Perceptions and Humiliation in Black and White

Posted by Tina

Our perceptions can cause errors in thinking and at times, humiliation and pain if we don’t notice and question them…if we let them go solid and make lots of rules for ourselves based on what might be false information. When X happens it’s because of YZ so I’m going to always avoid YZ from now on. The next step is to create an attitude and plan of attack…I’ll never speak to Q ever again either, he’s such an SOB!

Recent events in the news have me thinking about perceptions and how they can undermine relationships, color social thinking, and even drive legislation.

Black celebrities have complained that cabbies in New York will not stop when they attempt to flag them down; they attribute the snub to racism. What if 98% of the time it isn’t racism? What if the cab driver is simply rushing to pick up a fair his dispatcher has already given him? Cabbies snub a lot of people in New York. More than one movie star (white) has said as much…it’s a running joke. I frankly doubt that cab drivers are any more racist than anyone else. So is the black man unnecessarily causing himself pain with a false perception? I think it’s entirely possible.

When I was a kid a Jewish family moved into my neighborhood; they had two daughters about my age. The girls would stand at a distance from us as we played. If we asked why they didn’t come and play they said their father had told them we might not like them because they were Jewish. Their father finally came around to talk with the parents and ask the kids about what happened when his girls came out to play. I told him what they had said. He arranged to move his family into a new neighborhood and the girls did much better after that. His life experiences and perceptions had colored his thinking and given his girls a false impression about how they would be received.

Diane West wrote an article last that touched on this. She shared the following about Eric Holder and her husband:

In his (Eric Holders) “closed-door meeting” – no media – at the community college, Holder wanted students to know he understood their “mistrust” of police. In fact, he wanted the whole country to know it because the Justice Department later released excerpts of his remarks. “I can remember being stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike on two occasions and accused of speeding,” the handout says. “Pulled over … ‘Let me search your car’ … Go through the trunk of my car, look under the seats and all this kind of stuff. I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was and the impact it had on me.”

Hang on a sec. As a young man, my husband was pulled over on the New Jersey Turnpike. The state trooper ordered him to take his suitcase out of his car and dump his belongings on the ground. The officer looked at everything, through the trunk, under the backseat, turning up a pebble the officer tentatively identified as a “marijuana seed.” Then he noticed an unusual object in the mess. “What’s that?” he demanded. “Avon aftershave,” my future husband replied, unscrewing the cap of the Snoopy-shaped bottle.

That last part makes us laugh, but my husband remembers only anger and humiliation over the incident, and he is neither attorney general nor a black man. Call it equal-opportunity police thuggishness.

What if white people do experience many of the same humiliations and affronts as black people but since race has never been an issue the experience doesn’t get catalogued in his mind as a race thing? What if at least some of the problems blacks experience are a result of faulty perceptions? How would they know? How would anyone know? Whites keep tabs on these incidents they just file them away differently.

I was talking with a man, legally blind, in a bowling alley. I asked him what the most difficult thing about bowling was for a blind person. I expected an answer about lining up to address the pins bu he said it was the discomfort he felt thinking people were all staring at him. I laughed and asked him if he realized a lot of people felt that way? I told him about my discomfort as a child because I was so much taller than my classmates and how the experience had directed so many of my choices. I always sat in the back of the room and tried not to call attention to myself for instance. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how silly my perceptions had been and how much they had limited my experience in school.

It bothers me a lot that black people are taught to think, and believe, that people in the Republican Party, the Tea Party especially, are racist and filled with hate for minorities. It bothers me that there are political types that promote and foster this belief in the minority communities…they actually lie to people…to win elections. The lies hurt people and they prevent them from evaluating ideas free of this false perception. There isn’t much I can do about it other than expressing myself every time I get the chance. I have to wonder at the desperation in people who think they have to manipulate the narrative and promote lies to win the loyalty of some of our citizens.

We have to be careful about our perceptions and beliefs but I think we also have to begin to challenge the labels being placed on people and groups. When I look into the crowds at baseball or football games I see people of all races sitting in the stands together having a great time. More and more I see mixed families, a testament to the  melting pot and acceptance in American society. Some of those people are Republicans and Tea Party people and I know that in the SF Giants’ games a lot of them likely vote Democrat…butamazingly people don’t turn their backs on one another…riots and fights do not break out on a regular basis.

If we truly care about the state of race relations in America we need to stop creating false perceptions and false realities. From my perspective one thing that has to happen is we have to call out race baiting activists who whip up resentments and division for political power. And lets face it, they also do it for money. The events in Ferguson were not even hours old before the race baiters were present to control the narrative and whip up anger. A similar situation happened in the Trayvon Martin case. This isn’t the kind of politics we should be engaging in and it certainly isn’t the  kind of atmosphere in which any of us wish to live.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.