The First Time My Facebook Page "Blew Up"

There is a phrase within certain communities in America. It is a phrase that is in reference to one person or an group of people calling one's cell phone many times, often in rapid succession and usually over a short span of time. The phrase speaks of these people "blowing up your phone." This can occur when its your anniversary and you're suppose to be meeting your honey for dinner and you're running about 20 to 30 minutes or more late and your integrity is beginning to be questioned by that person. It can occur coincidentally when a number of friends randomly decide they want to connect with you. It can occur when bill collectors get bugs up their azzes in that very special way bill collectors tend to get bugs up their azzes. The scenarios are endless. And there are also endless emotional responses we can have. Annoyance is common. So is frustration. Sometimes having our phone blown up inspires a type of affection and warmth that comes with realizing we are loved and cherished enough by at least somebody that they are worrying the hell out of us to make that love known to us through the medium of cell phone technology. I have discovered that a facebook page can also get blown up.

In January of 2009 I had recently created a facebook account. Two months earlier in November of 2008, I had been laid off from my job as a manager at a large AIDS Service Organization non-profit in San Francisco, CA. I was living in a nice, friendly co-housing community in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California; a district known for its high Latino/Latina population and culture but also known for having significant numbers of other people of color residents as well, of which I was one as an African Descended man.

I had opened the facebook account at that particular time for a very specific reason. Even though I had recently been laid off and was now facing large and looming uncertainty about my financial future, I had planned a trip to Europe several months before the lay off and had decided that, despite the lay off, I was going to go through with my European travel plans. Setting up the facebook account was part of my plan for keeping in touch with friends on this part of the international dateline as well as other parts of the world while I traveled. I realized facebook would be a great way to give friends around the world up to the minute updates on whatever adventures and misadventures I would experience in the coming weeks.

I left San Francisco International Airport on December 26, 2008 on a non-stop flight to London's Heathrow Airport. I was going to visit at least three countries. I bought a festive and colorful "Happy New Year" sign with each letter of that phrase individually cut out. I draped it across my window for my roommate and friend Skye to see on New Years Day. I wanted him to know I was thinking about him even though I would be thousands of miles away by the time the actual day arrived.

I arrived in London, met a friend for lunch, and within several hours was on a speeding train to Lille, France to meet another friend Gerard, whose home I would be staying at, in nearby Belgium, for the first leg of my journey. We had a wonderful four days. And then my facebook page blew up.

Early on New Years Day, back stateside and in my Fruitvale neighborhood, at the nearby Fruitvale BART Station, a young African Descended man named Oscar Grant had apparently been shot by a BART police officer. Details were very sketchy at first. But suddenly my newly acquired facebook account was overflowing with angry, shocked and in some cases, totally disbelieving posts from dozens and dozens of my friends in Oakland and from around other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. The first post came from my friend Clay Smith who lived next door and who usually was up in the wee hours of the morning. He was probably one of the first people in the whole city to be on the computer letting people know what was happening. Soon it became very clear that this was a murder that many people were quickly seeing as being unprovoked and another example of Oakland's long and shameful history of excessive police force aimed at young men of color.

From many of these facebook posts I got the clear impression that something very big and something potentially very scary was going down in my beloved Oakland. I don't remember what time of the day it was in Belgium when the first influx of facebook messages and posts about his event came in. I am almost certain in was very early in the a.m. on January 2nd, Belgium time. I had Gerard turn on one of the twenty four hour French news channels on the TV. And sure enough, within minutes was the international report and there were the familiar images of the Fruitvale BART station on the screen and the familiar insignia of the Oakland Police Department on black and white police cruisers on the screen as well. I had frequented that BART station almost every day for more than a year. And this was the same station I had used to start my journey to Europe. I had taken the BART to SFO just a few days earlier. Now this station was on French TV. There was chaos and confusion all palpable in the video images. This BART station seemed nothing like the calm, tranquil BART station I had taken into San Francisco just five days earlier. It had now been transformed into an ugly crime scene. And from what I was hearing from my friends in Oakland, it was also the scene of a New Years Day execution. It was one of the most surreal moments I have had in recent memory. I sat before the TV motionless, in some form of shock. Tears started rolling down my cheeks, uncontrollably. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and seeing.

When the shock wore off a few minutes later, the only feeling I was able to clearly identify was a strong desire to return to Oakland. I seriously considered it. I eventually decided to stay in Europe for the duration of my planned journey. But from that day on, it was a very different journey. My trip had not been ruined. That had not occurred. It was just different now.

I returned about three weeks later. I flew back to San Francisco from London. I took the BART train back to the Fruitvale station. I got off the train, walked a few feet and just stood there on the platform for a very, very long time. I don't know how long I stood there. It was long enough for people to start staring at me. That takes some doing in Oakland. I got my wits about me and walked the three to five blocks back to the house I shared with my friend Skye. I walked into my room. There, draped across the window, was the sign I had placed there just before I had left. "Happy New Year."

THE BEST OF MOYO AFLAME 2011: Why The Eradication of Both White Privilege and Racism Have To Be a Part of the Progressive/Liberal Agenda, Part III, Finale

This piece originally appeared on Moyo Aflame on October 25, 2011

People get tired of racism. People get tired of talking about racism. People get tired of listening to other people talk about racism. It is not only people who are somewhat or largely racist who tire of these discourses. Many people get tired of this topic. I am strongly pushing the bounds of tolerance simply by composing a three part series on this blog about it. Even some of my most loyal fans will likely roll their eyes and shake their heads in disbelief and exasperation when they discover I have written yet another installment on the subject. That's just how averse we are in America to talking about racism. 

