a #tbt story...or roommate revenge...

I went to a variety of academic institutions: my desire to debate and my general thriftiness meant that i ended up in some places that I really enjoyed for one reason or another. California State University-Chico was one of those places. I spent a year there, and it was one of the more liberating experiences I've ever had, and many, many of the event on that campus play a critical role in the person I am today.

David was not one of those experiences. This dude was someone I could have lived without. 

This was a really weird dude. When I walked into my dorm room, he was already there- and was just sitting at a table- just staring at the door. When I saw him, it became really apparent to me he did not feel comfortable with me. This is not new to me. But because this isn't new, I'm pretty good about making connections with people. We talked for a few minutes and then i decided that, after a long day of travel, I should shower up, and explore my new environment. I ask David if he's going anywhere, and if he could either leave the door unlocked while I'm in the shower OR to just not leave for a couple of minutes. I jump in the shower and as I get back to the door, it's locked. I beat on the door (thinking this is maybe a joke) and no answer- but i hear a snicker from the end of the hall. It's David. That motherfucker did this on purpose!!

So I take off down the hallway, in a full sprint and in only a towel to cover up the unmentionables. But it's a towel, with open edges at the sides, so it's not doing a bang-up job at cover up. That being said, it did serve it's only purpose: to be on my body long enough to grab my roommate by the back of his shirt and litetrally drag him up a flight of steps to unlock the door, explaining to him (in the way you explain something to someone you're literally dragging around) that, if he ever tried anything like this again, that I would "kill him in his sleep." When we got in the room, he decided he wanted to fight- so he takes a swing- the ass-beating i gave this kid while still in a towel- i only wish there was video of that ordeal- i'm sure it would still be good for some laughs. The conflict ends in front of a disciplinary board, who in the end, thinks his provocation in both the initial issue as well as the fight would indicate that i was not in the wrong. It did teach him to leave me alone-but he wasn't as wise to the guys in the hall...

...so one day, after he pulls pranks or just does total d-bag moves to a ton of kids on the hall- the kids come to me with a favor: they want me to hang out with everyone drinking and gallivanting around, and they want me to make sure that Dave gets really really drunk- this would not be complicated- independently of Dave's small stature (5'2", maybe 120 pounds soaking wet), he was a belligerent drunk that sometimes can't even have those first couple of drinks before he becomes an asshole. So I'm just supposed to draw him here- and then what's gonna happen? I really wanted to know what to expect- what i was agreeing to. But over and over, as if it was the official party line: you're better off not knowing. Let me tell you, if you ever want to get a cryptic feeling from a response- let someone tell you "you're better off not knowing". So then, the drinking starts: we decide to play a game called century club: where the players square off against time- trying to consume one shot of beer per minute for 100 minutes. This mandates that everyone does their drinking as well as requisite shit-talking. There are 6 of us that start, and after about 45 minutes, Dave gets up and tries to excuse himself to go to the restroom. He immediately wakes up, walks to what he thinks is a urinal, pulls down his pants and proceeds to piss in HIS open suitcase, then returns to the table to continue. Clearly, this is not his real cup of tea- this heavy drinking thing. Independently of any drinking going on, there was also some of the that Wacky Weed present, and since I was in college, I enjoyed some of that as well. Dave was a military brat, so this "weird smelling stuff" was something he was unfamiliar with- but since everyone else was partying, he had to be too. So we decided to give him a "muscle relaxer and world spinner" which anyone who has ever drank a ton and then tried to your evening blunted off right, you know that it's a rough experience (once in my spins, i spun head over heels, and not the typical way one spends). I repeat- don't drink (until you're 21- i was when this took place) and don't smoke pot (unless you live  in CO or WA, or you have a medical card, or you have legitimate reason for having a card, etc) and really, don't do them in mass because i want to. But anyways, Dave is HAMMERED. He's falling down drunk, and that's when the dudes on the floor, who hated being around this dude, were the first (and- only) person on camp that would be willing to help this poor gentlemen back to his (read: our) room.  I thought it was odd, but not even the strangest thing that had happened that day on the hall...so i rolled with it- went to smoke some Ganja and go the fuck to sleep. 

I get back to my room and my roommate is passed the hell out in the middle of the floor- mouth wide open. That's odd, they didn't even help get him in his bed, which isn't but maybe 3-5 feet from where it all started. I don't worry about it, and go to sleep...

