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THE BATTLE FOR MODeRN 1923


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stevie wonder is ok. he’s blind.’

I was 7 years old and equal parts con­fused and pleased that my (at the time) ex­treme­ly racist dad was al­low­ing me to watch a pop mu­sic video (these that he an­gri­ly dis­missed as “n****r mu­sic” with a tone that was al­most en­tire­ly con­tempt) even if the rea­son he was giv­ing didn’t re­al­ly make much sense. 

My fa­ther was stri­dent­ly racist from a life lived on the kind of rails that would have made any oth­er re­sult un­like­ly if com­plete­ly im­pos­si­ble. He was raised in the kind of small Iowa farm­ing town where you didn’t have to ac­tive­ly hate blacks be­cause you’d nev­er see one in the first place. 

It was a “sun­down town” un­til 1979, and proud­ly. If you can imag­ine a world where every­one had seen Star Wars and black peo­ple weren’t al­lowed to own prop­er­ty let alone be in town af­ter dark, then that’s the per­verse Twi­light Zone episode that in­cu­bat­ed my dad.

My fa­ther had a head full of bad ideas that had to be road-test­ed out. But back to Ste­vie Wonder’s blindness …

Ste­vie Won­der is OK. He’s blind.”

I nev­er asked my dad what he meant by that but I nev­er for­got it. What I feel like he was say­ing based on what he said and how he said it is that Stevie’s lack of sight paid off some of the orig­i­nal sin of him be­ing a black man in the first place. That’s the les­son I took from it any­way. And it was a les­son I’d see re­in­forced over the years grow­ing up in Belle­vue, Nebraska. 

Belle­vue is a small sub­urb of Om­a­ha and the old­est city in Ne­bras­ka. It’s es­sen­tial­ly part-bed­room com­mu­ni­ty part-base hous­ing for the Air Force’s Strate­gic Air Com­mand next door. We moved there when I was 5 to take ad­van­tage of its su­pe­ri­or school dis­trict. We didn’t re­al­ly have any mon­ey but Belle­vue was cheap and this was a mi­cro-Slums of Bev­er­ly Hills way to get us into bet­ter schools. It was also (ow­ing to that same air force base) a much more mixed com­mu­ni­ty racial­ly, a mix that also ex­tend­ed to our schools. 

It’s a cliche by now that chil­dren aren’t in­her­ent­ly racist and that is true. It was also the tail end of the 1970s when all the Aquar­i­an post-hip­pies and PBS types were mak­ing sure we knew about the civ­il rights move­ment and Dr King etc. Hav­ing black friends wasn’t some­thing you thought about, it was just some­thing you did. 

But over time I saw that same at­ti­tude my fa­ther had to­ward Ste­vie Won­der played out again and again by teach­ers, by coach­es, by adult rel­a­tives, by oth­er par­ents. I saw it fore­most in the con­cept of ‘the good ones.’ You know where I’m go­ing with this. The tired racial cliche about X be­ing ‘one of the good ones,’ a lit­mus test nev­er ap­plied to oth­er whites.

Black peo­ple were born with a debt, and the debt of that orig­i­nal sin need­ed to be paid. With tal­ent (ath­let­ic prowess be­ing the most valu­able), men­tal and ver­bal (read: white) ar­tic­u­la­tion (dou­bly of­fen­sive since its couched in shock that blacks should even be ca­pa­ble of it in the first place), threat-neu­ter­ing dis­abil­i­ty (hey Ste­vie!), or per­son­al ac­qui­es­cence to all the above racist tropes. There’s a rea­son so many to­tal­ly-not-racist whites love that Chris Rock bit. You know the one.

As we got through Jr High and into High School and we were all steeped in the same cul­tur­al bull­shit as our par­ents, this the­o­ry I had be­came more de­fined around the edges. Black ath­letes were giv­en a temp pass so long as they un­der­stood on some sub­lim­i­nal lev­el that they were rep­re­sent­ing All Blacks and as such shouldn’t act too black. The same went for black peo­ple en­ter­ing the armed forces. I could­nt help but get the sense from how they were in­clud­ed and some­times not in­clud­ed that there was an un­spo­ken un­der­stand­ing that they were pay­ing down the orig­i­nal sin of their color. 

If you’re still read­ing at this point, that’s where I am go­ing with this: White su­prema­cy isn’t just about us­ing racial ep­i­thets. You don’t have to use the n‑word or burn a cross to be a white su­prema­cist. It’s much more in­sid­i­ous than that. 

White su­prema­cy is not lis­ten­ing to peo­ple of col­or when they tell you what it is to live as a PoC in Amer­i­ca in 2017. 

White su­prema­cy is sup­port­ing a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date with white na­tion­al­ists in his in­ner circle.

White su­prema­cy is equat­ing Black Lives Mat­ter with the KKK or the Nazis for dar­ing to stand up to the KKK and the Nazis. 

And white su­prema­cy is ab­solute­ly let­ting that shit slide from ac­quain­tances, friends, and fam­i­ly mem­bers. You don’t need a white polo and a cit­ronel­la torch to be a white supremacist. 

We need to do bet­ter and we need to ex­pect the peo­ple we as­so­ciate with to *be* better.
 
 

—ja­son malmberg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2017 Ja­son Malmberg.

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Der Tung
Posted
Wed 23 Aug 2017

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