Prometheus 6

My ISP is having latency problems. The site is moving so slow, your RSS reader will likely time out. And since both my sites are on the same account it affects them both, resulting in an avatar with no goddamn patience. I'm spending 4-5 minutes per post waiting for previews and page loads.

Rather than suffer, I decided I'd just write something off-line and call it a day. I'm feeling kind of meta today...well, recently, actually...so we may drift.

I used to be sort of a cool guy for white folks to talk to about racism. Had a couple of very public incidents where I caught someone out there without implicating the white race as a whole. Had some discussions on Blogcritics where it was said how good it was to talk about race without catching it in the neck. The Identity Blogging meme had me chasing around the net and introduced me to a broad array of folks. Where We Stand described racism as the damage the system of slavery did to both Black and white people...it had cross-over appeal, a true rarity in American race discussions.

White folks are probably not as comfortable as they once were. Not that all of them were ever comfortable...check the comments here.

See, I used to be a political blogger that had these race conversations on the side. I'd only get the two entangled when circumstances compelled...which they have done pretty consistently for the last two years or so. Since that time my outlook has become somewhat...darker.

It's not that I doubt the folks I've known for a while. It's that the field of people in error is so much larger than I thought. And it is being cultivated.

Error is being introduced into the system intentionally. Only you can't really call it error because the incomplete distribution of knowledge is necessary to insure those that got shall get.

Because of the size of the field of people in error, I don't think the critical mass of white people necessary to deal with racism currently exists. And because of the intentional error in the system I am not at all sure it will ever exist.

Then there's Black folks.

Recently it was said in the comments here that we can have the rather intense race discussions we've had because we don't have a bond we're unwilling to break so we can be honest.

I have no such bonds. Frankly, if you know your opinions will piss off your friend you better be really sure about it.

This shit is hard, and you have to be willing to deal in the kind of truth that pisses off both friends and enemies. Not like you should try to piss them off...if you constantly search for the angry truth, you got issues. But if you be avoiding things, it's not your friend you're hiding from.

Here's some hard shit: your average Black person doesn't want a comprehensive reorganization of their lives and ethics. Your average Black person aspires to a pretty standard middle class existence. He has these race-aligned problems that leap up in his face periodically and wants civil rights policy to take care of that shit. We know the stuff in the race-aligned problems box are pretty nasty, so just take it away. That's what they want. That's all they want. And I think that's a reasonable position to have.

Not at all sure it's attainable while Black folks are under rhetorical attack. And when every race issue raised is denied, or reinterpreted if denial is impossible (Google Shaquanda Cotton and Genarlow Wilson, staying away from blogs, and try reconstructing their stories to see what I mean).

And notwithstanding my open letter, Spence is right about there being institutional reasons the white progressive blogosphere didn't pick up the Jena 6 story. Seems the big box bloggers have picked it up, and a fair question would be, “why now?” I'd never ask them; neither should you. They should ask themselves, though...On the other hand, one must recognize that what folks are calling the white progressive blogosphere pretty much coalesced around the social capital networks of a few media connected folk, political and media sites in a concerted attention quest.

So though there are enough white folks of my personal acquaintance that either get it or are trying to that I won't spasm on you...but I don't think white folks will recrystallize their social structures without the influences of racism. And though there are serious, conscious folk working out here, I think most Black activists suggest way more work than most humans are willing to do, to get way more than most Black folks are actually looking for (which I deem most Black folks sane but foolish).

So what am I doing? To a large degree I'm trying to find proof I'm wrong. I'm close to the point of accepting mere evidence.