RACE IN AMERICA,
FEATURING THE THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES OF BRIAN ALLEN
FROM BRIAN: I am an ambassador of positive energy...people connector...mortgage advisor..former college athlete...casual triathlete. I’ve lived a very fortunate life, growing up all over the country…Joliet, IL, the home of The Blues Brothers; New Jersey; Dallas; Houston; and Northern Virginia/DC. It allowed me to nurture healthy relationships with a multitude of people and cultures. I played college basketball for Penn State, and I currently work as a mortgage advisor. More than the issue of race being a crucial topic today, the way it is being used to threaten our democracy is what is of utmost concern to me. That is my reason for sharing my thoughts.
NOTE: I will often use “Black” and “White” not because either term is a real human distinction, but because it is a real construct in our country. I personally prefer to be referred to as Black rather than African American because it is one syllable and simple.
“ME! WE!”
Why I Think Democracy Will Win
By
Brian Allen
Muhammad Ali, when speaking to Harvard’s graduating Class of 1975, was asked from the audience to recite a poem, and “Me. We.” is what he came up with. This is known as the world’s shortest poem, but it does pack a punch. (See what I did there?)
In explaining it, Ali said, “… what I gained was the ability to see the world in something like the way God must see it. To understand that there are no distinctions of any real importance in the affairs of men, that there is only one time and one place and one person and one truth. And that we are all contained in that time and place and person, and that the truth contains us all.”
Who represented “One World” more than Ali? It is the message of community and togetherness, what Ali stood for, that inspired me to share my thoughts on where we are as a country in the two years that have passed since George Floyd lost his life to police violence. This was a time, like 9/11/2001, when this country was “We.”
From that tragedy, I learned that I had numerous allies (members of the dominant caste), who with sincere intentions, wanted to know how to do better. COVID took away people’s ability to look away, to ignore, and to rationalize what happened to Mr. Floyd, and it is important that we stay vigilant toward anti-racism. It is no longer acceptable to stay silent, or even neutral. My message to the multitude of friends looking for guidance was to improve their racial intelligence, because it creates empathetic ears, which leads to ally behavior.
In order to manage this overwhelming demand, I actually started a private Facebook group called “My Allies” to provide a safe space to ask questions and discuss things without judgment, and to share ideas on how to fight racism. If we can’t talk about it, we cannot eradicate it.
The more sinister form of racism is the unseen, which produces outcomes detrimental to people of color. That ranges from written policy/laws to silence in the face of racism…when good people do nothing.
The most disappointing or disheartening exercise for me, especially during the previous administration, has been with people who I know love me and would probably take a bullet for me. It has been their inability or unwillingness to try to figure out why, on a daily basis, I was not only more aware of my Blackness, but also more afraid because of my Blackness for the first time in my adult life. They know my even temper, empathetic nature, and open-mindedness. Why, when I would suggest ways to understand it more, would I just experience radio silence? Is it shame, embarrassment, or denial? Whatever it is, I’m not going to give up on them, because they are me, and I’m trying to get them to “we.”
Understanding Racism and Institutional Racism
Whether it’s people I know, or talking heads on TV, one of my pet peeves is a lack of true understanding of racism, which is a subset of institutional racism. The often-used definition of racism revolves around intent and looks like the person wearing a hood, burning a cross, terrorizing people of color. That is the easy-to-see definition, popular until the decade I was born when it became quite distasteful to suburban America. It made it easier for people to absolve themselves of “that” disease or to deny they are taking part. It had to evolve and become less obvious.
ACTION ITEM: PLEASE EDUCATE YOURSELF ON INSTITUIONAL RACISM, RACISM, AND ANTI-RACISM
The FBI Criminal Behavioral Analysis
Within the FBI, there is a position called a Supervisory Special Agent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), agents who are trained in deception detection. In layman’s terms, they are human lie detectors. They use training, verbal, and nonverbal cues to determine whether a suspect is telling the truth. They are a vital and very respected profession within the organization. It is a process that takes 7-15 years to even apply.
Think about all the knowledge you gained between 1st and 10th grade. Then, take those 7-15 years of experience, and add 20, 30, or 50 years to it. But, instead of using that talent to fight crime, you use that talent to avoid professional roadblocks, micro-aggressions, physical harm, or even death. That is the Black experience when it comes to detecting racism. It’s not 100% foolproof, but you get the point. By instinct, I can walk into a room and pretty much pick out the allies as well as the others who may not have my best interest at heart. Thankfully, in most cases the latter are few.
Getting back to the FBI Profilers. Yes, I have some basic knowledge on whether someone is being truthful, but I would not sit in a room, with see-through glass and tell a Deception Detector if the subject is lying. So, it is probably best to leave racism detection to those who have the years of knowledge and experience.
