Tag Archive for: racism

Existing While Brown or Black in America

/in , /by

Existing While Brown or Black in America by Linda Rodriguez

In all the turmoil around #BlackLivesMatter and the extrajudicial killings of Black men and women by police right now, I notice the inevitable outcries from parts of the White community that the police wouldn’t shoot and kill these people for nothing, that they must have brought it on themselves in some way by their own lawless behavior. Perhaps. But when we have stringent, trustworthy investigations, again and again we find that these people did nothing so major that it would have warranted taking their lives. Still, to many White, middle-class people who are never hassled and threatened by police as they move through daily life, it seems that surely all these unarmed African American, Latino, and Native men killed by police every year must have brought it on themselves through some fault of their own.

So, allow me to tell a little story from my own life. In Kansas City, Missouri, where I live, the police used to be as undisciplined and out of control as some of the worst of police forces we’ve recently seen. A crisis finally forced the city to crack down, bring in a strong police chief to rebuild the force, and reorganize the police force around the motto of “Protect and Serve.” It never became a perfect police force, of course, but for a while it was plagued by less racial profiling and unnecessary civilian deaths than most urban forces today before lamentably reverting to its old forms.

Back in the 1970s when Kansas City’s force was so much like the departments we’re seeing on the news right now, pointing loaded rifles and screaming obscenities and death threats at unarmed demonstrators and reporters, I lived with my late first husband, Michael Rodriguez. Mike was a decorated veteran of Vietnam, married to me with two little kids, working a white-collar, full-time job as manager of a printing supply company branch, going to college at night, and the most non-violent and non-criminal person anyone could imagine. He went through some of the worst fighting in Vietnam as a medic, refusing to carry ammunition in his sidearm because he could not bring himself to kill anyone.

A fire station stood on the corner of the block where his company offices were, and several of the firefighters who were also Vietnam veterans had made friends with him since this was when no one in this country wanted to hear what these guys had gone through. This fact later saved his life.

One cold evening in winter when twilight came early, Mike was the last one out of his office, as usual, since he locked up at night and opened up in the mornings. He found his car’s battery had died and called a cab to come take him home. While he stood outside his own offices, long-haired but dressed in a business suit, waiting for his cab to arrive, two policemen pulled up, got out of their police cruiser, and started harassing him. They shoved him back and forth between them, called him racial slurs, searched him, and found nothing but his wallet, keys, and a tube of prescription ointment for psoriasis in his pockets. One then told the other, “We could shoot this motherfucker and say we thought that tube was a gun.” Kansas City police had just shot a fourteen-year-old African American boy three days before, claiming they thought the comb in his pocket was a gun—and they got away with it.

Mike thought he would die on that spot, leaving me a young widow with a baby and a toddler and no way for his kids or anyone to know that he had never done anything to deserve it. His firefighter friends had seen what was happening, however, and came out calling his name and asking what was going on and if he needed help. The cops told them to go away, but the firefighter veterans stood there watching and witnessing until Mike’s cab came, and he got safely away. Clearly, they saved his life that night.

If you talk with people of color, you will hear story after story like this. A friend of mine who is a White mystery writer married to an African American (extremely successful) artist just went out and bought all new dress business suits for her husband who, like most artists, normally wears jeans and T-shirts to work in, in the hopes that this will keep the New York City police from stopping and harassing him as he must travel through her city from home to his workplace and back. He must dress up for the commute, only to change into jeans and T-shirt at work, and then reverse the process to go home. White people don’t face this kind of treatment by law enforcement in their own lives, and it sounds so crazy and unreal to them that they assume people of color are exaggerating or making it up out of whole cloth, understandably, but this kind of harassment, threat, and fear is a part of daily life in communities of color all over this country.

Racism is a horrible and unjust fixture of American life, but just because you are White does not mean that you are safe from its destructive consequences. If allowed to flourish openly and unchecked, it won’t stop with communities of color. With the rising militarization of the police forces of large cities and small towns, I would caution my White friends to learn from our experiences. If this kind of behavior is allowed to continue and grow, it will eventually overflow into the White communities, beginning with poor and working-class communities and eventually moving up the socioeconomic ladder. It’s a matter of power and control, even beyond the matter of race and ethnicity.