...after waking up and cleaning myself up, i decide to walk over to breakfast. on the walk over, i see a picture of my roommate: on a wall full of campus posters. He's laying on the floor of our room in the picture, and his mouth is wide. open. And then i notice there are other things on the picture- what are those things around his mouth? Those look like...

Those look like dicks. Those look like 9 dicks (yes, you read that right- nine), all surrounding this guys face, pointing towards his open, some might even say pouting, mouth. The contrast in colors in man-meat made it look like a Benneton Gone Porn advertisement.  

And these posters were EVERYWHERE on this campus- they were in the student center, on bus stops, in classrooms, all over the dorm bulletin boards...i got called in, but because my dick obviously wasn't in the picture (no blacks in it at all), they wanted to blame me but couldn't. I wasn't part of that plan at all. Which then helped me understand the "you're better off not knowing" was for my benefit. 

But it did force him to move out, so I can't really be hating....although taking out behind the building and beating him like we were Django Unchained would have been better...

But that's just me.

And I'm kind of a dick.

Brown v. Board was never going to desegregate schools...and they knew it

I sit here, 60 years after the passage of Brown v. Board of Education, which made it actually illegal to have separate schools for blacks and whites in America. And while I think the implications of Brown v. Board are widespread and prevalent throughout of society, I do feel that, with regard to education, it was doomed to fail from the beginning.

And it's all tied to White Flight.

Segregation Academies. When Brown was made into law, it was clear that it would apply to public schools only. This meant that if you were white, the only way you could maintain a world where your children didn't have to share a classroom with a black child was to pull them out of public school and send them to private schools. But here was the problem: rich white people already sent their kids to private schools, and there wasn't enough space in the good, high caliber private schools to fill the void. But the awesome thing about capitalism: when there is a insatiable demand for something, there will be, without question, an unwavering supply of that item provided. Once it was obvious there was a demand for new private schools, those schools started popping up all over the country- more so in the deep south than in other parts of the country. Gerald Rosenberg in his book, The Hallow Hope, that between 1961 and 1970 that there was a 242% increase in non-sectarian private schools in the southeast- a numerical implication always makes things easier to conceptualize. This is not to say these schools didn't exist in other locations, but they thrived in the south, where the hostility to a claim that blacks and whites are equal will still find some hostile to this idea.

What is the basis of a segregation academy? It is tied to the premise that blacks, as inferiors, can only bring down the achievement of the surrounding whites. It presumes that in order to have excellence, you didn't just need to have whiteness present, but you also need the absence of blackness was also necessary. And although I am describing the time of Brown, I could just as easily be describing what times we're in right now. In the south, schools are more representative than they were in the days immediately following Brown, but in most of the country, in big cities collectively, in the Northeast, schools are more segregated now than they were in 1954. This isn't because there are physical barriers to keep kids from going to school (nobody standing at school doors with a gun) but there are many structural barriers to prevent it from happening (cost of neighborhoods, schools being determined by your physical address) independently of a set of codified laws preventing those interactions. And when it's all said and done, the parents pulled their kids out of public school, where based on how many people went to public school, was more than an adequate means of an education, to put them in private schools, which in some cases were vastly inferior to the public schools they are replacing. White Flight: from the public institutions to the private ones...