Let me expound. From American history, personal-lived experiences, and statistics, my every day latent fear of terrorism has a White face, not a Brown, or Middle Eastern one. But that same lived experience precludes me from assigning a negative stereotype to all White faces.
Those White teenagers who threw firecrackers at me in elementary school were offset by the big Texans with the cowboy boots, and big belt buckle, cursing out other adults with White faces who said something derogatory to me in a Dallas hotel lobby. Before that I was trembling inside because I had heard “How they are in Texas,” and learned a lifelong lesson at age 11.
The White teenagers who chased me down the street in their car in Houston, TX, when I was 14, were undone by the Taylor family, a White family who took me and my brother in as if we were their own, when my single father had business trips. The Taylors taught me how to water ski and to love Austin.
The White teenagers during my senior year in high school, who called me the N word, and told me to go back to Africa, and threatened my well-being, were immediately negated by the White faces of my high school friends, who without a word, waited on a bus stop bench with me, letting me know they had my back and were ready to rumble if those guys returned. These lived experiences have given me a heightened ability to be able to recognize allies and enemies adeptly.
I try to explain it to my friends of the dominant caste by starting with my favorite definition of White Supremacy. What I say goes something like this…
“You could go your whole life without meeting a Black person and be very successful. The same is not true for me; I could not go my whole life without ever meeting a White person and thrive. In fact, any successful person of color has had to interact on a “10,000 hour” level to succeed in a White world. Until I was 14, I went to all White schools all over the country, but still had to endure the N word, threats to my life, firecrackers thrown at me as a child, and multiple driving-while-Black incidents, so my life experiences have made me “racially bilingual.” Because there has been no need for you to live in my Black world, there is a natural blind spot for you.”
Then I follow that up with…
“When George Floyd died, so many of my good friends came to me for answers, I had to go back to school to get my ‘Race Masters Degree.’ I was almost embarrassed at how much I did not know about race in this country…how much was intentionally left out. So, if we all went to the same schools, and I, as a Black man, was embarrassed about how much we didn’t learn in high school, is it possible that there might be room for you to become more informed?”
ACTION ITEM: INSTEAD OF TRYING TO PROJECT YOUR IDEAL OF WHAT RACISM IS OR ISN’T, RECEIVE THE PERSPECTIVE OF THOSE WHO HAVE THE LIVED EXPERIENCE
Who Is “Us,” and Who is “Them?”
“Explaining racism to a White person is like trying to explain water to fish.” – Tim Wise
“Race” is such a complex word because, as it applies to DNA, it is a manmade construct created in this country in the 1600’s, when the plantation owners realized they were far outnumbered by the enslaved. They had to create a social construct to engineer a “White” majority with those who, before then, were no better off than the enslaved and only categorized by their country of origin…English, Irish, German, Italian.
These indentured servants were given horses and guns and were motivated by fear that the Black and Brown people (“them” from earlier) were the threat, not the power elites. The reality was that the slaves and the White indentured servants had more in common (economic insecurity) than the indentured servants had with the plantation owners.
Tim Wise, author of White Like Me, is considered to be one of the foremost intellectuals on anti-racism. If you listen to any of his lectures, he usually discusses “the greatest hustle” the wealthy used on the others who looked like them. My favorite heartfelt lecture from Tim can be found on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_IBE94hh9s
This hustle is still alive and well today. The plantation owners and power elites have been replaced by politicians and power elites, who seem to maintain a caste system motivated by power and White supremacy. I’m talking about the 1% of the one-percenters. Think Trump, McConnell, Graham, DeSantis, Gaetz, Holly, Cruz, and those that support their supremist agendas. It’s business suits instead of the “Colonel Sanders” outfits.
If we had a better grasp of our history, those people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th would see that they were being used by the power elites, just as those who stormed the Capitol in Wilmington, NC in the 1890s, and those who fought in the Civil War to maintain the slave states for those power elites who benefitted most.
People of color, like me, and pretty much anyone not of color I know would be the “us,” even though the economic net is much wider than it was in the early stages of our country’s founding. I have no one in that highest tax bracket that I break bread with.
ACTION ITEM: INSTEAD OF LABELING SOMEONE A REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT…CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERAL, START DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE 1% OF THE 1% VERSUS THE REST OF US. VOTING RIGHTS. GUN LAWS. HIGH GAS PRICES. ABORTION BANS. WHO BENEFITS AND WHO DOESN’T?
Zero Sum Gain
The generations-long practice of divide and conquer as it applies to race is getting those of the dominant caste to believe that if consideration is given to the subordinate caste, then those in the dominant caste give up something, or a lot of something. To those fighting diversity or social programs, giving to the marginalized makes the piece of the pie smaller for those who are advantaged. Diversity, in my opinion, would produce a bigger pie. Of course, my opinion is based on studies on economics (larger tax base), neighborhoods (multi-cultural enrichment), and education (better test scores and social awareness) that have all shown that diversity produces positive outcomes.