Whether we know it or not, all of us in the United States have a vested interest in this situation of extrajudicial killings by police forces. Americans need to have a thorough reorganization of every police force in this country. We also need a national discussion of the growing militarization of our police departments, large and small, and what we as citizens want to do about this growing threat. The stakes in this situation are high, and the costs of failure for us as a nation and individually will be unimaginably horrific.

Linda Rodriguez’s 13th book, Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging, was published in May 2023. She also edited Woven Voices: 3 Generations of Puertorriqueña Poets Look at Their American Lives, The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, The Fish That Got Away: The Sixth Guppy Anthology, Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology, and other anthologies.

Dark Sister: Poems was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. Her three earlier Skeet  Bannion mystery novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and earlier books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart’s Migration—received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. She also published Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop.  Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in Kansas City Noir, was optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Learn more about her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com or follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rodriguez_linda  or on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/rodriguez_linda.

Watch Out for Falling Heroes—T.K. Thorne

/in /by

 Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

The past few months, heroes have toppled under
the sledgehammer of truth. I’m not talking about the confederate statues; I’m
taking about personal heroes. Among the fallen are L. Frank Baum, author of The
Wizard of Oz books, who advocated
exterminating native Americans; John Wayne, who made disturbing
remarks about blacks and Native Americans: J.K. Rowling, who has made
remarks some
interpret as transphobic; and Dr. Seuss’ —of all people—whose cartoon art
included racial
stereotyping.  Classics like Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Gone with the Wind are coming
under scrutiny for racial stereotyping. 

 

This is really nothing new. Gertrude
Stein, an American poet and literature icon, sympathized with France’s Vichy
regime (a puppet state for the Nazis). Ezra Pound, a major American poet, became
a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. T.S. Eliot, a famous British essayist and poet was an
elitist, writing that “a large number of free-thinking Jews is undesirable.”
He did not espouse tolerance or even traveling widely and thus, presumably,
exposing oneself to other cultures. 

One of the real angsts about the historical book
I am writing now is that one of my heroes stumbles on his pedestal. When he
visited Birmingham sometime in 1963, his brother set them up with prostitutes
(both were married). I worried about putting in that chapter, but the story was
true and germane to the book. I grappled with whether to cut it or leave it. In
the end, I decided it was true, and the truth was more important to tell.
 Is he still a great man? A man to be followed and listened to?

I stopped drooling over actor Sean Connery when he
said he thought it was “absolutely right” to hit women when they wouldn’t “leave
things alone.” The “father of our national parks,” John Muir, had no place for indigenous
peoples in his “pure” wilderness and was clear about his racist opinions about
them and about blacks. Bill Clinton led record job creation but sullied the
office of president with his shenanigans. John F. Kennedy was just as bad in
that department, yet his words still inspire. Nixon created the Environment
Protection Agency (EPA) and opened China, but also dishonored the office he
held. Thomas Jefferson had slaves. Abraham Lincoln plainly said he had no
intentions of freeing slaves. And the paragraph above regarding prostitutes refers
to Martin Luther King. Even Mahatma Gandhi, surely an icon of peace and
civility, said the Jews under Hitler’s heels “should have offered
themselves to the butcher’s knife.” 

What? 

What, indeed, are we to do? Everyone has flaws.
No one is perfect. If you think someone is, you just don’t know about theirs. And
one person’s “flaws” is another person’s “strengths of character.” Judging
people is simultaneously harmful (“Judge not, lest ye be judged”) and
necessary. We can’t choose a better path without acknowledging and turning away
from ideas and behavior that will harm our social, cultural, and personal
evolution . . . or our world.

Should we separate the person from their
creations (art, writing, leadership) or do we turn away and disregard their accomplishments
or creations because of the creator’s flaws? Is it a matter of strict
lines in the sand? Should we make allowances for time, context, and culture?  Is justice  about punishment or mercy? Does it matter if
the theft was a loaf of bread and the thief was hungry?

I suspect dealing with this is akin to the
concept of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about forgetting, turning from what
is true, or acting like something didn’t happen. It is about letting go of the
grip wrongs have on us; letting go of our own
emotional angst and moving forward.