The Suburbs or How we kept the Blacks out: After Brown passed and it became illegal to discriminate based on race, it became necessary to discriminate by class, which based on our history, means it has a tendency to follow racial lines. The 400 years of providing slave labor, the 100 years of second class citizenry don't offset the 60 years of "equality" I'm sorry to say. When blacks could go to school where they wanted to to and live where they wanted to live, it seemed that whites were looking for a way to get out. Enter Levitttowns. What these pre-fabricated, cookie cutter communities lacked in originality they made up for in other areas. When the originators of the town started, they were infused by a ton of money in no-interest loans for GI's retuning from the war, a ton of money infused into interstate highways, which allowed people easy freeway access from their work to their jobs, and last but not least, a culture and maybe even an actual policy, of not letting blacks into their neighborhoods. So it seems the federal government was subsidizing, at the transportation end as well as the housing end, the flight of whites to the suburbs. Because the way cities are structured, when a ton of people leave the city, that means the city no longer gets any taxes from them- their property taxes are at use in the city they live in, and they end up taking more from the city than they give. Also, because it's Standard Operating Procedure to give tax breaks to businesses so they can locate in a city, it means that the businesses that are there aren't really contributing, the people who used to live there are gone, and it leaves only those who can't afford to leave: the poorest of the poor, who is a terrible group to rely on to for a tax base. The fact that they live in the areas indicates a lack of mobility we need to recognize. As Chris Rock, nobody wants to live in The Ghetto. This means the people who need the services most are the most hurt. This is generally how things work themselves out- the poor and marginalized are the hurt the most...Let's start with those no-interest loans...there were a ton of returning GI's coming back from the war and getting their lives started- and they were going to need a place to stay, so they started building new houses on the outskirts of cities, where the houses would all look and be built similar. As an incentive, the government offered returning soldiers no-interest loans to motivate people to make the move. There were a lot of black GI's who also just got back from the war and wanting to start their lives. They also were beginning to notice the inconsistency between what they were doing in the war (fighting against a kind of insidious prejudice and hate that spurred the killing of 6 million Jews) and coming home and not being able to eat at a table with whites or use the same restrooms. Blacks coming back from the war also wanted a piece of the American Pie, and to live in these no-interest loan homes. There was a problem- the banks and companies wouldn't sell to them. They wanted to keep their neighborhoods white. Or at least not black, because as they "knew" anything black automatically taints it.

The remnants of those actions are still present today. My wife and I were looking for a place to live last summer, and while my wife was in Boston, I was given the task of trying to find a place to live. So I go through the newspaper like my life depends on it (i guess it does, I'm not hard enough to make it on the streets anymore) and find a variety of houses. This was the process: I call about the house, the owner and I talk, we have a good rapport, I tell him about myself and my wife, that we're teachers, long term employed and that we have cats. They hear all of this and want to meet me. More than once I'm told to bring my checkbook, because if I like it, they're going to rent it to us. I get excited (well, I did the first couple of times), get in my car and drive over to the location. I'm always the first one there, as i have a fear that someone who isn't me will beat me there and they'll rent to them and not me. So I sit in my car and wait for the owner to arrive, which he (I'm not using gender neutral because in every instance I'm describing it was a guy) always does. I get out of my car and approach the owner. The owner, without fail, does one of these things: 1) looks at me and wonders what I'm doing there, 2) fails to recognize me as the person they spoke to on the phone, or 3) just has the color leave their face as they figure out I'm the person they talked to on the phone (all three say something about their personality that would give me pause renting from them). But as they figure out that the person in front of them (the black man) is the same person they told to bring a checkbook because they saw themselves renting to me, they try to figure out ways out of the situation. It not only clear they don't want to rent to me, it's also clear they know what they're about to do is messed up, but it NEVER stops them from doing it. This is the kind of subtle racism that Eric Holder and Michelle Obama have been talking about in their speeches in the last week, and the subtle, insidious racism I've been talking about for years.  Outside of specific portions of the county, you can be racist but it's can't be your public mantra. You can't say you don't like niggers, nobody will allow you to say that. But you can say I'd not be OK with my daughter/sister/mother letting some black dude marry her. And you can say it's because "she can do better" and nobody blinks an eye- even though "do better" is code for "find white"and everyone knows it but nobody is brave enough to say it.

Interstate Highways or On the road again: for most of our existence, where you lived and where you worked were connected: you worked in your neighborhood and you lived near where you worked. This meant if you work in the city, you live in the city, and if you work on a farm, you'd live in the country. In 1954 when Brown passes, if you live in the city and you work in the city, you're kind of trapped there. And if you don't want have your kids go to school with black kids, you have to send them to private schools. But with the growth of the suburbs, a white enclave outside of the city, there were options, but the means of getting to work was still problematic, as there weren't high quality roads to get people to and from work. The Federal Highway Act of 1956 established there would be interstate highways to connect all major cities (really, 1956 was when we figured out that would be smart?) but it also set up a variety of roads to facilitate access to the city: spur routes to take you from the outside of the city to the center, as well as loop routes, which went around the outside of the cities, which ironically is where the suburbs were- so now there was a set of roads that facilitated a worker getting their grind on in  the city and traveling to the suburbs, their white (because they didn't allow blacks) oasis, free from the problems caused by all those people we left in the city. In addition to just providing an easy route to and from the city, it also allowed the city planners to set up physical barriers with these interstates, which further divide these cities- in cities like Chicago, Interstate 94 is almost literally a color line, with rich whites on one side, and poor blacks on the other- a new version of  "wrong side of the tracks" except you put the tracks in after the neighborhoods were set up specifically to divide those areas.