I contend that the piece of the pie does not get smaller with diversity. I contend the pie gets bigger.
ACTION ITEM: START ACKNOWLEDGING THE MEGA-WEALTHY IS WHERE PEOPLE’S IRE SHOULD FOCUS, NOT INTERETHNICALLY.
Living With Grace – What if We (dominant caste) become Them (subordinate caste)?
I’ve been under the tent long enough to know one of the major motivating factors of the extreme right movement is the fear of becoming the “minority” in this country. Knowing exactly what the sentiment is about, I give the simple answer first:
That would make those who fear being a minority, actually be one of “us” and we would all be in it together.
Or is it… “I don’t want to become the minority because I know how I’ve treated them, or at the very least, how many have treated them”?
Throwing away the obvious unintended self-admission, it tells me they have no one significant in their lives who has been marginalized.
For the sake of this blog, I’m going to stick with what I feel about it. To endure all that we have endured, and still thrive, it cannot have been done without grace.
Macro level – All of those kids who desegregated public schools showed grace in the face of rocks, spit, and racial epithets thrown at them. Even as adults in hindsight, they reek of grace.
Micro level – My high school friend, whose parents disinvited me to his birthday party, is a current Facebook friend of mine and we correspond periodically. To explicitly disinvite me because of ethnicity takes a special kind of racism. They could have come up with 10 other excuses. But even in the moment, I knew it wasn’t his decision. If my ethnicity was an issue with him, I never would have been invited. I’m sure the hurt and embarrassment of that stung him like it did me because it was perhaps the first time someone in his life did something he knew was not right.
So grace has been imbedded in our DNA since that first ship hit Jamestown in 1619. Once the dominant caste becomes the minority, no one is going to start following you around in stores, or stopping you in your car for doing nothing, as we have endured.
Why Can’t We Just Move On And Stop Talking About The Past?
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is not just a quote from philosopher George Santayana when referencing the horrors of The Holocaust. Those in the dominant caste, who are uncomfortable acknowledging our country’s past, conveniently want to celebrate the 4th of July, and enjoy time off on “Columbus Day,” but talking about the dark side of our history often becomes taboo.
That’s like buying a business because of its assets, but totally ignoring the debts.
In my line of work people pay thousands of dollars for title insurance and hundreds of dollars for an appraisal to make sure there is nothing catastrophically wrong with a home. But our country has had a shaky foundation since before it was a country, and many prefer not to talk about it, or just choose to ignore it like it’s going to go away.
ACTION ITEM: LEARN YOUR REAL AMERICAN HISTORY BECAUSE IT IS DIRECTLY AFFECTING OUR TODAY AND OUR TOMORROW.
THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTES
The human condition seems to be, for things to make sense, that we have to pigeonhole people…put them in neat categories…prejudices. The goal should be to acknowledge those prejudices, address them, and grow. The world does not operate in the Black and White. It operates in the gray.
My father’s favorite saying growing up was, “Racism should be a pebble in your shoe, not an albatross around your neck.”
CONSERVATIVES AND “STOP BLAMING THE WHITE MAN”
One of my problems with conservatives of any ethnicity are tropes like “You can’t blame the White man for your problems…you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps…you have to strive for Black excellence.”
I contend that the two are not mutually exclusive. Any person of color who has excelled has not only acknowledged institutional racism but has adeptly circumnavigated it. Any person of color in my immediate circle provides living examples that racism is real, but it isn’t going to stop them from thriving.
My basketball analogy is of my 6’ 10” teammate saying, “Stop blaming the tall people for your struggles in basketball!”
There was absolutely nothing physically I could do about it, so I used my physical “deficiencies” to my advantage…to blow by the taller players…to increase the arc…to make eye contact. my shorter stature could help him…get him the ball in the paint because he can’t dribble. T-E-A-M!
The Southern Strategy and Its Grip on Society Today
As a country, we have had a history of White backlash with the progress of the Blacks. Reconstruction brought The Black Codes, record lynchings, and the construction of statues and memorials to The Confederacy to demonstrate White supremacy. The Civil Rights Movement brought about The Southern Strategy in the decade when I was born.
As I have mentioned, blatant racism became unsavory to American sensibilities. The triumvirate of George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, and Richard Nixon were the transition from bullhorn racism to dog-whistle racism, moving it into the gray palatable areas. The politicians started using code words to appeal to that segment of the population who did not in favor the strides Blacks were making, especially with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964/1965. That is the inflection point when Democrats (Dixiecrats) started moving over to the Republican Party. Even candidates for governor, like Ronald Reagan, were the “early implementers,” using words like crime…tough on crime…law and order…young bucks…jungle paths…welfare queens…individual property rights…forced busing…states’ rights…immigration…illegal aliens…liberal.
