In the last months, a terrific film has been featured next door in RI. Katrina Browne, a descendant of the illustrious DeWolfe family of Bristol, RI - where the oldest Fourth of July parade in the country is hosted every year - has produced Traces of the Trade (http:// tracesofthetrade.org/about.html), a film that confronts and examines her family's legacy as the largest slave-traders in US history based right here in the Deep North. It has been developed as "a catalyst for dialogue and education through screenings in communities and classrooms." It's a serious tool for understanding racism and its toxic effects both historically and up to the present. Along with Browne and her relatives, we are taken on a literal and figurative journey from Bristol to Ghana and Cuba examining the hows and whys of the privileges the DeWolfe diaspora hold - privileges that necessarily have come at the expense of other human beings and their descendants who have inherited their own legacy of disenfranchisement and poverty.
Some of the most precious moments at the screening I attended occurred in the extensive discussion afterwards in which members of the audience come to new appreciations of how white privilege operates and how descendants of those enslaved Africans still suffer today. In fact, when one (white) woman asked honestly for concrete, simple measures any one of us can take to start undoing these legacies, the answer from a woman who identified as black and native american was to go to communities of color and their events, to put oneself in circumstances where one is the minority and make a good faith effort to reach out to others. Blacks have to do it every day of their lives. The least the more privileged among us can do is to walk a short mile in their shoes.
We're all so atomized - those of us who are willing and able try to approach the problem analytically should continue to do so. But there's no substitute for just going out, talking to one another and building community.
Maryellen
On Feb 20, 2008, at 3:55 PM, Julio Huato wrote:
> Wojtek wrote:
>
>> Although I got off the boat some 27 years
>> ago, I honestly do not see those structural racist
>> norms that you mention - just I do not see god, jesus,
>> angels and so on. All I see is people making choices
>> and expressing opinions - and not that many of those
>> who I've met can be considered racist in any
>> meaningful way.
>
> For the sake of an argument, think of it this way:
>
> You are a yet-to-be-born, but discerning, enlightened, self-interested
> individual. God lays it out for you: You are going to be born today
> somewhere in the U.S. and you have a 13% chance of being born Black.
> God is not telling you location, parents' socio-economic status,
> educational level, etc. You can observe life as is in the U.S. now,
> so you now exactly what being Black entails. What you don't know is
> your race and how you'll do in the future as an individual.
>
> Then God asks you to state an amount of social power that you'd want
> to have as an honest compensation for the possible disadvantage of
> being born Black vis-a-vis being the median American (i.e. white)
> today. God is an egalitarian and wants to even things out. If
> there's no disadvantage to being born Black, then you can pick zero.
> If you see an advantage to being born Black, you can choose a negative
> number (that would be an amount of social power that would be
> subtracted from your lot to start with). If you prefer, you can think
> of social power as "opportunities" or "political power" or "capital"
> or "wealth" or "money." Up to you. Also, in a twist, God also asks
> you to guess an average of the figures that you think other 300
> million yet-to-be-born Americans would honestly pick in response to
> same question above.
>
> A rough measure of the current social cost of structural racism
> against Blacks in the U.S. would be that average figure times 39
> million.
>
> Now, are you telling us that, in answer to the first question, given
> that you don't see any inherent, structural, inherited social
> disadvantage to being Black (or perhaps even see an advantage), you'd
> choose zero (or a negative number)? How close would your answer to
> the second question be compared to the previous figure? Why?
>
> Later Wojtek wrote:
>
>> To be more specific, based on my 27 years of
>> observations of this country I came to the conclusion
>> that the poor living conditions of many (but not all)
>> Blacks in this country are a matter of personal
>> choices or lack of them rather than institutional
>> rules that keep that population from achieving better
>> living conditions. By individual choices I understand
>> not only the life styles that people espouse, but also
>> the choices that do not make e.g. choice not to get
>> education, as well as choices of the parents regarding
>> their children.
>
> The choices that your parents already made are not part of the
> structure that constrains or enables your own individual choices? The
> choices that your peers currently make don't amount to objective
> forces outside of you limiting or enabling your individual choices?
> I'd think so.
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