Is the rejection of the race a postmodern feature? by Kyle Phoenix

 

One, there is no scientific basis for race.

(I’ll respect your opinions and thoughts more if you go through the Book Talk. It’s okay to get new contradictory ideas—-no, really, it’s how those of us who manage, rule, and control do it. It seems contradictory to that idea but that’s how power operates.)

Book Talk with the Authors of How Real is Race?

Photo: Muhamed Causevic, ’15 Graphic Design By Kat Meads In How Real Is Race? (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), Anthropology Professor Emerita Carol Mukhopadhyay and Linguistics Professor Rosemary Henze , along with co-author Yolanda Moses, anthropology professor at UC Riverside, dissect the complex and often controversial concept of race using an anthropological approach. What is the true definition of race and how does your book help clarify that definition? Henze and Mukhopadhyay : Race is a culturally invented concept, not a scientific description of biological reality. As such, and as with any socially constructed concept, there is no “true” definition of race. Race is a way of describing social groups in the U.S. and some other parts of the world. But there are many definitions, and each tends to emphasize some dimensions of race while downplaying others. In our book, we emphasize that although race is a biological fiction, it is nonetheless a deeply engrained social reality. The U.S. system of racial classification, in particular, is a historically and culturally specific way of explaining, justifying and perpetuating a system of social, economic and political inequality. Race and racial classifications are still today used to uphold the power and privilege of some (mainly European American, Christian middle- and upper-class males) at the expense of those who are racialized minorities. Race may be biological fiction, but the social ideology of race has real consequences for people’s lives. What we try to do in the book is to shed light on precisely how and why race is unreal in the biological sense and yet very real in the social, ideological sense. Our hope is that by providing a more nuanced and evidence-based explanation, the subject of race itself, which has been largely avoided in public discourse, as well as in educational curricula and cultural diversity forums, can become part of and strengthen existing pedagogies of race and anti-racism. How does your anthropological approach differ from previous approaches? Henze and Mukhopadhyay: Most conventional approaches to race take either a biological or a social constructionist approach. The biological approach analyzes race from a genetic and evolutionary perspective, focusing on why the concept of “race” is not a scientifically accurate or meaningful description of human biological variation. The social constructionist approach emphasizes the idea of race as a social, cultural and historically specific “construction” or invention, created to legitimize and reproduce social inequality. Biology is usually ignored or seen as irrelevant. Our book takes an integrated, biocultural perspective, arguing that both approaches are necessary if we are to understand how race functions in the past and the present. We must understand how biological markers, such as skin color, and social controls over mating, such as anti-miscegenation laws, have been used to create and maintain the culturally invented

https://blogs.sjsu.edu/wsq/2015/06/16/book-talk-with-the-authors-of-how-real-is-race/#:~:text=Henze%20and%20Mukhopadhyay%3A%20Race%20is,%E2%80%9Ctrue%E2%80%9D%20definition%20of%20race.&text=Race%20may%20be%20biological%20fiction,real%20consequences%20for%20people's%20lives.

(Listen to the scientists, email and argue with them.

And consider this—-

• did you lose a finger if they’re right about race just being a construct?
• A breast?
• A testicle?
• Did one of your children die?
• Did you lose your home, your job?
• Is race so important to you, so central to your worldview that you can’t handle it not being true, your imbued thoughts?
• What are you without race? Are you still smart?
• Are you still tall and powerful?
• Are you worthy?
• What does taking away the false science around race negate for you, about you, about what you think of yourself?

I encourage people who comment and the people who see their comments to tell them in their pages/comments—-We see how scared you are, How mad you are, How small you are when race isn’t real. We see you.

Just write: We See You.

It will drive them race bonkers. But don’t worry, they’ll be gone by 2075, some even earlier. It’s a waiting game, a post-modern waiting game.)

The only differences between humans are Blood Type and ear wax type. Our skin color is due to environment, not biological. But classical racists try to assert so because Science is God, until it’s not. See if Science is “right” then there’s no differences other than the social construct.

Now dealing with the social construct has shifted considerably, and yes, it is becoming a post-modern “thing” to eschew race.

Mostly because when investigated or attempted to be explained, it’s evident of a White anxiety/neurosis. But what we can also see is that this social construct—-enforced at the tip of guns and pens to laws and economic factors——was programmed into everyone, everywhere where there was ability/capability to influence a society. A lot of this started because there were so many uneducated Whites—-so the pabulum of both the Bibble and social constructs—like royalty, race, virginity, etc. were fed to them, to placate and control.

