Race: Still America’s Flashpoint

Mike Polensek is not a racist. I’m not a racist. We both love Cleveland. However, if you had been listening in to the radio talk show that we both appeared on last Saturday (Aug. 4), you might have been hard-pressed to discern that fact. Our very brief verbal wrangling, sparked by the self-described “hate letter” he sent 18-year-old Arsenio Winston (who was recently indicted for selling drugs in the councilman’s ward), would lead one to believe that we are polar opposites in terms of what each of us want for Cleveland; and that is simply not the case. We both care deeply about our city ... and indeed, the region — and our country as well. We just happen to view some matters from a different perspective; which is understandable and not incompatible with us seeking solutions to the myriad problems facing our communities.

A few weeks ago when I first responded in print to the letter Polensek wrote (see the Cool Cleveland archives if you missed it) my point was — and remains — nasty letters alone will not solve the problem, but with that said, I honestly believe the best place for the young thug who sparked the debate is prison. According to government statistics he is twice as likely to die a violent death in the streets as in the joint. Nonetheless, people read and internalize what they wish, and gloss over the rest. More than a few White Polensek supporters wrote me to say how tired they were with everything always being about race. Polensek himself said on the radio show that he was “tired of this race crap.”

If White folks think they are tired of race being the central issue in American culture, if they just think they are tired of hearing about race all the time, then they ought to try being Black. I’m really, really tired of it, but I cannot escape it any more than I can escape my black skin. I wish, hope and pray for that day when, as Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently stated, people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Unfortunately, that day has yet to arrive in America and it oftentimes seems such a long way off.

Blacks neither started the racial acrimony extant in America today, nor do we perpetuate it; no minority in any country on the face of the earth has the power or wealth to control the Zeitgeist, we always are in reaction mode to how we are being treated by the majority culture. In fact, in one brief period during the 60s we actually thought that we were going to slay the dragon of racism in America ... but oh how wrong we were. No, we didn’t invent “White flight” and the wholesale abandonment of the principles of the civil rights movement ... Whites did that and now they just want to forget about it.

Some Whites mistakenly think that we Blacks just absolutely love complaining about matters racial; that we are always looking for something racial to bitch about. But allow me to let you in on a little secret: That’s not true. For us, the issue just won’t go away; we live it. Whites, on the other hand, can just move further and further out — if they can afford it. The whites that usually complain the loudest about race are the ones that are financially trapped and can’t escape their new Black neighbors.

The “melting pot” theory just didn’t work in our case. We’re confronted with race in one way or another almost on a daily basis, especially if we journey into corporate or cultural America — which is still largely White owned and controlled. I’ve rarely been to a gathering of educated, middleclass Black folks where race is not one of the main topics before the evening is over. Whites really have no idea how tiring the subject of race is to Blacks.

It’s not that most (or even that many) Whites are racist, they’re not; it’s just that they don’t care about race... it’s not their problem; they’d rather not deal with it. But, in the end, that is the problem — like it or not, race is their problem too. But racism is so institutionalized in America, so ingrained into our psyche (of both Whites and Blacks), so overpowering in so many ways both large and small, that we’re afraid to fight the giant. It’s so much easier for us to pretend that the two-ton elephant is not sitting on the couch in our national living room — farting. Talk of race makes Whites uncomfortable and Blacks angry; and sometimes it’s the other way around. However, until we can engage in open, non-judgmental and non-accusatory dialogues about race things will continue to change only at a snail’s pace — if at all.

The truth is, America’s “problem” today has morphed; it now has more to do with class than with race, but we are too close to the issue to realize it. For centuries the wealthy ruling class in our country has convinced Blacks and Whites they are natural enemies, and kept us fighting over the same few crumbs while they feast all the way to the bank (which, by the way, is now off-shore). But, as the fictional cinematic character, California Senator Jay Billington Bulworth, stated (and it bears oft repeating) “White people have more in common with Black people than they do with rich people,” and the sooner they realize it the better off we all will be.

They (in this case, “they” being the folks who are leisurely clipping their coupons on the French Rivera) just love keeping most working and middle-class Whites worrying about who’s moving in next door, the color of the child sitting next to theirs in the classroom, and whether affirmative action level the economic playing field for all Americans. Meanwhile, HMOs, Big Oil, giant pharmaceutical companies and their minions on Wall Street rape, loot and plunder the economy on a scale not seen since the days of the Robber Barons.

Time was, while the guy working on the auto assembly line was making his $40,000 per year (and living quite comfortably) the head of the company might be making 10 times as much; now corporate CEOs make literally tens of millions per year, which works out to thousands of times as much as the average worker. There is something very wrong with that. How did they pull this off? By keeping us distracted by matters as trivial as skin color.

We trail every other industrialized nation in the world in important markers such as the percentage of citizens without adequate healthcare, real knowledge attained by our high school students, and the quality of the air we all breathe ... and we are stuck on stupid — squabbling over race. Take a look at a list of the poorest cities in the country, and then compare that to a list of the most racially polarized cities in the country and the results are startling; the lists are almost identical. Not only is racism stupid, it also evidently causes poverty.

I have two passions: Gardening and cycling. I’m somewhat of a novice at the latter, but I’m a master gardener. I’d like to write a book about “Gardening in the Inner-City,” to show people how abandoned lots can be turned into profit-making ventures. However, my nose is held so closely to the grindstone of race that I must use whatever talent I have as a writer to try to conquer this unruly beast that refuses to come to heel and is eating away at the heart of America. I quite literally don’t have the time or luxury to write about what I really love.

I, like every other American, love my country, but Uncle Sam is a sick old soul. He’s suffering from the cancer of racism, the cirrhosis of sexism, the blocked arteries of homophobia, and the high blood pressure caused by toxic waste dumps (not to mention bridges that are collapsing). It’s up to all of us to try to help him get well — and we can’t do that by whistling past the grave yard and pretending all is well ... when it clearly isn’t. We all must engage in open, honest, and ultimately healing, debate about the problem of race that plagues us. Yes, it’s sometimes painful and oftentimes emotional, but it’s the only prescriptive that has a chance of working.

Let’s talk.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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