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Racism & Antiracism: New Research
Posted by: | CommentsFor the annual ASA conference in Atlanta, the session on racism and antiracism (organized by Eileen O’Brien) was divided into two, held back-to-back in the same room. With my presentation in the second of the two, I had a chance to catch the discussion portion of the first session, with Charles Gallagher present. As expected, the room was packed (and unfortunately most left after their session had ended). I was (at least somewhat) taken aback at how optimistic Gallagher was with the alleged absence of racism among young white people today. I wish more had been in attendance for my session that followed (including Gallagher), or that I had presented my material for that session, because my research paints a very different picture of young whites than what Gallagher sees.
Granted, I’m not saying that young whites today are tripping over themselves to join the Klan or anything. But a complete absence of racism? In my presentation titled “‘It’s not on the news, so…’: Ambivalence towards White Supremacy Among White College Students,” I presented evidence about how white college students go out of their way to not see white supremacist activities, while defending their right to exist and even flourish. They seem to feel it necessary to say that white supremacists and their organizations are a serious problem in our society, yet contradict themselves when they call them impotent, ridiculous, limited to the south, etc. This contradiction creates an ambivalence towards these groups, and whether intended or not, this ambivalence towards white supremacy assists in efforts to protect white supremacist speech.
I mentioned a couple of examples from the interviews that I found to be most intriguing. The first was Odella, who told me of an incident involving “good ole southern boys” burning “a black doll” in effigy on the grounds of her high school. She immediately minimized the incident, saying it had been resolved and called it “an isolated event.” Incredibly, later on when discussing the significance of white supremacists and their organizations today, she said:
“I don’t think white supremacy is a serious problem in our society, I know it exists, but um (.) maybe I just don’t see it (.) like maybe in other places it’s more prominent, but…”
After asking her if that incident at her high school constituted white supremacy, she answered “yeah, probably” but said it was “spur of the moment” and that these good ole boys had simply made a bad decision.
The other example came from Troy, who rationalized discriminatory behavior in the pursuit of profit. When he recalled his “training” as a club bouncer he provided extensive details on who he was supposed to keep out of the establishment: baggy jeans, Fubu clothes, and Timbaland boots, and most of all, black skin. Although he seemed to struggle with the racist thinking of his boss at one time, he said “it sounds terrible but it’s kind of like the line from The Godfather ‘It’s business, not personal,’” and saying it’s alright if “they’ve got bills to pay.” He admitted that the whole point of the dress codes those establishments enforce are a way to keep blacks out (“because they can’t just come out and say ‘all right black people [don’t] come in’ so they have to make a dress code and basically they find stuff that applied to [the] black crowd and say ‘you can’t come in wearing that’”).
Although these are just a couple of examples from the research, there were many others that showed young white people are generally ambivalent towards white supremacists and their organizations. I believe that this attitude makes it virtually impossible to get the needed public policies and societal resources to fight these groups and to protect the rights of those they seek to harm. I wish I were as optimistic as Gallagher is about our young white children today, but for now I say wait 10 or 20 years and see where they will be and how they behave.
Apology Not Accepted Dr. Laura!: Another Take on the Racist Rant
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Well known Dr. Laura Schlessinger, conservative talk show host and author, has done it again. Recently, in an on-air conversation with a Black female caller who was calling into the show to ask Dr. Laura for advice on how to handle issues of racial discomfort with the racially charged rhetoric of her White husband’s friends and family members; the host, as my good mother would say, “lost her damn mind” and displayed her intolerance and oppressive mindset toward people of color. This is not the first time she has exhibited intolerance and blatant ignorance toward a marginalized group. In 1998, she was quoted on her website as saying:
1. A huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys.
2. If you’re gay or lesbian it’s a biological error.
3. I call homosexual practices deviant.
4. When we have the word ‘homosexual,’ we are clarifying the dysfunction, the deviancy, the reality.
5. ….[reparative] therapies which have been successful in helping a reasonable number of people become heterosexual.