Imagine a mass of uneducated people—-you have to confer some level of superiority upon them in the 1500s-early 1600s, especially here in America because this was already a hybrid/revolting colony.

(Hmmm. Placate? Control?)

Essentially what happened was that the land ownings gentry saw that the indentured servants they’d brought over—-from everywhere, were mixing by molding into a large numbered underclass.

How to placate (regulation for land owning gentry and the egos of the White serfs/poor) AND control them?

(The “them” being not just non-Whites but ALSO Whites. Racism controls and placates White people—-which is why it has survived and prospered for so long—-it controls them, placates them about the control systems and then the control systems controls them and placates them. One word summation: Hegemony.))

Give differing rights to people based on skin color. So the Whites were given the rights to bear arms and kill the Blacks and the Blacks could not bear arms nor harm a White person. Just those passed laws and then economic privileges to White's, shifted the gentry having to worry about the mixing and underclass revolt. But what this also did was it created, which is the intent of race, hierarchy, superiority to Whites (Europeans) who were perhaps one step away from the gallows and imprison in Europe. They, whatever they were, high or low, based upon pigment were superior to an Other, to a Them here in America (and elsewhere in the world.) You could be something, even if you were nothing. Race gives White people (superiority) identity to someone, somewhere, all the time. It is a form of validation without effort, it suggests that they are good, better, more than, simply from being born.

500 years later, race is not the same thing as it was because there are objective measurement systems for all people. There are multiple classes, of all stripes—-not wholly equal, everywhere, yet, but there is “free” representation.

The Wars Are Ending Race

What has happened is the axiology, ontology, epistemology and imbued hegemony has shifted in the past 200 years. From the Haitian Revolution, the first and second Cuban Revolutions, the French Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Viet Nam war and the internet (sort of a cyber-war). All of those physical wars involved “others” as a point of conflict and economics. The internet, of course has opened the world up into like a giant cyber-conference room. It illuminates divisions, ignoring manmade borders, it allows them to be transcended or crossed—-post modernistic communication.

What wars have done, pointedly for Black Americans, is given us exposure to weapons and broader thoughts on freedom due to Black soldiers serving, fighting and traveling abroad. Like an infection they bring back to Black Americans new ideas of sovereignty and modern thoughts on human rights.

LGBTSGL & Trans Influence On Race

This is almost a subversive social movement to dismantle race, which has yes, more White people by population. However, there are more out Black Americans than White Americans because of the loss of social power/privilege. But coming out, changing genders and changing sexes (two different points) means that we’re surfing into a point of the 21st/22nd century where the body is becoming two things:

1. Autonomous. You, even if you’re a young child have the right, and now laws to support you announcing what and how you see yourself and your body and your sexuality.
2. We have the technology to alter an adults body to conform to their idea/ideal and to even block a teen from going through an unwanted sex based puberty.

This level of control of one’s body is staggeringly new in human history and more importantly the ability to change to what you want to be—-simply amazing. But also dangerous to the hegemonic idea of The Body, of the Body based upon science and religious text. Suddenly the Body is sovereign and malleable.

Even more the West, Americans, etc. have started to reach into non-European cultures for succor, meaning, relaxation, fulfillment—-so now millions no longer abide by a Western ontology of how to see one’s personal/spiritual self/God. This seems simplistic or even divergent but it leads back to race.

I’ll throw a third meat into the stew—-the dismantling of a binary gender construct of Man and Woman.

Now we have a Spectrum of this deconstruction—-at the farthest end—-actual medical/physiological build a vagina/breasts, construct a penis, we’ll call Transsexuality, that, a 10 on our scale-spectrum.

Then we have Transgender (no medical intervention) which is exploring degrees of not conforming to the society’s prescription of sex, sexuality, being asexual, or even different genders—-adopting ideas from indigenous cultures (who been telling folks for years that there is more than just male/female binary, static masculine/feminine genderfication. It’s like one of those cut out dolls that you pull apart and there’s dozens of possibilities in there. These possibilities are represented all around the world and the internet only shows more people ideas so that they can self-identify gender, sex, sexuality.

So we’ll call (all) Trans 7 to 10.

Now on our spectrum we got LGBTSGL, Pans, Omnis, Queers, Questioning, etc.—-because that includes the dynamic of sex, gender, sexuality as well—-it’s about 5–7ish.

