“Walk the Walk but Don’t Talk the Talk”: Color-Blind Ideology in Interracial Movement Organization

• • anti-racism, people of color, racism, social movements, white privilege, white racial frame, whiteness, whites

Color-blind ideology, which developed as part of the backlash to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement promoted the idea that skin color should not matter. In contemporary society, this often translates into the belief that racism no longer matters and that those who continually point racism out are trouble-makers “playing the race card.” In this context, even those organizations that repudiate racism are pressured to use racism-evasive strategies. Ironically, M. Hughey finds that white nationalist organizations are also using this post-racial rhetoric to their advantage by arguing that everyone, regardless of color, should have equal rights, including “whites.” For the white nationalist, organizing in a color-blind society means coming up with new ways to be taken seriously, since it is no longer appropriate to argue that people are inherently unequal. For progressive organizations, it means fighting an ambiguous form of racism that many refuse to see or discuss.

My study draws on three years of field work and interviews with twenty-five members of an interracial organization and coalition, analyzing the ways in which they address racism in private and public settings. I find that European American, Latino/a, and African American activists equally downplay the role of racism internally, and while they recognize the significance of racism externally, they do not make it a central part of their campaign. One African American woman summed it up this way,

There’s a way that you can bring that [racism] out without actually saying…Everything will speak for itself. It will eventually come to the forefront. (Personal Interview).

She felt that using the word racism against their opponents or addressing it explicitly in public settings would appear “unprofessional.” People of color who noticed racism within the organization also felt it better not to address it. A Latino organizer stated,

Anglos have a way of doing things, being so conniving…They are not in the fight, in the trenches. But if the publicity is there and the newspapers are there…they’ll show up…We do deal with that. We don’t talk about it, because if you talk about it and you say racism and all that, then you can jeopardize the whole movement (Personal Interview).

Activists justify these racism-evasive strategies by emphasizing action over talk. In their view, because they “walk the walk” they do not need to “talk the talk” on racism. Activists see themselves as “walking the walk” literally through marches and rallies and working within communities of color. As a European American organizer stated:

You know I think that the [the organization] does address that [racism]…we live in a city here that’s 60% African American and Latino…disproportionately members of those communities are poor…I think [the organization] makes the point without…using the labels (Personal Interview).

These findings have both theoretical and practical implications for studies of racial ideology and progressive movements. The term color-blind racism is problematic, because it combines a number of different components—racism, colorblind ideology, and racism evasiveness—which should be analyzed as separate but interrelated concepts. I suggest that colorblindness, as an ideology, promotes a certain racial worldview and political climate that leads to racism evasiveness. This racism evasiveness is what scholars are finding when their respondents argue that “the past is the past” or explain protests as “black unruliness.” These responses have typically been referred to as color-blind racism, color evasion, or power evasion. However, what is really being evaded is a specific form of racial power and racism.

While activists view racism evasiveness as necessary to solidarity, these strategies also limit their ability to challenge racism both within and outside of their organization. In fact, an African American man who left the organization stated:

They do too much over strategizing, over thinking [in the organization]. You know, it’s almost like, ‘We want to ruffle the feathers, but we only want to ruffle them to a certain point.’ No! Let’s ruffle the feathers until that chicken is bald, naked (Personal Interview).

For the most part, activists believe that there is a dichotomy between organizations, which talk about racism and those that act on it. Their pragmatic avoidance of talk is understandable, given the failure of many organizations to translate talk into action and the problems that may arise from calling out racist situations. However, the solution to the problems with talk is to throw it out entirely and instead focus on showing up to meetings, rallies, and marches. Avoiding discussions on racism internally may prevent the organization from dealing with complaints of racism when they arise. Also, if members are only communicating problems through a class analysis, how are they to justify their demands for greater representation of people of color on the job, in access to health care, and education, all racialized issues? Some antiracist training programs stress common language and analysis of structural racism for successful community organizing. Having that common language in the organization is important, because members noted different understandings of racism. Given these varied understandings, the organization could benefit from discussing how racism figures into their work. Progressive organizations must achieve a balance between talk and action, without relying on racism evasiveness.

~ Angie Beeman is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Anthropology & Sociology, Baruch College-CUNY. 