These things in concert have led to a world where white people can just leave the areas where they would have to interact with blacks in any meaningful way- and by that i mean they could keep their kids away from blacks. The things I'm discussing above happened in almost immediate proximity to the passage of Brown, and I think it's folly to believe they're not related.

Inevitably, what did you think they meant in Brown when they said "With all deliberate speed?"

Two Stories That Give The Finger To Post Racial America

Over the course of the last 48 hours, I've been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster: can't really pinpoint what it is that's causing me stress and strain: all things considered things are going well in life. I have a loving wife that probably cares more about me than I do myself. I have a job that I know I'm doing well as, as well as doing good at. I'm in relatively decent health, and I think most people in my boat would be looking for ground to kiss. 

But that's just not how I roll. 

The world we live in has a lot of things going on that, when I read about these things, it blows the mind, kills the spirit, and frankly, makes me hate people more than I currently do, which is a arduous task. But on Friday, as I'm surfing the web, i come to an article titled:

Town's Racial Tensions Laid Bare After White Baseball Player Leaves Game To Join Fight Against Black Man. 

I can't make this stuff up. Summary of the story: Baseball Player in Spiro, OK, a Thriving Metropolis along the Arkansas-Oklahoma border, was playing in a game when he realized his family was in the process of beating the shit out of a black man, who had been dating the stepsister of the player for four years. Apparently, they believed the warrant for his arrest (for an outstanding speeding ticket) was the result of some argument. After the fight was over, the player was allowed to continue playing the game. There are a variety of things that are mind-numbing in this situation: 

1) There was one arrest: The Black man. Devon Perry, who was attacked by the baseball player and by his family, was arrested at the end of the confrontation- he was accused of punching and kicking wildly (not an uncommon response when you're getting jumped). Now if you arrest him and the entire family, i get it. But for him to be the only person arrested? As the NFL Prime Time crew might say: Come on, man!! At least make it look like it might not be racially motivated, 

2) The baseball player was given a degree of latitude unheard of in sports. Now in general, it is frowned upon when players leave the field of play and get into physical altercations with members of the audience. The Indiana Pacers in general and Ron Artest specifically learned this lesson the hard way.  



The fact that a coach let a player leave the field, attack a black man and return to the field of play speaks volumes about a) the coaches character, or what I'd like to call, none, b) the racial tension in the town must be off the charts for this to not be an issue for anyone playing (for example, if I'm in the game, I'm probably pretty pissed off about having to wait for you to fight some dude so I can play). 

3) The school board and the administration of the school must also be of weak will to not put up more of a fight. This is one of those things that, even if you thought "that nigger had it coming" as an administrator, would probably not want the negative press behind racial tensions not only swept under the rug by their school, but probably made worse by their inaction. The Black students at the school protested, with many of them sitting out of school as a protest to the inaction perpetuated by Spiro High School by not only failing to punish the student, but by allowing him to continue playing in the playoffs. 

This story had me in a bit of a tail spin. Don't get it twisted, I don't harbor any thoughts or beliefs we live in a post-racial world. For example: I think I'm really good at my job, but I feel like white assistants of "significant" programs are more highly evaluated than I am- when if you just looked at my record vs. theirs in only the time they've been "ballers" I still crush them- and this pretends that all the time when they were in short pants that I wasn't producing team after team after team. I recognize that Mark Jackson and Lionel Hollins can't get NBA jobs after producing at the NBA level and people were pushing each other out the way to see who could get Steve Kerr fastest, who has ZERO experience as a coach and, other than a connection to Phil Jackson, no reason to believe he'd be better than an experienced coach. I get it. It kills my spirit, but I get it....

