From the Los Angeles Times:
Being black is exhausting, and here’s why
By Dexter Thomas
Dexter Thomas is from San Bernardino and is a PhD candidate in East Asian studies at Cornell University. He has taught media studies and Japanese and is writing a book about Japanese hip-hop. Thomas began working in new media as a student director of programming at KUCR-FM (88.3), independently producing podcasts as well as music and news programs. He has written for several outlets internationally on topics as diverse as Internet and youth culture, social justice and video games.
…Again, black people will have to answer insincere questions from co-workers and friends, and again combat memes of fake statistics on black crime, spread by the most popular GOP presidential candidate.
It’s exhausting.
The activists marching in Chicago don’t necessarily expect all of America, or even all black people, to join them in the streets. But they know that they will be a topic of conversation at millions of dinner tables this Thanksgiving. And they may wonder if the well-meaning folks all across America who “like” their Facebook posts will speak up this time when their uncle starts calling Black Lives Matter a “terrorist group.”
Being black in the digital age is exhausting for the same reason that being brown after 9/11 is exhausting, or being an immigrant, or a woman, or gay, can be exhausting: because whenever the weight of hundreds of years of injustice comes to light, you are told that it is your fault.
And you are left to shoulder the burden, again, alone.
From the LATIMES comments section:
* This misnomer that only White people can be racist is one of the biggest farces in modern life. People of color are just as racist against each other as whites are to anyone. Ever talk to an African American about Latinos or Asians or vice versa!? Well, it’s not a plethora of love and festivities.
* And comments by obviously non-Black ppl are exhausting, too. Comments come from zero relevant experience, only the experience of the privileged. (“Privileged you say?” Yes — so much so you don’t notice or don’t care. And for those with no logical skills and didn’t both the read nor think, black-on-black crime has zero relevance to the unnecessary killing of this man.)
Down-vote to your “hearts delight.” Continue your cycle of deflection, while the new generation listens and feels.
* Having to remind blacks that they must obey the police is exhausting. Young black men think their skin color intimidates policemen so they disobey orders, walk down the middle of vehicle lanes, and brandish knives. The police reacted properly to Laquan McDonald’s provocation.
* Nothing can be changed unless blacks are exempted from all civil and criminal laws. Brandishing deadly weapons would have to be a new constitutional right reserved only for blacks.
* I’m exhausted by that late 80’s hair cut.
* Color-blind Rules for a “successful” interaction with Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs):
1) Be respectful, even if they are not. They represent the Law and the Government
2) Immediately follow any legal order, even if it is marginal.
If it helps, you can pretend that they are the biggest, nastiest MF in town and they will beat you into the ground for fun if you backtalk them or put a cap in your rear. This is not the time to show your Bravado.
3) If you feel that you have been mistreated, please report the incident AFTER following rules 1 & 2.
LEOs are not being paid to deal with your BS or playing fair if you threaten them. In the end, they are there to protect your family from others that want to break the law. Cursing them out for doing their jobs is not helping your situation.
Yes, there are “bad” cops (see rule 3). I have dealt with them, so can you.
Each of the several incidents of possible LEO misconduct started with someone breaking rules 1 & 2. That is not to say that the LEOs were necessarily justified and obviously in some cases they should face charges.
* Dexter, I like your hair, so I’m going to give you some good advice:
You will expend a lot less energy if you restrict your concern for innocent people getting shot by the police, rather than exorcising yourself when criminals involved in criminal activities run afoul of the police.
I sincerely hope this helps.
* Well, thank god you don’t have to watch every video of a black man killing another black man. You wouldn’t just be exhausted, you’d be positively bedridden then!
* I’m exhausted by bad syntax, diction, and grammar.
* It was exhausting, to hear about the 9 year old boy, murdered in Chicago, by gang members, several weeks ago. Where were the demonstrators then?
* Being around black people is exhausting, too.
* Chicago, is approaching 400 Black on Black murders, so far this year. Where is the outrage from the citizens of Chicago?
* “For too many Americans, admitting that the U.S. has a race problem, and that black people bear the brunt of that race problem, is an insurmountable task.”