But interestingly, if you must label strict, never had a thought or a same sex thought (impossible)—-we’ll label Hetero as 1, which leaves 2–4 for “men” and women” who label themselves as hetero BUT 1 and 2 is strict Western ontology/religion based definition and structures.

3 and 4 is where the hetero expands based upon gender norms/roles.. Women working, becoming world leaders and voting and becoming presidents and lawyers and doctors and billionaires and flying space ships. Men being stay at home dads, single parents, adopting, having fluid sexualities—-even we have to include polygamy and polyamory across this whole spectrum.

See narrow misogyny supported racism for White men and Black men because it kept roughly a quarter of their female population dependent on the whims and ideas of its other half. Not so anymore. Now Men and Women, depending on how they identify—-just as heteros are not simplistic 1s and 2s, not all heteros are narrowed by gender “norms”. Half of the oppressive population of Whites (here in America and Europe) are “up for grabs” when there’s ideas, legislation about race, ethnicity, racism, culture—-regarding women.

And women often side to women, ignoring race (which is problematic) but race dismantling useful.

Back to Race

What all of the above meshuggas does to the modern, post-modern Zeitgeist is it radically shifts a socially constructed notion of race by dismantling and dispersing the very Body Politic that race attaches to.

People who define themselves, will no longer, not under the thumb of law or gun, allow themselves, their ancestry to be so roughly subdivided (half Black, a quarter Chinese )because their identities and perception of identity are more dynamic, and perhaps even fluidic.

See, you can’t have Caitlyn Jenner running for Governor and expect Jamal to stay in a Black box for the next 125 years (kids born after 2000 have a life expectancy of 125+ years).

In the “issue” of race to the context of White men, they’re outnumbered now across the world population—-hence so much anger, backlash, trepidation, anxiety because multiple bulls' are stampeding through ideas of Identity (sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, self, spirit, soul, religion, home country, origin, language) that the old rules can’t stop.

The Internet Wars On Multiple Levels

The best, worse and still unexplored thing to come along that is accelerating humanity. The acceleration comes form the fact that whether it’s San Francisco or Ethiopia or Singapore or Poland or Serbia or Moscow or even China—-like a vast digital/cyber virus—-information—-books, real science, ideas—-is sweeping around the world.

What will probably happen in a hundred yeas when we have a couple of wars over the internets destabilization effect—-(we used to have degrees of growth for countries and people—-now everyone can see and access IBM, Amazon, Mercedes)—-every human with internet access can want and desire both things and new ideas and therefore new ways of being that may be contrary to the society that surrounds them. Pre-Internet, your identity divergence was secret or you had to flee your homeland. Now, the internet provides people infecting their homelands as it’s exposure becomes ubiquitous.

We, as a civilization will hit a wall—-the last decades of the 2000s, where we have to band together because the Cyber/Internet Cascade wars are too costly or stupid—-we will advance to the first step of being a Stage 1 Civilization in energy, solar system colonization, sustainability, education and equitability—-because we wont’ have reasons to bar others out—-we’ll literally need everybody acting in concert to survive. (Bitcoin is a fascinating social/techno infancy example of this.)

We won’t be able to delineate by something as archaic and histrionic (“Ohmigod, she’s brown—-hide the babies!”) because so many of our cyber-coworkers and business relationships and even intimate and familial relationships, will be intermingled with other ethnicities and cultures.

We will start looking at how history has transmitted mental illnesses and their inherent uselessness. By the DSM-10 probably. Because the revisions will have to include our Spectrum 1 to 10, plus other cultural and ethnic ideas/identities and economic/statehood interests.

Race will become passé.

Ethnic origin, cultural origin, speaking multiple languages (English, French, Spanish, Mandarin/Cantonese, Farsi) and most importantly having some sort of Race Training/Cultural Engagement certification.

See, in order to survive, your children and grandchildren won’t be able to carry racism to the other parties around the world. Now they might start carrying social class judgments and educational biases about raw smarts, but you can’t be talking about niggers and do business in China because that will be a step away from slant-eyes and gooks. Anti-Semitism won’t be allowed either.

Not a flattening homogeny instead of hegemony but a form of mass acceptance—-similar to the Truth and Reconciliation town halls that saved South Africa from going nuclear over apartheid—-will be a mandated curriculum. People who are trained, probably from childhood eventually NOT to ignore ethnic and culture differences but NOT to see it as race. Which means that one generation decides, the next practices, the third improves—-hence, at least 100 years.

