My 'identity' can get me killed
This is a very long read so I'm only posting part of it. Click on the link to read the comments. Dkos diary...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/4/1605095/-My-identity-can-get-me-killed
My great-grandmother Amelia 'Milly' Weaver Roberts—born enslaved in Virginia, April 15, 1835
During the last couple of weeks, following the election of an openly white supremacist-endorsing man to the highest office in our land, I’ve been listening to and reading people’s comments and responses to that election. Included in remarks from some Democrats and left/liberal pundits have been critiques of “identity politics,” and calls for us to abandon them as central to our party’s future electoral strategies. A key issue in the commentary has been the raging debate about whether or not those predominantly white people who voted for that man and his Klanvention (aka cabinet-to-be) are “racists.”
My position is that they are. Some of his voters have been overt. Others heard the racism, xenophobia, and misogyny and ignored it—and enabled it—which essentially boils down to the same result. That’s not a shocking conclusion, since I’ve lived my entire life with an awareness of the prevalence of racism here in this country my ancestors helped build on their backs. In many ways, I’ve felt that the discussions have become detached from both a historical and present-day reality of life in the U.S.A. for those of us whose lives are most endangered by this step backwards—the real lives of real people whose “identities” cannot be removed like a change of clothes.
I’d like to share a bit about my identity, and why I view the current American racist backlash with no surprise.
I’m a black woman. I’m not a quiet one, or a passive one, and have spent most of my life fighting against racism and sexism and for civil and human rights. I'm uppity and proud of it. My opinions and actions have placed me in jeopardy of losing my life more than once. Over the course of the last 69 years I’ve lived though many of the phases of change in this—my country. My parents and grandparents raised me to never give up and to never abandon hope that things were getting better, bit by bit. I’m actually glad, at this point in my life to see the racial animus that infests us out in the open again, rather than being hidden from the public eye. Yes, I’m glad that some people in this nation elected a black man—twice—as POTUS. That election did not eliminate racism. In many ways it obfuscated it. What disturbs me is that some of those people who profess liberalism or progressivism keep ducking what is core to my view and experience of the world we live in, from my position as a woman of color.
We are now entering a backlash phase. Black Kos founder and managing editor David Reid said on Tuesday: “As my mom always reminded me it’s always darkest before the dawn. But as I’ve written many times over the years, I’m never surprised by racial backlashes. Every bit of racial progress we have made as a country has later faced a backlash.” The question will be, as it always is: who will stand with us during this phase? Some of you will, some won’t. We will persevere nevertheless. We always do.
That portrait above is of my great grandmother, whose spirit is always with me—as are the spirits and life histories of all those who came before me, to deposit me here in this time and this place. Today I want to talk about some of them. Who they were shaped my fate. My identity. I take pride in my roots and the inimitable courage they demonstrated—to survive, and prevail. Like them, I believe we too will prevail. Each year thins the ranks of the racists and bigots. Not fast enough for some, but my great-grandmother taught us, as did so many elders, that this is a very long struggle. I may not live to see the journey’s end. My task is to keep my eyes on the prize and fight on.
Amelia ‘Milly’ Weaver was born into bondage in Loudoun County, Virginia. I’ve written about my Virginia family here, in the past. She was unable to read or write. She vowed that her children—all of them. male and female, would learn to do so. They did. She was also one of the lucky women who was not raped during her enslavement. She was considered to be “valuable” in her role as a midwife and herbalist. Nor did she have to bear a child for an owner, as my great-great-grandmother Hannah did.
Amelia, seated in front of a portrait of her deceased husband, Presley Roberts, with her children. From r to l are Henry, Martha, Joseph, John, James, Hannah and my grandfather Dennis. All of them went to black colleges.
The indomitable children of the Roberts family fulfilled their mother’s dreams for them. None could escape being black, and wouldn’t have tried. They, like so many black folks in the U.S. fresh out of enslavement, strove to not only simply survive, but pushed the envelope of white supremacy that surrounded them. Life was not easy—and all the Roberts children owned guns, including the young women, and were prepared to use them in self-defense. The women in my family were blessed to be a part of a unit that never limited their roles or dreams because of gender. That is a key part of my identity and went a long way toward making me a feminist at a very early age.
During Reconstruction my grandfather and his brothers, armed with shotguns, faced down a group of white racists (who hated “educated n***ers”) without blinking an eye. In later years, during the Depression, three of the brothers fed an entire black North Philly neighborhood with the game hunted with those same guns. Great Uncle Joe, who with his sister Martha raised my mom and her siblings, had become a doctor, financed by my grandfather Dennis who was a Pullman Porter. I grew up being taught a strong respect for unions—black unions in particular, since I learned that the Pullman Porters were rejected by white trade unionists. Joe went out and about on his medical rounds—always armed. My mom told me Aunt Martha used to walk through the house at night, barefoot, carrying a rifle—on defense.
