Tag Archives Confederate Flag

White Supremacy: I Don’t Know How Much More of It I Can Handle

Since Sandra Bland died (was murdered?) I’ve shed tears nearly every day.  I haven’t watched the video of her encounter with the police officer who pulled her over. The police officer who stopped her for failing to signal when changing lanes which somehow led to her death. It’s too painful to view. I cannot consume more images of Black death by the hands of white supremacy. It’s traumatizing.

Yesterday on my way to drop off my rental car before heading to the airport, I accidentally made a wrong turn and came upon a police blockade. A handful of uniformed officers milled about, weapons encircling their waists, their Black and white Ford sedans forming a passageway wide enough for one car. 

Great. Fucking cops. My pulse sped up and my hands dampened with sweat as I quickly considered my options.

The officers were busy inspecting a car in front of me, so while they busied themselves with that driver, I backed up, planning to make a u-turn to get the hell away. I hadn’t done anything wrong – except having a terrible sense of direction – and I had a flight to catch.

The street was too narrow to make a u-turn without at least 15 points. I decided not to draw anymore attention to myself. When I pulled up to the sizable waiting officer, he peered into my rental – my heart threatened to explode – and said with a half-smile, “I saw you tried to turn around there. Where are you headed?”

I quietly told him, my voice wavering, blood pumping loudly in my ears, “I am headed to the airport. Returning my rental car first.”

“There’s no rental agencies this way,” he informed me like I’m an idiot.

He gave me instructions to find the rental car depot and then, speaking to me the way you’d approach a child:

“Don’t just dump the car on the side of the road,” he nodded his head toward the direction of the airport. “The rental company will charge you extra and you’ll get a ticket.”

It never would have occurred to me to dump the car. The rental agency has my credit card on file and my driver’s license information. More importantly, I am not irresponsible. I didn’t need his condescension.

I thought about Sandra Bland and how the police officer who pulled her over had the nerve to act surprised she wasn’t thrilled to get stopped. NO ONE IS HAPPY TO BE PULLED OVER. I wish I had Sandra’s composure when talking to the police officer, but I’ve never been good at hiding my fear.

I drove away, careful not to speed, even though I wanted to get away from them as fast as fucking possible, my hands still shaking.

White supremacy not only gets people killed, it wreaks havoc on the emotional well-being of many Black Americans, including me. Read more on The Girl Next Door is Black
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When my eyes aren’t wet with tears, I’m filled with rage.

When I’m not crying or seething with anger, I fall into hopelessness.

I’ve begun to question what my goal is in writing about racism. What do I hope to achieve? Black people (and others) have been writing about the United States’ problem with racism and white supremacy for centuries.

I told someone recently that fighting racism is like trying to kill roaches. You kill a few and then 50 million of their disgusting relatives appear. It’s not about killing individual roaches. The problem is larger.

Let’s say I open one person’s eyes. I help them wake up to the reality of our country. Then what?

I’m exhausted by the gravity of the problem.

I don't know how much more of this racist world I can take | The Girl Next Door is Black
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I’m sick of it all. I’m sick of being racially gaslighted by people who can’t see the world beyond the prism of whiteness, including some of my own friends. Or being trolled on Twitter by angry, racist white men who insist they’re Christian and love their country. These men usually have a bald eagle or American flag avatar – rarely do they show their real face, as they type the bigoted, ignorant drivel they harass Black tweeters with. Even on this blog, I am not safe from the racial harassment of “well-meaning” people.

Then there’s the irresponsible mainstream media that’s complicit in perpetuating white supremacy with their penchant for biased reporting. 

I find myself seriously reconsidering my personal views on having children. They’ll be born into the same twisted system. I’ll spend a significant chunk of my parenting time not just protecting my Black children from the usual elements of society and the human experience, but also protecting their sense of self-worth, their humanity; working hard to transcend the damage white supremacy inflicts upon black American’s self-esteem and lives.

I’m angry that a world exists where for centuries we’ve lived in a system based on a tremendous lie created and promulgated by greedy white men – that of white superiority. The avarice of these men that’s led to the genocide, murder and oppression of millions of people of color – ALL OVER THE WORLD for centuries.

I’m sick of trying to remain positive and buy into the idea that things will get better one day or “when the old racists die off.” In an interview with Vulture last year, on the topic of racial progress, comedian Chris Rock had this to say:

When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that Black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

(Some) people, more specifically, (some) angry white people, decried his comments as racist(!). Because that’s what sometimes happens when you call out racism. Instead of acknowledging that there is problem, some white people remain on the defense or mired in their own feelings of guilt.