I have learned that virtually everyone (who is not black or brown) or who is not very seriously engaged in and committed to some form of active anti-racist work, eventually gets tired of talking about racism and wants to move on to another topic of discussion. Racism is not a sustainable conversation with a very large cross section of American citizens. And if racism is not a sustainable topic, the topics of white privilege and white supremacy, both being realities that are required for racism to even exist, don't really even stand a chance of making it out of the birth canal. It is very much like we as a people are engaged in a type of stealth like behavior, when it comes to discussions around race and white supremacy. We are lying in wait for any random cataclysmic, newsworthy or even pop confection of a story to break so that we can exhale a huge sigh of relief and completely pounce on this new thing, full force, whatever it is, and give energy to it instead of to the ongoing and always relevant discussion of racism.

The problem of course, is that so many of these new things especially the big ones also have very clear racialized or race related and white privilege/supremacy aspects, energies or undertones to them that are so powerful they often simply cannot be ignored---Hurricane Katrina, the signs present at early and ongoing Tea Party rallies, the rhetoric that emerged from those early and ongoing Tea Party rallies, bitherism, the passage of California's proposition 8, the American recession, the passage of Arizona's SB 1070, the ongoing , persistent and unprecedented disrespect and racialized name calling and lampooning aimed at President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, the passage of Alabama's HB 56, the execution of Troy Davis, etc. America is anything but a post racial society yet so many of us so desperately want it to be. This desire is so deep and so insidious it has become as ingrained in the American ethos as racism itself.

Its easy to understand why Americans are so eager to move past racism. It is a very ugly yet integral part of our past history and current reality. It is a national embarrassment. And most people don't enjoy being embarrassed. We tend to want to move past embarrassing episodes in our personal lives as quickly as humanly possible. The same is true for our national lives as well. And it is not just African Americans who have been subjected to the American brand of ethnic based bias, of course. This is a country of the occupied, the enslaved and of immigrants. Every single occupied indigenous nation, family with enslaved ancestors and every immigrant group who has found themselves within the borders of the sea to shining sea-ness known as America has experienced some form of horrifying legacy of ethnicity based bias within these borders. There are the Native people's whose land was initially appropriated, The Jews, The Irish, The Italians, The Germans, The Japanese, The Chinese, The Vietnamese, The Mexicans, The Nicaraguans, The El Salvadorans, etc. One could write a very good and very compelling history of America simply by writing it through the prism of our history of racism and the stain of ethnicity based bias.

Many people also have a very poor level of competency when it comes to discussions around racism. There are voluminous misconceptions. There is a lot of disinformation. People are uneducated or under educated about the subject. People have been told lies that they believe even if covertly so. Some people with media power deliberately repeat these lies. People get very defensive. Some people get seriously irrational. People feel guilty. People feel shamed. Some people experience it as the ultimate "gotcha" conversation. Some are competitive enough to never want to engage in a discourse where they are on the wrong side of that gotcha. People feel buzz killed. I have compassion for all of that. I honestly do. And you know what? Get over it. Because the result of not getting over it, as whomever the genius was in early AIDS activism so solemnly bemoaned, silence = death. It really is as simple as that for me when it comes to my lack of tolerance for people's desire to avoid conversations about race. Silence equals death.

There was a video that circulated around the internet a while ago. It was Morgan Freeman talking to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes about race. Freeman's antidote on the topic was to simply cease and desist when it came to discussions about racism. Morgan Freeman is an imposing and convincing person. Many of my white facebook friends tagged me on their sharing of the video. They praised it endlessly. I was captivated by the video. The teacher of conscious living part of me who understands that one gives power to that which one speaks about, knew exactly what Morgan Freeman was talking about and was drawn in almost completely...but not quite. As more and more of my white friends engaged in deeper and deeper and more enthusiastic praise for Freeman's perspective, I began to notice that none of my black friends were responding to it similarly. And I have many black friends with very strong opinions. Many white Americans desperately want to move past Americas racist history. Black folks response to that is more often along the lines of, "Uh, hold on Sally." Morgan Freeman, I believe, is in an interesting minority in his perspective as far as black Americans go. Lets explore this deeper, shall we.

I went back and watched the Morgan Freeman 60 Minutes interview video again, and again, and again and a few things began to pop out at me. First, there is the undeniable fact that Morgan Freeman has far more class and other forms of privilege than the vast majority of other African Descended men and women in America do. This is important. Its difficult to imagine this having no bearing at all on his philosophy whatsoever. I believe it is largely his privilege speaking when he adopts his colorblind philosophy. Second, in the interview, in defense of his essentially colorblind philosophy, Freeman says to Mike Wallace, "I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man." Seems simple enough, right? For me however, there is one glaring problem with this approach being taken up specifically by Morgan Freeman. 

Here it is:

I very recently watched the video of this exchange yet again. In the meantime, since recording the original program with Wallace, Morgan Freeman has been featured on one of the installments of Professor Louis Henry "Skip" Gates Jr's PBS genealogy program, African American Lives. On this program it is revealed that, like many blacks from The South with the same last name, Freeman's name was taken when his ancestor became free from slavery, as a direct and unmistakable nod to that momentous event. Hence, Free Man. So every single time he is referred to as a black man and especially when he is addressed with the inclusion of his last name or whenever his last name appears in print, Freeman's connection to America's slavery/racist past is being conjured up...literally. And he wants to try to forget that? Move past that? Well, sorry, he can't no matter how hard he tries. It is literally a part of him.

The other big problem with Freeman's approach is that colorblindness usually equals some form of active denial or complicity when the issue is America's relationship to its own racial history and contemporary reality. There is no better place to observe this than in liberal, progressive white America that often believes colorblindness is a very good thing. It isn't. I do believe in the spiritual understanding that we give power to what we speak about. I have discovered however, that there are clear limitations to the application of this. When it comes to social justice advancements in the recorded history of humankind, such advancements have never, ever been achieved through silence. They've never ever been achieved simply through osmosis. They have been achieved through acknowledgment and then the long, hard work that follows and always with the ongoing acknowledgement just a half step behind whatever the current hard work calls for. Morgan Freeman's solution may be an appropriate one at some point in America's future. It is not a solution for the current American ethos around the issues of race, white supremacy, white privilege and black oppression and genocide.