6. …I believe that homosexual behavior is deviant; that when homosexuals adopt children, these children are intentionally robbed of a necessary mom and dad…
7. I’m sorry, hear it one more time perfectly clearly: If you’re gay or a lesbian, it’s a biological error that inhibits you from relating normally to the opposite sex. The fact that you are intelligent, creative and valuable is all true. The error is in your inability to relate sexually intimately, in a loving way to a member of the opposite sex – it is a biological error
.
Later she took out a full page in the Daily Variety noting,
While I express my opinions from the perspective of an Orthodox Jew and a staunch defender of the traditional family, in talking about gays and lesbians, some of my words were poorly chosen … Many people perceive them as hate speech. This fact has been personally and professionally devastating to me as well as to many others. Ugly words have been relentlessly repeated and distorted for far too long …
In The Boston Herald, Schlessinger said was quoted as saying her words were not an apology, but simple “clarification.”
In terms of the recent Black female caller, there are several points of importance. First, Dr. Laura began by asking the caller for an example of a racist comment, “Cause sometimes people are hypersensitive.” Later within the conversation, she says, “…hypersensitivity, OK, which is being bred by black activists.” The said quotes are examples of her in ability to take acts of racism and oppression serious. She devalues the plight of Blacks. Next, Dr. Laura says the N-word eleven times while debating that it is alright to use because Blacks use to word so freely. My final and most important point is that using the word was horrible enough. But when one listens to the actual conversation, one will be able to notice her “devil may care attitude” she takes. She seems to have no fear or disinclination with using the N-word or other degrading racist rhetoric. Researchers Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin discuss and explain explains the racial attitudes and behaviors exhibited by Whites in private vs. public settings in their profound book, Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage. Simply, their case studies proved that Whites will discuss oppressive and racists words in regards to marginalized people more so in private when surrounded by other Whites they feel are liked minded. Well, you might be thinking, “Dr. T, what she did was not in private, but on a publically national syndicated talk show.” What is interesting and escapes many that have attempted to discuss this issue, is the fact that a majority of those who dial into her show weekly, those that sponsor her show, share a like mindedness in regards to her social and racial ideology. She felt so freely to degrade the caller’s concerns while spewing the N-word because she knew the majority of her audience was simply like her. She felt feely to discuss interracial marriage in a degrading manner because she knew the majority of her audience was simply like her.
On her website, she said,
“ I talk every day about doing the right thing. And yesterday, I did the wrong thing. I didn’t intend to hurt people, but I did. And that makes it the wrong thing to have done. I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the “n” word all the way out – more than one time. And that was wrong. I’ll say it again – that was wrong. I ended up, I’m sure, with many of you losing the point I was trying to make, because you were shocked by the fact that I said the word…
Well Dr. Laura, I am sure Plato is rolling around in his toga due to your attempt to “philosophize.” Next, in regards to losing the point; THIS FACT IS TRUE! This is obvious by the views of news media coverage that has taken place on CNN, and other venues. The media once again exemplifies their fear to have real scholars on to discuss the matter. Instead they go to their shoe box of so-called experts who have no idea what exactly they are witnessing (who always happens to be Black). Sorry Rolland! To me, they all missed your point due to their inability to dissect your overall argument, words used, and tone. But do not worry, Dr. Laura. I got it…I got it.
Glenn Beck Attempts to Co-Opt Dr. King’s Civil Rights Legacy
Posted by: | CommentsOn his June 18 radio talk show, Glenn Beck discussed his upcoming “Restoring Honor” rally, which is scheduled to take place this coming August 28th at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. If Beck’s earlier “Rally for America” (2003), the finale of his book promotion tour through “real America” is any indication, there will be lots of flag waving, honoring the troops, and some relatively small crowds. But he has something else in mind for this rally.
(Beck at ‘Rally for America’ 2003)
As Beck noted, August 28 marks the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. What critical, progressive commentators can only recognize as an absurd, disgusting irony befitting life in the 21st century “bizarro world” of contemporary racial relations, Beck regards himself and the event as ordained by no less than God:
“what an appropriate day – at first we picked that date and we didn’t know and I thought ‘oh geez,’ but now I think it was almost Divine providence… I do.”
In his characteristically melodramatic style (and despite the fact that his initial hesitation suggests he, himself, questioned the appropriateness of doing so) Beck ran with the symbolism, sentimentally opining on June 15:
“As we create history together, your children will be able to say ‘I remember. I was there,’ as we… as we pick up Martin Luther King’s dream that has been distorted and lost. It’s time to restore it, and to finish it.”