They’re not racist, no. It’s the Black man who says “white people” who is racist. How dare he bring up race? Meanwhile, Donald Trump is running around saying all manner of racist shit about Latinos and Black people and he’s a leading Presidential candidate for the Republican party.

Chris Rock is right though and anyone who’s being honest with themselves knows it.

Just this past weekend, several hundred angry white men (and a smattering of women) gathered in Stone Mountain, Georgia – former KKK headquarters, to rally to defend their right to fly the Confederate Flag. They maintain that it represents pride in their heritage, not racism. Even though the heritage of which they are so proud, of which the Confederate Flag represents, depended on the free labor of enslaved Black people. The Confederate Flag which in several states saw a resurgence in popularity in response to the ban on school segregation – long after The Civil War ended. But, no. They’re not racist. They’re just “proud.”

I don't know how much of America's racism I can take | The Girl Next Door is Black
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20 years from now, those will likely be the same folks, who with the benefit of hindsight, will be ashamed of their actions. Apologizing and contrite like the damage hasn’t already been done. Just like those angry white people who greeted Black students trying to integrate white schools, with hostility, threats and indignant rage.  

Every day its some shit.

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Friday Five: Weekly Twitter Roundup 10/17/14

I’m trying out a new feature, Friday Five. Let me know what you think!
Friday Five Weekly Twitter Roundup | The Girl Next Door is Black

Here are five things you may have missed on Twitter this week.

1. I love everything about this White Macaroni and Cheese dish from the New York Times. It has brie! and mascarpone! The recipe looks simple enough that I might attempt to make it myself.

  2. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley doesn’t think her state has a Confederate Flag problem. (I’ve made my personal views on the flag clear.) 

  3. If you’re tired of hearing “Why are you single?”, you’re not alone!

 

4. Fall drinks are all the rage. Everything’s turning up squash. Eater asks: has it gone too far?

  5. Check out the trending #MyLoveLifein3Words. If you’re single, maybe your Prince/ss Charming is on Twitter. When I last checked, it had over 125,000 tweets!

 

Have a great weekend everyone!

What the Confederate Flag Symbolizes to Me

What the Confederate Flag means to me as a black person living in the South | Read more on The Girl Next Door is Black
The “Confederate Flag”, a rectangular variant of the Battle Flag. | Source

It’s 2014 and people are still squabbling over the meaning of the Confederate Flag.

Currently, the flag is a topic of contention in a Virginia town, where an “activist group” raised the Flag on a 90-foot tall pole on private property, visible from a freeway. According to an article from The Washington Post, one of the activists from the Virginia Flaggers, shared his perspective:

when he sees the giant flag along the interstate he feels pride and reverence

furthermore,

…he doesn’t think of the flag as a symbol of a fight to preserve the institution of slavery, in part because he believes the war was a defense against Northern aggression. The historical meaning of the flag, he said, should not be distorted by the message of the hate groups that have carried it — groups that have been repeatedly denounced by the Flaggers organization.

I’m pretty well acquainted with the Confederate Flag, a side effect of 13 years combined living in Georgia and Texas. When my family moved from New York to the South, I felt as I though I’d been involuntarily enrolled in a crash course on racism.

It was in Georgia where I realized the world as I knew it existed in terms of black vs white. Everyone seemed obsessed with everyone else’s race and your color gave people ideas about who you were before they even met you. Over the years, I’ve given some thought to the history of the flag and what it represents. When I see the Confederate Flag:

  • I remember a rainy day after school when my world changed irreversibly by these simple, yet loaded words:

    “Get away from my house, niggers!”

    A white classmate bellowed this greeting at me and my sister, an expression of glee and righteousness in his glare, a legal pad-sized Confederate flag pasted in the corner of the window from behind he which unwaveringly stared at us.

    As my mom tells the story today, the sense of helplessness in her voice betraying her desire to convey strength, my sister and I initially refused to tell her what happened, though she knew by our solemnity and silence something was off.

    She recounts, upon hearing what our peer shouted at us, resisting the impulse go tell some people what’s what and later shared her frustrations with my dad. To us, she explained that unfortunately, this was another one of those times when someone has hate in their heart for you because you are black. You didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t let it hurt you. We can pray for them.”

    Some people will hate me because I’m black.

  • It calls to mind an eye-opening conversation I had with a white co-worker, Sarah, as a teenager in Houston:

    We were sitting in her new, glossy black truck, an early graduation present from her father. She called it a “dually” – which always sounded like “dooley” to me – I gathered a “dooley” referred to an over-sized pick-up truck with a giant ass.One afternoon after work, as she sucked on a cigarette, she told me: “You know…I’m not racist. I don’t hate all black people. Like, I don’t like ‘niggers.’ You know what I mean? Like you. You’re one of the good ones. You don’t talk all ghetto and shit, you’re not lazy and you’re smart.”