The backlash was in the form of the largest campaign of mass incarceration of people of color our country has ever seen, which continues today.
Please do not take my word for it. Lee Atwater, a political consultant to Reagan, and Bush 41’s campaign manager 1988, spilled the beans in this interview he thought was off the record.: https://youtu.be/X_8E3ENrKrQ
A protégé of Lee Atwater was Stuart Stevens, a Republican Political Consultant, and Media Advisor for Bush 43’s 2000 Campaign. Showtime is currently running a 5 episode series that shows the through line of 50 years of dog-whistle politics. Stevens, had a mea culpa, when faced with the presidency of Donald Trump, and created The Lincoln Project, a group of former Republican strategists whose sole purpose became to insure 45 wasn’t re-elected. They definitely had an impact on the result of the 2020 election, but it was his introspection that was so revealing:
The Lincoln Project Episode 1/Minute 24 - “It’s all about race. But, the whole Republican Party is all about race. They seem to have given up pretending otherwise…The Republican Party has become a white grievance party. There’s always been this element in the party. I don’t think Trump made people more racist. I think he made it ok to be racist.”
The Lincoln Project Episode 1/Minute 53 - “[Lee Atwater] He would hire somebody like me to really do the racism. My first lesson in racial politics was in The Southern Strategy. All politics is, at least certainly in the south, is played in the key of race. So, our path to victory is to maximize White vote…It was playing the race card if I’m honest about it. But, you’re able to convince yourself, that the danger of the other side, is greater than the flaws of the side that you’re for…I think that in many ways, we [The Lincoln Project] feel a sense of personal responsibility. Who would believe this party, like this thing that you worked in, turned out to be, to some not insignificant degree, a force for evil? I can’t say it’s not my fault. The firm that I started was the most successful firm. I helped elect more than anybody else.”
What we are witnessing today is a direct result of the third major event of Black progress…the election of Barack Obama. Pushback that brought about the Tea Party, the MAGA Movement, and all of the other far-right groups we are seeing today. The lexicon of the dog whistle has been expanded with more “boogie man” terms like…”liberal media…radical left…build that wall…Black Lives Matter…woke…critical race theory.” The last three were positive terms, and movements, in the Black community that were appropriated and weaponized by politicians.
Critical Race Theory was the political response to the inarguable facts of George Floyd’s murder. As a side note, anyone demonizing The 1619 Project hasn’t read it, because it discusses the heroes of all races fighting for freedom and equality. When has critical thinking ever been a bad thing? Why does adding “race” create hysteria? When has banning books or not telling the truth ever been a good thing? Answer: When elites who wanted to maintain power decided it was.
The hands of the Democratic Party are definitely not clean, but there is only one party that is a clear and present danger TODAY to this experiment called Democracy. There is a segment of the population that will be unmoved by this blog post, but there is the majority of the population, I believe, who fear for the democracy, and the rights that are being taken away. They/we just need to be empowered and encouraged to do something about it.
By those charged with election security, 2020 was the most secure election ever. In four particular cases of voter fraud that I heard of, all voted for 45. One of the four was a woman of color, a former felon, who was told she could vote by the election board, but then had it rescinded. Which one of the four was put in jail?
VOTE the election deniers out! DON’T VOTE for the election deniers currently in office! It’s never been about Democracy for them. It has been about power. We as citizens have the power to save this country from autocracy, and if Kansas is a bellwether, I truly have hope that we will do the right thing…be on the right side of history.
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What has been most enlightening to me in these last 2+ years is the readily available facts about our history, that were suppressed in my public education. It is a history that scholars have been documenting since the ‘60’s. Here is a list of the books I have read since the murder of George Floyd, and the multi-cultural authors who have reinforced things I knew, and confirmed certain things I felt:
White Like Me – Tim Wise
Caste – Isabel Wilkerson
The 1619 Project – Nikole Hannah-Jones
The 1619 Project Born in The Water – Nikole Hannah-Jones
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man – Emmanuel Acho
Dog Whistle Politics – Ian Haney Lopez
The Sum of Us – Heather McGhee
The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander
White Fragility – Robin DiAngelo
White Rage – Carol Anderson
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Myth of Race – Robert Wald Sussman
What Unites Us – Dan Rather
A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zen
Everything Trump Touches Dies – Rick Wilson
The End of Policing – Alex Vitale
The Warmth of Other Suns – Isabel Wilkerson
Critical Race Theory: An Introduction – Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic
Critical Race Theory – Caldwell Wagner
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? – Beverly Daniel Tatum
The Essential Kerner Commission Report – Jelani Cobb
Born A Crime – Trevor Noah
Copyright: Brian Allen, all rights reserved.
Contact Brian at Brian.Allen30@gmail.com