#ENDITMOVEMENT: Social Media Activism, without Action

• • media, slavery, social justice, social movements, social networking sites

My current sociological research looks at the way millennials and digital natives (the subsequent generational cohort) use social media to construct identity in their everyday lives. One of the questions that I asked over the course of my ethnography was “Have you ever participated in a social issue campaign beyond reposting or retweeting about it on social media? If so, in what ways?” Overwhelmingly, the response was “No, I usually just retweet or repost it.”

I believe whole-heartedly in the power of awareness but as Mark Warren, the author of Fire in the Heart How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice puts it, “If we stop at moral impulse, we are left with altruism.”

The leaders of the End It movement seem to understand this on a rudimentary level but the same cannot be said about all of their followers and supporters. When I saw the red x’s on several of my students’ hands, I asked them about it. I said, “What type of slavery?” “Where is this slavery taking place?” “What can I do personally?” No one could reasonably answer any of those questions. When I asked, “Did you, or are you going to, donate money?” one person responded, “The hope is that people will eventually donate money.” “Where will the money go? What will they do with it?” My questions remained unanswered. They could only tell me that the red x’s were supposed to cause people to ask questions so that they could spread the word about world-wide slavery. When I asked questions, the message of freedom was not explained very thoroughly at all. Uninformed awareness is just as bad as unawareness itself.

This is a trend that I see in many social issue campaigns that take place on and through the aid of social media. While the so-called freedom fighters are undoubtedly well-intentioned, I see several issues with the way the message is constructed as well as with the proposed solutions. Beyond the social construction of the movement being somewhat lofty and ungrounded, I fear that the initiators of these types movements are merely banking on the other-directed vulnerability of millennials and digital natives. Social psychologists Wang, Tchernev, and Solloway cite users’ need to mitigate their self- image and the need to be affirmed by their peers, amongst two of the four main reasons why users engage with social media. Social media allows users to fulfill these needs as often as they want. Additionally, Quinn and Oldmeadow found that social media use by younger users helps ease the tensions that can be present during major transitional periods in life. Anyone with the right formula could amass a large following not because the people truly believed in the cause, but due to the nature of social media.

Beyond the primary issue with social media movements, I was underwhelmed with the lack of information I was presented with on the home page. The white savior narrative is prevalent and problematic and is reified throughout the page. Let me be clear, there is significant value in people of every race and nationality participating in a cause that is valid however there is a problem with the way the people are depicted on the site and on the Twitter feed. In the promotional video, the camera quickly pans over the people who are portrayed as either currently trapped in some sort of slavery or are survivors of it. The message is unclear. Again it is not the whiteness that I see as problematic, it is the underrepresentation of the people that the movement is trying to help. Where are these people? Why aren’t their voices heard most loudly and clearly? Visitors must go to the very last tab in the list – the “learn” tab, to watch the longer video which allows the audience to hear from persons who were formerly enslaved.

Enditmovement.com presents a dominant narrative instead of taking on a supporting role in the goal of liberation. Further, it does not do an adequate job of informing visitors about the roots of slavery and perhaps unintentionally hides the real issues at hand. The United States is one of the greatest catalysts of sex-slavery. The United States accounts for a large portion of the 32 billion dollars generated by sex slavery. The United Nations states that the U.S. is amongst the most common destinations for sex trafficking. We are producers of the enslavement that this movement is trying to fight. Though users can find this information on the site if they search for it, this information is vital to our understanding of this type of slavery and it is completely missing from the home page.

What is not missing, however, is the blatant consumerism. The tabs that allow you to learn more about the organizations who are being supported are neatly nested at the bottom of the page. Instead, upon a first encounter with the page, visitors are encouraged to visit the store to buy the gear and “be the billboard”. A lot of digging must be done to find the “slavery facts”. The average user is not very likely to go to the “learn” tab. Once found, the research is valid and points to a substantial problem in our global society. It also includes a list of sources and suggested readings however my students seemed to have missed the mark and settled for being aware but uneducated. I fear that this is the case for a majority of the red x bearers.

Perhaps the End It movement could be as powerful as it aims to be if it were to take on Gideon Sjoberg’s countersystem approach. “A countersystem analyst consciously tries to step outside of her or his own society in order to better view and critically asses it. … These critical social thinkers support the action of human beings in their own liberation” (Quoted in Feagin and Vera 2008:2).