    I shrank in my seat a little, stupefied by her words, unsure how to respond to the inherent supremacist subtext of her comment. In her voice I heard a sense of pride in her generosity and acceptance. She didn’t dislike all black people. Just the niggers.

    I wondered, how does she distinguish who is which if she doesn’t know the person?We headed to her house. She had offered to lend me a pair of her cowboy jeans since we were meeting up that night with other co-workers to see George Strait at The Rodeo.

    As we entered the garage, I noticed on the wall to my left, hung the largest Confederate Flag I’d ever seen. It covered almost every inch of space on the wall. The wall in front of me displayed several large shotguns. Knowing the racist apple usually doesn’t fall far from the even more racist tree, a current of fear ran through me when her dad, a tall, hardy man with a thick mustache Tom Selleck would envy, walked out to greet us, voice thick with the country, “Hey there, girls.”

    I hope he thinks I’m “one of the good ones.”
What the Confederate Flag means to me as a black person living in the South | Read more on The Girl Next Door is Black
Big ass truck | Source
  • The story of James Byrd, Jr. comes to mind.

    In 1998, I was in college in Texas when I heard the news of James Byrd, Jr., a black man, dragged to his death behind a pick-up truck, by three white men in Jasper, Texas. 1998(!) and still people were killing black people for the simple “crime” of being black.

    Two of his murderers were known white supremacists and at least one claimed membership in a Confederate organization. Sadly, his murder didn’t surprise me nor many other black Texans. As a black resident in Texas at that time, you lived knowing there are certain towns where you are unwelcome, where you may feel unsafe, where you may genuinely fear for you life.

    Three vicious men, murdered James Byrd, Jr. less than 300 miles from where I lived.

  • I recall, also while in college and stumbling on a disturbing photo at the photography shop that handled parties for many campus organizations.In the photo a group of thirty or so white students, posed in their Confederate best, costumed like extras in Gone with the Wind, Confederate Flags galore. The occasion was a white fraternity’s annual “Old South” party.

    It’s an (mostly) unspoken rule, at least it was when I was in attendance at that school, that black people don’t join white fraternities and sororities and to even attempt to do so results in an awkward situation for all parties involved. I thought of how uncomfortable I’d feel if I were to attend such a tribute to the “good old days” and how would I dress? Those times weren’t all that happy for people who looked like me.

    One chapter of this same fraternity later went on to offend Mexican students with their “Fiesta” themed party.
Kappa Alpha, Old South Party, 1985 Photo cr: ka-psi.org
From an “Old South” party thrown by Kappa Alpha fraternity, 1985
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[If anyone feels the instinct to play Devil’s Advocate and argue that there are black fraternities and sororities, I’d like to point out that much like Black History Month, Black Student Associations, BET and Historically Black Colleges & Universities, they exist in part, as a response to the exclusion from predominately white institutions. Thus, comparing the two would be a false equivalency.]

  • It reminds me of stories of angry white supremacist groups – not just in the past, but still in existence today – marching or rallying through neighborhoods with large black populations, their beliefs logged on posters with racist terminology, Confederate Flags proudly billowing, some terrorizing residents with racial epithets.
What the Confederate Flag means to me as a black person living in the South | Read more on The Girl Next Door is Black
KKK leader and members marching past protesters during a downtown rally in Tallahassee, Florida, 1977.
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  • Finally, and I mean finally as in “the last point”, as this is by no means an exhaustive list; far from it. Of course, this flag is synonymous to me with the enslavement of Africans and Blacks, people from whom I’m descended. Synonymous with the side that fought, in part, to preserve that disgusting, reprehensible institution to maintain its economic interests.

To some, the Confederate Flag is a symbol of pride. I will never be able to view that flag through a filter of pride. To me, it represents pain and hate. It embodies the most depraved soulless and cruel elements of humanity.

I will not deny anyone their freedom to display the Flag on their private property. However, I am free to want nothing to do with it. Years ago, I wrote in my journal, where I listed reasons to move from Texas to California after college, “I want to live somewhere I don’t have to see the Confederate Flag every place I go.”

Update: Shortly after I posted this entry on my Twitter timeline, I received the following tweet:

you people are constantly in a state of taking offense – to nearly everything. You should consider going home to Africa.

accompanied by this avatar:

Offensive Sign - The South Was Right with Confederate Flag

 

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