Impossible you say—-let’s roll back the calendar to 1921 and the Transsexual Movement then. Ummm hmm now folk on the cover of Time magazine and all kinds of men are talking about being skoliosexuals. (Yup, there’s a designated word and identity for men who like …a little extra in their dates.)

I would further posit that Obama being President was the US Republics’ olive branch to the world. To the future. “See, we can be progressive. Don’t judge us all. We know the future is coming and want to be a part of it, not a racist backwater land.”

Obama was also the prep to those in America who need to see this in multiple ethnicities, cultures, languages—-Black, White, Native, Latino, Asians, Multis and Mixeds.

It’s not so much that racism or racist are changing, as much as some people are changing, thereby changing their children and those who have static ideas are race and the other static folk will be dead by 2075.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

Note: I, as a teacher, encourage debate but I think the internet teaches some, who have no understanding of the power of not debate but Tomorrow, the Future and the permanence of the internet, so all civility goes out the window. We get it, you cut off Messaging like a putz on your profile because it’s easier to be a troll. Yippee. You finally have some power in your life to disagree with your rampant, itching thoughts about race because it’s so deeply central to your identity (which already suggests how easily you’re manipulated—-that the best thing you can do is disagree.)

Show us you’re a superstar DON”T write your points in the comments—-post it like a man or woman—-wherever you are on The Spectrum as an ANSWER to the question. I delete all posts that should be Answers themselves (grow a pair) or Comments that are specious or feckless or pedantic.

Know though, before you write I am forever in amitie amoureuse with you……..

11 ways race isn’t real

Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money, health and everything else that matters. Our goal is to ensure that everyone, regardless of income or status, can access accurate information that empowers them.

https://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6943461/race-social-construct-origins-census

https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-101196173/how-real-is-race-using-anthropology-to-make-sense https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/how-real-is-race

Race Is Real, But It’s Not Genetic

Is race real - For centuries, socially defined notions of “race” have shaped human lives around the globe—but the category has no biological foundation.

https://www.sapiens.org/body/is-race-real/

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Len

 · 4y

I wonder about the dissolution of the Body hegemony, so to speak. To my mind, it reminds me more of the “atomic!” craze of the ‘50s than as something that’ll last over time…because just like the atomic technology envisioned by the ‘50s, what’s actually changeable is much more superficial and specifi…

(more)

Vrathagni

 · 3y

An exquisite read!

Black Americans, are you treated better in the Deep South vs. elsewhere (North, West, Midwest) in America? by Kyle Phoenix

 

It’s an interesting question. I’ve lived in the South, Charlotte, twice. Once as a child for a year and then as an adult for longer. As I child I didn’t attend school, I was 11 but i was in my 30s when I returned to help care for an ill parent. I was also better educated as an adult so I was able to travel around the city/towns and work there in the city at two places.

There is racism but it’s mixed, just as it is here in the North—NYC, Buffalo, Philadelphia (places I’ve lived for 1+ years).

In Charlotte it was mixed—-racism isn’t simply racial or by race it includes bias, discrimination, apathy, judgment which is why we’re so confused by it. Think of it like smoke that permeates a two story home—-it might be unclear exactly where the fire is coming from.

(In California, up in Napa Valley, there were direct questions to the other Black males in a 60+ conference that descending upon a small town for a weekend, from a nearby resort. Understandable but I still walked away from the discussion, from the questioning White townspeople, before I said something…confrontational. But I will also add that I walked the length of the town—-20 blocks after 10pm/11pm and the police and I waved at each other. I was alone and I don’t give off menacing energy. I was sightseeing, store window gazing.

I’ve mainly flown over the Midwest or been in airports and people were okay in rural Northern states like PA and NY. Again though I was alone and my comfortable, polite self.)

Belk’s Department Store.

What to do for work in Charlotte? I applied for a position with my “real” resume at a position that was to be constructed in Charlotte on a campus—-but that was a year away. They wanted me to train/work in Oregon—-a 10 hour flight away—defeating the purpose of going to Charlotte for an ill parent. So I opted to go lower end, retail and picked out Belk’s Department store for the Christmas season. I’d worked at A&S and Lord & Taylor in college up North so I figured I could barrel through for a couple of months to offset my expenses.

