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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Sometimes I wish I could try on white skin"
Last edited Thu Aug 6, 2020, 03:23 PM - Edit history (2)
By Arnold Ragas:
Sometimes my black life matters.
"It mattered the day I was walking to my car at Lenox when I was ordered inside a police car until I sufficiently explained my purpose for being in the deck. My keys in hand provided no clue. It mattered the very next time I was in the deck and again ordered inside a police car until I again sufficiently explained my purpose.
My black life mattered the day I was helping someone move her furniture from her apartment to a moving van when several police officers pointed their guns at me until I sufficiently explained my purpose. Carrying a microwave to a moving van provided no clue.
My black life mattered the day I was looking through storefront windows and police detained me and questioned me until I sufficiently explained my purpose. It mattered further when I reached into my pocket for my wallet and they pulled their guns on me. My black life almost became matter on the pavement.
https://medium.com/arnoldragas/sometimes-my-black-life-matters-a390ccc049c
bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)GreenPartyVoter
(72,377 posts)malaise
(267,808 posts)Thanks for this
Rec
soothsayer
(38,601 posts)kimbutgar
(20,876 posts)I feel so embarrassed now that when I was young I wasn't either all black or white. I hated being a person who could be identified both ways. The black girls were so mean to me in high school because I had pale skin and nice hair and the white girls didnt know what to make of me. I had many different friend of ethic backgrounds who accepted me fortunately. In college I expressed my angst To a professor who told me I was a person of the future. I had hoped by my age there wouldnt be so much racial bigotry but here it is in full force Vomited up everyday by an illegitimate president stoking the flames. And its so obvious he has emboldened the police even more to racially profile an obvious black man who is just living an authentic lawful life.
Ohio Joe
(21,656 posts)wcast
(595 posts)"Or just maybe my skin is the sin and no accomplishment vaccine can inoculate me. "
Arkansas Granny
(31,483 posts)SaveOurDemocracy
(4,398 posts)...entirely cut off family and friends who rage against BLM; I wish you'd post this and then let us know their response, how they attempt to dismiss this man's words.
Thanks for posting Heartstrings.
spudspud
(508 posts)That's their go to dismissal for all such accounts. It allows them to ignore reality, while simultaneously getting a dig in.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)If you try to encourage a MAGAt to read it, theyd just spew their lies and skip away, Oh Im too busy to argue...
BobTheSubgenius
(11,535 posts)...would trade places with me, and I'm RICH!"
- Chris Rock
BGBD
(3,282 posts)I would 100% trade places with Chris Rock.
Decoy of Fenris
(1,954 posts)littlemissmartypants
(22,418 posts)volstork
(5,394 posts)Thank you for sharing.
AZ8theist
(5,339 posts)That a percentage of our population has to live like this....
Even after a bloody civil war was fought. Here we are 160 years later and not much has changed.
FUCK the racists and bigots. Starting with the traitorous racist on top of that stinking pile of shit.
Lonestarblue
(9,880 posts)And utter frustration at the inequities of our society. I long for a time when we see the person and not the skin color., though I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.
ChazII
(6,198 posts)had an episode that guest starred Rosa Parks. God transformed Monica from a white Irish angel into a black Irish angel for her to understand what Rosa Parks went through. Towards the end of the show Monica is being chased through the woods as two white men are going to kill this black woman. Monica prayed and was changed back to her white skin. The powerful moment in the show is when she apologized to Rosa Parks for her prayer was 'let me be white again.' Yes, this is fiction but it was a powerful episode especially when Rosa Parks forgave Monica.
soldierant
(6,648 posts)I may even have it on VHS. I have a lot of them.
Sure, it's only a story on a TV show. But most people learn powerfully from story - more powerfully than any other way. I wish people wouldn't belittle fiction just because ot didn't actually happen, Fiction has a truth of its own - or, alternatively, can lie very convincingly in its way.
Delphinus
(11,808 posts)Story is quite powerful. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about this.
soldierant
(6,648 posts)Nice to know I'm not the only person in the world who "gets" that.
FailureToCommunicate
(13,989 posts)This is such a screwed up country.
The Wielding Truth
(11,411 posts)to be treated so poorly.That's why local police should be a must so they will know the people who come and go in their area. I know this happens and it makes me sick. Just because of the color of your skin you are hassled.
Enoki33
(1,584 posts)many, many of us who are not considered part of the dominant society that painfully relate to this. We file it in a folder that is dusty, and move on doggedly over the uneven playing field.
Fla Dem
(23,351 posts)Moostache
(9,895 posts)I can't say it better and I can't describe his experiences at all.
