is merely a pejorative blanket term that invokes a variety of ambiguous, cherry-picked ideas of political failings.

Declaring something is “identity politics” is often a measure taken to trivialize identity-based issues that make many members of dominant social groups uncomfortable (e.g., Black Lives Matter critiquing anti-black racism, feminists critiquing sexism, LGBTQ activists critiquing cis-heteronormativity, etc.).

‘Identity politics’ is used as an expression to identify political deviance — to describe political actions defying imbalanced political structures we’ve been conditioned to accept.

Basically, “identity politics” is used as an expression to identify political deviance — to describe political actions defying imbalanced political structures we’ve been conditioned to accept.

What’s ironic is politics are unavoidably connected to identity for everyone. Who and what we are is rooted in our identities. Identities are forged by socio-historical context, and they directly impact interpellation (the means by which we encounter our culture’s values and internalize them) as well as our lived experiences. Experiences correlate with identity to provide both an epistemic and a political basis for interpreting the world we exist in.

Consider white-centeredness, a deeply-rooted cultural feature of this nation. The term “white-centeredness” describes the centrality of white representation that permeates every facet of dominant culture. This representation upholds as “normal” the ubiquity of language, ideas, values, social mores, and worldviews established by the white perspective.

White-centeredness standardizes whiteness. This standardization saturates what we refer to as the “status quo.” The maintenance of this social order is white identity politics, as engaging in political activities to preserve these ideas and structures demands prioritizing the collective interests of white America.

White identity politics go ‘undetected,’ as we’re socialized to regard the sustaining of dominant culture as ‘what is expected’ or ‘the way things ought to be.’

The thing is, nobody distinguishes political motivations, political judgments, or political maneuvering that enshrines white-centeredness as being white identity politics. Instead, white identity politics go “undetected,” as we’re socialized to regard the sustaining of dominant culture as “what is expected” or “the way things ought to be.”

Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos, a sociologist with Swinburne University, echoes this sentiment, stating:

If the phrase has any value at all — and it really doesn’t — “identity politics” calls attention to the ways that people from majority groups, especially White people, do not “see” how their identities are governed by politics.

This is how Whiteness works: White culture is embedded into all fields of public life, from education, to the media, to science, to religion and beyond. White culture is constructed as the norm, so it becomes the taken-for-granted ideal with which other cultures are judged against by White people.

Hence, White people do not recognise how their race shapes their understanding of politics, and their relationships with minority groups.

It shouldn’t be surprising that those who occupy positions of social dominance seek to discredit identity politics wielded by those with restricted social power.

They’ll refer to it as “divisive” or “tribalism,” neglecting the fact that the political activism they belittle is in response to pre-existing social divisions situating certain social groups (tribes) with greater sociopolitical power at the expense of subordinating other social groups.

They’ll go to great lengths to invalidate missions for increased social and political power by those from marginalized social groups — communities systematically disenfranchised in ways that restrict access to resources, rights, or opportunities made fully available to other social groups.

In other words, the term “identity politics” is typically employed as a linguistic Trojan horse to stigmatize campaigns for civil rights.

The term ‘identity politics’ is typically employed as a linguistic Trojan horse to stigmatize campaigns for civil rights.

In 1977, a Black feminist lesbian organization known as the Combahee River Collective issued a statement that may be considered the historical genesis of explicit identity politics. In it, the group expresses the relevance of identity to politics and how shared aspects of identity produces solidarity when confronting unique forms of oppression that target specific identities. The group was formed after issues related to their particular life circumstances were continually disregarded due to pervasive heterosexism, erasure within the white-dominated women’s movement, and erasure within the male-dominated Black liberation movement.

For marginalized social groups, what is perceived as explicit identity politics is a challenge to status quo, and used as a means of seeking increased sociopolitical power currently not being distributed in an equal or just manner. This form of political engagement — which emphasizes issues and perspectives relevant to shared aspects of an identity — serves to address social ills that disproportionately impact the lives of marginalized social groups in clear and specific ways.

A laser focus on matters related to our own social positions breeds insularity and complacency, obstructing our emotional and intellectual connection to disparate social realities we don’t experience. This is why we need intersectionality — to challenge and expand that narrowed focus.

We need intersectionality to challenge and expand that narrowed focus.

Speaking to how intersectionality forces us to move beyond more simplistic notions of complex social matters, Zevallos says:

Intersectionality is not about “identity politics,” a term used to denigrate minorities’ contributions to activism, academia and other public discussions. Intersectionality is a framework used to illustrate how systems of discrimination are interconnected.