...I know it's not post racial- I know racism is everywhere- and that the way society projects itself on its most marginalized citizens has deleterious effects on them...that it might lead to some long term trauma. Turns out that it does: that 30% of all kids that live in the inner city have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD- and that it has devastating effects on kids ability to learn. One of the things about PTSD is, usually, the stressor that causes the PTSD is a temporary one: if you're in Afghanistan and you see your unit blitz attacked, you won't have to worry about that when you're back stateside. If the stressor was the devastation after a major hurricane, that will eventually go away. The problem with PTSD for these kids is that the stressor is their home environment, which means as long as their home is their home, the stressors never leave. This makes it a unique form of PTSD, one more dangerous than your father's PTSD. And since this PTSD is more insidious than the type soldiers coming back from war face, the kind that rattles soldiers to their core and is a major cause for a lot of the homelessness among returning veterans, you'd think you'd give it the kind of name that would generate the necessary mobilization to make things happen. And, with all the might of the Harvard scientists that did the research could muster, they come up with: 

Hood Disease 

Now I guess I could just be happy they're making an attempt to point out a problem. And maybe I would be, if I believed, at all, that their goal was to resolve the problem. It's obvious this has not been a concern. Why do I think that? Let's first start with the name. Hood Disease. This indicates that only people in the inner-city will get it. This creates a means for all those for whom it would be near impossible to get to brush it off and not concern themselves with it- and as we all know the only way to get a problem resolved is to get the average person behind it. And the average person knows that if they're not from the hood, don't live or know people from "the hood" then they never have to worry about it. I think it would fall in the category of Sickle Cell Anemia- a blood disorder that causes the body to create sickle shaped red blood cells which reproduce at different rates, cause clotting and generally lower life expectancy by 15+ years. If you've never heard of it, it's probably because you're not black- as it's a disease that, in America, effects Blacks almost exclusively. I'm not saying that whites say "fuck niggers and their sickle cells"- I think it's more like it's not an active action, but much more like passive inaction- i'm not NOT looking for a cure to Sickle Cell, but this also means they're not LOOKING for it, either. And really, most problems don't get resolved if you're not trying. 

I guess the most frustrating thing to me is that this would have been incredibly easy to make a neutral interpretation of. PTSD is a clinical term, one you might find in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). And we can all recognize that the term "Hood" is not a neutral term- it's not the abbreviation of neighborhood that it used to be. It draws a very specific connotation, one that is by definition not neutral. It seems we should make an effort to not conflate our neutral medical terms and our racially charged identification terms. The negativity of those terms will, at best, neutralize attempts to mobilize action- at worst, it gives people that might have helped (because they understand how messed up PTSD is- and the idea of not being able to remove the stressor might hit home in the same way the gay member of their family allowed them to change their views on gay marriage) a reason to not help (they're in the hood- if they want help they need to follow Horatio Alger and pull themselves up by their bootstraps- something they'd be enraged if you told a Vietnam Vet to do that). Our connection points are the avenues where we can see difference and hold it up to the light and see that those points are not that different than ours. And it's with those actions that we can move beyond where we are. So one day, calling something Hood Disease would piss off someone other than me. 

Or that one day everyone in a town like Spiro might think, when they hear a baseball player leaves the field to go beat up a black man, does so and re-joins the game, they might think what i did:



That's fucked up.

A Letter to my Seniors who won't be able to read this for 3 weeks...

Dear Seniors,

I just made you write a letter to incoming freshman about what to expect at Saint Francis and how to get the most out of that experience. It only seems fair to offer some of the same sage advice to you as you begin your journey from high school into "the real world." And what does the real world entail? The same things the "fake"world does, except you can be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But seriously, what things do you need to know to fully succeed in college and beyond? Well, here's a list of things that may help- at least I wish someone had told me these things (correction: i wish i had listened when I was informed of this stuff)...

1) Everything in moderation. Why do I start here? Because unless you go to college and live at home, one of the first choices you're going to have is whether or not to party that first night. And unlike the new high school parties, these will have kegs. And Jungle Juice. And Marijuana. And lots and lots and lots of peer pressure. Whether or not you choose to partake in these is clearly your choice- my only recommendation is to do whatever you do in moderation. Almost all of your friends that start at a college away and find themselves returning to a college closer to home usually have taken moderation out behind the building and beat it like Django Unchained. But moderation is an issue with academics as well- sometimes students immerse themselves in their academics- so much so you never meet students and expand your horizons.