There are perhaps no better words to capture the perfectly incongruous nature of this association than those provided by the master of satire, Stephen Colbert: “Finally, someone is bringing Martin Luther King’s movement back to its conservative white roots” (The Colbert Report, June 23).
Indeed, the idea that Glenn Beck or his scheduled guests (which include Sarah Palin and the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent) should assume the mantel of restoring King’s dream is beyond perverse. Recent articles by Dennis Henigan and Paul Helmke expose the track records of the individuals involved in planning this event, and with those, demonstrate what an offense this event is to the civil rights legacy of Dr. King. Among many gems from NRA Board Member, Ted Nugent, is his public declaration that South Africa’s apartheid wasn’t that “cut and dry,” because “all men are not created equal. The preponderance of South Africa is a different breed of man.” Is the wicked irony of the NRA’s celebrated presence at an event shrouded in the legacy of the assassinated leader, whose entire platform was built on peaceful, nonviolent protest, lost on everyone organizing this event?
Beck, for his part, has been at the conservative right forefront of what anti-racist writer/educator Tim Wise has cleverly labeled the “Cult of White Victimhood,” and their calls of “faux-pression”. In fact, Beck has not only argued that President Obama’s policy agenda is driven by “reparations” and the desire to “settle old racial scores,” (an absurd claim, the legitimacy of some form of restorative justice notwithstanding); he boldly claimed on Fox News that Obama was a “racist” with a clear “deep-seated hatred for white people.”
Stepping back from the obvious problems of Beck’s rally, however, we should contextualize white conservatives’ embrace of Dr. King’s legacy and civil rights rhetoric in a larger
framework. This latest example is part and parcel of an increasingly commonplace exercise in colorblind racism. Whites frequently invoke memories of the civil rights movement and the beloved Dr. King as a maneuver of positive self-presentation, evidence of the progress we have made in society. While the intentions of such whites may be “good,” the rhetoric remains problematic nonetheless, as it is often employed to invalidate the persistence of ongoing interpersonal, institutionalized and structural racism.
More malevolent and concerning, however, is the way in which white conservatives are increasingly invoking the civil rights legacy to support the actual dismantling of civil rights victories. Tragically, the paradoxical invocation of civil rights rhetoric has become a contemporary means by which the racial status quo of white supremacy is restabilized and even strengthened against further attack. Consider the way in which “civil rights” have been rearticulated in the battle over affirmative action. In the past several years “Civil Rights Initiatives” groups have emerged in numerous states, including Michigan, Washington, California, Nebraska, Colorado and Arizona. While the name might suggest otherwise, these groups have successfully introduced “civil rights” proposals in the past 2006 and 2008 November election ballots that would ban affirmative action in government hiring and university admissions. (In at least one case, the U.S. District Court found that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative had engaged in systematic voter fraud, as individuals recruited to sign the anti-affirmative action petition were led to believe the ballot initiative was actually in support of affirmative action. This suggests just how distorted “civil rights” rhetoric has become in recent years.) Indeed, affirmative action has been rendered largely impotent in wake of these types of legal battles, including several key Supreme Court decisions.
Similar rearticulations of “civil rights” abound. Affirmative action re-coded as “reverse discrimination”; health care and economic reform reframed as “reparations,” with the implicit understanding that something is being taken from innocent whites and redistributed to undeserving blacks; fellowship and scholarship programs originally designed to increase the representation students of color in various programs literally struck down under the Civil Rights Act of 1964!
In this upside-down climate, conservatives like Beck and other “Cult of White Victimhood” members unflinchingly argue that they are the true defenders of civil rights, as they work to erode the hard fought gains of people of color and protect normative white dominance. With no-end in sight, the need for critical scholars, activists, and citizens to publicly deconstruct the political rhetoric of so-called “civil rights” in the 21st century, and reappropriate and protect the civil rights symbols of our past is nothing short of urgent.