On-site links:
Why The Eradication of Both White Privilege and Racism Have To Be a Part of the Progressive/Liberal Agenda, Part I

Why The Eradication of Both White Privilege and Racism Have To Be a Part of the Progressive/Liberal Agenda, Part II, OCCUPIED Edition

Why The Eradication of Both White Privilege and Racism Have To Be a Part of the Progressive/Liberal Agenda, Part I

And there's the rub.

In America, at least, in terms of political strategy, we have left wing politics and we have right wing politics. That, of course, is overly simplistic. It however, is not so overly simplistic as to significantly obscure the fundamental reality of current American political structure. There are what are observed by many as extremes on each of those poles, naturally. Yet even these extremes are not so dissimilar from the less extreme nor moderate expressions from which they are a part, to necessitate a completely different rubric being used or proposed.

Race is a completely made up construct, of course. There is no proven biologically based feasibility to the construct whatsoever. Many have attempted to discover such feasibility. Each, to date, has failed miserably. So why is there such cachet, so much gnashing of teeth, such vitriol and so much power attached to this construct if it is completely made up? The answer: The two principal artifacts of the invention of the construct of race are white privilege (or white supremacy to be more accurate) and racism. In stark and revealing contrast to the construct of race itself, these two artifacts are very real indeed. There is not one single person on the entire planet earth who has not been dramatically impacted and affected by both of these artifacts in some way, I don't believe. And every single one of the people with the greatest wealth and power on the planet has benefited enormously from them both. This is true even if they sincerely did not want to benefit from them and even if they are a person of color; which the vast majority clearly are not (see this). These people have simply achieved their accomplishments in spite of white privilege and racism, in such cases. You cannot ever convince me that there are not many blacks who have worked just as hard as Oprah Winfrey has. You just can't (if you take the time to meticulously peruse that list of the 400 richest people in America, you will notice Oprah is the only African American on the list. There are exactly zero African American men on it. That is not a coincidence. That is not an accident. It is by design!)

One thing that also needs to be kept in mind here is that there is no such thing as a truly self made man or woman on the face of the planet either. Every single person who has accomplished whatever has been accomplished in his or her life regardless of discipline or scope or arena has been achieved with the assistance of a virtual army of other largely unseen and unknown people.

The right wing in America, for the most part, makes little pretense about their engagement in cashing in on and exploiting the construct of race. The reigning poster child for this cashing in on and exploitation has to be none other than Herman Cain, Republican candidate for president in these United States of America. I see no irony in the fact that he is African American and has undoubtedly been on the receiving end of racism and that his "successes" have most certainly been curtailed by white privilege as well. Naturally, he seems to be very averse to admitting this, publicly at least. The only thing that is potentially tragic about Herman Cain would be some revelation that he sincerely believes he will get the Republican nomination. It would be very sad indeed if he ever believed such a thing. It would however provide quite a bit of fodder to those in America who deeply believe in the concept of karma. Lest there be any uncertainty, let me clear it up once and for all, Herman Cain is not going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012 in these United (divided) States of America.

On the left, particularly in the so called progressive left, we have what appears at first glance to be a more complex and complicated situation. Don't be fooled. It is a ruse. True, many who are a part of the ruse may not really consciously know they are part of a ruse. Still, they are part of a ruse nonetheless. There are also people on the left who are actively not a part of the ruse. They are primarily certain breeds of anarchists and revolutionaries. The easiest way to expose those who participate in the ruse, consciously or otherwise, and who are white, is to gather a bunch of white progressive liberals in a room and present a proposition to them. It begins with a question: "How many of you are willing to completely dismantle your white privilege by surrendering and liquidating all of your financial assets, giving up your American way of life and going and living the rest of your lives in Liberia, West Africa?" Followed by the dissemination of the following additional information: "One way tickets have already been purchased for you. All you need to do is go to the back of the room where you will find lawyers and financial consultants who will assist you in the liquidation of all of your assets. When that process is completed, then you just need to come to front of the room and collect your one way plane tickets. Planes will be leaving in exactly two weeks. At that time you will need to do whatever is necessary in your personal lives to allow you to leave at the appointed time. Spouses, significant others and family members are of course welcome to join you. We have made provisions for that. Everything is being underwritten by a personal contribution by George Soros. In Liberia, of course, only people of Black African descent can become citizens and therefore own land. We have arranged with Liberian officials for you to live there indefinitely but without the benefit of citizenship." 

There would be people of African Descent and other people of color in the room whose role would be to simply sit back and see how many people make their way to the back of the room and then to the front. This ladies and gentlemen is an experiment that would likely end up significantly deconstructing the supposed deep differences between the American left wing and the American right wing when it comes to the artifacts of white privilege and racism and the role they play in each groups real lives.

Most white people are not willing to give up their white privilege even if they are very well educated about race theory, white privilege, the tyranny of left wing color blindness and such. I understand that. I get it. At the same time however, it is this reality which all non whites spend our entire lives intimately dealing with every single day. The hypothetical I presented above, is pointing that and a number of other things out. And it all still reflects a real problem for white progressive liberals in America because it is literally the big white elephant in the room for such progressive liberals in this country. Most have not discovered ways to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to being, in a very deep way, allies to people of color while simultaneously confronting their own white privilege and in some cases the addition of what we know as class privilege. I know many white progressive liberals who are smart, active, dedicated to change and with all kinds of other positive attributes who ultimately still get caught up in the white privilege web. All white people benefit from both white privilege and racism including white progressive liberals. At some point this has to be more than simply acknowledged though sincere acknowledgement is a very good starting point.

While doing research for this essay I inadvertently came across a blog by a Russian American young woman who is a self identified progressive liberal living in the USA. She is smart, highly educated, dedicated to social change, compassionate and a social justice activist. I landed on a post where she was discussing a piece by renowned anti-racist writer and lecturer, Tim Wise. The quote I will provide below illustrates very clearly to me and hopefully to you, the problem of the white progressive liberal in America today with regard to white privilege and race.

