Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I'm still not ready to talk about Black history. I still want to talk about white US history.
Q: Why do Black people see racism in everything?
A: A few years ago, European tech entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky asked some very good questions in good faith. He asked why San Francisco and Madrid were different in so many confusing and awful ways. I answered each of his questions. Please verify each and every answer with a skeptic's keen eye.
Here we go...
1/N
Q: Why are homeless people so rare in Madrid and so common in San Francisco when here GDP per capita is half?
A: Racism.
Of the homeless folk in the USA, 45% have mental health challenges and 40% are Black, even though only 13% of the pop is Black. In SF, less than 5% of the population is Black, but 37% of the homeless population is Black.
In the 80s, when Reagan killed mental health facility funding and Black homelessness exploded, no one cared. 🤷🏿♂️
But... most homeless US folk are still white? Facts. Unaffordable housing combined with a lack of social programs or safety net lead to homelessness in the US in general. Because in the US, most white people will oppose social safety nets if they believe that Black people will benefit, or if you remind them of "changing demographics." Because racism.
https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sf/soy046/5002999
Convince a racist white US citizen that "Black people receive welfare!" and they'll oppose their own benefits🙃
Q: Why is the murder rate 500% higher in California than Spain?
A: Racism.
Despite (and because of) racist over-policing, law enforcement in the USA is fantastically inept at catching killers that murder Black folk. Including Black folk.
Black citizens (wisely) don't call the cops. So murderers rack up astronomical body counts.
Less than 1 in 2 US murders is solved. That clearance rate is *lowest* in neighborhoods where cops brutalize innocent Black folk the most.🙂🙃
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/01/12/as-murders-spiked-police-solved-about-half-in-2020
But is this correlation or causation? It seems almost like Black folk are suggesting that police activity *causes* more murders to happen?
We can test this (and we have!) by seeing what happens if you go into a neighborhood with a lot of murders, and get police to stop brutalizing innocent Black people, and focus only on stopping murders.
Result: You can end a murder wave in a city by getting cops to focus on murders instead of being evil.
Operation Ceasefire works.
https://www.npr.org/2011/11/01/141803766/interrupting-violence-with-the-message-dont-shoot
Q: Why is health care free even for tourists in Spain paid for by Spanish taxpayers as a human right and so incredibly expensive and cumbersome in California? Our son fell in the bathtub and we had a $12k bill for a few stitches at Stanford ER.
A: Racism.
People hate Obama's Blackness so much, that their opinion of whether universal healthcare is good or bad depends on if you call it Obamacare.
Racist folk with terminal diseases and no insurance, will vote against free healthcare. Cuz Obama.
People oppose "Affordable Care Act" more if you call it "Obamacare." 🤡
https://www.cnbc.com/2013/09/26/whats-in-a-name-lots-when-it-comes-to-obamacareaca.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-obamacare-affordable-care-act-name-2017-2
Congress spent 8 years opposing Obama's plan, without any plan of their own. Their whole plan was "I hate you, and I hate your plan!"
The Affordable Care Act was Obama's big win. So they needed to destroy it. It really is that petty.
US opposing to clear public goods like affordable housing, public transportation, and affordable healthcare, is inextricably tied to racism.
Q: Why are universities in Spain free* and there is no student debt while in the USA there is more student debt than the GDP of Spain?
A: Surprisingly, also racism!
College in the US is too expensive, so loans.
Black kids are on average, lower income than white kids. Most college drop outs leave not due to poor grades, but for financial hardship. Poor kids very often don't graduate. 😢
Drop out without a degree, you still owe a huge debt.
(*Folks from Spain have clarified that Spanish universities are heavily subsidized and very affordable, but are not quite free. I'm leaving the above question unchanged, as that was what was originally asked.🇪🇸♥️)
Even if you graduate, you have a huge debt. But... Black kids are less likely to be hired than white kids. And if hired, are given lower starting salaries.
Deck stacked against you: Deeper in debt, and harder to climb out.
Black kids owe $7.5K more than white kids at graduation. But within 3 years, black kids owe $25K more than white kids.
77.7% of Black students borrow.
50% default within 12 years.
No one cares.
Much of the $1.6 trillion debt is held by Black students. Yes, I said trillion. With a "T." And yes, I said "debt held by Black kids," who are hired less and paid less.
The unspoken part of the US student loan forgiveness "debate," is racists thinking "I am fundamentally opposed to anything that would lower the suffering of Black people or prevent the siphoning of their wealth."
Q: Why are there in the USA more people in jail/parole than there are inhabitants in Madrid the third largest city in Europe?
A: This one's easy. Racism.
The US arrests and convicts a lot of people. Most folk in jail, on probation, or on parole in the USA are there for 2 reasons:
1) Non-violent drug offenses
2) Are just awaiting trial, but are too poor to make bail.
For drugs, pretty much any methodology you use shows that white Americans use more drugs, more frequently, than Black Americans. It's not even close.