~ Jennifer Mueller, Doctoral Candidate & Graduate Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University
Racist-Right Radio Commentary Perpetuates Old White-Racist Frame
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A recent article by Casey Gane-McCalla at Nation’s NewsOne blog provides a list of the racist comments and commentaries of Rush Limbaugh. Because he is a major propagandistic shaper of the opinions of many Americans, most especially white (and disproportionately white male) Americans, these racist opinions are powerful in perpetuating the four centuries old white-racist framing of this society (with is racist stereotypes, ideologies, images, narratives, emotions, inclinations to oppress materially), as well as the systemic racism of which that framing is only part:
“Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
“The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”
This idea of black criminality is very old, and here Limbaugh is parroting the modern version of the white racial framing of African Americans as criminal, which I have shown thorough actually dates back to at least the 1600s. Elite whites say this type of thing century after century so that what is a racist and highly stereotyped and BS imagery comes to be accepted by many people “truth.”
[To an African American female caller to his program]: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
This imagery of African Americans as savage and uncivilized also dates back to the 1500s and 1600s, and was originally (and ironically) created by slaveholding, and highly savage, Europeans.
A bit later these were added to the NewsOne list:
Limbaugh Says Steinbrenner Was A “Cracker Who Made African-Americans Millionaires”
Limbaugh: Obama & Oprah Are Only Successful Because They’re Black
Limbaugh Calls Gov. Paterson A “Massa”
There are also many negative comments full of highly stereotyped white-racial framing of African Americans aimed at President Obama:
‘Limbaugh has called Obama a ‘halfrican American’ has said that Obama was not Black but Arab because Kenya is an Arab region, even though Arabs are less than one percent of Kenya. . . . . Despite the fact Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law school, Limbaugh has called him an ‘affirmative action candidate.’ Limbaugh even has repeatedly played a song on his radio show ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ using an antiquated Jim Crow era term…’
These and many other racist comments from Limbaugh regularly suggest and reinforce old racist images of African Americans, or variations on four centuries old racist stuff. White-racist commentaries are amazingly un-original and parrot-like. Conformity to past racist imaging is essential to contemporary racist thinking.
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argue that much U.S. opinion is shaped by the organized propaganda that comes out of the capitalistic mass media of the United States. This mainstream media propaganda model shows
how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are propagandized and how consent for various economic, social and political policies are “manufactured” in the public mind.
Radical-right talk show host like Limbaugh, with their millions of listeners, play a central role in this propagandizing and keeping the United States are foundationally and fundamentally racist society.
Large-scale and organized action to create alternative media networks of equal power are essential if this huge propaganda process is ever to be effectively countered.
Children March against Anti-Immigrant Federal Action
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On July 28th, 2010 hundreds of children will march in front of the White House in Washington D.C., in Los Angeles in front of the Federal Building, and in Mexico City at the US Embassy. They march to deliver a letter to President Obama and to protest the tragic situation of children being taken from their undocumented parents following deportation.
The children who are separated from their parents often end up in the foster care system. Once in this system, it becomes almost impossible for the parents to get them back because of language difficulties, legal status, resources, and understanding how to negotiate the complex system.
In an effort to provide a better life, these parents lose the most important and precious thing in the world to them and all because they wanted to a life free from destitution and poverty. We’ve come a long way from Emma Lazarus’ “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” written in 1883.
Knowing that this is the immigration policy that the U.S. is enforcing, there are those who may not comprehend how parents could take such a high risk to lose their children by working here without the proper documentation.
Well, imagine you live in a community that has suffered tremendous financial hardships, particularly since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has obliterated the local corn market because it couldn’t compete against the government subsidized corn imports from the U.S. Your main source of income is gone. Your children wear clothes made out of old flour sacks, they don’t have shoes on their feet, they don’t go to school, and they rarely eat meat. You’ve started giving your six-year old coffee to fill him up. They cry from hunger and when they get sick there is nothing you can do. The only answer seems to be to work in the U.S. Your options are to either leave your young children behind knowing full well that by the time you return they will not even remember who you are, or you to take them with you. You don’t fully understanding that if you get deported, the cost is that you might lose them forever.
If we put ourselves in this position, not many of us could sit back and watch our children suffer hunger and destitution without doing something, anything to ease their suffering and improve their lives. This is why so many parents risk everything, leave everything, and come to work in the US.