My stepfather drove me to one of the malls (there are several) but it was distinctly heavily Black populated, customers and employees. Spiffed up in a suit and tie, I went in with my printed resume and asked a sales associate behind the counter how/where to apply. She explained she was it and with visible disdain took my resume, looked it over, deeply looked me over then told me they’d get back to me but the newspaper ad was wrong, they had no openings.

Okayyyyyyyy.

I went back out to the car and told my stepfather to take me to the White mall, where there was a Belk’s. Got there interviewed with a White woman who was doing the interviews as she’d worked there for 40 years, we chatted so long my stepfather had to leave for work. She even told me about supermarkets downtown that had different foods and products I liked from up North.

Here’s what happened—-the sales associate was a young Black woman and I was a young Black man. But I wasn't a Southern young, uneducated Black man. I speak clean, clear English, my resume included my colleges degrees/experience and I also was only interested in the temp work. I was clearly an Outsider, an Other, within a Black sphere. It often happens that Blacks discriminate against one another based upon social class. I present as too high and proper.

When I told my stepfather to take me to the White mall—-I also said—-because “…they (White people) tend to like me better.”

What I’ve learned happens is I have more experience with White people as friends, teachers, students, supervisors, subordinates, lovers, etc. so I lack the intimidation that Black people, not all but some feel in a White sphere. I’m not blind, though I wear contact lenses, but I’m not off-put by White people. I’m used to it. I’m not intimidated nor frightened, though I do work with my students and teachers about their own issues of being surrounded by White people. I also work with White teachers and students going into high Black/Latino spaces about being surrounded by non-White students.

That awareness of racial “stuff” and my own comfort at being “unique” in some spaces (I also feel it about intelligence, since I was a child and to a milder degree, sexuality. But I’m out about race, smarts and sexuality so I don’t feel self-conscious in the ways people expect. I generally feel self conscious in the sense that I see others reacting to stuff that are norms of/to me.)

So I understood the young Black girls bias towards me. I also knew that in a White environment predominantly, I stand out as “one of the good, proper, smart ones”. What i didn’t expect was that it would be so pronounced in the South. I honestly expected more White to me/Black bias. In fact I found the Southern Whites more accommodating and helpful and thoughtful with rides (there was a black out across the city and a young White girl gave me a ride home so I wouldn’t have to wait on the bus. I was adamant that we talk and our coworkers know she was taking me because I was a big Black dude and she a small, young White girl. Not that I feared appearances but her generosity was a little naïve, I thought, to take a male acquaintance across town. But if we push this farther, she knew from my mannerisms and the houses address that I was “okay”. ); information—-another Belk's coworker, an older White man, retired who came to Belk’s for the discounts for Christmas and to get out of the house, intricately explained Medicaid/Medicare laws to me about my mother as his mother had died under similar circumstances; of the guys I dated, the most thoughtful about me, my parents home and safe sex were two White guys and one Black guy but several other Back guys were social class judgmental about my parent’s house and the mixed county it was in vs. being on the Black side of town. Several of the Black guys, unfortunately bearing out to racial statistics, insisted on unsafe, no condom sex and I declined.

I tried to register with two temp agencies—-one a Black/Latino one, again trying to just do temp work for a couple of months (not having a timeframe on my terminal mother) and needing a flexible schedule; the minority one was unhelpful. But Manpower was the one who got me the job/interview at $80k a year in Oregon that I didn’t take.

WalMart!

Finally I landed at WalMart for 6 months before I brought my mother back to NYC. Because it had health care, stock investment, and flexible hours. They pounced on me to come right in and happily put me into their system—-you get pay bumps by your educational experience and my willingness to do their position graduating Computer Based Learning (still one of the best systems I’ve ever seen as a teacher).

I didn’t mind working at Customer Service and I even corrected several of the managers who were younger, Black and putting me into a jackpot situation because they were upset at other Black customers stealing/returning for store credit and gas card credit. The discussion then became that the majority of the store employees, Black and Latino lived and commuted by car or bus to the Black-poorer-Latino side of town. The same as the “thieves” so they were all intimately aware of each other.

I had picked WalMart (over a local pawn shop) because of the benefits I explained and because it was a good 15 city block walk or the shuttle bus, ninety cents—-literally stopped right in front of my parents front lawn and let me off right across the road. Charlotte is like a perpetual early to late summer so sometimes I walked, sometimes the bus honked for me outside of my front door. And every night the bus left from the WalMart itself—-ten feet from the front door to put me 20 feet across the road from the house in 5 minutes. A $10 a week commute cost meant that though the pay was much lower than my teaching/consulting rates in NYC, it put me solidly on the middle class rung in Charlotte, which is about 25% cheaper.

