Wow.

I'd heard that once, a long time ago. I remember being chilled by the thought that some white people see blacks as a gathering storm of violence that threatens to overwhelm the white race in ths country. "We must fight back", they say. Then, I remember that I heard that people who espouse this ideology of white dominance are the ones who say these things. It used to be, for black people, that you never knew who those people were and so you just assumed that they all feel that way. Now, in 2008, race has become a really more complicated thing. There are people like the blogger Mr. Greenwald referenced who are clearly on a kind of psychotic, racist bender and think what Barack Obama meant by having a dialogue on race is that only the most vile, odious, and obscene elements should be allowed to simply spew forth and frame the discussion on their terms. We've already had that, and it serves no useful purpose.

This is the sickness in full flower, and it's not at all the same as the misunderstanding of a white person who knows nothing of Black American culture except what he or she sees on MTV or the news at 11. Given such a limited portrayal, that person might develop a bias until they meet and get to know someone who is black and doesn't espouse urban Hip-Hop sub-culture, or listen to rap music or speaks in "ebonics". There are many people who say that these things you see are responses to institutionalized racism in the American culture, and that's true. But it does not follow that all black people subscribe to these forms of expression. This is something a white person may not know or realize and therefore, all they have to rely on are the stereotypes, and some of them can seem off-putting or even frightening. To such a person, 50 Cent and his G-Unit can look like exactly what they fear.

Here's the issue for black people as nearly as I can discern it: although civil rights and changes in the law have improved things dramatically, and although the culture has shifted to something less overtly racist and certainly less overtly and violently discriminatory, there are two things we deal with on a regular basis that white people do not. The first is that we are not always seen as fully human beings, and because of that, we are having to be somehow extraordinary to be perceived as "like anyone else," in essence, like "regular people" as Archie Bunker would put it. The second problem flows from the first: unless we are outstanding, we are lumped with the rest of "them". "Them", being the lowest and most objectionable members of society who happen to be black. Imagine hearing something like this. "I thought you were different from them. I thought you were white, " when you fail to live up to someone's expectations. You can't just be a flawed human being, a work in progress. You have to be somehow more than human all the time. That's hard to live up to.

Black people live with this. All the time. Every day. Some would just as soon not bother. And unfortunately, all too often, the all-seeing eye of the media catches us at our worst, most human moments, and broadcasts that, and then the pundits and politicians use it to confirm their worst fears. So good, God-fearing white folks stay in their safe, suburban neighborhoods and don't go out at night lest they see the angry face of some black person intent on doing them harm because of some misplaced animosity. It's a short walk then to imagining brown people from the Middle East swimming across the ocean to threaten us, or brown, Spanish-speaking people coming from our Southern border to take jobs away from good, God-fearing white folks. It's not a long walk for some to get their own private arsenals to defend against "the culture war". Nor is it a leap to imagine them voting for George W. Bush or John McCain or supporting a pointless war as long as it keeps "them" the hell away from "us".

As long as this is the lens we are perceived through, black people will be angry, and nothing will change. As long as the lens we see white people through paints them all with the same broad brush of endemic racism, they will be resentful and nothing will change.