2) Most of what you learn, despite the money you spend, will be learned outside the classroom. This is not to say that you will not learn A TON of important things in your classes. Insofar as an academic endeavor, there won't be very many things capable of exceeding a college education. For that, college is the goods. But lets not kid ourselves: ask all of your "grown up" friends about how much they use any specific thing they learned in a specific class on the job. I'm a teacher and I still find most of what i use on the job wasn't obtained in a classroom- i use my ability to communicate to different kinds of individuals from different backgrounds that i learned by living in the dorms, i use the organizational and research skills i learned in speech and debate, but even when I'm teaching English 1 I find myself telling them more about the best way to prepare for a test than teaching them grammar, and my test preparation skills weren't taught to me in a class: they were taught to me by a freshman from Lowell High School who lived on my floor (and is now a dentist in San Francisco).

What does this mean in real-time? It means that sometimes, the true learning will happen when you don't go to class and do something with the people around you. These people will end up being some of your best friends and confidantes. I thought I had a ton of close friends in high school- or so I thought. Of my high school friends, I think I still have one or two- but for the most part- the ties that bound us together are no longer as strong, or even relevant, as they once were. This isn't to say you'll not keep any of your high school friends, but it is to say that the people you go to college with will be particularly close to you- it's essentially your surrogate family. One of the down sides to being human is that need for connection to something bigger- the people around you serve that function. Sit around and shoot the shit with kids in the lounge. Join into a heated conversation about politics. Go out and play frisbee golf with those hippy kids. Play hoop with the psuedo ballers from downstairs. Study with the girl who digs anime and that dude down the hall with the great head of lettuce. All these experiences are as integral to your college experience as that Organic Chemistry or History of Sexuality class (not as cool as you think).

3) Don't Procrastinate. I know. I know. I know. I'm not the first person to suggest this to you. You've been told your whole life to not sleep on your work and to stay on top of things. But here's the thing about college you don't really know: the amount of work they give you is reasonable to do, but it's actually probably too much to do all at the last minute. But because college classes are way less focused on jumping through the hoop kind of BS that fill a high school grade book, and instead only focuses on a few major assignments- this means when you wait too long, cram last minute and don't get it done, it hits your grade so much harder than when you were in high school. A bad couple of days in the testing chamber could leave you with a sub 2.0 grade point average. The amount of work you're given for a class can feasibly be done in between classes and it still allows you time to go out and have your fun (kind of ties to the everything in moderation). This will happen to everyone at some point in time, the difference between people who get to stay in college and people who have to come home is how often your procrastination gets the better of you.

4) Be yourself. Everyone wants to take their initial college experience and use it as an opportunity to re-make themselves- to be the better, smarter, cooler version of their high school selves. People do it all the time and they do it in a variety of ways: they decide after  4 years of not doing any partying in high school that they want to be the party girl and goes out drinking every night. The boy that was kind of a dork in high school and since nobody knows him essentially becomes a cartoon version of themselves, acting in ways the real them would be ashamed of. The shy peaceful kid gets in with a crowd of kids that eggs and toilet papers houses and cars. All these kids are doing what they think is expected of kids who everyone wants to hang out with. But eventually the real you comes out, and all those fake ass busters you were hanging out with will figure you're not one of them, but someone of substance, you'll end up where you are right now: confused and not sure who your friends are. If you use the same standard you've always used, then you'll come up with a worthy set of friends. And let me make this point: not everyone you meet will be your friend- and that's good because most people kind of suck. In my world, a friend is someone that has stood up to the test and passed. If your friendship hasn't been tested, then you ain't friends yet. And don't assume all the people you want to pass the test will- that's the thing about tests- some motherfuckers will just fail it- and that's not on you- unless you accept their failure and allow it to happen again.

The most important thing to remember is to have fun. If you don't have fun in college, it's probably not gonna happen- the last place where responsibility has a pause button...

DD

the hate is strong in this one....

Over the last couple of weeks, a conversation that is at the center of my existence has been at the forefront of discussions in this country. The conversations of Cliven Bundy and of Donald Sterling have made the discussion of race something it has been necessary to have. Important to have.

Safe to have. 

