Every where you turn, be it in the press, TV, magazine, newspapers, movies, documentaries, CNN, you see images of black people – almost always, in some kind of negative situation, either in poverty, disease, war, crime, and the criminal justice system, at worst and more often than not in situations of under achievement at best!! Blacks are viewed and treated often either with hateful dismissal at worst, or with compassionate liberal understanding dismissal at best...
Much has been made of white supremacist beliefs, but one can't help asking the question then, are black people somehow inferior? In mental and emotional capacity, in moral and ethical standards, in cultural and social etiquette? Is asking this question in itself racist? Of course the answer to all of these questions is of course NOT!! In capital letters, and yes this question would be extremely racist, except of course I am black, so I think that excludes me. My reason for writing this blog is that in my experiences of traveling the world, working in a million different roles in a million different industries often concurrently (I knew there was a good reason for doing it!) is that my travels and experiences, are leading me to believe that in fact, it is the case that in the west, the prevalent view is that indeed, there is some sort of inherent inferiority in blacks, and I think that this view is held by far more people than I could have possibly ever expected or even wanted or cared to believe! In having conversations with some of my friends, I have come to find that the language used is often highly offensive and so innocently so, and too often so acceptably so. A friend of mine talks all the time, quite dismissively of black neighborhoods, saying things such as "people moved out of Harlem and no one would even go there any more" completely, innocently, and highly offensively acceptably unconscious of the implication of this dismissal of all the other communities that populate this neighborhood. The most revealing of our conversations was when she was describing a SNL skit whereby a black guy and a trashy white person were involved in some trashy lowly banter. It occurred to me that she did not need to describe that the black guy was trashy as well – because it sufficed to say "black guy" to indicate that this was trashy conversation between contemporaries!! A black friend recently remarked "when did this neighborhood become such a family neighborhood?!!" referring to the white families that had moved to the Forte Greene area, making it a more desirable area to live in for whites and blacks who can afford to, alike. He made this statement completely oblivious of the total and absolute annihilation of the fact that black families have always lived there, and indeed, it was always a beautiful and quite desirable area to live in (for our communities), no different than BedStuy or Harlem for that matter. This illustration of the unacceptable acceptability of this sort of language even among some black people to dismiss the every existence of black people, I find extremely worrying. Of course neither of these two people thought they were saying anything offensive and they were both surprised that I pointed it out, but language, no less than images, such as we see on TV and elsewhere, is an extremely important tool, that can be used both constructively and destructively.
Another recent occurrence, which I encounter quite often, but had never analyzed in the same manner before, was when a friend of mine mentioned his fear of being in elephant and castle, which btw, is not even a black neighborhood per se, saying something to the effect of a white boy being at risk in this neighborhood. His statement discomfited me, but I could not quite put a finger on it, until later on when I thought about it fully. The reality is that one never hears of white people being lynched because of being in a black neighborhood, and yet one does hear all manner of horror stories about black people finding themselves in non black parts of town. You hear about racist attacks on blacks all the time, and yet, it is considered somewhat offensive, if I raise my concerns of racism or a racist attack – whiny even, and yet, it occurred to me that is completely totally acceptable for white people to make those kinds of offensive statements based purely on irrational fear that is steeped in nothing but pure prejudice that goes contrary to any statistics.
My experiences at the UN have been very revealing as well. As an intern at this bastion of multinational multiculturalism, I have come to find myself among a privileged elite group of graduates/about-to-be graduates of prestigious institutions, of which I am one of only about 10 (being generous) people of African origin from a group of 225+. This is a group that not only has access to privileged information about a fast track to prestigious roles within the UN, but that is given extra information about these, and is actively encouraged to pursue those roles. Of course the fact that the internship is self funded means that only people who can afford to self fund for a period of at lest two months in one of the world's most expensive cities can afford to take up this opportunity, but regardless, I found this fact interesting to note, due specifically to the organization that the UN prides itself to be. I suppose it surprised me that there seemed a clear unspoken social hierarchy in this organization that I expected to epitomize equality and of course, in many ways it does. I sense a quiet disdain and disregard even, for example, for my boss who's an African woman – Egyptian - from her compatriots, notwithstanding that she is one of the few people in the UN, if not the only one, certainly the only person I have ever encountered that speaks ten languages fluently including all six of the UN languages. I have experienced all manner of prejudice in the private sector from the very subtle exclusion to more overt prejudice, but somehow, I suppose I did not expect to see any clear distinction of privilege within the UN based on anything other than mere merit. I suppose it is naive to expect the outside world to not be represented to a certain extent inside of the UN, but I suppose as a black person who looks in the mirror every morning and sees nothing but a compassionate, loving, thoughtful, hardworking, resourceful, intelligent and deserving human being, I can perhaps be forgiven for being shocked every single time I encounter inequality, regardless of however many different explanations may exist for it – no matter how innocent.
A recent Global Youth Conference I participated in at the UN was an illustration of the stark difference in the manner in which we view certain people. All the delegates stayed in the same hotels, and were all sponsored to be there – many of them being young people still studying, with no income of their own, and yet, from my limited experience with the conference, I found that the African delegates were treated with so much more disdain than the delegates from Europe for example. There was no exchange of cash for any goods or services, so the often used argument of how much one spends (in a restaurant or store for example) does not apply. This was done with impunity, by almost all concerned, with the rightness of this behavior clearly unquestioned. Granted, this conference was a hugely frustrating event for all concerned, due to many reasons, but still one could not help noticing the starkness of the difference with which some delegates were treated, and the amazing acceptability of this.
Could I be wrong, and will I one day look back at this blog and think "what was I thinking?!" I sincerely hope so. I would love to hear your thoughts, cusses and counter views. I didn't mean for this to be an essay, but oh well… mind you I could go on and on…
thug