When did separating very young children from their parents because of deportation policies become American values? Most people cannot imagine the destructive long-term consequences these policies are having on immigrant families—for years. It should take far more severe than trying to earn a living even while working without the proper documentation to justify the government separating parents from their young children. The act of dividing families, particularly families of color, reveals a dark side of America—one we have seen before with black slave children removed from parents and sold off like if they weren’t even humans and with Indian children who were removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools to teach them how to be white people. Americans justified these atrocious acts in the past and we are doing it again. Will people of color, especially the poor and the most vulnerable, ever be seen and treated as human beings in this country by most people? If they were surely these policies would not be sustainable.
Something must be done that both (1) keeps the children with their parents, and (2) ensures the children’s rights as U.S. citizens in the future should they be deported with their parents. Immigration laws must be changed in ways outlined by Michele Wucker, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New York City, who states, “The population of immigrants who are in this country without legal papers did not grow to more than 10 million people without America’s full participation in the legal charade.”
Until the Obama administration or the Congress have the guts to fix our immigration system, the most compassionate means of enforcement need to be found. And it cannot and should not involve the kinds of family tragedies that take children away from their parents.
Arizona Native Americans Oppose New Nativist Law
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I’ll bet Arizona’s mostly white nativists, including right-wing Republicans, did not see this one coming. Native American groups in Arizona have made it clear they will not enforce the new Arizona anti-immigrants law. An Arizona Capitol Times report by Evan Wyloge states:
Native American tribes are charging that the law was written without considering their unique circumstance and that it will violate their sovereignty and their members’ civil rights. Despite a request by Gov. Jan Brewer’s office to comply with the new law, Native American tribes will continue to oppose it and seek ways to avoid its implementation, said John Lewis, executive director of the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, which represents 20 tribes in the state. [and a fifth of the lands]
One reason is that the new law will
lead to disproportionate stops and detentions for tribal members, violate their sovereignty and negatively impact the tribal economy.
Police officers, especially white officers, are likely to target Native Americans, because they often look Latino. I wonder why that is? Could it be because a majority of Mexicans and Mexican Americans have substantial Native American (indigenous) ancestry?
And that raises another point. Aren’t most European Americans in Arizona and elsewhere the descendants of undocumented immigrants who came into a country without the permission (and often against the opposition) of the existing indigenous inhabitants? (We had no general exclusionary immigration laws until 1920-1924, so requiring immigration documents for all is fairly new in this country’s history.)
Hmmm. Does that also mean that a majority of current Mexican immigrants have deeper historical and ancestral roots in North America, and in what used to be northern Mexico (e.g., Arizona), than European Americans?
Navajo Nation Councilmember Delegate Kee Allen Begay Jr. has commented on the implications of the law:
“What if we had a law that said whenever a white person is traveling through the Navajo Reservation, we have reasonable suspicion that they’re carrying drugs? Where would the outcry on that be? ….We were here before anyone else, before any white people, and now we’re going to be questioned about being here legally?”
What if, indeed!
White Reaction to Being Called Out on Racism: Jane Hill’s Research
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The reaction of Tea Party defenders, including Sarah Palin, to the NAACP’s calling out some Tea Party members and leaders for their racism calls to mind a fine book by Jane Hill, The Everyday Language of White Racism. She has many insights in the book – which I highly recommend to you – but one that fits this calling out of racism by Black Americans at the NAACP is this one on how whites often react to being called out with a line of reasoning about white innocence like this:
I am a good and normal mainstream sort of White person. I am not a racist, because racists are bad and marginal people. Therefore, if you understood my words to be racist, you must be mistaken. I may have used language that would be racist in the mouth of a racist person, but if I did so, I was joking. If you understood my meaning to be racist, not only do you insult me, but you lack a sense of humor, and you are oversensitive.
Hill adds that this “chain of reasoning makes the speaker the sole authority” over what her or his racist commentaries actually mean. Not surprisingly, many whites are today unwilling to listen to the views of those Americans who are regularly targeted by white racism–even to views about the reality and pain of that everyday racism. I also deal with these important listening and empathy issues in the newsecond edition of my Racist America book.
White Criminals as Celebrities?
