Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

“His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” Jeremiah 20:9

Last night I had an honest conversation with my friend Connor Descheemaker about my race. I’m a black male and I was frustrated about the lack of black faces you see in the Phoenix art scene – especially black male faces.

The logical question becomes, why not? Why are there not a lot of black voices in the intimate Phoenix art community which I love?

Why have they been marginalized, assuming that they have?

We hear about the struggles of Hispanics, but the struggles of blacks seem to be conveyed in the abstract as we don’t tell enough stories about the struggles of blacks seem to go unreported.

It seems like there is a sense of oppression Olympics going on (a term I first heard from Mary Stephens). Whereas blacks, Hispanics, women, Asians, ect are fighting to be the most oppressed and in doing so clash against each other instead of coming together.

Another fundamental reason that there may not be a lot of representation of blacks in the Phoenix art scene is because of the pervasive prejudice that exists between whites and blacks and blacks and Mexicans.

Howard Zinn mentions the notion of divide and conquer in his classic “A People’s History in the United States” where different races are pitted against each other by rich white interests in order to have them not come together and rebel against the system.

This pitting of races against each other is still broadcast in a society where there are mangled messages suggesting intra-racial violence when in fact most acts of violence happen inter-racially.

“The naked truth is that the vast majority of killings in America is committed by members of a victim’s own racial group. There is no “race war against white people;” black social ills continue to be tethered to white supremacist notions, policies, and practices, and Turley-Hansen’s thinking is clouded by stereotypes about black pathology that belies the dynamism of black life and black leadership” said Michael Whittaker. Neal Lester, Jeremy Brown-Gillett and Rashaad Thomas in an East Valley Tribune article recently.

That being said, there are certainly strands of racism and prejudice exhibited against blacks and prejudice perpetuated by blacks. The reason I exempt blacks from being able to be racist is because racism is about power and the ability to institutionalize regiments that oppress large groups of people.

Black people do not have power to create prison systems that inordinately lock up white people to an infinitely greater degree than whites.

We need to start with conversations which can fuel ideological shifts. A good place to go to engage in something like this is at Conversations on Race which will be taking place next month at the Phoenix Center for the Arts.

We need more black people represented in our midst and I’d hate to know that a potential Basquiat was in the shadows because our community didn’t have the capacity to facilitate his/her artistic expansion.

I’ll end with a quote from Cornel West, a great thinker on race dynamics.

““To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that which shows what it might become. America — this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of ‘no’ into the ‘yes’ — needs citizens who love it enough to re-imagine and re-make it.”

Love wins,

DG

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I Affirm Affirmative Action

I Affirm Affirmative Action

DG Burns

 

Recently State Press reporter Annica Benning wrote an op-ed piece about how affirmative action is essentially unnecessary, belittling to minorities and essentially reverse discrimination (she made this specific claim in the first version of her article that she surreptitiously revoked curiously after I decided to write a rebuttal  under the notion of ‘accuracy’; however, luckily her ‘revised’ article, though less controversial, is nonetheless still inaccurate).

First, in her initial article she quotes Bill O’Reily – mistake number one.

Bill O’Reily is a racist.

Here’s a quote from him in reflecting on the Trayvon Martin incident “The civil rights industry and our leadership in Washington will not take on the black crime problem because in order to do so, black culture would have to change,” O’Reily said.

So, in order to curb violence in the African American community we need to change the culture? Yes, because African American culture is significantly more violent than white culture and is single-handedly responsible for their violence.

Wrong.

Black culture needs not change, rather, the system that perpetuates inequality and injustice towards minorities needs to be ameliorated. Then, and only then will we see crime among minorities decrease.

O’Reily is essentially calling black culture flawed in some way and that is, well, racist.

In her initial article she also mentioned that “our society has an unwritten rule: that white people cannot criticize black culture.”

This is true only when the person criticizing black culture is doing so in a racist manner and, guess what, O’Reily is guilty.

Second, the Benning mentions that “The primary problem with affirmative action is that it does not help minorities.”

Wrong again.

According to a report from the U.S. Labor Department, affirmative action has benefited 5 million minority members and 6 million white and minority women move up in the workforce.

The fact of the matter is: Affirmative Action is still necessary.

After California abolished its affirmative action policies in 1998 student admissions at Berkeley fell 61 percent and minority admissions at UCLA fell 36 percent.

According to the American Association of University Women, women’s average salary is $8,000 less than male’s average salary a year.

Also, the second graph mentions that “Practicing diversity only for a select ethnic group is discrimination against said ethnic group.”

Since when is affirmative action about one ethnic group? The author fails to mention that women and all minorities benefit from affirmative action.

Next, Benning claims that “The saddest aspect about affirmative action is it belittles minorities.”

She knows that because she’s of course a minority.

Nope.

Affirmative Action affirms minorities because it empowers them by providing them with equal opportunities.

Lastly, white people generally see affirmative action as reverse discrimination. However, let’s be real, that doesn’t exist.

I think Sara Luckey from Feminspire says it best when she states “When white people complain about experiencing reverse racism, what they’re really complaining about is losing out on or being denied their already existing privileges. And while it may feel bad to realize your privilege is crumbling and the things you’ve taken for granted can be taken away from you, it is unfair, untrue, and disingenuous to call that experience reverse racism”  said Luckey.

This article is a classic article complaining about minorities taking away privileges from white people and is oddly directed at minorities exclusively. I can’t imagine how traumatizing affirmative action policies must be for someone going to a university is. It must be catastrophic to be enrolled in school and know that affirmative action is still rearing its ugly head.

The truth of the matter is this: minorities and women (who are oddly enough not mentioned in an article written by a woman) have had their teeth kicked in for so long that when they get a chance to eat at the table with the white men they will take it every time and that’s justice, not discrimination.

Reach the reporter: dgburns@asu.edu