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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhite panic, White Denial: The Racial Prehistory of the McKinney Pool Party
http://www.alternet.org/culture/white-panic-white-denial-racial-prehistory-mckinney-pool-party-white-america-cant-let-goWe shouldnt lose sight of the fact that the confrontation between those people was a real event in a real place, which unmistakably evoked Americas history of racial violence and civil disobedience. I also saw it, almost literally, as a collision between the past and the future. Whether or not that young lady behaved with perfect decorum on the afternoon in question, she is unmistakably an American of the future not a future in which cultural or racial identities dont matter (we wont see that in any living persons lifetime), but a future of increased fluidity and intersection and overlap. Her crime, so to speak, lay in being a black girl who went to a pool party in a largely white suburban neighborhood and acted as if she belonged there, without assuming she was to be held to some special standard of good behavior. That police officer, on the other hand, seemed to have absorbed a contact high from the long and brutal history of police violence against people of color. Fortunately for all of us, his obvious zeal for the role was rendered ludicrous rather than tragic by its context.
Yet it is African-Americans who are constantly accused of fixating on ancient history, a charge presented in various ways, many of them subtler than the white-centric paranoia delivered by Fox. Stated most directly and without hyperbole, this boils down to the idea that black people need to get over all that stuff that happened in the history books or in black-and-white video clips, like slavery and lynching and segregated lunch counters and generations of systematic economic and residential discrimination. It isnt helpful; its only holding them back. Anyway, white people living today arent responsible for any of it and America simply isnt racist anymore: Check out Obama and Jay-Z and LeBron. If anybodys a racist, its all the black people calling everybody else racist.
OK, I said I would avoid hyperbole and I lied. Not everyone who expresses this view follows the chain of association all the way through that last sentence, or the one before it. (Although the Im not a racist, but mode is distressingly common.) But the important ideological thread, even in the most polite and neutral formulation, is the desire to decouple distressing individual events from the even more distressing current of history. The deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Eric Garner and all the rest are disconnected cases of perceived threat and police authority and possible wrongdoing, each to be weighed on its own merits. They do not belong to any larger historical pattern, and those who insist on perceiving such a pattern are dwelling in the past or playing the race card or nursing old grudges or otherwise denying and undermining the greatness of America.
Except of course for the confusing fact that many white observers do perceive a larger pattern linking the thorniest issues in the African-American community, which is the point where this ideological construction begins to reveal itself. Since it is urgently important to resist the obvious pattern the one that would be discerned immediately by any outside observer an alternative must be found. So the pattern we get instead of history is a murky and shapeless monstrosity spawned from the bad conscience of the social sciences: The culture of dependency or the collapse of the black family or, if were really reaching for the dog whistle, the thug subculture of baggy pants and Purple Drank and incomprehensible rap lyrics and, most damning of all, a disrespectful attitude towards authority. (Thank God young white folks have never expressed anything like that.)
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)homegirl
(1,433 posts)as I have not followed this news item. Was this a community event or a private pool party?
NOLALady
(4,003 posts)A child was manhandled for no reason. Other unarmed teens had a gun drawn on them. This behavior is unacceptable at a community event as well as at a private party.
homegirl
(1,433 posts)to know why the police were called.
dembotoz
(16,832 posts)Anyway bout 25-30 young white kids were gathered in a portion of the lot sorta hanging out.
As I left they had formed a caravan with perhaps some car pooling and were heading out.
No big deal, bless their hearts...
Had they been black there would have been a police presence
Boudica the Lyoness
(2,899 posts)if the kids were black?
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)All the comments from racists on YouTube were based on the the idea that "those people" weren't supposed to be there.
Point out that they LIVED THERE and that was twisted into anger that "welfare pays enough to live in a good area". Forget that it's the 21st century and this teen could have been raised by a cardiologist.
nc4bo
(17,651 posts)non-respectful and they should have immediately dropped to the ground at the officer's command. For that, they deserved to be handcuffed like criminals, physically and verbally assaulted. Those kids all deserved what they got.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)actions. Panic, denial, fear etc are on the rise in the white community and is related not only the way the white majority has treated the communities of poc but also to the fear that the white majority is coming to an end.
The police brutality we see is just one of their tools to keep poc in line even after white people are not longer the majority. Access to affordable education, housing and segregation are also still being used. And I do not see this ending any time soon. The white majority is not going to give up easily. Also it should be noted that not all white people fall into this panic, denial and fear category. I for one cannot wait for the majority of minorities. I am tired of the fighting.
BumRushDaShow
(129,440 posts)http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/archive/Swim-Club-Members-Nothing-to-Do-With-Race.html
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Pool-Boots-Kids-Who-Might-Change-the-Complexion.html
The notable quote that alerted to their bullshit was this -
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2009/07/black_children_kicked_out_of_p.html
Unfortunately to many whites, the very presence of blacks near them fouls their air, the ground they stand on, and the water they swim in.
gollygee
(22,336 posts)Segregation of swimming pools and beaches is a huge tradition in the US. It is apparently a part of segregation that is still hanging around.
BumRushDaShow
(129,440 posts)which has persisted, except for select communities dotted across the nation, for centuries. Basically, people "feel more comfortable" around "their own kind" (and this goes both ways). It's very cultural. From a sociological standpoint, a community evolves certain "cultural practices, behaviors, and norms" and when others don't confirm or come from outside of this mutually agreed-to environment, then the fireworks begin.
The problem is all the garbage that is created to justify "why" someone "not like you" is not acceptable being with or near "you". And the concocted reasons devolve into de-humanizing whole groups of people despite the fact that we are all "human".