"I recently read an article by Tim Wise, who according to himself is “among the nation’s most prominent anti-racist educators.” 

The article starts with an assumption: “Whites generally have…white privilege” and that this privilege is “unearned.” 

He speaks of white people as if we all share the same culture, ignoring the differences of experience among immigrants and others who are white skinned but do not belong to the “dominant culture”. To make an example of myself: I felt alienated a lot in my young years as a result of having parents who did not partake in the american (especially materialistic) lifestyle. No, I wasn’t discriminated against for being from Russia per say, but (for years) my clothes did not fit in and the things the other kids did (go to the movies, mc’donalds, eating chinese food) I could not do and so those “dominant culture” kids kept away from me (resulting in perhaps depressed self esteem and poorer performance in school) It wasn’t an issue of poverty because we weren’t that poor. Doing these things was simply not a part of my parents culture. But Wise disregards such experiences or demotes them and I take issue with that. In any society where people of diverse backgrounds integrate, there will be a tug-of-war between this need to fit in and maintaining your own culture. This is normal and inevitable. It’s not a bad idea to mitigate the rifts somehow – but how?

So white children and wealthy children should be punished because of attributes they were born into/with? It reminds me of this moral dilemma story about the doctor with 5 sick patients who need different organs to survive, and one healthy man who comes to his office. Is killing this man and taking his organs to save the other patients justifiable? In the white/non-white student situation the consequences are even more muddy. Sacrificing one child for the sake of another doesn’t result in a 4x benefit...

...The reason that the presence of a non-white person in certain schools may be questioned is because affirmative action DOES rig the system! Very often standards WERE lowered to foster diversity." (emphasis is the original writers, not mine).

We have a lot of work to do. Please leave me a comment if you are unable to see the many problems with that quote. I will not take a condescending tone with you. On the contrary, I will compassionately and pain stakingly point out in very clear detail all its very problematic elements.

Friendships Between Black Men and White Women, Part I

In 1990 I enjoyed a very pleasant and nice lunch with a white female friend at a restaurant in a mid-sized Central Kentucky city. This was something we did frequently. We had arrived at the restaurant in my friends car. When we returned to her car to head home, someone had scrawled in the dirt on the car the words “nigger lover” on one of the car doors.

Four years later in the same state though in a different city approximately 30 miles away, I went to a different restaurant, a Denny's, after 1 am with several white gay male friends after having socialized together at a local gay bar until the bars closing time. The Denny's was located in one of the more diverse neighborhoods in this city of between 250,000 and 300,000. The neighborhood had a significant number though not a majority of African American residents. We all felt very comfortable in the neighborhood. We had all been to this Denny's as a group many times before. We were all very good friends and we always had a great time whenever we were all together. That early morning outing was no exception.

Sometime between our order being taken and when our food arrived, a young white woman we had not noticed earlier (I did say we were a group of gay men didn't I) walked up to a table not far from ours where a young black man and a young white woman were seated. The one white woman walked right up to the table, got about a foot from the face of the young woman sitting there and said in what seemed to be the loudest voice she could muster, “You are a disgrace to your race you f*king b*tch. You're nothing but a f*king nigger lover. Somebody ought to slap some f*king sense into you. And I just may be the one to do it”

It was an early Saturday morning. This Denny's was one of the few places open in the city after hours. Hence, it was fairly well packed with an extremely diverse group of people many of whom had similarly arrived from various watering holes throughout the city for an early morning snack or meal. There was a substantial wait staff on hand and there was a night shift manager on the premises who was a muscular white male who was the size and build of a professional wrestler. He appeared to be in his late 20s to early 30s.

The woman who came to the table of the black man and white woman did not stop her tirade after her initial outburst. She went on and on for what seemed like an eternity though in reality it was probably around 10 minutes. She never once acknowledged nor looked in the direction of the black man whatsoever. Her full and undivided attention was searingly focused on the other white woman. At one point she angrily challenged the woman sitting at the table to go outside with her and engage in a fight. The table she herself had been sitting at which contained a group of white men and woman loudly cheered her on when she proposed that challenge. For their part, the black man and the white woman sitting at the table didn't say a word. From the instant the one white woman had opened her mouth they lowered their heads and seemed to be wishing they each had the superpower of invisibility. None of the wait staff said a word throughout the entire tirade. The manager, who was visible to everyone throughout the incident, didn't say a word and took no action. No one in the restaurant said a word nor took any action. Finally, one of the white gay men at our table jumped up and rushed over to the manager, got in his face and screamed, “Will you call the f*king police or something a-hole!” At this, the screaming woman and all of her friends collected themselves and rushed out of the restaurant. I didn't notice if they paid their bill or not. The young black man and young white woman at the table kept their collective heads lowered, speechless. They were obviously traumatized. Everyone at my table openly vowed to never return to the restaurant again. I don't know about the others but I kept that promise. I and no one in the restaurant likely had any idea if the black man and white woman at the table were romantically linked or merely had a platonic relationship. There was no overt affection expressed between them. I for one have gone out numerous times and at all hours of the day and night with many different white female friends.

Now, when these two events took place I was in my early to mid 30s. I have other stories I could tell that both pre-date and post-date these two. They are stories that take place in this same part of the country and in other parts of the country as well. They are stories that occur in communities much smaller and communities much larger than these two. The common denominator in all of them is that they involve me—a black man, and at least one of my white female friends. For many years I have had many close and important relationships with white women. Not all of the stories I could tell involves racism and/or overt bigotry. They each however, express some of the numerous and complex dynamics that can be present whenever black men and white woman develop friendships in a decidedly race and gender conscious culture and where black men and white woman are often viewed as being at opposing ends of that cultural channel. So many things come into play here—power dynamics, money, socioeconomic statuses, sexuality, classism, perceived gender and race based cultural worth, etc. The most horrifying of the stories I could tell involves me and one of my very closest white female friends who at the time the story takes place was pregnant. Hint: It too took place in The American South and the lovely people we encountered on that fateful day mistakenly made the assumption I was the father of my friends unborn child...