As a Christian sociologist, I often find myself at an impasse. I strive to love people in my daily life and I recognize the desire to be a part of something that is bigger than one’s self. I do see validity in the core purpose of the #enditmovement. However my grounding in sociology makes it easy for me to see through the inauthenticity that can exist in “viral” movements on social media. I want to call everyone who believes themselves to be passionate about the liberation of all enslaved or marginalized peoples – religious or not – to inform yourself and others about the facts. Then use your knowledge to act beyond the confines of the screen.

Guest blogger Apryl Williams is a sociology graduate student at Texas A&M University.

When the Bullets Aren’t Rubber: Racism and Violence in Brazil’s Protests

• • Brazil, racism, social change, social movements

On June 13, Brazilian military police shot journalist Giuliana Vallone in the eye with a rubber bullet. That night police violently repressed a street protest in São Paulo, Brazil where thousands had gone to demand the reversal of a recent 7% bus fare increase. Local media and organizations like Amnesty International denounced the police’s “excessive use of force,” including its indiscriminate use of tear gas and rubber bullets. News of the police repression in São Paulo sparked indignation across the country. This photo of Vallone went viral.

(Image source)

Within the week, mass mobilizations spread across Brazil reaching numbers unprecedented in its recent history. On June 20, more than a million protesters demonstrated in the streets. As the movement grew, protesters called for an end to political and financial corruption and – instead of the 2014 World Cup – better healthcare, better education, and affordable (if not free) public transit.

Yet the degree of indignation the earlier image of Vallone caused, and the photo’s subsequent place as a rallying cry in the movement as posters emerged stating “we will not forget,” warrants particular attention.

(Image source)

Vallone, as a young white Brazilian woman, came to serve as a somatic representative of the national body politic. An attack on her “innocent” body was seen as an attack on all Brazilians.

As both the movement and the corresponding police repression continued to grow, photos of violence enacted on white female bodies also continued to go viral. While the photo of Vallone played a unique role in sparking increased indignation and mobilizations, later photos of white female victims were similarly privileged. Other examples of this trend can be seen in this image, where a white woman is being pepper sprayed by the police.

(Image source)

And, it’s also evident in this image, where a black police officer hits a white Brazilian woman with his baton, forcing her to fall into the arms of another light-skinned protester.

 

Police with baton and falling woman

(Image source)

 

These three images appeared again and again in domestic and international media coverage, as well as through social media platforms like Facebook and in YouTube videos that compiled images of police repression.

Media coverage of participants in the June 2013 demonstrations in Brazil framed whites as legitimate protesters and representative members of the national body politic, and, particularly white women, as the wrongful victims of police repression. But how have black Brazilian protesters been represented within the movement and in media coverage? Is violence against them similarly understood as an illegitimate attack on the national body politic?

In and out of the movement, black Brazilians were largely stripped of their right to demonstrate. The media, among others, branded them not as concerned protesters, but as violent vandals, whose own experiences of police brutality were deemed of little interest. Not only has the police brutality against nonwhites not appeared in media coverage, the media’s visual accompaniments have marked them instead as the instigators of illegitimate “violence.”

 

(Image source)

In one Washington Post piece, for example, the contrast is startling.  While it includes two photos of white women suffering the effects of tear gas and pepper spray, the two images of black men show one with an Anonymous mask in front of a burning barricade, and the other in front of a line of vandalized ATMs (photo above). While neither is actually engaged in an illegal act, the photographs’ compositions work to associate black youths, and indeed, blackness, with vandalism. These photos of black male protesters work to generate a very different type of indignation. While the photos of white female protesters produce a rallying cry against the external threat of police repression to the movement and its members, photos of black male protesters work to mark and chastise them as an internal threat to the movement’s success and future.

These racist framings were also palpable on the streets. On June 20, I watched as a mob of thousands heckled a lone black male protester for attempting to attach a (likely political) poster to a downtown statue. They jeered at him, gesturing thumbs down in unison, as many flashed green lasers into his eyes, making it impossible for him to climb down from atop the statue structure. Through multiple levels of coverage, discourse and practices, black male protesters became not civilians engaging in their civil right to protest against concerns affecting both the nation as a whole and their communities specifically, but – in the words of Brazilian journalist Elio Gaspari – “violent troublemakers.”