I can only empathize, and try to understand; listen and try to make change happen faster, make the arc of history bend towards justice a little quicker today than yesterday. I can teach my children the truth - that through no action of our own, through a cosmic genetic lottery, we were born with a winning ticket and unearned advantages. We get assumptions of innocence, latitude to be less fearful around police and judges, more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt in all matters; and we did exactly NOTHING to deserve or earn them. Recognizing that this is TRUE, and fundamentally WRONG, is the least I can teach them. And I can assure them that the right thing to do is to speak out against anyone they are around who says otherwise or tries to minimize this reality in favor of a self-servign fiction.
As a white man, all I can say is that I see those experiences as the photo negative of my own, literally exact opposites...and until that changes, until policing changes and profiling and targeting changes, then we ALL have to remain united in a call to make sure that Black Lives Matter as a reminder to ourselves that silence is acceptance and acceptance is killing people who deserve to live their lives as much as anyone else - and worst of all, it is killing some people at much higher rates than others and for too long went unchallenged and unacknowledged - still does for the "all lives" types.
Until we live in a country where Arnold Ragas - and everyone or anyone with dark skin instead of pale skin - can stop feeling like that AT ALL, let alone ALL THE TIME (out of necessity or fear for their very lives), we cannot allow the urgency to fade or the status quo to creep back into a comfort zone for any length of time. Many miles to go, and many weary folks to help along the way, but fighting back against those who divide for political and personal advantage is the least we can all do. If everyone starts with just the least we can, it adds up to a lot.
colorado_ufo
(5,717 posts)a kennedy
(29,462 posts)would be great if we could try on black skin to walk a mile in their shoes too. I keep thinking of Oprah saying she was followed in Harrods in London when she was there. Followed like she was going to steal something......
iluvtennis
(19,757 posts)rurallib
(62,344 posts)scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)rurallib
(62,344 posts)dlk
(11,433 posts)Scarsdale
(9,426 posts)I often think about Trayvon Martin's parents, and am sad that many mothers of young black men have to worry whenever their child goes out for a simple errand to the store. This should not be happening now, at this stage of what is supposed to be a civilized country. It is a disgrace.
dlk
(11,433 posts)Im hopeful that recent events have started the long-needed recognition and reckoning of where our country has been and currently resides. We have much to answer for.
calimary
(80,693 posts)Thanks for posting this, Heartstrings. It's good for everybody's awareness expansion.
Karadeniz
(22,270 posts)scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)posted, and done a 4-paragraph excerpt as requested by the DU Admins.
Here is the link: https://medium.com/arnoldragas/sometimes-my-black-life-matters-a390ccc049c
Medium.com deserves the clicks for the work they publish.
Heartstrings
(7,349 posts)This was sent to me by a friend with no link, so I appreciate you giving me it!
scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)Whenever I see something with no link, I always do a search to see if I can find the original.
Heartstrings
(7,349 posts)Demovictory9
(32,323 posts)thesquanderer
(11,954 posts)Heartstrings
(7,349 posts)Searched and I wasnt able to find any confirmation, but maybe someone else here on du can clarify....
betsuni
(25,128 posts)Hadn't heard of a garage being called a deck.
thesquanderer
(11,954 posts)Clearly it's someplace people park (the full sentence, abbreviated in the excerpt in the OP, was "The keys in my hand and the cars between lines provided no clue" ). From your mall reference, it sounds like it could be what they call one level of a multi-story parking garage.
ETA:
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multistorey_car_park
So yes, it references a multi-level parking structure, but they do call the entire structure a parking deck (as opposed to my earlier guess that that was the name for one level of it).
betsuni
(25,128 posts)Just when you think you've seen the stupidest of them, you find a stupider one. There are hundreds!
Watched one yesterday where a Karen saw a black police officer in full uniform get out of his police car in the parking garbage (or deck) of the building where he lives (what she calls "her building" as they all do -- it's a private property fetish/obsession, and they always claim to know EVERYONE in the building) and followed him in her car yelling at him. She'd accused him of "breaking in the building" and making her feel unsafe. The funny thing is that she was the one filming, so she had evidently posted it online, thinking she was catching a dangerous criminal who had gone to extreme lengths to break into the building by parking and walking to his apartment with a shopping bag in one hand and his apartment keys in the other. The Karens who claim to be so afraid of the "dangerous criminals" that they follow them around and get right in their face and threaten them. Want to see what happens when they do that to an actual real criminal, but of course they never know who the real criminals are.
El Mimbreno
(777 posts)on our county Democratic Party website. Thanks for passing it on.