(The high cost and thievery comes from the population addiction to cars (and gasoline)—-which I noted immediately and why I refused to get a car. Now that I think on it there were some coworker grumbles about that because I could clearly afford one and instead liked having extra money.)

I also would make or buy nice lunches at WalMart and I was regularly editing textbooks and novels I’d written in the breakroom. I think I was the only employee who actually read the magazines—-science, finance, etc. in the bathroom and gently put them back or bought them. (Tony Robbins Money Matters, Scientific America, Forbes—I would preview then pick up on payday. I also got a great deal on clothing and a flat screen TV. As a social class aside though, I wasn't comfortable with their having a direct deposit onto my ID card—-posing folk to not even get cash itself and just work and swipe for everything, including gas—-instead I opted for a deposit into my own account and I did 75% of my food shopping at Food Lion, just to have a little distance, detachment from WalMart world.)

While this might seem small and idiosyncratic, I was defining myself intellectually and financially and even as an employee, as different, because of my thoughts about myself, money, etc. than my coworkers—-particularly, my Black coworkers. I recognize that's such class based things and critical thinking make me stand out among Black people and if not admired, then regarded well among White people—-for some of the same and different racialized projections.

I was of course enhanced by the fact that my mother and stepfather had bought an overprized, slightly too big house a decade before that having lived in a really oversized house in Pennsylvania and co-op in Brooklyn. My stepfather is a ne’er do well that my mother bought to have companionship and then regretted it for years—-his poverty mindset infecting her entrepreneurial mindset—-she had a lot of money when they got together and they frittered it away.

I offer this because to some degree there are these two distinct mindsets/habits/educated thinking of my mother vs Poverty, survivalist, money-hungry mindsets of other Blacks.

The statistics is that 40% of Black Americans are in permanent generational poverty—-he was and still is; my mother being the come up for him. And yes, to some degree her and my biological father meeting while both in college, are the come up for me; my grandparents both educated—-my grandmother not Black but Narragansett light tan and my great-grandparents Narragansett and White—Upper Class/Rich by early 1900s standards in Rhode Island.

All of that advanced education for 70+ years is infused to me and makes me more Middle to Upper social class/intellectually detectable to Whites and as I often joke, as soon as I open my mouth, to Blacks, as well. (I also write in cursive 95% of the time—who knew that social class tell? lol)

But I was like one of three WalMart employees out of 200 who lived within a mile of the store. Immediately, with my speech and intelligence, labeling me a Black Other. And there was some crusty treatment, remarks, a young fool almost got his ass beat—-he was a former employee on crack who I rightfully refused a return of—-yes, one immediately becomes all kinds of niggers and faggots.

It got shouted at me a lot of times all the times by Black folk. I went to a sort of outdoor, downtown city proper mall/party but never got to a gay club though I did walk past it during the daytime on one of my many, daily walking trips—-I would pick a direction, a road, take a bottle of water and just walk until I was tired, then walk back. I literally walked in about a 15 mile circumference of the house in Mecklenburg and never had a problem—-because I was pushing into more White areas.

But again, I’m generally dressed casual or more conservative, no bright sneakers or hippity-hoppity outfits, I have really good manners and make confident eye contact with everyone. I think it’s important to point out this makes me approachable by Whites and available. It also makes me seem more direct and perhaps challenging to Blacks (who don’t know me personally.)

Because I was always unsure/hedging how long I would be there, eventually 1.5 years-2 years, I tried to keep my expenses to a minimum and became a black belt in connecting bus routes and times to the hospital, home, work, downtown, the mall. I got around.

Black In The Court System

Then because of his financial mismanagement, I had to take my stepfather to court (county’s clerk) to get the money right for my mother’s care. This also involved the diabetic rehab having countless meetings about his being in arrears and then eventually civil court—-where I got to cross examine him—-I kid you not! (Still one of the highlights of my life/trip.)

But I will say the judge/clerk and pro temp lawyer—-were mightily impressed by me in court and saw my stepfather and his daughter (who literally dressed like a prostitute—-mini skirt, bustier, mini-vest, bald head and bangle earrings in court) and the contrast of me in an Armani suit, Italian shoes, speaking properly, calmly.