I don’t buy the authors argument for a second. Black people from a cultural perspective have a big problem with violence, period. US DOJ statistics are consistent, blacks account for 12.5% of the population, yet are responsible for 51% of all violent crime. There’s no way getting around that, yet the author wants to ignore the elephant in the room.
Let me help the author. There are roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the nation, and about 900,000 sworn cops. There is a tiny minority among that large group that has no business being cops because they are racists, power freaks, predators, incompetent, you name it. There is no magic screening process that will bar their entry into the police ranks, there is no training that will make them better cops, heck you can’t even make them decent human beings – but they are still there, minimally competent in civil service protected jobs, one tragedy away from the evening news.
There is no such thing as perfect policing, and no one is going to pay more in taxes to try reach that impossible goal, either. Since its a given there are bad cops out there, then why on God’s earth would young black men keep insisting on testing the waters by assaulting cops, resisting arrests, getting high on PCP and arming themselves with a weapon they refuse to drop when ordered to do so? The Chicago kid came across one of these bad cops, and he did not deserve to be shot down like a dog. What his family needs to accept, however, is that he had no business doing what he did at the time he came across the bad cop.
Grad photo aside, he was on PCP, doing auto burgs, and armed.
* Don’t do drugs and commit crime. Police, racism, shootings, these won’t be issues if you don’t do those two things. Trust me.
* High on PCP, slashing police car tires & brandishing a blade…HE DID NOT deserve to be shot by that psycho cop 16 times but…you know, if he was in the library studying on a weeknight at 10pm instead of smoking some sherm, perhaps things might have been different.
I moved out of the house at 19 and did terribly stupid things all the time and managed to survive it. But sometimes kids don’t. The cop needs to be convicted, but the poor kid was culpable as well.
* Sometimes I wonder if the best solution would have been to repatriate the slaves, with a generous gift of money, back to Africa following the Civil War. In the long run I bet the former slaves also would have been happier. In fact, of that I have absolutely no doubt.
* In nearly all of these events, the suspect ran or was resisting. That’s not “bizarre racial gymnastics!” That’s violating the law and subjecting yourself to needless risk. I really take umbrage with that statement by Dexter.
* What’s exhausting is to constantly hear the media, activists and almost an entire community who thinks all these events occur in a vacuum. The suspect is never at fault or even partially at fault. No one is expected to bear any personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions. No, these are all blameless little saints doing nothing provocative and those damned racist police (even when they’re “of color”) are always at fault. All with a healthy dose of insinuation that every white person in the US is somehow culpable. Yeah, its exhausting all right.
* I can’t look past Dexter’s haircut. Come on.
* Imagine being brown. That’s actually invisible. Is it exhausting not existing? In a city that’s 50% Hispanic and 10% African-American how many black writers and how many brown writers does the la times have? How many columns do they run on the Hispanic experience?
While they tilt at every windmill they somehow are blind to the community they are supposed to be serving. If you just read this paper you would think the numbers were flipped that it’s 50% African-American and 10% Hispanic.
* Since you are the majority now you should stop whining. You have an absolute majority. Encourage your people to do well in school and go to college. That’s a start.
* Exactly right… you would think this country is 60% white, 30% black, 10% hispanic, and .01% asian the way the media reports things.
* How many white, black, and Asian writers and reporters does La Opinión have?
* That is kind of the thing that bothers me about the black leadership. It’s like black kids are worth more to them dead than alive. I mean seriously, South LA doesn’t have to be that dangerous but what are the city leaders doing about it? Nothing unless someone is killed by a police officer.
* I taught in South LA and it was clear that the political leadership there does nothing about quality of life issues. In fact, often thousands are spent on the funeral of a young black male but how much attention was given to him when he was alive? This is a legitimate question. There is a ton of posturing, but when you get down to it, no jobs materialize in South LA and the city’s answer to everything it more police or gentrification.
* Poor, exhausted Dexter! And, apparently, poor, exhausted everyone else, per his column (except, of course, non-immigrant heterosexual white males, who basically just hang out on Bill Gates’ yacht while playing polo with Price Harry on the fantail.)
It’s haaaaaard being Dexter. My sympathies!
