WP's Colbert King: #LivingWhileBlack
This is a great piece ending with a terrific suggestion.
And you don’t need to have your own story to tell to do this. You can simply go to #LivingWhileBlack and read the stories and retweet them to your networks. This is a simple but very effective thing you can do as an ally in the fight for racial fairness and justice.
Roseanne Barr is not the problem. She’s just a symptom.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/roseanne-barr-is-not-the-problem-shes-just-a-symtptom/2018/06/01/2fcbc8d8-64f6-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html?utm_term=.375f922ab8ec
Most African Americans will never find themselves on the receiving end of Barr-like racist tweets. (Though some of my incoming emails might curl your toes.) The likelihood of blacks encountering a mob of white men in hoods is rather slim. So, too, the experience of having molotov cocktails enter the house through the kitchen window. Most black lives will not be ended by a police bullet.
But the sting of racism is a constant presence in times and places where black people live, move, and have their being. The little, sharp, quick pains can be felt at anytime and anywhere: in the workplace, while shopping, in restaurants, even churches. They are delivered through the insidious weapon of ignoring a black colleague on the job, a black shopper at the counter, or the black family in a white neighborhood.
The wounding message: What you have to offer on the job is barely tolerable or worthless; you are unnoticed standing there waiting to be served; the white shopper, white colleague, white neighbor is more important.
The sting is felt in the social reception where no one speaks to you. It is displayed in the body language and attitude of the white server who wishes you were someplace else. Racism is embodied in the stereotyping that holds black males out to be suspicious, dangerous and untrustworthy — and black women to be loose and jaded ... Most of these slights, insults and covert nonverbal, racial microaggressions ... don’t quite rise to the level of a formal complaint or a trip to the human resources office. But they are there, pervasive, like the air.
The hashtag #LivingWhileBlack speaks to the breadth and depth of embedded racism in the country. We can use it. Take to Twitter to let other folks of color know they are not alone. Use social media through personal accounts to unmask the magnitude of racism in the workplace, in social life and where we pray. Cite chapter and verse, and name names.
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