Black women struggled against industrial relations law as they experience co-occurring incidents of racism and sexism in the workplace. The law puts Black women into a tricky position by forcing them to focus workplace complaints in either the area of race discrimination or gender discrimination.

Professor Crenshaw’s use of intersectionality shines a light on how existing processes act as if individuals belong to discrete groups, when, in fact, Black women face multiple inequalities at the same time. Over the decades, theorists, including Professor Crenshaw, have further developed intersectionality to show how other relations of power structure inequality.

For example, a Black woman activist at a Black Lives Matter protest unfortunately could not expect the police to protect her safety, as we have seen all over the world — while a White woman activist at a Women’s March protest can expect the police to provide a peaceful environment for her to march across the city. Race offers a buffer for one gender group (White women), but not another (Black women); hence, interconnections of race, gender and other forms of disadvantage require concurrent attention.

3. Naysayers don’t want seismic social change

Many people simply don’t want radical social progress, or significant societal changes that would create a more inclusive social order, as this requires casting asunder oppressive ideas and systems codified into the status quo that dominant social groups benefit from.

When you’re socially and politically exempt from systemic inequality, it isn’t unusual to focus on matters that relate more to your vantage point, and to greet treating matters that decenter your purview with indifference, defensiveness, bewilderment, or hostility.

Editor at Large of The Establishment Ijeoma Oluo, who spoke to this tendency in her article Thank God For Identity Politics, describes those who take issue with intersectionality as “people who are threatened because they see intersectionality as something that is forcing them to change, to see themselves as something other than the aggrieved party.”

This brings to mind the recent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. No, it wasn’t a “We Hate Intersectionality” protest, but it damn sure was a flagrant display of white folks espousing exclusionary beliefs (e.g., chanting “You will not replace us,” parading KKK and neo-Nazi symbols) and expressing dissatisfaction with steps toward social progress: removing monuments commemorating white supremacy.

Despite being white and existing within a white-dominated society steeped in a white-centered culture, both the protestors and their sympathizers are unable to see themselves as anything other than “victims” of a changing world gradually eroding their hegemonic status.

Despite being white and existing within a white-dominated society steeped in a white-centered culture, both the protestors and their sympathizers are unable to see themselves as anything other than “victims” of a changing world gradually eroding their hegemonic status.

This imagined distress of the privileged is encapsulated by the popular quote, “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

We Need Accountability

I asked Oluo about her opinion regarding the criticism that intersectionality creates a “hierarchy of suffering,” to which she responded:

I think that it is the lack of intersectionality that creates a hierarchy of suffering. Intersectionality does just the opposite: it adjusts to the nuances of individual situations, and holds us all accountable to each other.

This. Right. Here.

Intersectionality demands accountability. Those occupying dominant social positions tend to be less accustomed to taking responsibility for attitudes or behaviors that adversely affect non-dominant group members.

‘Special Snowflake’ My Ass: Why Identity Labels Matter

This is something I’m intimately familiar with when it comes to Black men who embrace shallow “Black first” ideas of wokeness that’s hip to the antiblackness ever-present within our white supremacist society while also reproducing ideologies that overlook or co-sign misogynoir and heterosexism. This is why Oluo affirms, “You cannot only pick up the parts of revolution that free you and then fight against those working to free themselves and still call yourself a revolutionary.”

We’ve all been socialized within a profoundly oppressive culture wherein widely accepted social mores cater to dominant social groups, whether based on gender, class, race, sexuality, ability, religion, or a combination of these and more. The exercise of intersectionality intervenes on the everyday assumptions, expectations, and interests we uncritically accept that routinely eclipse the concerns of marginalized communities.

Writer, educator, and social activist Sikivu Hutchinson explains it this way:

Intersectionality is the human condition. It addresses the multiple positions of privilege and disadvantage that human beings occupy and experience in a global context shaped by white supremacy, capitalism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, heterosexism, ableism, segregation and state violence.

Intersectionality upends the single variable politics of being “left” or “right.” It speaks to the very nature of positionality in a world in which it’s impossible to stake a claim on a solitary fixed identity that isn’t informed by one’s relationship to social, political and economic structures of power, authority and control that are themselves rooted in specific histories.

As Oluo puts it, intersectionality requires folks to “set aside their egos and realize that we can always do better, and should always strive to do better, if we really want to be better.”

