Comments on Racial and Class Discourse from an Ivory Tower in Connecticut: What the Black Community Can Learn From A Tragic a...

Steve Salerno’s request is totally bogus. While i...

2009-03-23T15:12:00.000-04:00

Steve Salerno’s request is totally bogus. While it does not infuriate me it does strike me as very unoriginal. White liberals, and white people in general, have been telling the ‘minorities’ to look past race for how many generations?! So how does Salerno differ from all of those in the past who have told us that discussing race is foolish, old, a dead issue? He doesn’t. He raises the same dead arguments from their graves and attempts to parade them around as his own original ideas.

Salerno tells us that by continuing to argue about the relevance of race we are working against Brother Martin’s dreams!! Maybe Salerno needs to go back and study Brother Martin a little more. Would Brother Martin really be mad at us for continuing to discuss race when statistics barrage us everyday that show how minorities are incarcerated at vastly higher rates than whites? That unemployment is vastly higher for minorities? That the average wealth of minorities is much lower? I don’t want to venture too far, but I would be willing to bet Salerno doesn’t have any friends rotting away inside prison dungeons like I do. He doesn’t want to face the reality of what’s going on, when 2.3 million Americans are incarcerated with disproportionate numbers of minorities.

Salerno doesn’t want to hear about about it, he’d rather tell us that we are the fools, who are working against our own cause by continuing to talk about race! But although I am a Marxist who believes the class struggle is the preeminent struggle to fight, I would never discount the importance of race because race and class are so tightly intertwined in America.

While Steve could CHOOSE to turn his back on his Italian roots and just be a human being, minorities who are dark-skinned can never do that. Whether Steve chooses to like Da Vinci and Gotti or not, he won’t be pulled over by police because of the color of his skin. The very fact that he can choose to give up his ethnic background shows how far different his life experience is from that of minorities. Italians and Irish people were happy to turn their back on other immigrants and blacks as soon as they became assimilated in American society and became accepted, and that is what Salerno is doing now. We’re happy for you Steve, that you could become assimilated and blend in, sadly we cannot and we will continue to fight this righteous struggle.

After all, how can we fight racism if we don’t talk about race?!?! Or maybe Salerno believes racism doesn’t exist because his enlightened mind sees nothing but human beings? Well while he’s in cloud nine we’re here in the streets where racism is rampant (please just visit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website if you don’t believe me) and we will continue to discuss race and fight racism as long as it’s necessary. If Salerno wants his theories to be taken seriously he needs to show how they will benefit us in the struggle against racism. If he can prove they are more effective at fighting racism than our current method of openly discussing race and exposing racism, then we will gladly give his ideas more merit. Until then, they will be judged for what they are: useless advice which - intentionally or not - would disarm us in the ongoing struggle against racism.

P.S. If you do choose to read my thoughts on race,...

2009-02-27T11:36:00.000-05:00

P.S. If you do choose to read my thoughts on race, please start with the earlier posts first. In later posts, I gave in to the "more pragmatic" inclinations of my audience, who refuse to view the world through a non-racial/post-racial lens. Funny how hard we'll fight to preserve what makes us unhappy.

Bilal, I'd like to open up a dialog here. I guess ...

2009-02-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

Bilal, I'd like to open up a dialog here. I guess the best way to do so is to point you towards my blog, www.shamblog.com, and to ask you--if you're so inclined and have the time--to simply look up my posts on race and racism.

To distill this to a topic sentence (that undoubtedly will strike you as being written from a Euro-centric perspective), I don't understand why we need race. (For one thing, it does not appear to be a biological fact. It's a social construct. I have relatives who are darker than is Barack, and we are, technically, white.) And I don't understand how people who continue to argue for the relevance of race fail to see that they're actually working at cross purposes with Dr. King's vision of a time when people are judged "by the content of their character, not the color of their skin." From my point of view, you don't reach that "promised land" by continually harping on skin color. But anyway, before I wind up writing an essay in its own right, I would simply ask you to look me up, again, if you're so inclined. Some of what you read may, on its surface, infuriate you. However, I hope you will give me credit--if for nothing else--for sincerity. As I've said several times on my own blog, my dad (who faced persecution in his own life) tried to bring me up to be a "proud Italian." It occurred to me very early on that if I wanted to self-identify as Italian, it not only meant taking the credit for the likes of Da Vinci and Dimaggio, but also taking the blame for Capone and Gotti. I decided I'd rather just be me. One individual with no heritage.

Anyway, see what you think.

2009-02-27T11:31:00.000-05:00

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Wow, another great post. I am extremely respectfu...

2009-02-24T11:30:00.000-05:00

Wow, another great post. I am extremely respectful of your ability to navigate the rocky terrain where personal responsibility intersects with social responsibility.

The inability of many liberals to see the social context to issues such as these (issues that aren't very palatable such as abuse and drug dealing) is one of their main faults. Luckily we have someone such as yourself that can carefully and respectfully point out the facts and make sure that America doesn't get off the hook for its culpability in all of this.

My friend (a UHart grad) was good friends with this woman and her murder is truly a tragedy. This cowardly act won't earn the aggressor any respect in prison and he may actually become targeted himself. Once I find out where he's going I'll contact my friends inside and find out his status.