These examples are not the only black bodies that appeared in media coverage, nor are only black protesters linked with acts of vandalism. Yet the overwhelming tendency within the movement and from local and international media sources has been to reinforce particular discourses of violence and the nation that circumscribe nonwhite Brazilians, particularly young men, as illegitimate members of the nation engaged in illegitimate acts. In the words of Brazilian anthropologist Jaime Alves, the “black position within the Brazilian racialized regime of citizenship points to the ontological impossibility of fully participating in the nation.”

These exclusionary discourses manifest themselves in racist practices with lethal consequences. The police repression white middle-class Brazilian protesters have experienced over the last few weeks pales in comparison to the violent police brutality nonwhites experience everyday throughout Brazil. This differential treatment has not escaped the recent wave of protests.

On June 24, military police action by the BOPE Special Forces (the inspiration for Elite Squad) in the favela community Nova Holanda, in the Complexo da Maré, left 9 residents dead. The deadly raid followed a peaceful demonstration in the neighboring area Bonsucesso.

While subsequent protests have made reference to these deaths, the massacre in Maré has failed to spark the same level of indignation or coverage seen with the rubber bullet that struck white female journalist Vallone. While the racial identities of the victims are still unknown, statistics regarding the confluence of race and class in Brazil, particularly with regard to sociospatial relegation to Rio’s favelas, has left little doubt in many people’s minds. As one protest sign I observed during a demonstration in Rio on June 27, “I am black, woman, young, from Maré…don’t kill me, please!!!”

Troublingly, domestic coverage in the U.S. has highlighted that only two of the dead did not have criminal records. Media sources more generally have called them “gang members” and drug traffickers, unquestioningly accepting police claims, even though there remains great uncertainty regarding the reasoning for the police raid or its high death toll. In the meantime, and with the recent end of the Confederations Cup soccer tournament, it seems that much of the international media has already moved on.

Why do the rubber bullets against white skin move more than the real bullets that kill the black population everyday?

(Image via Facebook)

This protester’s sign, from a protest in the days before the Maré massacre, resonates now with even greater tragic weight and sadness: “Why do the rubber bullets against white skin move [people] more than the real bullets that kill the black population everyday?”

 

~ Katherine Jensen is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, currently living and doing research in Brazil.

Idle No More: Indigenous Protest Movement Confronts Canada’s Inconvenient Truth

• • Canada, civil rights, indigenous, inequality, racism, social justice, social movements

Métis activist Chelsea Vowel brilliantly captures the essence of a grassroots indigenous movement currently unfolding in Canada:

Although thousands of indigenous people all over Canada rallied together under the banner of ‘Idle No More’ … there has been very little media coverage on the movement. Most of what is being said in the mainstream media is focused on Bill C-45. I’d like to make it clear…they’re getting it wrong … Canada, this is not just about Bill C-45 … In short, Idle No More’s Manifesto is what we have always been talking about, whether the particular focus has been on housing, or education or the environment, or whatever else. What lies at the heart of all these issues is our relationship with Canada. And Canada? This relationship is abusive … I can go find dismal statistics on pretty much any aspect of life for indigenous peoples in this country; trot them all out and say, ‘look it’s really bad’ and you will nod and say, ‘wow it sure is’, but that still won’t make it clear for you. I need you – WE need you, to see the forest and not just the trees.

The “forest” to which Vowel refers is the on-going colonial relationship Canada retains with its indigenous population, a relationship many Canadians believe no longer exists. Or, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a relationship they conveniently deny or ignore, precisely because it does not serve their economic interests.

The message of the Idle No More Movement is an inconvenient truth – a threat to the Canadian government’s neoliberal agenda.

As Vowel puts it:

It is time for Canada to end discriminatory approaches dating back to colonial times and honor the rights of indigenous peoples as secured in Canadian and international law.

April Blackbird is a sociology honours student and politics major at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada and a First Nations activist. Kimberley A. Ducey is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, University of Winnipeg.

The End of Civil Rights Revolution: Dr. King’s Assassination

• • African Americans, civil rights, class, racism, social change, social justice, social movements, white privilege



April 4, 1968, about 6:01pm. We should always remember that time. It has now been 44 years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. He was moving conceptually and in his actions in a more radical direction combining antiracist, broader anticlass, and antiwar efforts—which efforts likely had much to do with his assassination.King (Photo: Wiki-images)

I remember the day vividly, like it was yesterday, and can still remember the time of day when one of my students at the University of California called me to tell of the terrible event, and I can still remember well my and his distressed emotions as we talked about the shooting. (We did not know Dr. King had died at that time.) He was one of the few African American students then at that university and as one would expect was devastated by the event, as I was too

In some ways, King’s assassination marked the apparent end of much of the black civil rights movement in the 1960s, not necessarily a coincidence. One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder about this historical timing — or to wonder where this country would be if thinker/leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X had lived to lead an ever renewed rights and racism-change movement.