©Raven/Sage Mahosadha

Today's Wisdom From Audre Lorde: There is no Hierarchy of Oppressions

Audre Lorde, 1980

There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions                           

I was born Black, and a woman. I am trying to become the strongest person I can become to live the life I have been given and to help effect change toward a liveable future for this earth and for my children. As a Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, poet, mother of two including one boy and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself part of some group in which the majority defines me as deviant, difficult, inferior or just plain "wrong."

From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sexes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression. I have learned that sexism (a belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over all others and thereby its right to dominance) and heterosexism (a belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving over all others and thereby its right to dominance) both arise from the same source as racism-- a belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby its right to dominance.

"Oh," says a voice from the Black community, "but being Black is NORMAL!" Well, I and many Black people of my age can remember grimly the days when it didn't used to be!

I simply do not believe that one aspect of myself can possibly profit from the oppression of any other part of my identity. I know that my people cannot possibly profit from the oppression of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence. Rather, we diminish ourselves by denying to others what we have shed blood to obtain for our children. And those children need to learn that they do not have to become like each other in order to work together for a future they will all share.

The increasing attacks upon lesbians and gay men are only an introduction to the increasing attacks upon all Black people, for wherever oppression manifests itself in this country, Black people are potential victims. And it is a standard of right-wing cynicism to encourage members of oppressed groups to act against each other, and so long as we are divided because of our particular identities we cannot join together in effective political action.

Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.

It is not accidental that the Family Protection Act, which is virulently anti-woman and anti-Black, is also anti-gay. As a Black person, I know who my enemies are, and when the Ku Klux Klan goes to court in Detroit to try and force the Board of Education to remove books the Klan believes "hint at homosexuality," then I know I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, .wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.

Racism and Other Related Topics 101: Broken Down and Made Simple

Racism

Racism is the belief in inherent racial differences amongst and between different sets of people's. This belief is then used as a justification for non-equal treatment of the entire population of members of a certain race (sic). The important knockout punch here and that is packed with racism is provided by this—a group possessing the belief in these inherent differences also possessing the social capitol and “power” to enforce their racist views and beliefs within a cultural, governmental and/or global context. This understanding is also one of the core elements behind the term “institutionalized” or “structural" racism.

Most post modern biologists, anthropologists and sociologists reject the idea of “race” that is an important aspect of the concept of racism, preferring to rely on more empirically verifiable concepts such as ethnicity. These truths however, have not found their way into the common understanding of the average person nor has the power of racism been significantly reduced and certainly not nullified as a result of this fact.

Institutionalized Racism (aka: Structural Racism)

Institutionalized racism occurs when racist ideas, philosophies, attitudes and enforcement become enshrined in a culture’s fundamental and important institutions such as a cultures governmental institutions, financial institutions, educational institutions, political institutions, judicial institutions, law enforcement institutions, etc. It is racial discrimination by these and other large and powerful institutions that have the power to influence the lives of a very large cross section of people. Stokely Carmichael is credited with inventing the term in the late 1960s.

With these understandings it becomes clear that one and only one socio-political cultural group on the planet has the inherent and demonstrated power to universally translate the racism that exists in the hearts, souls and minds of some of its members, into a powerful channel of enforcement—white people.

Prejudice

Prejudice is simply a pre-judgment or assumptions made about someone or a group of people without the requisite or corresponding knowledge or information to substantiate such a judgment.

Discrimination

Discrimination is prejudicial treatment of an individual or an entire group of people based solely on their membership in a certain group.

“Reverse Racism”

Other ethnic groups such as African American's, Arabs, Latinos, Ethnic Chinese, various Indigenous Peoples, American Indians, Jews (who do not assimilate as whites) and others may have members who hold extremely biased and prejudiced attitudes and beliefs against other races (sic) and ethnic groups. None of these groups however, have historically nor in current times had the same degree of social power to enforce their views in the same ways that white people have. Such people and groups may have the power to enforce such views regionally but certainly not globally. The sheer overarching power of white people on a global and social scale is simply too massive for that.

Such ethnic groups may also have members who believe their racial (sic) or ethnic group is superior to white people. In a practical sense, this does not matter because there is no corresponding social power to enforce such a stance on global cultural reality. The most such an ethnic group member can engage in is hate speech and/or ethnically based terrorism and/or ethnic cleansing. These are terrible and horrifying sure enough. This however, is not the same as having the global power and all the systems thereof to back up ones actions with. And in any case hate speech, terrorism, and genocide/ethnic cleansing are also the evidential purview of white racists/supremacists as well, as history has well taught us and continues to teach us. 

Whatever non white racial (sic) or ethnic group such a person is a member of will be one that does not ultimately possess the overarching social power to enforce such beliefs in anywhere near the degree a white person/group would be able to.

Given this understanding, a term such a “reverse racism” is essentially a red herring/straw man of a term primarily used to confuse, manipulate and alter the truth/discourse in conversations around race, ethnicity, power, white privilege, etc. The phrase has no real meaning except in the minds of those who choose to use or believe in the legitimacy of such a term. In reality this term is a made up term with no real practical or legitimate social meaning whatsoever.

“Playing the Race Card”

Similarly, the phrase “playing the race card” is also a red herring/straw man of a phrase. This term is often used as an indication that a member of any racial (sic) or ethnic group other than white people has the power in fact to use their very real societal and cultural victimization in a way to gain some kind of real demonstrable power in a specific situation. For example, it is often used in legal/courtroom proceedings as a way to present the theory that a real or imagined crime committed by a member of a non-dominant racial or ethnic group such as African Americans, can be minimized, justified or erased because the person belongs to a group that has historically been victimized in one or more ways. This is what people who believe in the concept of reverse racism would like us all to believe. It is essentially a very well constructed wool such people attempt to use to pull over the eyes of unsuspecting naive people and people who don't really have a firm grasp on how white privilege and racism intercept in the world.

