Monday, October 28, 2013

I can't do better BLOG writing today than was done by my friend John Baker who responded to yesterday's post... so I'm sharing it verbatim...

Jerral,
Read this with interest. It affirms that poverty, the cruelest form of violence in the country and world continues to expand. Your data explains that the grief continues without much happening from the richest country in the world.

I think Jerral we are starting from the wrong place. You know the story of the traveler who got lost out in the country......he saw a farmer plowing his field and cried out to him....how do I get to Cannon Ball? The farmer stopped, scratched his head and said.....if I was going to Cannon Ball I wouldn't start here.


The starting place is white privilege......not just about money,  power, control, access, about a white culture that established a deadend conversation about poverty
that has been carried by Republicans and Democrats......never getting results, but great amounts of jaw banging while the poor get poorer, the undocumented receive no justice.......and white folks hold on to their privilege......I am one of them.....as are you....we are white privileged men who contribute to racism everyday. Beginning with myself, I have never met a white man who is not racist in this country......

White folks will have no play in solutions on poverty until they handle their own privilege.....unearned stuff that blocks the poor, those of whom you speak eloquently.

Few whites  view themselves as whites.....liberal and conservative. alike...

I believe you discovered this when you left the your position of headmaster and went to teach in south San Diego...

I remember my roommate in seminary who was from Harlem, New York.....said to me, John until you become proud of your white skin, how will you ever be helpful to people of color and related issues of poverty, community building. 

For me, the conversation must begin with white folks.....privilege is the cornerstone of racism in this country and is what breathes life into injustice, poverty, war, and//////

This conversation is worth having....engaging white folks to look at white privilege and what they do to promote racism everyday in this country and beyond. Then consider how we can move beyond.....to build community that works for all....not some as it is with white privilege.

AGape'
JB



7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to be a part of such a conversation.

As I age I.m more and more aware of how lucky I've been to be white, born to educated parents, born in San Diego and California, endowed with intelligence, good health, some talent and surrounded by very special people.

Also born to nontraditional parents who did not force me to be anything I didn't want to be, a frilly little girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I less and less take that for granted.

Robert Smith said...

12 years ago I addressed our Annual Conference on white privilege. The response was amazing. It was something many whites had never considered and it angered them that I should suggest that we have an unfair advantage or are in any way responsible for the violence to which John refers. African Americans had a different response realizing that a few of us know what is going on and want it to change. The solution that is all too often the catalyst for change is revolution and as "minorities" continue to grow in this nation so will the possibility of revolutionary change. It's understandable that the violence used against people will be used against the abusers.

Anonymous said...

Jerral, I knew you during your stint in South East San Diego. I was never so prouder of a fellow teacher when we were walking together towards our lunch spot (Don's back room) and you noticed a student of yours sitting by himself and whose grumbling stomach could be heard from afar. Without him asking, you gave him your sack lunch and told him to enjoy then just kept walking with me. I knew right then and there that you were perfectly suited to teach the Humanities as you are the hope for it. :). I have never once thought of you as having a racist bone or a practiced of self-indulgent opulence. Namaste. Great blog writing Mr. John Baker!
F.N.

Jerral Miles said...

John Baker’s friends and mine weigh in on the subject of white privilege:
————-
…from a friend of John’s in Washington, D.C.
John - you are so right. Why is it that we so desperately need to dismantle white privilege and yet we seem unable to even talk about it much less take action?
Blessings on you, my friend.
————-
Jerral,
A Japanese American from Hawaii….was grade school age, 1st grade, Dec 1941,  when the white huge soldiers(Japanese men are much smaller in stature) swept into her home with bayonets on their guns looking for evidence of support for enemy Japanese....even though she was a US citizen...she was frightened beyond belief...

Agape'
JB

Wow! So many thoughts muddling my mind reflecting on what Larry and I are reading right now...talking about racism...the relocation of the Japanese and Japanese-AMERICANS at the beginning of WWII. But, that's not focusing on the tragedy of poverty in America....I would imagine us AJAs are considered "white" and just as guilty. This "grouping" reminds me of an application form I signed years ago (actually it was in 1957) in Dover, Delaware to do substitute teaching there. I had to declare if I were BLACK or WHITE...no in-between. Well, I created an "in between" box. Of course, I was never called or contacted. Then one Sunday, in church, I was introduced to the principal of an elementary school in Dover by a friend's mother who had told me how desperate the school district was for subs. I told the principal I had applied quite a while ago and never got called. Well, would you know that on Monday morning, I was called. I had to guess that I was accepted as "white". Another incident (1957) happened in a Sears store in Wilmington, Delaware..had to use the bathroom and asked a clerk which one I should use because there wasn't one "in between". She looked at me, didn't know how to respond, then blurted out, "The WHITE one" So, we're white? No, only when it's convenient to whomever, including ourselves.
—— 
to John Baker from D. C.
I sorry  to tell you my padre but money ,power and control  has to be taken for it

Anonymous said...