And I think this is where the problem lies. We only have conversations of race when they're safe to have, they tend to be short in length and memory, and rarely, if ever, hit at the core of issues. And, because we only have the conversations when it's safe to have them, we tend to miss the forest for all those damn trees in the way. 

It's OK to call a racist a racist. That seems obvious. But it is actually only true in some instances. For example, it's fine to call out a racist if they've done something so egregious that everyone will have no problem standing up and saying that's wrong. Nobody has a problem calling Donald Sterling out as a racist when he says he'd doesn't want his side piece bringing black people to games (note: V. Stiviano is part black). In 2014, it's unbelievable that someone could hold those views: says someone who doesn't live the life of a black person. The things that Donald Sterling said on that tape and everyone was so offended to hear, those claims he made are being personified in your everyday lives: the lives you lead, as well as most major indicators you might want to look at. It's safe to call him a racist. 

Just last week, in Boston, the beloved Boston Bruins lost Game One of their 2nd round playoff series to the Montreal Canadian (preface: not a huge hockey fan, but for different reasons than your racism is steering you to- NHL crushed my loyalties). In the 2nd overtime period, defenseman PK Subban breaks through and scores the winning goal, to beat the Bruins 4-3. This was Subban's second goal of the game. Now I'm a fan of a variety of teams, and when my team loses, especially a close, hard fought game, I can be quite frustrated. I could see myself yelling, and maybe even making a comment or two, but not this. Boston fans tweeted the word #nigger so much it was trending in Boston. The Boston Bruins came out and said that the people that did that have no affiliation to the Boston Bruins team or the organization. Really?!?!? So a bunch of people NOT tied to the game, not watching the game, just HEARD that a black man scored the game winning goal and decided to, absent the game itself, put out a campaign of hatred? Come on, Cam Neely. You have some racist ass fans. Own up to it. But everyone wants to treat this instance as an Isolated Incident- one that isn't reflective of how people in Boston feel about blacks. Having been a guy that spent almost a month in Boston for a few summers can tell you that the racism is strong in that town. I remember listening to someone bad mouth blacks in front of me, and when called out about it he reminded me that "i'm different" (read: an acceptable black man- to him) and when i asked about David Ortiz or Kevin Garnett, i felt like i was in the movie Do The Right Thing when he told me that they're "different" too- different meaning he can't use his general excuse of race hate, so he just carves out exceptions, not recognizing that if you carve out enough "exceptions" you need to re-evaluate the "rule". Nobody wants to say "Boston Fans are racist" especially Cam Neely, so instead of admitting what is obvious (you had some racist fans say some racist shit) he says "it's not indicative of the Bruins organization, which is just not true.

The fact that the PK Subban issue, the Donald Sterling issue and the Affirmative Action in the Supreme Court issue all came up the same week, and they somehow lead to three entirely different narratives in this country. Subban's narrative averts light from the fans and an attempt for team to distance themselves from those claims (even as those claims are interwoven into the team narrative), Sterling's narrative shines light on the actions of a particular racist (as opposed to shining away from a group) and the attempt of the team (and the league) to distance themselves from discussion, and the SCOTUS discussion of affirmative action falls the way that almost all important conversations about race will fall: onto deaf ears.

The NBA is all up in arms about Sterling, but for a league that's 80% african american, they have only 30% of the coaches are african american, and only 20% of the general managers. If you're at home thinking this sounds messed up, go to work tomorrow and count up the african americans where you work, then divide that number from the overall number. the number at my employer: 4/160 so i can't really front- but i've been beating the drum about it loudly since i was hired, and there are twice as many blacks here as when i started. I've worked for a Fortune 500 company as a scientist, and my most vivid memory was knowing that were no other blacks who worked IN THE BUILDING I worked in, and thinking how i always wondered where everyone else was (dr. neil degrasse tyson deals with this here) and I literally felt like i was carrying the burden for my people in every thing that i did (i found out day 3 i was the first black they'd ever hired to work in the lab). I've been the only black in most of the jobs I've done, and in all of the jobs there have been so few blacks it was hard not to assume mal-intent.