They never forgot where they came from and the perils they faced as a proud black family who no longer lived in the South. They knew that racism in America had no geography. Those black folks who prospered knew that they were targets of hate. Black families in America knew about the Tulsa Massacre and the Destruction of Black Wall Street. They knew of the other black communities wiped out by racist, envious, resentful whites. They knew of the lynchings, rapes, and cross burnings. Yet, they persevered and multiplied. They never returned the hate, but were mighty particular about which white folks they could trust.
My mom went to an HBCU in West Virginia, where she met my dad. He was the child of a proud black man, George S. Oliver, who worked as a chauffeur and went on to work for the rest of his life as a driver for the Post Office. His wife was my grandmother Mabel Bodine, who I called ‘Bobby.’ She was a white farm girl from bible-belt Kansas who helped raise me. She left the farm to work as a domestic, where she met my grandfather and fell in love. Later in life she worked for the Singer Sewing Machine company. Her marriage to a black man in 1915 was anathema to her proudly racist mid-western white family. She was scratched out of the family Bible after she wed my grandfather. Both of them were active Republicans in Chicago, where they moved to get away from Kansas. My dad was born to them in 1919. I told my dad’s story here, in “Strange Fruit revisited.” His white mother didn’t make life any easier for him. He almost died right here in the U.S. while returning to his base in Tuskegee, were he was training with the Tuskegee Airmen. .
My father’s joy in serving his country at a time of war and doing it with pilot’s wings was short-lived. His skin color again made a difference. During a break in training he went home to Chicago and returned to Alabama on a bus with a childhood buddy, another airman, also black, but there was one difference. Daddy looked too white. The two buddies, leaving the bus, were spied by a group of 10 or 12 rednecks, who seeing them together, arm in arm – both in their uniforms, spat out epithets of "****** lover" and proceeded to try to kill my dad and his friend. Two against many was impossible odds, and my father – who took the brunt of the attack, was hospitalized. A rumor got back to the base that my father had been killed. The Airmen were ready for battle; they broke out equipment from the armory and were headed into town to extract revenge. My father was quickly removed from the hospital on a stretcher to prove that he hadn’t been killed to quell the revolt. For this incident, my father was court-martialed for "inciting a riot". Years later, his record was cleared.
As a result of those trumped up charges my father, like many other black men, did not benefit from the G.I. Bill. The program was essentially a massive affirmative action welfare program for white men which built what we now refer to as “the white middle class.” Years later, with the help of a lawyer, he finally got his due.
Read the rest at the sourcelink...
My 'identity' can get me killed
This is a very long read so I'm only posting part of it. Click on the link to read the comments. Dkos diary...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/4/1605095/-My-identity-can-get-me-killed
My great-grandmother Amelia 'Milly' Weaver Roberts—born enslaved in Virginia, April 15, 1835
During the last couple of weeks, following the election of an openly white supremacist-endorsing man to the highest office in our land, I’ve been listening to and reading people’s comments and responses to that election. Included in remarks from some Democrats and left/liberal pundits have been critiques of “identity politics,” and calls for us to abandon them as central to our party’s future electoral strategies. A key issue in the commentary has been the raging debate about whether or not those predominantly white people who voted for that man and his Klanvention (aka cabinet-to-be) are “racists.”
My position is that they are. Some of his voters have been overt. Others heard the racism, xenophobia, and misogyny and ignored it—and enabled it—which essentially boils down to the same result. That’s not a shocking conclusion, since I’ve lived my entire life with an awareness of the prevalence of racism here in this country my ancestors helped build on their backs. In many ways, I’ve felt that the discussions have become detached from both a historical and present-day reality of life in the U.S.A. for those of us whose lives are most endangered by this step backwards—the real lives of real people whose “identities” cannot be removed like a change of clothes.
I’d like to share a bit about my identity, and why I view the current American racist backlash with no surprise.
I’m a black woman. I’m not a quiet one, or a passive one, and have spent most of my life fighting against racism and sexism and for civil and human rights. I'm uppity and proud of it. My opinions and actions have placed me in jeopardy of losing my life more than once. Over the course of the last 69 years I’ve lived though many of the phases of change in this—my country. My parents and grandparents raised me to never give up and to never abandon hope that things were getting better, bit by bit. I’m actually glad, at this point in my life to see the racial animus that infests us out in the open again, rather than being hidden from the public eye. Yes, I’m glad that some people in this nation elected a black man—twice—as POTUS. That election did not eliminate racism. In many ways it obfuscated it. What disturbs me is that some of those people who profess liberalism or progressivism keep ducking what is core to my view and experience of the world we live in, from my position as a woman of color.
We are now entering a backlash phase. Black Kos founder and managing editor David Reid said on Tuesday: “As my mom always reminded me it’s always darkest before the dawn. But as I’ve written many times over the years, I’m never surprised by racial backlashes. Every bit of racial progress we have made as a country has later faced a backlash.” The question will be, as it always is: who will stand with us during this phase? Some of you will, some won’t. We will persevere nevertheless. We always do.