Here is what people who believe in reverse racism don't want you to know: In reality, it is only white people who can consistently and successfully use the so called race card against members of other racial (sic) and ethnic groups because only white people, in most situations, have the social capitol and power to do so. An example of this can be seen in the 2008 general election in California specifically regarding the ballot initiative known as Proposition 8. Here was an initiative that set out to define marriage as something that could only legitimately exist between one man and one woman. In essence it was an attempt to even further marginalize non-heterosexual or same gender loving/LGBT relationships. Proposition 8 passed in the state of California. After the polls closed, a theory was put forth that the proposition passed as the direct result of a high number of African American and Latin voters in California voting in favor of the discriminatory proposition. In this instance, the playing of the race card was successfully used primarily by members of the white, gay male communities of California. African American and Latin LGBT people in California (and beyond) suffered a tangible and in some cases, a physically violent backlash from this that would not have been suffered by white LGBT people to the same extent if the tables had been turned. This is because African American and Latin LGBT people do not have anywhere near the social capitol nor political power within either the larger United States cultural milieu nor the mainstream LGBT communities within America that their white especially male counterparts possess.

Other historical examples of this same applied principal/understanding are:

A. The way Japanese Americans were treated and perceived by the general American populous, at the time, in America, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

B. The way Muslim and Arab Americans have been treated and perceived by the general American populous since 9/11

C. The way Native Americans/American Indians/First Nation Peoples have been treated and perceived in America and Canada since their lands were invaded and stolen by European colonists and invaders for the last several hundred years in North and South America.

D. The type, breadth and scope of disrespect, name calling and vitriol shown to President Barack H. Obama by members of the media, political pundits and and those who make their living through political commentary and that is unprecedented in modern American politics, including during the 2 presidential terms of George W. Bush.

White Privilege

White privilege is the belief that whites hold a large number of advantages in the world that are implicit and explicit and granted to them in society simply for being white. It is similar to The Fundamental Attribution Error found in the field of psychology.

Some people who dispute the existence of white privilege often like to site the fact that whites also suffer death, hardship, unemployment, homelessness, poverty, illness and all manner of social ills just like everyone else as proof that white privilege does not exist. This is essentially an ad hominen argument because the critical race theory by which the concept of white privilege came about never purported an understanding of white privilege as being akin to a comic book like super power that white people supposedly possess. Quite the contrary. White privilege is the expression of a normative structure in society that explicitly and implicitly both simultaneously provides societaladvantage to whites and societal disadvantage to non-whites. It has to do with the normalization of part of one's identity (whiteness) in a way that is so congruent with being a member of the dominant culture for there to be little or no distinction between the two.

I Am a Student of the Tim Wise School of Truth Telling, Social Activism and Educating

Tim Wise

There are a whole lot of people I take cues from when it comes to my activism and how my activism is expressed through my writing. Perhaps I will eventually write something on this blog in homage to most or all of the primary people I learn from in this regard. For now however, I wish to point my attention to my teacher, Tim Wise.

I did not always appreciate Tim Wise nor his brand of activism. Don't get me wrong, I always knew his primary subject matter and his understanding and presentation of that subject matter—white privilege, antiracism and such, were always completely spot on. I suppose I just wished he coddled people more, said things more gently and wasn't so in your face with his message.

I am forever grateful I got over that phase.

I am a gentle man. I am a loving man. I am a man who is deeply guided by my spiritual principals and values. It took me a very long time to discover however, that a huge percentage of people on the planet take those wonderful traits—and I do see and experience them as wonderful—as cues to abuse and walk all over people who embody those traits. I have been abused and walked all over by a lot of people as a result.

Enter Tim Wise into my field of consciousness.

I have probably seen Tim Wise give a talk or engage in a small panel discussion about a half a dozen times or so at this point. People in The San Francisco Bay Area, especially in Oakland, love him. Invariably there will be a person in the audience, typically a middle aged white male, who, during the Q and A section of the event, will rise up essentially to refute everything Tim has said in the previous hour or so. Such questioners are usually always foaming at the mouth and filled with a type of rage and vitriol that is easy to sense by the time the person gets the mic in hand. You feel yourself and everyone else in the room bracing for what is coming (which BTW, usually contains a long preamble/race baiting filled commentary before the actual query is arrived at).

I have paid extremely close attention, over the years, to how Tim Wise handles such situations. He combines pit bull tenacity, laser sharp focus, sometimes with a touch of wit and an absolute refusal to be bamboozled or to take on the questioner's rage, which they usually strongly and desperately want him to do. He also completely refuses to allow such people to frame the discourse even though that portion of the discourse started with their question. This, in my opinion, is a singularly amazing skill in interacting with anyone in any confrontational environment. Tim Wise is a master at this specific skill. And I do love learning from a Master.

Tim Wise also speaks the truth that does not want to be acknowledged nor spoken and has the death threats to prove it. When I receive my first death threat I will then know I have truly learned all my lessons from my teacher, Tim Wise. I'm putting my money on my first death threat coming from a white, “A-gay” male member of the LGBT communities. That demographic already has the dubious distinction of owning four of the five times I've been called a nigger to my face in a completely unprovoked, self righteous and sad attempt to demean me in public in my adulthood. The icing on the cake, if that is the appropriate metaphor, is that all four of those incidents occurred in San Francisco, California and not in someplace like Jackson Mississippi nor Selma, Alabama. The fifth incident also occurred in San Francisco. I simply do not know the sexual orientation of the perpetrator who was a bike messenger who sped by me while hurling the epithet.

I digress.