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There seem to be a number of white criminals in the news just in these last few days, but no mainstream media analysts or politicians are discussing the “problem of white crime” these days.
There is the “image makeover” of the serial murderer, David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”), who killed six people and injured seven others. Now serving a 25-year-to-life sentence, he has attracted numerous, apparently mostly white, friends:
from outside prison who, though they deplore his murderous past, have become friends, acquaintances and in some instances a kind of ad hoc set of assistants. This circle of admirers, to a great degree, is made up of evangelical Christians, including a Town and Village Courts judge in upstate New York and a financial adviser in Manhattan, who have been moved by Mr. Berkowitz’s story of becoming a born-again Christian 23 years ago, and many of them have sought to publicize his account of redemption.
How many people of color put into prisons, including many who are eventually shown to be innocent or become converted, get this kind of attention and favorable public support?
Perhaps the most unusual of these white criminals is the “barefoot burglar,” Colton Harris-Moore, of Washington state. He has been on the run from the police over two years because of numerous burglaries, car, boat, and airplane thefts:
After fleeing a Washington halfway house in 2008, his run from the law took him across the country, including an alleged 1,000-mile flight from Indiana to Florida in a stolen airplane.
As one of our readers (thanks, Benjamin)–who pointed this story out to us—has noted: white privilege is written all over this story. How did he go so long and do so much criminal activity without being discovered? White privilege.
Now he is a celebrity with no fewer than 58,000 fans on his Facebook page. His story is being treated as a “human interest” story by the media and lots of Americans:
Moore’s story has captured the interest of tens of thousands on, many of them now offering encouragement, praise and advice. He’s also got a fan page on the Internet, which sells T-shirts with his face on them and is taking donations for a Colton Harris-Moore defense fund. . . . it’s easy to see why Harris-Moore, a tall, lanky, regular-looking kid, has garnered so much attention. While it’s yet to be seen how he will fare in court, there’s doubtless a book/movie deal in store somewhere down the line.
Apparently, a relative is lining up such a deal now. “Regular-looking kid” also seems to be code for “white kid” in some mainstream media analyses. Youth of color almost never get this kind of treatment. Black and Latino teenagers routinely get picked up and sent away to prison for many years for doing much less in the way of law violations than this young white man.
How often do youth of color get such beneficial mainstream media coverage and widespread sympathy for their exploits and difficult home conditions? Instead, as the experienced legal scholar and prisons specialist Michelle Alexander shows, they have gotten a new institutionalized Jim Crow prison system designed to imprison many youth of color for law violations that many similar white law violators do not even go to prison for.
Structural Racism and a Tale of Two Islands: Manhattan and Rikers
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday, The New York Times’ City Room Blog published a piece about the changing demographics of Manhattan which is obvious to anyone who lives here: Manhattan is getting whiter. In fact, Manhattan is whiter now than it’s been since the 1970s. According to the report,
For the first time since the 1970s, a majority of Manhattan’s population is non-Hispanic white, according to an analysis of census estimates. The white share of the population, which had dipped to about 40 percent as recently as the 1990s, climbed to nearly 51 percent last year. The rest of the borough’s residents were 24 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black and 11 percent Asian.
Part of this demographic trend is not about urban-living per se, but about the cost-of-living in Manhattan. As Scott Stringer, Manhattan borough president, notes “The entrance fee to live here is a million-dollar condo.” That’s not exactly true, but it feels true. I live in Manhattan and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will always be a renter and never own a home or apartment. Stringer is more accurate when he says, in the rest of that quote, “It’s magnificent and a great place to live, but its becoming more challenging for two teachers, or a nurse.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Manhattan lost residents in the past year after a decade-long trend of population gains.
(Image from PlanetWare)
The bigger picture here is that there’s another island which is also part of the New York City: Rikers Island. Rikers Island is the city’s largest jail facility, and it’s actually a complex of some 14 different jails. (Jails, different than prisons, hold people who are being held before sentencing and those with sentences of less than one year.) The island is a small land mass in the East River just between Queens and the Bronx. On a given day, there are approximately 14,000 people incarcerated there, and another 11,500 or so who work there as correctional officers or civilian staff.