For the sake of realizing a society more inclusive of the disadvantaged and the underrepresented so that increased access to well-being and autonomy is possible, it’s vital we take advantage of an analytical tool that deliberately seeks out those who exist on the margins.

And that tool is intersectionality.

This article originally appeared on the author’s Medium account. Republished here with permission.

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“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Everything short of racial justice is white supremacy. Everything.

Credit: Vlad Tchompalov/Unsplash

I’m going to say something about race that may seem to fly in the face of everything we’ve been taught about how to handle complicated and divisive adult issues—but, as unproductive as it may sound, it’s the truth: There is no compromise.

There is no compromise to be had, none whatsoever, when it comes to racial justice. There are no baby steps that are acceptable. There is no middle to meet in.

Everything short of racial justice is white supremacy. Everything.

There is no compromise to be had, none whatsoever, when it comes to racial justice.

If this sounds harsh or unreasonable to you, I really need you to understand why it is not. If this last election and the torrent of narratives against “identity politics” has you thinking that maybe, just maybe, some middle ground between white supremacists and anti-racists must be found, I need you to understand the danger this belief puts us in. Because the desire to make racial equality a topic which is up for debate, or racial justice a goal that we can ease ourselves into, is what has sustained the system of violent white supremacy for hundreds of years. I need you to understand, because I need you to understand what those who say that we are “pushing too hard” or “asking for too much” or “moving too fast” are really saying.

The average American will easily agree that they believe that freedom, justice, and equality are basic rights, rights we are born with. These ideas are woven throughout the entire narrative of our democracy. But in practice, very few people actually believe that freedom, justice, and equality are rights that every American deserves. When you enjoy your freedoms, and you tell those who want their freedoms that they have to wait, that they have to go slowly, that they have to give you time to make uncomfortable adjustments to the amount of privilege that their inequality has afforded you, what you are saying is, “You were not born with these rights. You were not born as deserving as me. I have the power and privilege to determine when it is time for you to receive freedom and equality, and my approval is conditioned on how comfortable and safe you make me feel about how that freedom and equality will impact the privileges I enjoy.”

Support Diverse Journalism — Become A Member Of The Establishment

What is the compromise between justice and oppression? What grey area between inequality and equality exists? There is none. You cannot have a little injustice and call it justice. You cannot have a little inequality and call it equality. And whenever you decide that you have the power to slow or stop justice and equality for others — you are immediately ensuring the continuation of injustice and inequality by placing yourself above those seeking justice and equality. There is a claim of superiority inherent in believing that you have the right to slow racial justice. It is a claim of superiority that white supremacy has granted you, and that you cannot accept without becoming a willing proponent of this white supremacist system.

You cannot have a little injustice and call it justice. You cannot have a little inequality and call it equality.

Lives are ruined while we “wait our turn.” Children are expelled from school, young adults are locked away in prison. As people of color in this country we receive substandard health care, we are denied job interviews, we are denied bank loans, we are paid less, our neighborhoods are denied investment and infrastructure, we are locked in poverty, we are erased from history books and movie screens, we are harassed by police, we are murdered by the state. There is no amount of discomfort on behalf of white America that would make the continuation of this white supremacist system anything other than inhumanely cruel.

Those who want to uphold white supremacy, or even delay its destruction, are denying the humanity of people of color in this country. There is no nice way to ask for our freedom that will lead to it being granted. Believe me, we’ve tried. Even having to ask is an act of oppression in itself.

Your Calls For Unity Are Divisive As F*ck

We live in a country where people will try to convince you that if you do not prove to white America that you are worthy of freedom, justice, and equality — if you do not ask nicely, wait patiently, prove your worth with respectability and good deeds — that it is right that it would be denied you. We live in a country where people will try to convince you that you do not have freedom, justice, and equality because you have not done enough for those things.

We live in a country where people will try to convince you that pushing for freedom, justice, and equality in a way which white America has not pre-approved will only lead to more oppression, injustice, and inequality. We live in a country where people will try to tell you that white America is not at all responsible for the white supremacy it upholds, that their hands are forced by your refusal to make the prospect of your freedom, justice, and equality more comfortable for them.

Those who want to uphold white supremacy, or even delay its destruction, are denying the humanity of people of color in this country.