The events leading up to Dr. King’s assassination need to be taught everywhere. In late March 1968 Dr. King and other civil rights leaders participated in and supported the local Memphis sanitary works employees, black and white, who were striking for better wages and working condition.

Conditions in Memphis, as elsewhere, were very oppressive for workers, in both racial and class terms, as this wikipedia summary makes clear:

In one incident, black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full day.

King gave his last (“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”) speech at a rally for the workers at the Mason Temple in Memphis.
This is the famous section near the end of his prophetic speech, where he reflects on death threats he had often received:

We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.

Let us remember him well, and especially his prophetic antiracist, anti-capitalistic, and antiwar messages, on this day, April 4, 2012.

Documentary: Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

• • African Americans, racism, social movements, urban revolts

Continuing our Black History Month series about documentaries, the recently released “Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975” is an important film that serves as an introduction to the Black Power movement in the U.S. as seen through the lens of Swedish journalists. This short trailer (1:59) explains a bit more about the film:

Watch Looking Back at the Black Power Movement on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

The film features archival footage from the period with voiceovers from contemporary artists. While I didn’t find that the voiceovers added much of value to the film, some of the archival footage – particularly the clip of Angela Davis responding to an interviewer’s question about ‘violence’ – is compelling and makes the film worth watching.

The film becomes problematic in the last half when it locates the demise of the Black Power movement on the rise of drugs in the Black community, both of which it seems to suggest is the fault of Black mothers. This is a serious misstep on the part of the filmmakers as it feeds into dominant narratives about Black pathology.

An excellent companion text, and one that offers a much more nuanced analysis of the Black Power movement, is Professor Alondra Nelson’s Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). While the film brackets the Black Power movement off to a bygone historical era, Nelson’s work extends that lens to the present day and demonstrates how that struggle continues, and does so without resorting to tropes of Black pathology, but instead focusing on empowerment within the Black community in the face of ongoing discrimination.

The film is available on most PBS stations on the Independent Lens series (check local listings), and is currently streaming on iTunes and Netflix. Nelson’s book is available from University of Minnesota Press, at the usual online retailers, and of course, independent book stores (good reminder, @Joyce!)

Does Capitalism = Systemic Racism?

• • African Americans, capitalism, racism, social movements, systemic racism



Over at the Village Voice website the provocative African American critical theorist and savvy analyst of U.S. society, Greg Tate, offers “Top 10 Reasons Why So Few Black Folk Appear Down To Occupy Wall Street,” a humorous and sarcastic take on this issue. (See other comments on Tate’s piece here and here.) Most of the Occupy movements do appear to have been disproportionately white.

One barbed reason Tate offers is that African Americans want to see the OWS movement stay alive. If it got to be known as a “Black Thing,” then white officials like

Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly would feel compelled to set more upon the movement than decrepit desk sergeants with pepper spray.

Another point is that African Americans already have a “radical heart,” which has been shown many times. They are certainly not afraid to participate:

Protest history shows our folk couldn’t be turned around by deputized terrorists armed with dynamite, firebombs, C4, tanks, AKs, machine guns, fixed bayonets, billy clubs, K-9 corps, truncheons, or water hoses. Stop-and-frisk has prepped most brothers to anticipate a cell block visit just for being Slewfoot While Black.

That is, African Americans have never shown they were scared of fighting societal oppression.

Two of his reasons get seriously at the core issue of the relationships of contemporary capitalism and systemic racism. One more reason is that African Americans have long ago realized something that the OWS folks seem to be late in coming to understand–that is,

that American elites never signed the social contract and will sell the people out for a fat cat’s dime—hey, no news flash over here. Black folk got wise to the game back in 1865 when we realized neither 40 acres nor a mule would be forthcoming.

Then Tate’s number one reason gets even deeper into this issue. Capitalism, as usually framed in OWS discussion, is often of less immediate concern to black Americans than systemic racism:

Experience shows that racism can trump even greed in Amerikkka—especially in the workplace. White dudes with prison records get hired over more qualified bloods with not even jaywalking citations. You don’t have to be as high up the food chain as banker-scum to benefit from white supremacy or profit sideways from the mass povertization of the Negro.