I have also learned that it takes a special breed of person to unflinchingly point out the shortcomings in communities one is also a member of. That is because a special form of disgust and hatred is reserved for all of us who engage in this form of activism. It is only worth it if it is also a community or communities one has a hell of a lot of love and affection for. Tim Wise often points out that both his wife and his two daughters, whom he loves dearly, are all white. When I rail against white privilege in the world and racism within the white, gay male community specifically, I can similarly claim that the man I sleep with every night and have dedicated my life to is also a white man. Okay, a dark olive skinned Sicilian. Sue me.

Question for Sage: Being Black, Being Gay and Being a Spiritual Teacher (Remixed)

(NOTE: In the time since this piece was originally written (April 29, 2010) I have generally stopped referring to myself as a "spiritual teacher." I do however still view myself as an elder, wayshower and carrier of wisdom.)

Q). How does being black and gay influence your spiritual teaching work? Or does it?

(A) (Sage) 

Both my ethnicity and my sexual orientation most definitely influence my teaching work and I imagine they also influence every other aspect of my life as well. 

At the most fundamental level these "things about me" are things I understand to be rather unique, at least as far as the spiritual teaching community is concerned. What I mean by that is that I am not aware of a large number of either African American (outside of mainline Protestant church ministers, who are also often over-the -top homophobic and/or heterosexist) nor openly gay or same gender loving spiritual teachers out there presently. And so at the most fundamental level I am keenly aware of that. Perhaps more importantly, I am aware that the people who might be the audience for anything I produce or teach will also be aware of this, whether these awarenesses are on a conscious level or not. I am also aware that given the level of pretense that exists in most spiritual circles, these are things such people may want to pretend they don't notice. Then there is the whole issue of what such people may choose or not choose to do with that information if and when they do allow themselves to notice it. Race, ethnicity, gender identification and sexual orientation continue to all be strong and often contentious areas of social and other expressed energies in the world, perhaps more so in the USA than in comparable country's such as Canada (where gay marriage is legal) and Europe, that also boasts a number of country's that recognize gay marriage.

There is a saying in the black community particularly among blacks whom American society might consider successful or blacks who are in types of work or professions where there have not traditionally been high numbers of African Americans. That saying goes something like, "If you are black, you can never forget that fact."

I have heard many story's over the years that bear witness to the truth of that above saying. One that has always stuck in my mind for some reason is a story Whitney Houston spoke openly about once on a television talk show i just happened to catch. Houston recounted that at the absolute height of her popularity and fame, she attended a formal event of some kind. She was wearing a very expensive designer dress, was dripping with the jewels of her success and was embodying her "Diva-ness" to the fullest. Suddenly and without any warning an elderly white woman attending the function came right up to her and calmly and with complete seriousness said something to her to the tune of, "Excuse me darling, would you be a dear and get me a refill on my champagne?" For the uninitiated, the punch line is meant to indicate this elderly white woman's belief that Whitney Houston, pop diva extraordinaire, was in fact none other than one of the servers at the party and not one of the guests. Houston assumed this "mistake" was made only because she was black and that no matter how much fame and success any black person achieves, there will always be those for whom we will remain simply just another...well....you get the picture. Who knows where the truth lies there. My own life experiences however, informs me that Miss Houston was correct in her assumption.

I believe there is some fundamental truth expressed there, in that story. And I have heard numerous black superstars express essentially the same story, experienced by them in their own unique way--Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby, just to name a few. That fundamental truth is neither experienced as particularly burdensome nor negative for me however. At least not most of the time. Rather, it is one of the many things in the world that keeps me grounded in general and grounded in this human form I am in specifically; a form that includes the color of my skin and the fact that I make love to men.Some days are clearly better than others however. There is no doubt about that.

At another level these things about me bring an awareness that both my ethnicity and sexual orientation are things that have been marginalized by many cultures and many people and for a very long time. I am very aware there are people in the present day who also may attempt to marginalize me or view me as "lesser than" or even physically harm because of one or both of those "things about me." There are not many spiritual teachers out there, I believe, who have to include in their consciousness, when they give a public teaching, for example, the thought, "Oh yeah, there just might be someone in the audience who may throw a racist or gay slur at me during the talk." I don't believe Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson or Wayne Dyer have ever had to go there. Nor have many, many others. I have experienced marginalization on numerous occasions during my time on the planet. I have been called a faggot to my face in public. I have been called a nigger to my face in public. And I am certain some of the people who engaged in those acts were spiritual or religious people. As I have said in another piece I wrote, I have been called a nigger to my face, in public exactly five times in my adult life. Four of those five acts were committed by openly gay white men, in public spaces and in one of the world's most recognized progressive and spiritually diverse city's---San Francisco, California. And in every single case (being called nigger and faggot) these incidents were, from my perspective, completely unprovoked, except by the anger and self loathing that was present and lurking in the consciousness of the person behind the words. So there's all that as well.

So there are many ways my own awareness of my ethnicity and sexual orientation could potentially influence my teaching work, both negatively as well as positively. The way I believe these awarenesses most impacts my work is that I believe there is a clear socio-political and sacred activism element to my teaching work and most likely always will be.

While I can be just as positive and "woo woo" as the next person, it is not long before some reference to political or social challenge and struggle in the world and the interest in the transformation of those challenges comes into my work. I make an absolutely clear association between such challenges, transmuting them and what I consider to be authentic spiritual practice. For me there is no such thing as an authentic spiritual practice in the 21st century that does not include sacred activism work on some level.

In a nutshell, my teaching work is heavily influenced by the consciousness and underlying philosophies and teachings of both Liberation Theology and Engaged Buddhism. My life and work are steeped in them to the core. My personal spiritual practice is also heavily influenced by them both as well. So my teaching work has a very clear Sacred Activism element to it that is both fundamental and fundamentally related to both my ethnicity and sexual orientation. 