That portrait above is of my great grandmother, whose spirit is always with me—as are the spirits and life histories of all those who came before me, to deposit me here in this time and this place. Today I want to talk about some of them. Who they were shaped my fate. My identity. I take pride in my roots and the inimitable courage they demonstrated—to survive, and prevail. Like them, I believe we too will prevail. Each year thins the ranks of the racists and bigots. Not fast enough for some, but my great-grandmother taught us, as did so many elders, that this is a very long struggle. I may not live to see the journey’s end. My task is to keep my eyes on the prize and fight on.
Amelia ‘Milly’ Weaver was born into bondage in Loudoun County, Virginia. I’ve written about my Virginia family here, in the past. She was unable to read or write. She vowed that her children—all of them. male and female, would learn to do so. They did. She was also one of the lucky women who was not raped during her enslavement. She was considered to be “valuable” in her role as a midwife and herbalist. Nor did she have to bear a child for an owner, as my great-great-grandmother Hannah did.
Amelia, seated in front of a portrait of her deceased husband, Presley Roberts, with her children. From r to l are Henry, Martha, Joseph, John, James, Hannah and my grandfather Dennis. All of them went to black colleges.
The indomitable children of the Roberts family fulfilled their mother’s dreams for them. None could escape being black, and wouldn’t have tried. They, like so many black folks in the U.S. fresh out of enslavement, strove to not only simply survive, but pushed the envelope of white supremacy that surrounded them. Life was not easy—and all the Roberts children owned guns, including the young women, and were prepared to use them in self-defense. The women in my family were blessed to be a part of a unit that never limited their roles or dreams because of gender. That is a key part of my identity and went a long way toward making me a feminist at a very early age.
During Reconstruction my grandfather and his brothers, armed with shotguns, faced down a group of white racists (who hated “educated n***ers”) without blinking an eye. In later years, during the Depression, three of the brothers fed an entire black North Philly neighborhood with the game hunted with those same guns. Great Uncle Joe, who with his sister Martha raised my mom and her siblings, had become a doctor, financed by my grandfather Dennis who was a Pullman Porter. I grew up being taught a strong respect for unions—black unions in particular, since I learned that the Pullman Porters were rejected by white trade unionists. Joe went out and about on his medical rounds—always armed. My mom told me Aunt Martha used to walk through the house at night, barefoot, carrying a rifle—on defense.
They never forgot where they came from and the perils they faced as a proud black family who no longer lived in the South. They knew that racism in America had no geography. Those black folks who prospered knew that they were targets of hate. Black families in America knew about the Tulsa Massacre and the Destruction of Black Wall Street. They knew of the other black communities wiped out by racist, envious, resentful whites. They knew of the lynchings, rapes, and cross burnings. Yet, they persevered and multiplied. They never returned the hate, but were mighty particular about which white folks they could trust.
My mom went to an HBCU in West Virginia, where she met my dad. He was the child of a proud black man, George S. Oliver, who worked as a chauffeur and went on to work for the rest of his life as a driver for the Post Office. His wife was my grandmother Mabel Bodine, who I called ‘Bobby.’ She was a white farm girl from bible-belt Kansas who helped raise me. She left the farm to work as a domestic, where she met my grandfather and fell in love. Later in life she worked for the Singer Sewing Machine company. Her marriage to a black man in 1915 was anathema to her proudly racist mid-western white family. She was scratched out of the family Bible after she wed my grandfather. Both of them were active Republicans in Chicago, where they moved to get away from Kansas. My dad was born to them in 1919. I told my dad’s story here, in “Strange Fruit revisited.” His white mother didn’t make life any easier for him. He almost died right here in the U.S. while returning to his base in Tuskegee, were he was training with the Tuskegee Airmen. .
My father’s joy in serving his country at a time of war and doing it with pilot’s wings was short-lived. His skin color again made a difference. During a break in training he went home to Chicago and returned to Alabama on a bus with a childhood buddy, another airman, also black, but there was one difference. Daddy looked too white. The two buddies, leaving the bus, were spied by a group of 10 or 12 rednecks, who seeing them together, arm in arm – both in their uniforms, spat out epithets of "****** lover" and proceeded to try to kill my dad and his friend. Two against many was impossible odds, and my father – who took the brunt of the attack, was hospitalized. A rumor got back to the base that my father had been killed. The Airmen were ready for battle; they broke out equipment from the armory and were headed into town to extract revenge. My father was quickly removed from the hospital on a stretcher to prove that he hadn’t been killed to quell the revolt. For this incident, my father was court-martialed for "inciting a riot". Years later, his record was cleared.
As a result of those trumped up charges my father, like many other black men, did not benefit from the G.I. Bill. The program was essentially a massive affirmative action welfare program for white men which built what we now refer to as “the white middle class.” Years later, with the help of a lawyer, he finally got his due.
Read the rest at the sourcelink...
My 'identity' can get me killed
