So many people really don’t want to acknowledge how commonplace this kind of thinking is in America, because it disrupts the heroic vision that’s been carefully cultivated, including in the educational setting. But trust me: the Black people you know, KNOW this is out there.
https://twitter.com/sifill_ldf/status/1495194259225468931
This was the rude awakening my mother got when she came here in the 1960s. My godmother has STORIES about what she and my mom saw and dealt with, even as “foreign” Blacks who could avoid SOME of the racist BS even in New York. But they were expected to know they were still n—ers.
My mother passed in 1983 in “modern” America. And though by then she was a citizen, she had no illusions about how a whole lot of white folks felt about our presence here. She was proud and determined and loved so much about this country but was very clear-eyed about America.
And if the reaction to Barack Obama becoming president didn’t make you see it? Including the vicious backlash that swept Trump in?? Then you just don’t want to see it.
That said, there are LOTS of people, across the racial board, who are fighting this with all they’ve got. That’s the battle: to make this multiracial democracy work; something that due to the extremely tribal nature of humanity is hard to do. If we do it, it will be miraculous.
I’m choosing to stay hopeful and prayerful because the alternative is unthinkable.
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