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2015-05-04 20:57:27 UTC
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/5/growing-up-between-black-and-white-in-baltimore.html#commentsDiv
Growing up between black and white in Baltimore
After my family immigrated to Maryland, I internalized the racism that
could be turned against me
May 3, 2015 2:00AM ET
by Arun Gupta
In February 1968 the Kerner Report, commissioned by President Lyndon
Johnson to examine the causes of urban riots, warned that our nation
is moving toward two societies, one black, one white separate and
unequal. The report was duly ignored, even as its predictions were
borne out just a few months later, when riots broke out in hundreds of
cities after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.
My family emigrated from India to Baltimore in 1969, the year after a
week of deadly and destructive riots swept through the citys poverty
belt. Over the next 20 years we lived in Baltimore County, which
envelops the city. In the 1970s, we were the only nonwhite family for
blocks, except for two other Asian households. Because my father was
an engineer and my siblings and I excelled in school, we were able to
benefit from the model minority stereotype. While early on we had to
confront open racism, we were accepted into white culture over time.
This contradictory experience meant I internalized the racism that I
could be subjected to.
The worst racism was reserved for those who lived in the black
sections of the city, then being hollowed out by what the Rev. Donte
Hickman, a pastor in Baltimore, described as deterioration,
dilapidation and disinvestment in an article in The New York Times.
My family and I usually faced milder discrimination stemming from
ignorance, such as when a friend asked, Do you really eat monkey
brains? while we watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
But explicit racism was not unknown. In one neighborhood, minor
frictions with our neighbors escalated into a white mob outside our
home screaming at and cursing us. The family next door egged our car
and abused our dog. Eventually my mom had to escort us to and from
school because white kids would attack us. Occasionally another kid
called me n-----, though I found that yelling, Youre stupid Im
from India usually resolved the situation. But one friend repeated
the epithet so often that I couldnt chalk it up to ignorance, leaving
me feeling debased and humiliated.
Once at the eighth-grade lunch table David (names have been changed)
passed around KKK literature. I was repelled and fascinated by the
graphic racism. When he declared he was going to join the Klan when he
turned 18, all the other boys seemed proud, and I was struck with a
fear I didnt understand. Still, I remember joining in with my
playmates when we put pillowcases over our heads and threw a cross on
the fire to burn, while their fathers watched and chuckled.
Some of the most explicit racism I witnessed was in the Boy Scouts,
where being part of a community meant people felt comfortable enough
to speak openly. I remember someones father driving us through black
neighborhoods, explaining how n-----s were animals who only care for
cars and clothes. Another time, a dozen boys, including a black kid,
came to join our troop. I heard someone comment, A black kid will
never survive in this troop. He soon dropped out.
If racism is internalized by those who are tormented by it, just
imagine how deep-seated it is among those who benefit from it.
In the last week Ive been in contact with more than a dozen friends
who grew up in Baltimore most white but also black, Latino and
Native to hear what they remember. Only one white friend I talked to
remembered visiting the home of a black family growing up, and that
was once. None of them ever had a black family at their houses. Some
did not encounter a black person until high school.
But I wasnt the only brown kid to trip over the color line. Sam, who
is part indigenous, recalls, When I was 9, I remember calling a black
kid the N-word and how upset he got. That was a defining moment. I
realized how powerful the word was. Sam also said, In high school my
brother had a black friend who would come over. He would tell racist
jokes, and everyone liked him, saying, See, hes OK with it. Sam
concluded, I had to actively unlearn racism, and I can still feel it
inside me. If racism is so internalized by those who are tormented by
it, just imagine then how deep-seated it is among those who benefit
from it.
My friends are more tolerant than their parents generation was, but
few support the protests in Baltimore. One described the violence as
an understandable reaction to militarized policing. Another passed on
offering an opinion as the vast majority of whites, myself included,
will have no idea what it is like being black in Baltimore. But most
choose to condemn the riots or even throw in with state violence: I
choose to side with law and our police and fire dept., one wrote.
We are wealthier, more powerful and more tolerant than ever. But
individual tolerance cannot overcome the structural racism in
Baltimore that results in police brutality with impunity, the 46,000
vacant or abandoned homes in the city, the life expectancy on par with
Haiti, the decades of redlining, blockbusting and predatory lending
that looted the city long before a CVS was ransacked. In terms of
residential segregation in the Baltimore area, little has changed, and
the same is true nationwide.
We as a nation tolerate an African-American unemployment rate more
than twice that for whites, a black childhood poverty rate three times
that for whites, black median household income less than 60 percent of
whites, a black death rate 20 percent greater than whites and 1.5
million missing black men which we would call genocide in any other
country.
Since the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer, the rest of the
country is slowly realizing that the economic and social plight in
black America is directly linked to systematic violence by police
forces. Thats what set off Baltimore.
With rare exceptions, however, the media portray this as an issue of
tensions between the police and black communities. That is not the
whole story. We also need to examine how white people even those who
think of themselves as tolerant or have learned how to conceal their
racism with code words are complicit in allowing police violence to
continue unchecked.
The solutions the Kerner Report suggested the last time Baltimore
burned apply now as well:
A commitment to national action compassionate, massive and
sustained, backed by the resources of the most powerful and the
richest nation on this earth. From every American it will require new
attitudes, new understanding and, above all, new will.
But we also need to finally admit the truth of something else the
report said: White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White
institutions created it, white institutions maintain and white society
condones it. The racism we learned in our youth will not disappear
until we come to terms with it honestly. Until we demolish the white
culture of complicity and silence, we are condemned to more repression
and more riots, no matter how tolerant we are as individuals.
