Let's build on good will and talk race

Buffalo News ^ | 03/07/02 | Rod Watson

[Phantom Lord]

Let's build on good will and talk race

The "angry black male" is back.

That may disturb some people, but it disturbs me even more because of one hard reality: He never left. Even while the expected pockets of outrage over a recent column about racially oriented team names was dying down, what some describe as the "angry black male" was always around.

But if you're looking here to find him, you're looking too far away.

He's the guy at the water cooler talking to you about the Bills.
He's the guy in the cafeteria complaining about the weather.
He's the colleague telling you about his kid's Little League game.

He's the guy (or perhaps the woman) talking to you openly about everything except race and white people, because that's the topic most African-Americans talk about candidly only among one another. The result is a quiet, seething anger that I suspect most whites have no idea still exists.

It needs to be on the table. As a community, we need to talk about it, because it exists not just among the down-and-out, but among the suit-and-tie crowd as well.

When someone as mainstream as the late Carl Rowan writes a book titled "The Coming Race War in America," in part about black anger, we need to talk about it.

When someone like Newsweek columnist Ellis Cose writes a book titled "The Rage of a Privileged Class," about the anger of all those middle-class African-Americans we think have nothing to be enraged about, we need to talk about it.

And when Los Angeles Times correspondent Sam Fullwood writes a book titled "Waking From the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class," about disillusionment with integration and the penchant of many blacks to turn inward, we need to talk about it.

Those 1990s books set the table for a new dialogue. Some of that has happened here on a small scale. That much is good.

Yet two years into a new millennium, we still don't want to deal with it in a broad, systemic way. In fact, judging by much of the feedback I get, we don't want to talk about it in any way that pushes people outside their comfort zones.

That has to change. If we're going to get past it, we need to talk about issues of color and power - who has it and who doesn't - in a frank and honest way, not sugarcoat it.

Does doing that mean I hate white people, as some readers suggest? Of course not.

Individual whites can be as nice, caring and visionary - or as mean-spirited, thoughtless and bigoted - as blacks, Hispanics or members of any other group. My guess is that, as with other groups, most fall into the former category.

What I do hate is the inequitable social and economic structures that have lingered as a result of institutionalized advantage. I hate what former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley calls "white skin privilege."

I hate the fact that the mayor of this city - which is 37 percent black - has a management team that doesn't come anywhere close to reflecting that diversity.

And I hate the fact that the county executive could meet with a "kitchen Cabinet" with no minorities or women and not realize the folly of that until it hit the front page.

Does that mean I hate the mayor and the county executive?
No.

Based on my contacts with them, I suspect they're both decent individuals.

And that's the point: We have a lot of decent individuals. But as was once said in another context, all it takes for an unjust system to perpetuate itself is for a lot of decent individuals to pretend there's not much wrong.

It's time we stop pretending.

Granted, that goes both ways. If you're minority, it's time to stop pretending the schools can raise your kids without you, that your community can thrive without your economic support or that government will respond to you if you don't vote.

But it's also time to stop pretending things will significantly change if black people just try harder. We need institutional changes as well.

What makes me optimistic is the positive feedback I get, not just from blacks but from whites. People who agree with something generally don't write. The fact that so many do tells me this community has both the capacity and the willingness to tackle problems of race head on, not sweep them under the rug.

There's a nucleus of good will. If we don't take advantage of it, then I'll be angry.

[uncbob]

The result is a quiet, seething anger that I suspect most whites have no idea still exists.

You are right
I tried to tell my co-workers this years ago about the majority of blacks and was laughed at

[uncbob]

That has to change. If we're going to get past it, we need to talk about issues of color and power - who has it and who doesn't - in a frank and honest way, not sugarcoat it.

Well what this really means is Blacks tell Whitey how racist he is and how all their troubles are due to the white man
And Whitey is supposed to feel quilty and take it

This is total BS they don't want a REAL dialogue where they are told the vast majority of their problems are their own doing.
Cut me a break . This meaningful dialog BS has been espoused for years and really means Whitey sits back and listens to how rotten he is

Well not this whitey

Problem is TOO many WHITE LIBERALS chant this same garbage

[Trailerpark Badass]

My, what a disturbing piece! In so many ways

[AppyPappy]

the NEGRO????

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

Well what this really means is Blacks tell Whitey how racist he is and how all their troubles are due to the white man And Whitey is supposed to feel quilty and take it

This is total BS they don't want a REAL dialogue where they are told the vast majority of their problems are their own doing.

Bingo! What more needs to be said?

[babyface00]

I, for one, would like to know what else they want? More wealth transfers based on skin color? More preferential treatment in hiring?

At some point, this community needs to take responsibility for itself. Slavery's been dead and gone for over 100 years. Institutionalized racism has been gone for generations. Billions have been spent trasferring money to a lot of people who, quite frankly, didn't do much to better themselves with it. Preferences in hiring and admissions only served to create more dependency.

As a white male, I'm tired of feeling guilty and I'm sick of paying taxes to support people who will never be happy. The "black community", in my opinion, is acting like a bunch of spoiled, badly-behaved children. It's time they grew up and looked in the mirror.

(I'm a little grumpy today, sorry.)

[HELLRAISER II]

Equality is great, so is peaceful coexistence. But as a White man I must admit that I get tired of hearing about oppressive Whitey every day in the news or how Whites & the U.S. Govt. owe Reparations to the Blacks. We don't owe them squat, so if they want it to be a equal, peaceful community I'm all for it. But if they want to be better than me and they want me to pay for it, well they better think again it's not going to happen.

[HELLRAISER II]

Speaking the truth doesn't come across as grumpy, it's simply the truth and well said by the way.

[babyface00]

Many thanks.

[Whilom]

Been tried before, Rod, ad nauseum. Words, honeyed or hot, won't close the racial chasm and soothe the troubled spirit. Money won't do it. Government programs won't do it. Courts won't do it. Good-will won't do it. No wonder the spirit is troubled -- we have a society's failure that can't be fixed by society's solution. Maybe individuals just have to make the best of it as individuals. The Golden Rule is trite because it's true.

[Faraday]

Awwww. Are we feeling put upon today? Apparently opportunity is not enough. He needs a hug. (Oddly, this is probably correct. If there were more intact families in the black population, the level of anger would go down quickly.)

[ThreeOfSeven]

The "angry black male" deserves no special break, no slack for outbursts of violence.

[jim997]

I agree 100%, If you've sent your children to all black school in Durham NC, you could experience, first hand, the "anger"....All we want is equality, but some want to be more equal than others. All we want are REPERATIONs, but we won't talk about Afrimative Action as a form of reperation. If I were a young black male, I would be angery too....that what I would learn form BTV, Jet and Eboney...that's what would be pushed on me every day!

[Wurlitzer]

For those of us that have the misfortune to live in WNY and the Buffalo Pravda News know that Ron Watson can spot racism everywhere. He cannot write a column without it. The only reason he gets away with it is that he is black and the Buffalo Pravda News, is owned by the same individual as the LA Times.

Only a fire can eliminate the stench emanating from this newspaper.

They cannot even print color in register. You get the impression that you must wear 3-D glass to look at a color image.