Essay #2. The Magic of Racism
A good magician knows the art of deception. A great magician can make an audience see and believe something most intelligent people know isn’t and never could be real. For instance, we all know that a person can’t be sawed in half and put back together. Yet, as an audience we actually believe it’s possible. What’s really going on is just a sleight of hand and intentional misdirection. Racism, which is race prejudice plus power, is much like magic. Racism needs the power to intentionally misdirect what’s truly going on. Without the power to intentionally misdirect what’s truly going on, racism becomes impotent. The intentional misdirection of racism is designed to keep its victims from seeing and understanding what is really going on. An example of this would be Black-on-Black crime. When Black people start talking about making things better, racism does a sleight of hand and brings up Black-on-Black crime. I know Black-on-Black crime exists. According to Blackdemographics.com the 2013 US Census Bureau estimated that there are 45,003,665 African Americans in the United States which means that only 14.1% of the total American population, which numbers at 316.1 Million. However, this country is 67-70% White. Which means that 211.7 Million to 221.7 Million are White. All one must do is read the newspaper or watch the news and you’ll understand that there is robbing, stealing and even killings in White neighborhoods happening every day. Now here’s the first step to the sleight of hands and misdirection magic of racism. It’s not called a White-on-White crime problem. I live in a state that has only about a 20% minority population and only 1% of that minority population is Black. And just like in other states people here are victims of crimes. People here get killed. Banks here get robbed. There are home invasions. Unfortunately, there are rapes here also. Because of the population’s demographics here, most of the time those crimes are White-on-White crimes. However, I’ve never seen or heard these crimes reported as White-on-White crime. There are poor, low income and even uneducated Whites that also live here, but I’ve never heard them being told to stop the White-on-White crime, before they can prosper. They are instead told that their problems are because of people of color. Most of them can go days, even weeks and not speak to a person of color, yet they believe the racist lie.
The second step to the sleight of hands and misdirection of racism, is getting Black people to believe that somehow the racism perpetrated across this country is our fault. Racists try to make us think that somehow racism would miraculously stop if there were no Black-on-Black crimes. Ridding society of racism against any group of people should not be based on what goes on in their neighborhoods. We need to stop racism because we’re equally human, and it is morally wrong. And yes, there’s no doubt about it, crime in Black communities needs to stop. But this country needs to stop lying about racism’s cause. There would not be some kind of positive, automatic chain reaction, ridding this country of racism, if Black-on-Black crime didn’t exist. Remember what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 1, 1921? Black Wall Street, the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious Whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering – a model community destroyed and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused. The night’s carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, 1500 homes, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected, the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials and many other sympathizers (SFBayview.com). The power aspect of racism kept this American atrocity and many others like it, out of the mainstream public education history books. Those African Americans people were doing what White racist people often cry. They were sticking with their own kind and prospering. This was the ultimate case of damn if you do, damn if you don’t.
While we’re focusing on the lie, Black-on-Black crime, our children aren’t receiving the same level of education as their White counterparts. Black-on-Black crime kills the body and robs us, and it needs to stop. However, the magical power of institutional racism kills the future, one generation at a time, forever.
There are millions of Black people who believe ‘Black Lives Matter’ because we want to be counted in ‘All Lives Matter’ and we haven’t been. However, the intentional misdirection power of racism would have you believe that because a few militant Black people might mean something negative, that all hard-working Black people must also mean something negative when they want Black lives to matter. Just like the person who gets sawed in half by the magician, non-thinking people, even though logic dictates that they shouldn’t, believe Black people really think and believe only our lives matter. Americans needs to focus on the hidden hand, which hides the power and the magician of racism. That is the hand secretly killing us all.