Tate’s points about the need to consider the relationships of actual capitalism and racism brought to my mind just how Western capitalism got its first huge surges of capital and wealth, in the process Karl Marx called “primitive accumulation.” Recall this famous passage from Das Kapital:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation. . . . [They all] depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode . . . . [C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.

Western capitalistic wealth and production thus began with the violent looting of resources and forcible enslavement of numerous populations. All these chief moments of early capitalistic wealth accumulation involve non-Europeans–indigenous peoples, Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans—those racialized as “not white” in the dominant racial framing of white Americans ever since. Capitalism is so intertwined with systemic racism in its distant historical origins and contemporary history that it has been a mistake for analysts and activists to try to separate them. To the present day. Capital today still often comes “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”

Systemic Racism and Collective Forgetting: Let Us Recover Those Like Walker, Garnet, and Delaney

• • African Americans, counter-frame, freedom and equality, social movements, systemic racism, white racial frame



In my The White Racial Frame book I not only discuss this age-old white racial frame, which accents both white virtue material and anti-others material, but also the important counter frames to this dominant white frame that people of color have developed. In the U.S. case African Americans have developed an especially strong counter frame over centuries, perhaps because they have had the longest period of time situated firmly within this systemically racist society.

One feature of U.S. systemic racism involves a rather intentional collective forgetting by whites of key African Americans who articulated and often organized around a strong counter frame. Let me remind our readers of a few of these great Americans.

One of the first to put counter frame down on paper was David Walker, a young African American abolitionist working in Boston. In 1829 he published a strong manifesto, entitled Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Demanding full equality, he wrote to his fellow African Americans with revolutionary arguments in an anti-oppression framing, so much so that slaveholding whites put a large cash bounty on his head. (He died young, probably as a result.) Walker analyzes slavery and racial segregation for free blacks quite bluntly. Most whites are “cruel oppressors and murderers” whose “oppression” will be overthrown. They are “an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings.” Whites seek for African Americans to be slaves to them

and their children forever to dig their mines and work their farms; and thus go on enriching them, from one generation to another with our blood and our tears!

He then quotes the words “all men are created equal” from the Declaration of Independence and challenges whites:

Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us–men who have never given your fathers or you the least provocation! . . . . I ask you candidly, was your sufferings under Great Britain one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical as you have rendered ours under you?

A little later in the 19th century, an admirer of Walker, the African American abolitionist Henry Garnet, gave a radical speech, “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America,” at a National Negro Convention. Garnet’s counter framing is very assertive and to the point, and it is also an address to those enslaved. He offers a structural analysis of “oppression,” arguing too that the white “oppressor’s power is fading.” African Americans like “all men cherish the love of liberty. . . . In every man’s mind the good seeds of liberty are planted.” He calls on those enslaved to take revolutionary action:

There is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood. If you must bleed, let it all come at once—rather die freemen, than live to be slaves.” He concludes with a strong call to rebellion: “Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties.

One of the most brilliant of the 19th century analysts of systemic racism was the great abolitionist, Martin Delaney, who among other actions worked in revolutionary efforts to overthrow the slavery system. (In May 1858, he and John Brown gathered black and white abolitionists for a revolutionary meeting in Chatham, Canada. Four dozen black and white Americans wrote a new constitution to govern a growing band of armed revolutionaries they hoped would come from the enslaved US population.) Directing a book at all Americans, Delaney emphasizes the

United States, untrue to her trust and unfaithful to her professed principles of republican equality, has also pursued a policy of political degradation to a large portion of her native born countrymen. . . . there is no species of degradation to which we are not subject.

His counter framing is one of resistance and extends the old liberty-and-justice frame beyond white rhetoric:

We believe in the universal equality of man, and believe in that declaration of God’s word, in which it is positively said, that ‘God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth.’

Delaney attacks whites’ stereotypes of African Americans with a detailed listing of important achievements of numerous free and enslaved African Americans and emphasizes how enslaved workers brought very important skills in farming to North America that European colonists did not have. African American workers were the “bone and sinews of the country” and the very “existence of the white man, South, depends entirely on the labor of the black man.” Delaney emphasizes that African Americans are indeed very old Americans:

Our common country is the United States. . . . and from here will we not be driven by any policy that may be schemed against us. We are Americans, having a birthright citizenship.