Then in civil court, again in Armani, the Judge, an educated Black woman, invited me and coached me, how to question and cross examine my stepfather—-because she could see that we had enough in common education that I could. This time my stepfather's daughter yelled from the bleachers in sweats and a t-shirt, and got shutdown.

But I held my ground against my stepfather’s lawyer, in a packed courtroom, and cross examined him from memory to the point where the Judge literally favored me as much as possible in her ruling. There was Black educated simpatico between me and the Judge. (She looked like Judge Maybelline on TV.)

I point this race stuff out for her and the White male judge-clerk before because I could see them seeing the educated and uneducated differences/temperament between us. I could see the favor, in both court outcomes, was to my personal presentation. While my stepfather was wrong, I did feel enough sympathy for how I saw him in his cheap suit, crocodile tears and rubber shoes—-being perceived by them, not to have dropped all the TEA on him I could’ve. I saw their bias in my favor and why they were biased about him and my stepsister. They were presenting and acting out as “loud, poor, uneducated Negroes”

(Now you can see where some of my mixed emotions, guilt comes in at.)

The Distraction of Work and Races There

I did well at Belk’s, reasonably enjoyed the ease of the time, it distracting me from my terminal mother. I even got to help a Black woman who fainted form the heat with her 5 children—-and I jumped into School-Teacher Child Safety mode, having two designated women watch/corral her children (against predators/kidnappers) until her husband arrived.

WalMart for 6 months was a nice distraction too—-I actually got to see a Black Friday sale—-I’ve never been to one (better things to do in life besides just be a consumer). But it’s heavy Black/Latino population garnered a high speed chase of a submachine gun armed gang, followed by SWAT, cops, Deputy Dog—-forcing the whole of the store onto the ground as they rounded up the M-16 packing gang.

I blithely arrived 2 hours later. lol

There was also the Madea impersonator who regularly robbed meats and stun gunned the cancer riddled security head. I explained that I was not like the confused employees who took the robberies personal and I would never intercede. And that I was thinking perhaps of transferring to a more White supercenter up the road.

Do you see how race, racism, bias, discrimination, social class spite and judgment are intertwined?

Now I’m sure there was some White bias/race issues but again, I present—Middle to Upper Middle Class in carriage, presentation, speech so as a singular person, I don’t get it much. There’s still stuff. This is America.

But as a whole, the South had more Black to me, Black racialized/social class bias. What I will offer though in some sort of not Black defense but explanation, is that a lot of the Black to Black bias, is engrained or enforced or pressed by White perceptions, society and desire for favoritism.

See, I feel like I’m good enough, I have skills and such—-I can get offered the $80K a year job off of three phone interviews and turn it down (my stepfather went apoplectic—-how could “we” not get that paycheck? Of course, I was there for my terminal mother—-you can see his money greed.)

Even the greed, the fear I’d take over, become management (WalMart offered several times and offered me positions up north here if I wanted) or perhaps even harm or judge those “less than me”.

Generally you don’t judge down, particularly if you’re a teacher, the whole point to uplift people—-but racialized hegemony has twisted some Black people to believe betterment is at the expense of others. Black others. So lots of times I felt the pronounced racial Catch-22 I feel here in the North, though that 22 is based upon Poverty vs. Middle/Upper Class more pronouncedly within a racial context. In the North, I’ve found I become the Other when I don’t collaborate to demonize ALL White people, Jews, “them”, etc..

Don’t get me wrong, I believe we all are racist, that was the inculcating point of social mores, laws, strictures, structures, restrictions, etc. And I believe it is a part of human consciousness that we have to actively redress or challenge or correct. But I also believe that we all are along a spectrum of intensity of racialized bias.

And in the South, it is more intensified but for different reasons than what we see as “classical racism” here in the North.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

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MIchael Wenzel

 · 4y

That was a very comprehensive and informative piece done from a unique perspective. Thank you.

Kyle Phoenix

 · 4y

Thank you. I try to be honest, even in my own confusion, or multi-layered feelings, responses and understandings of things like my own ethnicity and culture, I’m lucky to be old enough and young enough to understand and experience this transitional space in time in society.

MIchael Wenzel

I'd say lucky is a stretch, but I suspect you have a more optimistic outlook on life in general, which is commendable. In any case I think you're a person I would enjoy having a beer and a conversation with, which I am currently enjoying, so cheers.

Blair Miller

 · 4y

Excellent post. I would share, but for some reason my share button won’t work. Thanks for writing about your experiences.