So maybe the answer is not to ban books or art
(because ideas are next) or even to shun the art, works, or accomplishments of
the flawed (because ultimately that is everyone), but to be aware and negotiate
the complexity. What young children with forming ideas are exposed to may need
to be more strictly scrutinized than what adults read. It’s important they be
exposed to material that reflects the diversity of the world. Confederate
statues are still art and reflect historical people and events, but do they belong
in public squares as “heroes?” Can we appreciate the beautiful and charming aspects
of Southern culture while remaining clear-eyed about the racism that dominated that
way of life? Can we admire the stunning culture of the Japanese, while
rejecting the blood thirst of feudal rulers and war mongers? Can we accept and
understand structural racism can exist along with good, decent police officers?

This is hard. We are not wired to do this very
easily. We are wired to want simple choices—good/bad, dangerous/not. We want
(need?) our heroes to be perfect. And if they aren’t, we want to put our hands
over our ears and shut our eyes. But they aren’t perfect. We aren’t. Our
country isn’t. We can be patriots and criticize. In fact, we must if we are to continue
making things better and stay true to the ideals that  many have given freedom
and blood for. At the moment, we are so polarized, that one side cannot imagine
saying anything good about the other, no matter what it is. Picking a path
through this jungle is hard. It is much easier to stay divided, to cheer only
for our team. But life is not like that. Life is change. It is complex and contradictory, even our
heroes. We must make decisions as we pick our way through stony, thorn-filled
paths. We must make choices. Sometimes they are obvious, but often they are not
clear or perfect.

Sometimes they will just be the best we can do.

 T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  TKThorne.com

 

 

 

Pandemic, Protests, and Privilege

/in /by

By AB Plum

Paraphrasing E.L. Doctorow, “Writing is a socially
acceptable form of committing murder.”

I’ve been killing a lot of characters this past month.

Not because the pandemic has demanded much of a change
in my life. I, basically, lead a life of privilege. I think killing “the bad
guys” is my way of venting frustration about the handling of the pandemic fueled by institutional racism.

Food, good, fresh food,
appears on my table nightly. The house where I live provides more than adequate
shelter. Walking daily remains part of my routine. I am white, well educated,
and healthy (except for a heart condition that puts me in the “Higher Risk” COVID-19 category). One risk I don’t have to deal with: 
living in constant fear of the police.

I like to think I’m smart enough to be grateful for my
lot in life and to be sensitive to so many others less fortunate. (It sounds
self-serving, but I grew up poor as dirt and have never forgotten my deep roots
in poverty).

Unconsciously, I write about flawed characters who
often are well-to-do. Many of them, though, have memories of being poor,
disenfranchised, ill, mentally incapacitated, and marginalized because of race
and/or gender.

In my Ryn Davis Mystery
Series, she runs a safe house for former prostitutes. With Hispanic surnames,
little education, less money, and children with absentee fathers, these women
are struggling to learn computer skills that will give them better chances to map
out independent lives and to protect their children. None of them has ever met un policia they trusted.

Beau “Peep” Scott earned millions as a drummer in The
Stoned Gang. The rock group’s name is apt since Beau burned too many gray cells
to take care of his fortune. His parents were drug addicts who neglected him,
and he deals daily with people’s sneers about his intellect. He adores Ryn and
may be the only man she trusts completely.

Elijah White, former Stanford law school and business grad,
successful corporate attorney, and the oldest of five siblings, now runs his
own PI business in Southern California. He remembers going to bed hungry. His
father was shot and killed by a cop.

Angie, a former Ph.D. candidate in biology and the
abused, runaway wife of a Silicon Valley tycoon, is about to hang out her shingle
as a vet for the homeless. She lived on the streets when she met Ryn. She
shares an affinity with Elijah and Beau for 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles. She
also understands classism from the perspective of a trophy wife to a toothless
bag lady.

These are a few of my regular characters in the series.
I’ve not killed any of them and don’t see that happening in the next book at
least. Instead, I look forward to exploring greed, lust, and power as the
primary reason for murder—and maybe for most of society’s woes.