There is no compromise to be had. There is nothing between oppression and freedom that doesn’t guarantee our continued subjugation. We cannot trade away our humanity to those who claim to be allies in the hopes that what they will build in our name will be anything more than our oppression. We cannot ally ourselves to those who would be turned away by our demands and ever expect those demands to be met. So if there is no compromise, what can we do?

We keep pushing. We keep fighting. We check ourselves for the internalized white supremacy that tells us that we have to take it slow, that we have to settle for less. We check our allies for the internalized white supremacy that tells them that they are not required by their belief in justice and equality to fight white supremacy, no matter how uncomfortable it may make them. We show people how their words do not match their actions. We do not for one moment let white supremacy feel comfortable in our presence.

So You Want To Fight White Supremacy

We raise our kids with this same, uncompromising belief in our rights. We challenge any attempts to normalize our oppression. We continuously bring to light the racism that others would prefer live in the dark. We celebrate every victory and always know that it is not enough. We fight not for the hearts and minds of individual racists, but for the freedom, justice, and equality that we are overdue to receive and that they have no right to withhold. We push past our own individual liberation and comfort and fight for every last one of us. We comfort each other, hold each other, and make space for grief and despair and exhaustion. But we don’t give up. We don’t compromise our neighbors, our children, our humanity.

Do not let anyone tell you that your time has not come.

Do not let anyone tell you that you ask for too much.

Do not let anyone tell you that you should have to ask at all.

We don’t compromise our neighbors, our children, our humanity.

I do not know what freedom, justice, and equality will look like for us — I have never seen it with my own eyes. But I do know what our oppression looks like, and right now, it looks like the compromises of our souls that we are being asked to make every day in the hopes that it will somehow lead to our liberation.

We are worth more than this. We are worth the fight. We were born worthy.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/why-i-didnt-call-the-cops-when-i-saw-a-teen-with-a-gun-ed7a2d8e02a1/ Wed, 23 Aug 2017 21:28:37 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=4588 Read more]]> In a country with alarming rates of police brutality against Black people, the wrong thing to do can feel like the right thing to do.

M y family patriarch was keen to wave around a pistol whenever someone threatened his inner-city neighborhood corner store. I have a clear memory of running inside and dropping to the floor of my aunt’s Baltimore rowhouse during a suspected drive by. Like most, I have spent many snack-filled nights watching crime-based TV dramas, pretending I wasn’t scared while I switched on all of the house lights. This is the extent of my firearm exposure.

In my adult life I have never seen an actual handgun that wasn’t holstered to the belt of a police officer. So when I found myself alone at the local art park watching a pre-teen pass me by, boasting to his friends that he had a gun and was about to use it to shoot someone, I was quite literally unprepared for what came next.

As the boy and his friends walked past, I wanted to assume his claims were false — that there was no gun. I was quickly proven wrong when they were about a hundred feet away and his intended target arrived with some friends, the firearm came into sight, voices were raised, and curse words flew. Through the uproar, it was clear his friends hadn’t believed he had a gun either.

In my adult life I have never seen an actual handgun that wasn’t holstered to the belt of a police officer.
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I was standing in a wide open space near a large tent under which an oblivious white man ignored his toddler in favor of his smartphone, also tuning out the confrontation that was happening just yards away. I was very aware of how not bulletproof I am and of how intensely my family needed me to make it back home. I was also aware that this man and his daughter probably had a family member like me awaiting their safe return.

I listened intently to the heated conversation of the teens. Seconds dragged like hours as I tried to decipher between the back and forth of typical youthful aggression and the very real potential for danger. More than once, I looked in my camera bag for my phone, my internal dialogue wavering. Should I call the police? Of course, there’s a group of teens with a gun in broad daylight in a public place! What if one of them gets hurt? What if they shoot someone else accidentally? What if they shoot me accidentally? What if someone dies? What if we all die? If there was ever a time to dial 911, this was it, right?

Yet, each time I reached for my phone, I faced the same overwhelming thoughts. These teens were Black — and I couldn’t stop remembering the murder of Tamir Rice.

Black People Feel Lucky To Walk Away Alive From Police Harassment

The grainy surveillance footage of 12-year-old Tamir being shot almost on sight, because he had a toy gun, played over and over in my mind. I would not be the person who put another young boy at risk of murder in the hands of police.

Sure, I could emphasize that I wasn’t sure if this gun was real, and that these were just teens — but in the case of Rice, the person who called the police used the additional descriptors of “toy gun,” “not real,” and “juvenile,” and that was not enough to spare a life. How could I possibly guarantee compassion from the cops, or even a basic confirmation of wrongdoing before the discharging of weapons?