More comments on John's letter:

K,
Interesting....like you growing up on Kauai, on a plantation in a Japanese community never did make any distinctions......when we left for the mainland....Topeka, Kansas,
was where I ran into racism....which was so hard to understand....why? Now I too have greater insight into this and found that my own racism, acquired from a white race based culture, blocked me from seeing my neighbor as neighbor......stero-types and ignorance ran wild in me....get a hold of White Privilege by Paula S. Rothenberg....a short collection of articles...quick read and re-defining.....

Agape'
JB.
-----Original Message-----
From: K.T.
Sent: Oct 29, 2013 2:40 PM
To: John Baker
Subject: Re: Fw: Letter from JB

Your roommate was wise:

I remember my roommate in seminary who was from Harlem, New York.....said to me, John until you become proud of your white skin, how will you ever be helpful to people of color and related issues of poverty, community building.

It's funny, but I was truly NOT aware of skin color until our family went to Nashville where my Dad took a sabbatical leave at Fisk University and we lived on the campus there. I played with my neighbor Tony and one day told him I was so happy that I would know someone when we went to school. Hiis mother later came over to tell my mother that she'd better explain that things there weren't as they were in Honolulu (I went to a primarily Asian church, and was one of five or six haoles in my school). You see, Tony was African-American and I am, as you know, a haole. I WAS FURIOUS...could NOT understand why these distinctions were made! I still get angry, but have more understanding...

K.

Anonymous said...

There is a lot to your friends letter that I agree with and indeed there is a lot of truth to it. However I'm not sure I would lay it all at the feet of being white. It is part of the problem in America, that we don't even see in White Europe. So is it Americanism?

I have long said that Racism is is part of Racialism. The belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, and social, cultural and/or biological differences among races.

Most interesting there is Racialism between and inside every race. Long before there was White America there where people who judge others based on color of skin and hair. Among the Hispanic and Latin Peoples you will find that the Cuban doesn't like the Puerto Rican's, both of those cultures don't like the Mexican Peoples. People of Central America have disdain for peoples of South America. I know people from Venezuela who have negative speak of the Native Indians in their own country.

Let's look at the Asian Culture and you will find distrust and looking down ones nose and other peoples of Asian country's because of the color of their skin or texture of their hair. Women in many of the Asian Cultures strive to not let sun touch their skin as it would cause them to darken and represent the working class. The Japanese don't like the Chinese, and neither don't like the Korean. They all have disdain for the smaller native peoples. Don't get me started on the division within China and it's different groups and how they look down on each other.

Even within the Black Community there is degradation of each person based on the darkness/lightness or tone of the skin color. I was completely blow away when I heard black friends refer in a biased derogatory way of another black person.

I have been to countries in the South Pacific were all of the people are basically the same skin color. Their hair is different textures and their bone and body structures differentiate them and also their Religious Culture. Their difference is Religious and depending on that plus their work ethic they hate each other. In Fiji, like many other countries in that part of the world there are the native peoples, Hindu peoples and Muslim peoples. They each stay within their own groups and serve each other in commerce. Each group look down on the other two groups.

When America started in the largest cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia you had and in some case to a lesser degree today groups of people divided by the country they originated from. Within those areas you had division based on which church you went to. Every one worked toward bettering themselves so they could look down upon those around them.

Isn't that the really problem here in America? What is MIne is Mine, I don't want you to have any of it. If you don't look like me I certainly don't want you to have any part of the pie I'm already carving up for me and mine. Your writer friend had it correct but should have made it that no one will give any play in the solutions on poverty until they have taken care of their own privilege.

No it's not very Christian, or Christ Like, or God Like, or what ever. But we find this behavior not just here in America but everywhere. Some places to a lessor degree, some places to a greater degree. I really feel that it is the "God" thing that makes each group of people distrust the other so much. "Your God doesn't like you as much as My God likes me." They can't stand that your god and theirs might actually be the same.

We as a Species need to stop see each other as different, need to quit being so selfish and become a community of people who choose to survive this world together. I'm not so sure that color plays as big a part as god and money.

My 2 cents worth for today.
Bryan R.

Anonymous said...

Jerral,

I liked John Baker's insights and comments, as well as your own as usual. I must plead guilty along with all the others in our privileged race. I work hard, as I know you and John and folk of like mind do in overcoming prejudice but no one know what it might be like to be of another color living in a culture of white privilege.

Many years ago I read a book called Black Like Me, where a white man found a way to make himself black and live among the black people in order to get some idea of what it is like.

There is a new book out called Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and its Relevance Today, by Jacqueline Battalora--Strategic Book Publishing.

Love and peace,
Taylor