***  AB Plum
lives, walks, and writes in the heart of Silicon Valley. No Little Lies, her third book in the Ryn Davis Mystery Series hits
Amazon on July 6. Preorder here.  
























Relatively Speaking

/in /by
by J.M. Phillippe
I have been thinking a lot about relative experience.
“Relatively speaking” is a phrase we toss around casually,
an improvised rescaling of any given comparison. Hidden in the phrase is an
acknowledgement that the scale of comparison has been significantly reduced to
include a limited range of possible experiences or perceptions of reality, and
that range is defined by a supposedly shared context—both speaker and audience
must acknowledge some general truths about the things being compared.  But it can also be a catch all, a brief
acknowledgement that the context is not the same from one person to the next,
that “the worst day ever!” in one life cannot be appropriately compared to the
“worst day ever!” in another.
In my relatively limited (there’s that word
again!) understanding of economics, I am able to grasp at least this concept:
an apple does not cost the same to everyone who buys it. While the price of the
apple may be fixed, the cost of that apple relative to the income of the
individual buying it is not. Things can get more complicated when you don’t
just compare income (we each make the same amount of money, so the apple should
cost the same to both of us) but expenses as well: if we each make the same
income, but your rent is higher than mine, that apple will be a greater
percentage of your food allowance than it will be of mine. In that way, the
apple could relatively cost you more. 
This sort of relative cost idea can be translated to
experience as well, so that any given experience can cost or benefit any
individual relative to the other experiences in their life — everything needs
context. A fender bender on a day where everything else is going well most
likely won’t be perceived as negatively as if it happened on a day when several
things seem to be going wrong. However, the context that a person operates in
is not daily, but cumulative: even if nothing else is going wrong today, things
have been going wrong all week, all month, all year, for the past decade. Any
new experience is measured against previous experiences in order to determine
its particular impact, positive or negative.
And yet, “nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Without this comparison, any given experience could theoretically stand on its
own. It wouldn’t be good or bad, relatively speaking, but simply good or bad,
inherently. Or, in what I imagine as Buddhist thinking, neither good nor bad,
but simply existing, ideally without impact, without contributing to some
greater context, acknowledged and let go. If we could escape our contexts,
maybe we could escape relative thinking. In theory, that is how to escape
suffering.
Except an apple doesn’t cost the same to everyone.
“Expensive” is a relative concept. So is safe, and healthy, and successful, and
all the things we end up having to measure for ourselves, individually. I read
in Loneliness (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008) that people even have a biological
set point for their need for social connection, varying from one person to
another. Even our biology forces relativity on us.
So we seek out contexts similar to our own, or as close as
possible. We look for people with similar experiences, similar perspectives,
similar measurement scales. This is how I make sense of a world where otherwise nice-seeming people don’t seem to grasp the pain and suffering of others. Their experiences are so far removed from those different than them that they have no reference point of comparison. For example, a white person living in an all-white community may not have had any direct experience with seeing a friend or loved one deal with racism and have trouble believing either that it exists or that it is as systemic as it is. It’s the way that many men don’t seem to get sexism until it impacts their daughters. If we are all stuck comparing everyone else’s experiences to our own, relatively speaking, we all start to think that apples cost the same to everyone, and that other people are just complaining for no reason — or are incapable of understanding the true value of an apple. It takes concerted effort to try to see the world through someone else’s lens, and to understand how their cumulative experiences shape any given moment in their lives, to understand, for example, the anger that seems to come out of nowhere but is for that person the result of the straw that broke the camels back. 

Our internal scales can be powerful forces. But we can change those scales, and alter what we
measure all of our experiences against; change the thinking, change the
comparison, build compassion. In the meantime, if we resize our experiences, as
Munroe said, to fit the scales in our head, it might be worth noting that other people have their own scales, too. And that we can’t erase someone else’s experiences just because we have no reference point to compare them to. We’re not all buying the same apples with the same money, and we aren’t all carrying the same straws on our backs. For those of us with privilege, the apples are always going to cost a little less, and we’re going to start off with less straws to carry. For those without relative privilege, apples will always cost more, and their camels have been pre-loaded with burdens. 
It really is all relative. And context is everything. 
***
J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She works as a family therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.