* Surveys
* Police blood tests per capita
* Drugs found per traffic stop
* OD fatalities per capita
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/racial-disparity-drug-use_n_3941346
But Black folk are disproportionately stopped, searched, charged, and arrested, tried, and convicted for drugs.
On bail: If you are arrested while poor and Black, you may be in jail *over a year* before trial. 600K+ folk in jail today are pre-trial. 😢
You will be locked up with folks my size. You will very likely be assaulted.
Even if you are innocent... An officer will offer you a way out of your year of hell: just admit your "guilt" and get out today!
You will take that deal and be on probation / parole.
Even if innocent.
Q: Why is inequality in the USA twice as high as that of Spain?
A: Racism. My thread from yesterday explained the ways in which systemic racism is designed to siphon net wealth from Black people, but I don't think folks appreciate the scale.
Civil asset forfeiture alone steals more wealth than "all other forms of burglary combined."
Black median net wealth is on trajectory to be zero by 2053.🤷🏿♂️
The question shouldn't be "Why do Black folk see racism in everything?"
The question should be "Why do white folk not see any of this?"
The answer to the better question is of course, that there is an information delta between "what Black folk know about racism" and "what white folk know about racism."
Racist people don't want you to know any of this stuff. Because some people, on reading this stuff, say, "Sounds bad. We should maybe change things to be less bad?"
I love every question that Martin Varsavsky asked, and I believe that he was asking them in good faith. If anyone views this as a "dunk" or criticism of him then they are completely missing the point.
Similarly, if anyone views this as me saying "All white people are bad!" They've also completely missed the point.
The point is that we can't resolve any of these questions without understanding the systems that they operate in. That means understanding US racism, and how we all play a part in it
If I, as a Black dude, don't understand these systems (and their leverage points), even I can contribute to it and make it worse. Racism isn't "who called who the N-word."
Consider these statements that I could make:
"I value education because I'm Nigerian! Black Americans don't value education!"
"I believe in unpaid internships. Hustle and grind early in your career!"
"I would never hire someone with a criminal record!"
"Ugh! I'm not going there! That's the hood! Full of ghetto people!"
The first statement makes me very sad. Black folk in the US pay *more* for their education than anyone else on planet earth. This is an objective fact. To suggest that Black folk in the US don't "value education," but somehow Nigerians, Kenyans, South Africans, Ghanaians, and Cubans do, is to ignore US racism and blame its victims. It's to ignore white US history.
Good education in Nigeria is Black history*. Cool story. Happy for you👍🏿
I want to talk about white US history.
(*Squints at UK...)
@mekkaokereke thank you for this thread.
It reminded me of a thing that *really* opened my eyes years ago to how deeply ingrained racism is in the USA.
Public swimming pools.
There used to be tons of them in the USA, but when they started getting desegregated, communities started closing them down instead.
Why? Racism. 😢
It hurt white kids as much as it hurt Black kids. But the important thing was: it hurt the Blacks.
The depth of this hate is unfathomable to me.
@ValkyrieKerry oh I know, I happen to be from the EU.
@rysiek @mekkaokereke it was not only against African American people, back in those days you weren't able to freely use a public swimming pool if Mexican:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lopez_v._Seccombe
Why? Racism & Xenophobia
All that always drive us to the Black-Brown unity
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93brown_unity
> is a racial-political ideology which initially developed among black scholars, writers, and activists who pushed for global activist associations between black people and brown people [...],and Indigenous peoples of the Americas [...] to unify against white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism
my 5yo kid cried when they read a children book featured this image: why?
Because racism & Xenophobia
@rysiek @mekkaokereke absolutely. The city of Dallas, TX had TONS of neighborhood pools all over the city. But then they suddenly became “a risk” and every single one of them were filled in. In many cases they built tennis courts over top of them. But even those have fallen into disrepair since a couple ladies got popular.
So glad I left that state.
I'm sorry, I genuinely don't understand the question. Can you expand on it a little bit please?
I will do my best to answer.
Ah. I see. The usual "If I as a white person can overcome being poor, why can't you as Black people overcome racism?"
This is a common thought process, by people that don't understand the magnitude or the scale of racism. This is sometimes framed as "It's not race, it's class!" It's both. But mostly race.
It's also a common thought process by folk that have experienced hardship themselves, but instead of that generating empathy as in most, it calcifies lack of empathy.
Study after study done that attempts to quantify the impact of race vs socioeconomic status, shows that the effect of racism dominates. Even when Black people in the US do escape poverty, they still can't escape racism.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html
Nothing I say though is likely to convince you. If you've made it this far in life honestly believing that being a poor white woman is a bigger obstacle in the US than being a Black woman, then I am not here to change your mind.
What I will say, is that this isn't zero sum, we don't have to pick and choose, and we don't have to play oppression Olympics. 👍🏿
Everyone knows that I pull a lot of Black folk out of poverty by getting them into tech. Fewer people even recognize that I pull a lot of rural, white folk out of poverty too. I look where other folks in tech don't look.
But that's irrelevant. Some people see someone advocating for Black folk, and can't help but say, "What about me?"