Let us bring these and other important 19th African Americans back into our contemporary history, as they were both thinkers and activists in the long tradition of people fighting for liberty in the United States. Note too essential elements of the black counter frame in these and many other black thinkers and activists too often forgotten writings from the 19th century: a strong critique of racial oppression; an aggressive countering of white’s negative framing of African Americans; and a very strong accent on the centrality and importance of liberty, justice, and equality for all Americans. African Americans have been perhaps the most central Americans in keeping these liberty and justice ideals constantly alive and imbedded in resistance organizations over four long centuries of freedom struggles in the racist history of the United States.

More Wisdom from Frederick Douglass: The Struggle

• • African Americans, social change, social justice, social movements, whites



Clearly, much discussion about continuing struggles over racial oppression is generated daily across the country, although often outside the mainstream media and political sectors. Given the racial realism so well argued by Derrick Bell (see philosopher Tommy Curry’s provocative summary of these issues here), one has to wonder, can real multiracial democracy ever come to the United States? I ran across some provocative writings of Frederick Douglass today that always make me pause and think deeply about the ongoing struggles for justice and equality in this country.

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, one of the three or four greatest Americans ever in my view, said this in a famous speech in Canandaigua, New York, on August 3, 1857:

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. . . . If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. . . . Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others. (Frederick Douglass, “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies,” The Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. John W. Blassingame [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986], Volume 3, p. 204.)

Race-Based Violence: Our Double Standard

• • African Americans, media, social movements, urban, white privilege, whites, youth



Heard any reports of “flash mob violence” in the news lately? Now that “flash mobs” are apparently no longer limited to the “cute” actions of white upper-middle class people, such as dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” now they pose a threat to the social order, and must be vilified. These mobs have been called an epidemic (see here), while some Black leaders like Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia have condemned the participants for their actions. These mobs (or in some cases so-called “flash robs”) have occurred predominantly in big cities like Philly and Milwaukee.

Another important morsel of information concerning this news story is that the bulk—if not all—of the mob participants were young and Black. It did not take long for conservative commentators to jump on the “liberal media” for ignoring the story, or at least glossing over the presumed racial nature of the incidents (CNN did have an extended piece on it though).

Despite the inclination of conservatives like Michelle Malkinand John Bennett to insist that these acts have been racially based—more specifically, black-on-white—the reality is that race might not have been the motivating factor. For example, in response to the flash mob activities in Philly, the First Deputy Commissioner Richard Ross said the following:

You can’t just simply look at the race of the offender and the race of the victim and say it’s ethnic intimidation. It may be, but we’re not sure…We’re in the business of what we can prove, not what we think.

Nonetheless, conservatives continue to claim a double standard on how news media report on stories such as these. Progressives might even struggle to deal with these conservative claims. Tell them to look at the bigger picture concerning race-based violence in U.S. society.

Tell them about the reality of hate crimes in this country: namely, who is most likely to be victimized. In 2004, approximately two-thirds of victims of race-based hate crimes are African American. This percentage has not changed much: in 2009, out of 4,057 race-based hate crimes, 2,902 were “Anti-Black, accounting for nearly 72 percent of all victims” (note: the FBI reports anti-Jewish hate crimes as religious-based, while anti-Hispanic are deemed as ethnic-based). Only 668 of the victims were classified as “Anti-White,” or about 16 percent (see here).

This discrepancy in the numbers is especially revealing given the fact that white non-Hispanics make up the solid majority of the U.S. population, while African Americans constitute just 13 percent. All I can say to Malkin and others like her is: why aren’t we hearing more about the hate crimes committed against Blacks in this society?

What explains this outcry over the recent “flash robs” apparently committed by Black youths? This response from mostly white conservatives is nothing new: (1) crack-cocaine was never a problem until it began to affect white communities; (2) gun violence in schools was never a big deal until post-Columbine. Now flash mobs have become a problem because, as we have seen in the Middle East and Britain recently, social media can be used to challenge the social order. I think there are a number of factors at play here, including generational differences, cultural lag, and socioeconomic factors.

That aside, we should take Malkin’s and other conservatives’ responses as a reminder that their so-called “color-blindness” is a sham and their allegiance to and defense of the white racial frame continues on.