race and racism

First off, this is about race. And it's about racism. It's also about saving people right now, so I'll keep this short.

I grew up three blocks from St. Paul Central High School. It's a majority black High School just off I-94. It's my alma mater.

I didn't start out at Central. For my first three years I went to a private, all-boys, vastly white Catholic school. I played basketball.

I remember, freshman year, coming back into my own neighborhood with a team of all-white boys, and playing at Central against a team that was all-black in front of a majority-black crowd. We were all 15 years old.

My team, the Cretin Raiders (yes, that's a real name) sucked that night. We played like crap, even though the level of athleticism on my team was equal to our opponents. And it was pretty clear why. We were, aside from me and one other teammate, scared shitless and "off our game." You see the other white kids, my teammates, had never even been in a majority-black environment before...and they were falling prey to their own history, their bias, their fears. As my coach later yelled in less kind terms, we weren't even playing basketball. Race and fear had affected our playing, and the outcome of the game.

Four weeks later, at the Cretin gym, this tiny, claustrophobic, old-school gymnasium, the exact same scene reversed itself. Central's majority-black squad came to a gym packed with screaming white folks...pounding on the bleachers....and they played like shit against us. My team won going away. Race and fear had affected the kids from Central too.

I think of that when I see what's played out in New Orleans. The trucks of white guardsmen bussing in. The slow response of the Federal Governement. The city of New Orleans municipal government's breakdown in executing basic missions. The state of Louisiana's failed response. I see two overlapping things.

I see how race, how bias, how fears, how people's inherent "comfort levels" all came into play...and, truly, were a major factor that messed up our government's response to this disaster. Just like I watched two basketball teams both play well beneath their abilities...I can tell you...I'm sure race and fear played a role in the response to hurricane Katrina across the board. There is no doubt about that.

But it is also clear how racism...structural, virulent, real...came to play in New Orleans. And structural racism in America is a one-way street:

First, because of racial segregation. While racial segregation is the reality that kept folks in the most flood-prone parts of New Orleans, segregation goes beyond geography; it's as much a part of American life as apple pie. Segregation in America means one thing: whites keeping other people out...whether that's in Piedmont or Metairie or Park Avenue.

Second, because of the racist structure of poverty in this country and this nation's thirty-five year affair with ignoring it and accepting it That's the real meaning of Reaganism and "starving big government," and we all know it. The Reagan attack on big government came as a response to the War on Poverty and Civil Rights. People voted for it along race lines; they still do.

Third, because of bipartisan governmental bias and corporate irresponsibility: from the lack of funding for the levees right on down to the absence of FEMA from the ground in New Orleans.

Fourth, in the treatment and characterization of the victims themselves. Mike Brown's casual remark about the victims "bearing some responsibility" is a statement we all must keep in mind when we look at the faces of those mothers with children and old folks in wheelchairs at the Superdome and the Convention Center.

When blacks were in desperate need, people in our government whose job it is to risk their lives to try to save them....simply did not do so. And when they failed to do their jobs, they blamed those victims.

That's racism. That's the consequence of power structures that simply do not value African-American lives as highly as they do the comfortable benefits that come from the existing system. And in the case of the GOP, those comfortable benefits include a forty year pattern of using racial bias to win elections. That's the truth.

We're not talking about a level of "racial comfort" that can be solved by George Bush and Mike Brown going on Oprah and "talking about it." We're not talking about "race" simply throwing us "off our game."

We are talking about a legacy of structural bias in the way we run this country, from both political parties...and an abject lack of commitment from our large corporations. (You don't think that the big companies whose businesses run through New Orleans don't have a stake in the people of that city, do you?) Further, we're talking about one political party, the GOP, that has built its house on the Southern Strategy and systematically undercut reforms, spending and any basic government commitment directed at improving the lives of the poor and racial minorities. That bias is not a two-way street. It's called racism.

All of us in the cities know this. We see it every day. And we know that the real reason that we saw the scenes we did in New Orleans days after the natural disaster....the real reason that the United States of America has looked like a "third world country" for all the world to see...is structural, persistent racism in the conduct of our government and deep in the fabric of our society. It's time for this country to wake up.

In the meantime, let's keep pressure on to save lives.

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