At another level still, these things about me influence my teaching work in ways that are a result of the fact that I, in no way, have consciously disowned anything about these two aspects of who I am. In other words, I accept them. I embrace them. And so I bring the history, cultural elements, personal life experience, dramas, personal and collective pain and everything else about being a black, same gender loving man into my teaching work. I however, do not believe I have created an "identity" out of either. It can be very difficult to explain in words the difference between fully accepting something about ourselves while not going so far as to then create an identity out of that same thing. For me my awareness that I am far more than the sum of any of my parts helps me to successfully navigate that sometimes slippery slope---most of the time.

Tracy Morgan's Recent Anti-Gay Rant: The Moyo Afame Treatment

I do not often feel called to comment on current events. The recent and ongoing news-cycle around Tracy Morgan is a clear anomaly for me. So why bother? Well, its caught my attention in a way most news stories involving celebrities don't. Plus the story brings all the most contentious, hard headed American children around the same campfire at once. And that just doesn't happen all that often, even in this sometimes salacious country with reality television consciousness. And who are those "children" gathered around the campfire? None other than racism, homophobia, heterosexism, violence, sexism, scapegoatism (the LBGT community is the scapegoat here, lest some might have imagined I was saying Tracy Morgan is the scapegoat.) and even a little Southern Dis-comfort thrown in for spice.

You may be wondering, "where's the racism to be found in this story?"

I understand that question because it's not in Morgans reportedly hate-filled screed, a screed that apparently even included a shocking nod to filicide, or the deliberate killing of one's own child--but subtly tucked away in the response by some in the LGBT community. It never ceases to amaze me how so often, just under the surface of so many white and perhaps some other LGBT folks consciousness, lies this pesky little racist recessive gene that needs just the slightest little tug to transform that recessive gene into a full-out dominant gene that needs to shout out its dominance at every opportunity. It showed up in spades (pun intended) in 2008 when blacks were unceremoniously blamed by various whites and some others in the LGBT community for the passage of proposition 8 in the state of California, a state I happened to be living in at the time. I experienced firsthand the backlash of that. I, at the time, was a black, same gender loving man who had worked tirelessly and for months against that heinous proposition, attending all kinds of conferences and grassroots meetings to help strategize its defeat. After its passage however, I noticed several of the promised invites to attend strategy sessions planned in the terrible event of its passage, suddenly got uh...lost in the mail. And then shortly afterward appeared the infamously racist cover of The Advocate proclaiming gay as being the new black. Chile, as I first looked at that cover, I was imagining both Martin Luther King, Jr and Harvey Milk simultaneously twisting and turning in their respective graves.

I've read numerous articles about Tracy Morgan's horrifying, yes horrifying, lets just be clear about that-- Nashville "performance." After the first one or two, I simply jumped to the comments sections of said articles. Predictably, there were scads of understandably irate LGBT people needing to share a piece of their mind about this story. I wanted to feel connected to, in total alignment with them all. I truly did. However, so many of these commenters simply could not divorce themselves from seeing this whole incident in any other way but through the lens of black vs. white. What? Yep, that ole recessive racist gene just couldn't stay recessive through this one, baby. The call to resist the metamorphosis to dominant gene behavior was just too strong for many, it seems.

So for all of you white or perhaps other LGBT people who cannot see beyond the white vs.black angle of this story, let me break it down for you. This is not about Tracy Morgan being black. This is not primarily about a black man coming from an oppressed heritage and being unable to understand the depth of his own oppression to the extent that he then goes on to oppressing, through ridicule and mean spiritedness, another likewise oppressed group of people in return. It is not about that here any more than when gay and lesbian people who discriminate against and hold extremely prejudiced and hateful stances against trans people or radical feminists who truly hate men, regardless of ethnicity, is primarily about that same dynamic in those respective circles. Yes, once upon a time, even I, in my naiveté, believed that a member of one oppressed group should automatically respect and abhor the oppression of all other groups universally. So I understand, to some degree, the impulse to go there and believe that is mainly what is happening here. And God knows I speak out as frequently as possible about "The Black Church" and its inability to recognize the insanity of persecuting gays when so much of black history is about persecution. Eventually however, I learned that hate is an emotion that is often stronger than reason.

I believe white and other LGBT people who always want to play the "race card" whenever a black person shows their ignorance, hatefulness, disdain, violence or heterosexist views toward or about the LGBT community, are in fact displaying a somewhat nuanced racism that I am imagining most are unconscious of. And you know one of the reasons I believe this? One reason I believe this is because when an Asian or Hispanic person disses the LGBT community, I do not hear the voices of "also oppressed-ism insensitivity" so immediately and strongly invoked. When a Jewish person bashes the LGBT community I do not hear the voices of "also oppressed-ism insensitivity" so immediately and strongly invoked. When Andrew Dice Clay (who is not Italian, btw, but Jewish) went on his anti-gay tirades in the 80s and early 90s, I didn't hear members of the LGBT community loudly and instantly bemoaning his Jewishness and citing the holocaust as a rationale for Dice Clay somehow naturally needing to be more "mutually oppressed" sensitive.

Tracy Morgan's main crime on that sad night in Nashville, TN is not that he is a back man who needs to bone up on his African American history and see the light, as a result, as so many white and other LGBT bloggers and internet comment posters seem to believe. No, his main crime is that he is a wounded, perhaps mean-spirited, perhaps hate-filled, clueless individual who, like so many comedians and shock jock radio hosts and Fox News commentators and American Tea Party members and Republican politicians and members of The Christian Right and reality television "stars" and black churchgoers and Donald Trump and Sarah Palin and countless other Americans--first and foremost need to understand they are coming from a place of mean-spiritedness that is harmful and destructive. And right after that is the truth that many of these same people, Tracy Morgan included, also often speak from a place of heterosexual privilege. Third, these same people need to simply wake up to the fact that hate speech and hate-filled actions of every kind really have no place in the public or even private speech, truth be told, of a civilized society. Finally, there needs to be the simple realization and deep understanding that none of us are free until all of us are free. Hallelujah!