Growing up between black and white in Baltimore
After my family immigrated to Maryland, I internalized the racism that
could be turned against me
May 3, 2015 2:00AM ET
by Arun Gupta
In February 1968 the Kerner Report, commissioned by President Lyndon
Johnson to examine the causes of urban riots, warned that our nation
is moving toward two societies, one black, one white separate and
unequal. The report was duly ignored, even as its predictions were
borne out just a few months later, when riots broke out in hundreds of
cities after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.
My family emigrated from India to Baltimore in 1969, the year after a
week of deadly and destructive riots swept through the citys poverty
belt. Over the next 20 years we lived in Baltimore County, which
envelops the city. In the 1970s, we were the only nonwhite family for
blocks, except for two other Asian households. Because my father was
an engineer and my siblings and I excelled in school, we were able to
benefit from the model minority stereotype. While early on we had to
confront open racism, we were accepted into white culture over time.
This contradictory experience meant I internalized the racism that I
could be subjected to.
The worst racism was reserved for those who lived in the black
sections of the city, then being hollowed out by what the Rev. Donte
Hickman, a pastor in Baltimore, described as deterioration,
dilapidation and disinvestment in an article in The New York Times.
My family and I usually faced milder discrimination stemming from
ignorance, such as when a friend asked, Do you really eat monkey
brains? while we watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
But explicit racism was not unknown. In one neighborhood, minor
frictions with our neighbors escalated into a white mob outside our
home screaming at and cursing us. The family next door egged our car
and abused our dog. Eventually my mom had to escort us to and from
school because white kids would attack us. Occasionally another kid
called me n-----, though I found that yelling, Youre stupid Im
from India usually resolved the situation. But one friend repeated
the epithet so often that I couldnt chalk it up to ignorance, leaving
me feeling debased and humiliated.
Once at the eighth-grade lunch table David (names have been changed)
passed around KKK literature. I was repelled and fascinated by the
graphic racism. When he declared he was going to join the Klan when he
turned 18, all the other boys seemed proud, and I was struck with a
fear I didnt understand. Still, I remember joining in with my
playmates when we put pillowcases over our heads and threw a cross on
the fire to burn, while their fathers watched and chuckled.
Some of the most explicit racism I witnessed was in the Boy Scouts,
where being part of a community meant people felt comfortable enough
to speak openly. I remember someones father driving us through black
neighborhoods, explaining how n-----s were animals who only care for
cars and clothes. Another time, a dozen boys, including a black kid,
came to join our troop. I heard someone comment, A black kid will
never survive in this troop. He soon dropped out.
If racism is internalized by those who are tormented by it, just
imagine how deep-seated it is among those who benefit from it.
In the last week Ive been in contact with more than a dozen friends
who grew up in Baltimore most white but also black, Latino and
Native to hear what they remember. Only one white friend I talked to
remembered visiting the home of a black family growing up, and that
was once. None of them ever had a black family at their houses. Some
did not encounter a black person until high school.
But I wasnt the only brown kid to trip over the color line. Sam, who
is part indigenous, recalls, When I was 9, I remember calling a black
kid the N-word and how upset he got. That was a defining moment. I
realized how powerful the word was. Sam also said, In high school my
brother had a black friend who would come over. He would tell racist
jokes, and everyone liked him, saying, See, hes OK with it. Sam
concluded, I had to actively unlearn racism, and I can still feel it
inside me. If racism is so internalized by those who are tormented by
it, just imagine then how deep-seated it is among those who benefit
from it.
My friends are more tolerant than their parents generation was, but
few support the protests in Baltimore. One described the violence as
an understandable reaction to militarized policing. Another passed on
offering an opinion as the vast majority of whites, myself included,
will have no idea what it is like being black in Baltimore. But most
choose to condemn the riots or even throw in with state violence: I
choose to side with law and our police and fire dept., one wrote.
We are wealthier, more powerful and more tolerant than ever. But
individual tolerance cannot overcome the structural racism in
Baltimore that results in police brutality with impunity, the 46,000
vacant or abandoned homes in the city, the life expectancy on par with
Haiti, the decades of redlining, blockbusting and predatory lending
that looted the city long before a CVS was ransacked. In terms of
residential segregation in the Baltimore area, little has changed, and
the same is true nationwide.
We as a nation tolerate an African-American unemployment rate more
than twice that for whites, a black childhood poverty rate three times
that for whites, black median household income less than 60 percent of
whites, a black death rate 20 percent greater than whites and 1.5
million missing black men which we would call genocide in any other
country.
Since the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer, the rest of the
country is slowly realizing that the economic and social plight in
black America is directly linked to systematic violence by police
forces. Thats what set off Baltimore.
With rare exceptions, however, the media portray this as an issue of
tensions between the police and black communities. That is not the
whole story. We also need to examine how white people even those who
think of themselves as tolerant or have learned how to conceal their
racism with code words are complicit in allowing police violence to
continue unchecked.
The solutions the Kerner Report suggested the last time Baltimore
burned apply now as well:
A commitment to national action compassionate, massive and
sustained, backed by the resources of the most powerful and the
richest nation on this earth. From every American it will require new
attitudes, new understanding and, above all, new will.
But we also need to finally admit the truth of something else the
report said: White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White
institutions created it, white institutions maintain and white society
condones it. The racism we learned in our youth will not disappear
until we come to terms with it honestly. Until we demolish the white
culture of complicity and silence, we are condemned to more repression
and more riots, no matter how tolerant we are as individuals.