 Originally published on The Black American News Network website Aug. 2012 Updated June 27, 2015 ‘…impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal’ President Barack Obama June 26, 2015 during eulogy of Reverend Clementa Pinckney For African-Americans, name means everything. Your name is the one thing post emancipation that cannot be taken away, not easily anyway. Together with a social-security number, your name identifies you as unique. It sets you apart. It is reasonable then to assume that until you have done something to taint your name or that attaches to your social-security number, no one would have any reason to deny you opportunities before meeting you, right. But hold on folks, there’s a new sheriff in town and he’s policing by a new set of rules. While minorities of all kinds have wrestled with whether to celebrate their culture by giving their children distinctive names, or help them "blend in" with a name that won't stick out, blacks have chosen increasingly distinctive names over the past century, with the trend accelerating during the 1960s. | Research in the U.S. shows that as a result, employers now use these names to identify ethnicity. Names like DeShawn and Shanice are almost exclusively black, while whites, whose names have also become increasingly distinctive, favored names like Cody and Caitlin. Roland Fryer of the Cambridge-based National Bureau of Economic Research says, “It's not really that you're named Kayesha that matters, it's that you live in a community where you're likely to get that name that matters." However, in another paper entitled “Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal … The University of Chicago's Marianne Bertrand and MIT's Sendhil Mullainathan appeared to find that a black-sounding name could be an impediment. For many blacks this presents a peculiar problem. On the one hand, they do not want their children robbed of their ethnicity, on the other they believe a distinctively black name could end up being an economic impediment. 'Black' Names A Resume Burden? - CBS News Written by Jay Arrington, The Maryland Daily Examiner For additional articles written by Jay Arrington, visit the Maryland Daily Examiner website. For information regarding the Maryland Daily Examiner, contact Reggie Kearney (Editor-in-Chief). |
|
0 Comments
 “Imagine if in this world we were all colorblind. If not one of us had any way of distinguishing of race. Oh my what a wonderful world this would be if somehow in our place and time we could live side by side in this world colorblind.”
From the song “Colorblind” by Jay Arrington © Copyright 2011Poetry Emotion Productions, LLC Raise your hand if you believe that what you contribute to society relative to your values is not a reflection of what you learned at home and be honest. Come on now. Let’s see a show of hands. Granted some of you did not grow up in a two-parent home or with your biological parents. Still, the odds favor that your values descend from your home and what you heard adults say about others, and their (adults) treatment of others. Mind you, these off-the-cuff descriptions and gestures might stem from road-rage incidents or an adult responding to a news story, a politician or a crime. However, the most likely venue for the majority of influence on your values were the conversations had around the dinner table. Imagine a child sitting around the dinner table hearing his father referring to a co-worker as a “Jew Bastard” or her mother referring to a neighbor as a “Black Nigger Bitch.” You know what I mean don’t you? Fess’ up, we’ve all heard it before. Hell, as a black man I heard my father say “Jew Bastard” many times as I am sure many of you have heard someone say, “Nigger,” “Spic,” “Kike,” or “Wetback.” Chances are the majority of you first heard these words at home around the dinner table. A few years back I wrote a series titled “The Ape Story” about the pattern of learned behavior in the urban community, not that urban communities have a monopoly on setting bad examples but to offer a solution by identifying the problem. Well folks, guess what? It ain’t only in urban communities. It’s in suburbia also and again if we are honest about it we must acknowledge that bad behavioral patterns have been alive and well in mainstream America (white households) for hundreds of years. In fact, most of the bad behaviors present in urban communities are a by-product of blacks’ assimilation of white societal behavior/s…enough of that however. This past Wednesday night in Charleston, SC a twenty-one year old white male walked into 200-year-old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and with malice & forethought shot dead nine black bible study participants. Forget for a moment the act as heinous and hateful as it was and concentrate on this, twenty-one years of age. Where and how does a twenty-one year old amass this much hatred for a race of people especially when his age alone testifies to the fact that his life experience with blacks could never justify such hate? There can only be one plausible explanation and that is perhaps this was a homeschooled curriculum. Think about this folks. When you see archival footage of lynchings, dogs attacking blacks in the south, protestors blocking school doors and whites spitting and tossing rocks do you ever wonder where those people are now? Really, the majority of these people were white women that brought along their children to enjoy the spectacle of a black man being lynched. Some were white teenagers that enjoyed terrorizing lunch counter protestors, Freedom Riders or beating to death someone associated with the Civil Rights movement sans “Selma.” Where are those people now or better still where are their grandchildren and what were the lessons taught during the conversations around the dinner table? Well, some are in Congress passing laws that reflect their values, e.g. voter suppression, denial of assistance, deciding what foods families are allowed to purchase (Kansas). Some