You're in a thread about racism, trying to use your marginalized identities (woman, disabled) to downplay the effects of racism. You literally started off by writing "What about [people like] me?"
As if Black women with disabilities don't exist.
No one is trying to deny your lived experience. What I'm doing, is rejecting your downplaying and minimizing of racism.
@mekkaokereke @JulieLiddellWhitehead I would say that "it's class" is a superset of "it's race". Definitely with "it's race" being the major part of "it's class". However I cannot agree more on everything you said.
The book "Caste" from Wilkerson have an interesting view on this topic.
Also Frantz Fanon work (in special "Black Skin, White Masks") can provide a good insight on why this configuration is still in place.
@JulieLiddellWhitehead @mekkaokereke
I read your posts and stewed on them for a few days. Then I saw this post:
https://social.joelle.us/@joelle/113950096508717786
I listened to this song for the first time just now. When I heard the chorus "too slow" I immediately thought of you.
Listen to this: "Picking cotton? too slow!" Do you get it?
Suggesting black people are simply failing to take personal responsibility is like telling them they are "picking cotton too slow." Just try harder, right, and they'll be fine?
For the 5th day in Black History Month, the Black feminist writer I’d like to highlight Nina Simone who wrote this song: Mississippi Goddam. While a lot of people might have wanter her to stay away from issues of race, she spoke truth. One of the challenges in theory is to write things plainly. This was what Ms. Simone excelled at. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ25-U3jNWM
@mekkaokereke as a white person, I cannot agree more. White people often view only overt acts of racism as racism.
Many think it is easier to ignore the systemic part, or blame it on other things in order to deflect and keep their power unwittingly, rather than see what is plain to see.
It's the same reason that white people claim they "don't see color". It's a socialized unconscious deflection.
@mekkaokereke And yet, Martin keeps pestering us saying that he's about to leave Spain because he refuses to pay so much in taxes.
In any case, I digress. I remembered the original thread and I think your responses are brilliant. Thanks for these threads, they're pure gold.
@mekkaokereke I’m really appreciating your summaries. In addition to boosting your posts, I’m sharing them with my other white friends on an embarrassingly regular basis. Like you deserve a byline on all my social media lately, not just credit for the individual quotes.
Please know your words are not falling on deaf ears. And thank you.
@annaraven @mekkaokereke I feel like leveraging the power of relationships to shift the norms is something most of us can do. If we white people are visibly, undeniably anti-racist, it makes it harder and harder to dismiss.
I know some of my friends get triggered into a fragility response by some hard truths. But it’s better for me to be on the receiving end of that than a Black person caught by their words, and whatever influence our friendship has, it’s my job to add.
@annaraven @mekkaokereke Gods, that came out jargon-y.
What I meant was: yeah. Our friends are paying attention, to our silences as well as our words.
I see change— and resistance— and I know it matters to be visibly anti-racist. (I’m a retired teacher, so my kids made me hyper aware of the impact of being visibly, identifiably, every day, an ally.)
@mekkaokereke Ages ago, my brother and fam went to Benni Hanna and he kept peppering the chef with questions. How this, how that... Finally, my aunt cut him off- You are annoying people!
But my uncle stopped her- I want to know the answers to those questions! If he doesn't ask, how will I know.
Thank you for your answers, and the time to explain/educate it out. Many people might not know the (right) questions, but with these threads they don't need to.
This thread (and the whole series: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111856915139042511 ) is absolutely wonderful. I have above-average knowledge of US history (for somebody who grew up and lives outside of it), the general knowledge of US stuff outside of it is on average better than vice versa and yet, I only knew some of the points you raised. 🤷♂️
Black History Month megathread! Feb 1: The Statue of Liberty https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109789295728917242 Feb 2: Generational Wealth https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109795292010229762 Feb 3: Seeing Racism Everywhere https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109801619225078087 Feb 4: Swimming https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109807073812925673 Continued... https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111877545844953639
@mekkaokereke I do have a take... As a brazilian watching american discourse.
@[email protected] thing is, white people may have experienced 1st and 2nd level racism, internal and interpersonal. But they never experiencedd 3rd and 4th levels (institutional, systemic). Frankly they don't even believe it exists, and fantasize it as YA dystopian fiction. And that's by design. Im a Brazilian watching the debate in US, and when people talk racism, black people mean 3, 4 and white people mean 1, 2. They don't even have the same concepts.
mekka okereke 
BigJay 🏳️🌈
Frank Cote
Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis
secretsloth
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Valkyrie Kerry
Esparta
FeloniousPunk
OldAndCranky
Julie Liddell Whitehead
keithzg
Frischling
Leonardo Xavier de Brito
poleguy looking for lost tools
D2
Juan Luis
Paul Cantrell
Martin Vermeer (not Jesus)
Cat C-B
Quatrain Gleam
annaraven
⛧⛧⛧J.d.B.⛧⛧⛧
Aviva Gary
Agora
David Jaša
Lilly Evans
Hadriscus
nonlinear
Scott Williams 🐧
Mees
Pamela Ehn