The second thought that slowed my instinct to act was that of my two sons. I can’t fathom the thought of someone’s rush to judgment transforming me into the mother of a dead boy. Because of that, I engaged in this reach and retract pattern with my phone during the entire ordeal, never actually calling for help, but never giving up the idea that help was needed.

When My Cute Black Kid Becomes What You Fear Most

The altercation was intense but short, as many of the teens were working to calm their friend and have the gun put away. I learned their intent by stopping to listen to what they were saying, by responding with humanity instead of fear. Yes, there was one angry kid fired up at the sight of his enemy, but the others were talking him down, pleading for him to use the good sense with which he was born.

While walking further away in a futile attempt to provide my own protection, I strained against the bombardment of expletives and mayhem to find the voices of reason in the fray. Even if I were to call the cops, the teens seemed to be self-regulating and dispersing in peace. After a few minutes, they all walked away unharmed, as did everyone else at the park that day.

I did make it home safely, but not unbothered. A number of uncertainties circled in my head. I will never know if that gun was real; I gathered from the way the disagreement fizzled out that it wasn’t, but I could be wrong. I will never know if that angry, immature young boy with a gun, maybe even only 10 or 11 years old, went elsewhere and shot someone.

Or, if his actions had invited someone to shoot him in retaliation. I will never know if any of their parents had a clue what happened that evening, if their mothers were up that night dishing out consequences, if their fathers were worried sick about the path on which they were headed. Nearly two months later, I continue to question if the kids would be safe or if this was just one chapter in a novel of potentially negative life-altering choices.

However, what I do know is valuable.

I know that none of those boys and girls were turned into an R.I.P. hashtag that day. Each one of them went home to someone, somewhere, and had the normalcy of sleeping in their own homes, hearts beating, lungs inhaling and exhaling.

I know that none of those boys and girls were turned into an R.I.P. hashtag that day.
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None of them were threatened or intimidated or roughed up by an under-trained overzealous officer intent on taking his bad day out on some poor young “thugs.” None of them were subjected to the brutality of a police force that is statistically proven to disproportionately condemn the black children who have the misfortune to cross their path.

In recent years, the biggest disparity in arrests of white versus black juveniles in the city where I live, Charlottesville, Virginia, occurred in 2011. Although the small city is overwhelmingly white, records indicate 71% of teens arrested were black. In the past five years, black kids accounted for 75% of stop and frisk incidents. And these racial disparities don’t just exist within the city limits; Charlottesville resides in Albermarle County, where African-Americans make up 10% of the population but 30% of the arrests.

And let us not forget that the city, county, and state police forces provided security for the KKK rally and counter-protest in Charlottesville. The end result: The police used tear gas on protesters of the KKK, while the white knights remained unscathed.

How We Learn To Love ‘Good’ White Men With Guns

Choosing to check the privilege of my suburban, mostly middle-class upbringing, assessing my own media-fueled prejudices, and stopping to think about the potential consequences to these young people was the right thing to do, even if it was the wrong thing to do.

How did we, as a nation, get here, to this state of unrest in which one needs to stop and pause when faced with the seemingly mandatory task of calling the police when there is high probability of a violent crime? Or have we always been here?

As a kid, one of my white friend’s moms had to hide my sister and I in the back of her car so their town’s racist police wouldn’t see us at a checkpoint. As a young 20-something, after being pulled over because of my lapsed registration, I inched my car up just a bit to make sure I’d left the officer space to park behind me — and he responded with a commanding yell and a hand on his holster, threatening me to stop my vehicle or else.

I have my own ignorant optimism to blame for not sooner equating the threat of racist cops to the theft of black lives. There are millions of stories to tell me otherwise, but my moral barometer was still inherently leaning toward police interference as a first line of defense — until it came time to literally make the call.

Stopping to think about potential consequences was the right thing to do, even if it was the wrong thing to do.
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If my son were to find himself an angry pre-teen in this same scenario, would I want a passerby to make the fast assumption that he was carrying a real weapon? Would I want her to believe he and his friends weren’t as capable of resolving the situation as local law enforcement would be? Maybe. But, probably not. What I saw that day at the art park among a brilliant blue sky and the warmth of spring’s end shook me — causing me to question the cloudy landscape of my own values.