are in the criminal justice system implementing those laws in ways that reflect their values, e.g. shooting folks down like the animals they view them as or handing down exaggerated sentences. Some are in the school system denying education to those they consider a threat to their perceived superiority, a direct reflection of their values. Some are sitting behind a desk denying work opportunities in an attempt to oppress the already oppressed, another reflection of values. Some are watching their grandchildren walk into a church and gun down nine people worshiping the very God upon whose word America claims to have built its foundational principles/values. Yeah, right. Listen up folks and you will hear if you haven’t already people referring once again to the country’s need to have a serious conversation about race. This may come as a surprise to you folks but there is a serious conversation being had about race and therein lies the problem. Want to hear it? Get invited to dinner. RIP brothers and sisters and pray the Father grant us some time to return to Him. Written By Jay Arrington, Maryland Daily Examiner For information regarding Maryland Daily Examiner, contact Reggie Kearney, Editor-in-Chief at reginald.kearney@marylanddailyexaminer.com  “I am—yet what I am, none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes; They rise and vanish in oblivion's host, Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes: And yet I am, and live—like vapours tost.”From the John Clare poem “I Am” So now everyone wants a piece of Rachel Dolezal’s hide - Some want to tan (pardon the pun) the white part and others want to tar and feather the other. Personally, I could care less. It is even being reported that Dolezal admits that her hair is a weave, duh! Really, what self-respecting black woman doesn’t have a weave of some type in her hair? I am at a lost as to why this is a story anyway. Don’t get me wrong I do understand the shock and the outrage to a degree but what I don’t understand is the surprise everyone seems to be experiencing. Consider this if you will. White folks have been imitating blacks for years - our music, our style of dress, our dance, our art, our walk, and our talk. Hell, the first time a white person laid out in the sun in an attempt to secure a tan we should have known something was up. Now-a-days, the only things that blacks can say we took from whites culturally speaking is disrespect for parents, promiscuity, lack of morals and tattoos (stolen from the Aryan Brotherhood in prison) and we screwed all of these things up by going overboard. And here is where things get people’s panties and boxers all in a bunch. You see folks, America is accustomed to whites imitating blacks for entertainment purposes, (can anyone say blackface, Eminem, or Vanilla Ice) because there is no inherent danger of overkill. Blacks on the other hand consistently go overboard when imitating whites. Unfortunately, we blacks have yet to figure out the dangers such as societal regression reaped upon us (blacks) by blazing that obstacle laden trail. Enter Rachel, Dolezal, and suddenly that tabooed glass ceiling has been shattered. Rachel dared to go where no white man or woman that we know of had gone before. Instead of imitating or instead of pretending to be blackish Rachel decided to be black and some of us are insulted. Remember the weave I mentioned earlier, why do you think weaves exist? Because white folks have brainwashed black women (some) into thinking that unless they have long flowing hair like white women they (black women) are unacceptable and unattractive. Why the hell would anyone be mad about a white woman wearing a weave and subjecting herself to the aforementioned mental psychosis? Hell, if anything, take it as a compliment. And besides if society accepts whatever Bruce Jenner’s name is claim that although he was born a man he is really a woman trapped in a man’s body, why not accept Rachel as being a black woman trapped in a white woman’s body however ridiculous the argument is or the speculation might be. Oh, but then again we are discussing race and race is not afforded the same “oh you poor thing you deserve to be happy” BS as whatever it takes or whatever someone does to achieve orgasm, can we talk. In the movie “Watermelon Man,” Jeff Gerger, a middle-class white bigot awakens one day to find he is no longer white but black. Needless to say Gerger’s world is turned upside down. For one thing, Gerger, played by Godfrey Cambridge, is accused of robbery for running after a bus that as a white man he chased for years for exercise. Yet, chasing the bus as a black man, the police assume he is fleeing a crime scene, classic situation relevant even to this day. In the film “Imitation of Life,” a young fair-skinned black girl named Sarah Jane played by Susan Kohner decides to pass as white to escape the oppressive policies of the era only to discover that passing is not a pass. When her white boyfriend discovers her deception, he beats Sarah Jane mercilessly. My point is that relatively speaking there is no fairytale happy ending for being black, pretending to be white and now we see also for pretending to be black, so what’s the big deal? Take a read of that excerpt from the poem at the beginning of the article and marinate on its meaning. What does it say about how you feel about who you are, where you are, versus what you want to be and where you want to be. There is one thing if nothing else - this entire affair begs me to contemplate how much this girl’s parents hate her to have outed her, and why. Written by Jay Arrington, The Maryland Daily Examiner For additional articles written by Jay Arrington, visit the Maryland Daily Examiner website. For information regarding the Maryland Daily Examiner, contact Reggie Kearney (Editor-in-Chief). |
Jay ArringtonJay Arrington is a featured staff writer and reporter for the Maryland Daily Examiner. Archives
July 2016
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