Rikers Island is, in many ways, experiencing the mirror opposite trend of Manhattan. Ninety-five percent of the inmates in New York City jails are African-American or Latino, while these two groups make up only about half the city’s population. This, too, is obvious to anyone that’s ever been to Rikers Island. I spent about five years doing health-related research there and know this fact well.
What does this tale of two islands tell us about structural racism? In very broad terms, it illustrates the ways that racism and racial inequality can operate quite effectively without the kind of overt racism of the “Yup, I’m a racist” t-shirt-wearers. One tale, of Manhattan, is a tale of real estate. The other tale, of Rikers, is a tale of the New Jim Crow, New York-style.
Like so much in Manhattan, the driving story around the rise in white people here is about real estate. The real estate trend that most often gets mentioned in this context is the gentrification in Harlem, East Harlem and Washington Heights, neighborhoods that have traditionally been home to large African-American and Latino populations. Gentrification is the process of newer, more expensive housing being built in neighborhoods; the newer, more expensive housing displaces current residents who can’t afford to live there. There’s nothing inherently racial about gentrification, but when those who are displaced are Black and Latino and those who are gentrifying are white, it works out that way.
What drives the gentrification of these once predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods is a dramatic rise in the construction of tens of thousands of “luxury apartments” all over the city. Once apartments are designated “luxury,” they are not subject to the otherwise fairly strict rent-regulation laws in New York City, and they are priced well above what’s affordable for working and middle-class New Yorkers, and are completely out of the range of poor families. The majority of new housing being built in Manhattan in the past 10 years has been “luxury,” while the number of “rent-regulated” (or, even the more expensive “rent stabilized”) apartments has dramatically decreased.
What the City Room Blog refers to, rather benignly, as the “dispersal of black and Hispanic Manhattanites,” is more than simply gentrification and being priced out of the housing market. This is also the story of policies that are part of what Michelle Alexander has termed, The New Jim Crow.
Take a look at the policies which have created Rikers Island and you will see what the New Jim Crow looks like in New York City. In contrast to “million-dollar condos,” for white, wealthy New Yorkers, those who are economically disadvantaged and Black or Latino live in what are referred to as “million dollar blocks.” That is, those who are incarcerated at Rikers come from the same few blocks within New York City. These blocks are dubbed “million dollar blocks” because the criminal justice system has become the predominant institution in these neighborhoods and funnels, literally, millions of dollars into them to control these predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods, simply standing on a street corner will put you at risk for being arrested, regardless of what you’re doing. The NYPD’s “sweeps” in these neighborhoods – where the police literally “sweep” everyone off of particular corners and detain them – is standard policy in New York and has been since the Guiliani era (Bloomberg has continued and stepped up these policies).
You don’t have to be committing a crime to be targeted by NYPD for “stop and frisk.” Since 2004, the NYPD has stopped and interrogated people nearly 3 million times, more than 80 percent were Black or Latino. The names and addresses of those stopped have been entered into the department’s database, regardless of whether the person had done anything wrong. Last year, NYPD officers stopped and questioned or frisked more than 575,000 people, the most ever. Nearly nine out of 10 of those stopped and questioned by police last year were neither arrested nor issued a summons.
Once in the system, either with a record – even for a minor offense – or, just because you were once “stopped and frisked,” means that the NYPD regards you as a potential suspect, and, you are even more likely to end up spending at least some time at Rikers Island, particularly if you are young Black or Latino man. Michelle Alexander argues in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Her work shows that by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness.
That process works here in New York City, where the rhetoric of color blindness prevails while the island of Manhattan gets whiter, and Rikers Island remains Black and Latino.
T-Shirts for Sale at July 4th Festival: “Yup, I’m a Racist”
Posted by: | CommentsSome people at the Lexington, Kentucky July 4th Festival yesterday were selling t-shirts with a giant “Yup, I’m a Racist” logo across the front (h/t: ChrisBoese via Twitter). Reporter Greg Skilling of the Louisville Examiner, headed over there with a video camera to investigate (video is 7:44):
There’s not much to say here except that this is yet another installment in the ongoing series “White People, Behaving Badly.” And, of course, to point out the obvious, we’re so not post-racial. I fear that H.L. Mencken was right when he said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”