I don’t agree with teenagers having access to firearms and waving them around in public, and I don’t believe it was safe for them to be there navigating a very mature situation on their own. I even think I made the wrong choice by not calling the police. Yet, somehow, I’m still glad I made it.

Data indicate law enforcement officials have killed nearly 500 civilians this year alone.

Pixabay

By Celisa Calacal

The number of fatal shootings by police officers in the first half of 2017 is nearly identical to the number of shootings recorded during the same time period in 2016 and 2015, according to the Washington Post’s police shootings database.

Police have shot and killed 492 people in the first six months of the year, and authors John Sullivan, Reis Thebault, Julie Tate, and Jennifer Jenkins write that police killings are set to reach 1,000 for the third year in a row. According to the Post’s database, which began in 2015 following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 992 people were killed by law enforcement officers in 2015 and 963 were killed in 2016.

“These numbers show us that officer-involved shootings are constant over time,” Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina, told the Post. “Some places go up, some go down, but it’s averaging out. This is our society in the 21st century.”

Data from 2017 show that armed white males are the category of people killed the most by police officers, a continuing trend over the past two years. However, black males are killed at disproportionately higher rates. While black men account for only 6% of the U.S. population, they make up about a quarter of police shooting victims. According to Mapping Police Violence, a database that tracks the number of black people killed by police officers, blacks are three times more likely to be fatally shot by officers than white people. The Post’s police shooting database shows that the number of black men killed by police has been declining — 50 were killed in the first half of 2015, 34 in the same period in 2016 and 27 so far this year.

While black men account for only 6% of the U.S. population, they make up about a quarter of police shooting victims.

Of the 492 people killed by police, 27 were reported unarmed. One such victim was 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, who was slain in April leaving a party in a Texas neighborhood when an officer fired several shots into a moving vehicle.

Equally alarming is the number of mentally ill people law enforcement officials have shot and killed — 121 so far this year. In June, Seattle police shot and killed 30-year-old Charleena Lyles, a mentally ill black woman who was pregnant at the time. She had called 911 to report an attempted burglary at her home, and officers allege she pulled a knife on the two officers. Reports from The Seattle Times revealed that one of the officers was not carrying a Taser at the time of the shooting, a violation of department policy.

Equally alarming is the number of mentally ill people law enforcement officials have shot and killed — 121 so far this year.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of Police Executive Research Forum, said the shootings of mentally ill individuals can be avoided. “We know we can make a difference in cases where the person is mentally ill and in cases where someone is not armed with a gun,” Wexler told the Post.

An estimated 8% of police departments across the country have had an officer fatally shoot a civilian since 2015. LAPD officers have killed 47 people since 2015, the highest number of any police department in the country. Phoenix police have killed the most people in 2017, fatally shooting eight.

Holding Hands With The Police May Kill Us

While the FBI technically tracks fatal police shootings, its database relies on voluntary reports from police departments and only covers cases of officers shooting alleged felons. Data from the Washington Post suggest the agency’s figures are significantly lower than the actual number. Former FBI director James Comey called the FBI’s system of tracking fatal police shootings “embarrassing and ridiculous” last October. On Saturday, the agency said it would move forward with a data collection program to gather information on police shootings in 50 local and federal law enforcement agencies, with the intention of forging a nationwide system in 2018.

While the FBI technically tracks fatal police shootings, its database relies on voluntary reports from police departments and only covers cases of officers shooting alleged felons.

In October 2016, the Department of Justice said it planned to collect more comprehensive data about police shootings. But under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump appointee who has called consent decrees a hindrance to law enforcement efforts, it is unclear if the agency will follow through on its promise.

Not only has the number of people fatally shot by police remained about the same as in previous years, so has the number of officers indicted for fatal shootings. Previous reporting from the Post reveals that from 2005 to 2015, just 54 officers had been charged, though police killed thousands during that period. More often than not, law enforcement officers were acquitted of all charges.

How We Learn To Love ‘Good’ White Men With Guns

In the past month, several officers have been cleared of charges after fatally shooting civilians. Officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of all charges for killing Philando Castile during a traffic stop last July, though Castile was complying with Yanez’s orders. A week later, Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown was acquitted in the shooting death of Syville Smith. In the case of former University of Cincinnati officer Raymond Tensing, who fatally shot Samuel DuBose in 2015, a mistrial was declared after the jury couldn’t come to a verdict. A separate trial for Tensing last fall also ended in a hung jury.

This story originally appeared on Alternet. Republished here with permission.

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