And even as these issues are at the forefront of discussions, lets not kid ourselves and believe these won't continue. It seems like not that long ago i was watching a receiver talk about how he would "fight every nigger" at a Kenny Chesney concert (aside: how many "niggers" did he anticipate would be there? did he see Cowboy Troy? Darius Rucker? I'm sure all 5 "niggers" there were worried) and the league was all up in arms, talking about how there was no place in the league for that kind of thinking. I wonder what happened to him? Oh, yeah, the Eagles re-signed him and he'll be a starting wide receiver next year. Meanwhile, Deshan Jackson gets cut from the Eagles on the accusation he might have gang ties. At the same time, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts was caught in his car, under the influence of alcohol and drugs and had $29,000 in cash in the car, and as of today, has received no penalty from the league. So we have 3 "crimes"- one is using the word "nigger" on tape, one was being impaired while driving and having drugs and money in the car, and the final was "alleged" gang ties. And the only one to really pay any penalty was the black with the "alleged" gang ties. Because it's easy to make that call. It's safe. The other two are too much like things that could "just happen" to someone, so we try to whitewash (no pun intended- no fuck that- pun totally intended) those issues away. 

At one time in my life, I taught at a private high school. it was an excellent academic institution, but one thing it seemed to lack in my eyes was diversity. when i got hired, i decided to ask the number of African American students there were at the high school. The number i heard back from them was surprising, but nonetheless, for me, a really easy number to remember: the number of my favorite basketball player and possibly the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) Michael Jordan: the number 23. I was a bit distraught when I saw that number, but I was confident I would be able to help those numbers increase. I was at that school for over a half dozen years, and when I left that school, I was curious to see the number of African American students at the school. I was dismayed, but not surprised to see the number at the end was a Jordan number. But not the 45 he rocked when he went HAM in Madison Square Garden and dropped that Double Nickel, but the same 23 when i got hired. A full class of kids had entered and left, and somehow, the numbers did not increase. The school made many claims about increasing African American numbers had, in over a full graduating class set, not increased the numbers even one student. You can make whatever kind of claims you want to about wanting to increase numbers, but if you don't actually increase numbers, your words fall on my deaf ears. The reason why schools don't increase the numbers of African Americans in the schools is, somewhere down deep, in those places nobody likes to even admit exist, whites think blacks going to school with their children will hurt their kids academically, like academic failure is endemic to black kids- so much so that it makes white parents want to avoid the possibility of truth. They don't know if it's endemic (and i guess that makes it communicable?) but they'd rather not have their kids be "guinea pigs" in this "sociological experiment" (words in quotes are words USED TO ME to describe the blight black kids might put on white schools- note- he only listened to me talk and thus had no frame of reference i was black). We can make all the structural changes we want to make, but until we can makes some mindset changes, we'll condemn the Donald Sterlings for their actions, while pretending that our choices to send our kids to "good" (read: white) schools as opposed to "bad" (read: minority) schools, while pretending that the world is post-racial until your white daughter brings home a black man for the first time (and regardless of how "enlightened" a parent wants to pretend to be, when they first meet me, i, almost without exception, get "the look"- that perplexed "i can't believe you're black" look or "i can't believe my daughter brought YOU home" look- which hurts my heart every time i see it even though it's not a surprise)- when you have to go to "that" part of town to do something and you're "afraid to leave your car there"- when you see a black man when you're walking and clutch your purse "just to be safe". These are things people do all the time, and don't think of them as racial issues, they "justify" these actions under a variety of concepts, but the biggest one: safety. 

These kinds of mindsets personify themselves in many instances. I remember once was at meeting of african american teachers talking about race and one offered me an experiment to try: give each of the kids in your class a notecard and have them write six words about race, to describe how they would feel if their loved one (mother, daughter, sister) brought home an african american-what would your six words be? Some of the answers I got in these classes (as the students offered their comments anonymously and printed them on notecards so i couldn't identify handwriting) were simultaneously disheartening and enlightening. I will list three below: 

Bad way to make mom mad. 

Dad's turning over in his grave.

Can't you bring home white people?

These are three statements, from 14-18 year old kids, who, when asked honestly how they felt about their loved ones being involved with a black person, we see comments that are very consistent with Sterling's views. But why does any of this matter? Why does it matter if Donald Sterling thinks like he does and if you students think like they think?

Because when Sterling does it, it's easy to condemn. When it's your child, your brother, yourself: it's harder to do. It won't make a difference until we can call out Sterling for his actions, but also the Bruins for their fans, and more importantly, call out small snapshots of racism, as well as the big ones.