I can never fully understand my wife's experience being Black in America

"A Child's Garden Northampton 2 by Lynne Graves" by Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

I am a white man married to a Black woman for over 25 years. We have five children together. In that time I have learned a lot about American society that I never suspected - and wouldn’t have believed 30 years ago if I had been told. Even after 25 years, I still have a lot to learn. One thing I have learned is that multiple issues keep racism a problem in the United States. There is a quote in the book “Methuselah’s Children” that points out one problem we have with race relations. A character, explaining to his people why they are in mortal, danger says:

“But Eve is right... as far as she went. Individuals are kind and decent… as individuals to other individuals. Eve is in no danger from her neighbors and friends, and I am in no danger from mine. But she is in danger from my neighbors and friends, and I from hers.”

This is one of the things that makes racism hard to eradicate in the U.S. About 13% of the population is African American. This means that most of the white population does not really know any Black people. They may work with a few, or they may interact with some at the gym, but there are no Black people that they hang out with and get to know. That means what most white Americans know about African America ns is what they see on TV, in the news, and in movies. Or what they hear from their leaders and authority figures. I speak from experience. I was raised in a mostly white community with no Black people. When I graduated high school, I didn’t think I had a prejudiced bone in my body. Despite never hearing anything overtly racist at home I was wrong - but that’s what I thought. It wasn’t until I started meeting Black people that I began (slowly) to realize how wrong I was. I thought racism was a thing of the past, and that any problems were isolated incidents that should be addressed, and that was it. I didn’t believe there was any disparity in the treatment of whites and Blacks by police, in hiring, or anything else.

When I started working with a lot of Black people, I began to see that some things I believed were wrong, but I still didn’t realize how many. I didn’t even realize when a coworker told a new employee I didn’t mean anything by something I’d just said that I was saying offensive things. I didn’t really start to understand until I married into a Black family and began to see some things they experience on a regular basis. It was hard to comprehend how different my experience as a white man in America is from my wife’s.

What really brought home to me just how wide the experience gap can be happened just a few days ago when Cameron Welch posted the unwritten rules his mother gave him growing up. I recognized almost the entire list as things my wife said to our children - but one really hit me. For years my wife would tell our kids not to touch anything in the store unless they were going to buy it and get onto them if they did. I would tell her it’s no big deal as long as they put it back. Seeing “Don’t touch anything you’re not buying” on Cameron's list put my wife’s rule in a new perspective. Growing up, we were always grabbing things we wanted and running to mom with them and being told to put it back. But we were white kids in a white town. Generally, even kids who were caught shoplifting just had their parents called. It never occurred to me that telling our kids not to touch anything in the store would be a survival tactic to keep our kids out of trouble. But it is.

That so simple a thing could be a source of concern is startling, and heartbreaking. A child taking something they like to show their mother should not cause fear of reprisal or for the child’s safety. But that is where we are in America. Black families fear that just trying to show mommy a neat toy could have serious consequences. White people usually don't. We are in that place because most white people don’t actually know anything about Black people, and we aren’t willing to learn because it involves admitting that there is prejudice, that there is white privilege, that slavery is still a problem and that racism has not gone away, just gotten sneakier. Until we can have those conversations we can’t solve the issues. Until we, as the privileged class, will at least listen to why the phrase “White lives matter” is an inappropriate (at best) response to "Black lives matter" we cannot hope to face the bigger issues that have to be addressed. 

It may not be reasonable to expect more white people to befriend Black people, but it is possible to learn more about the Black experience in America. Netflix and Hulu both have sections with documentaries and movies by, about, and for Black people. Some of them are very intense and can be hard to watch. Some of them can be entertaining. But watch with an open mind and maybe learn a little about what life without white skin is like in the U.S. 

Passwords are only as good as the way they're secured

Parents and students at Pine Forest High School in Fayetteville, N.C. received quite a scare when a student from Louisiana posted death threats on Edmodo, the school sponsored social network. The failing was not in the security of Edmodo, but in the security of the passwords used to administer the social platform.

Apparently at least one password was accessible on the school web site. One of the big discussions in security today is how to replace passwords, which suffer from the likelihood of being either too easy to guess or discover using sophisticated software and hardware, or too hard to remember for most people. But it really doesn't matter how hard to guess or easy to remember the password is if you leave it out for anyone to find.

There are any number of ways to secure passwords. Some are good - software like Lastpass, and some are better than nothing - like a password protected Exel spreadsheet. There are excellent free and commercial solutions, so figuring out which one is best for you might take a little research. Googling "best password manager" brings up reviews by several reputable sites and publications. Don't let your passwords be exposed to strangers, find a password manager that works for you.

Time to start anew. Get your dog a sombrero.

Say What?!!!

I was driving to work this morning, and there was a short news piece about the World Health Organization. I've never thought much of the WHO, but this took my opinion to new lows. It seems they've come under fire for the H1-N1 joke. People are claiming the WHO overhyped the situation to benefit pharmaceutical companies.

The WHO response?

We always characterized the virus as mild, but would have been negligent not to label it a pandemic.

How the hell do you have a MILD PANDEMIC?!!!!

Tough blow to the Libs

To me the only surprise in Scott Browns Massachussets victory is that the liberals were so surprised. Are they ostriches? Has their collective head been buried in the sand for the last year? Tea parties, conservative authors spending much time at or near the top of best seller lists, much noise and thunder in the form of polls saying Americans overall do not want the government running their healthcare, people like me writing congressmen, senators and President Obama with our concerns. Of that list, the only one I never even got a form letter response from was the President.

How many signs do they need to convince them that they are elected by the people, not by the intelligentsia, academia, or the fringe of either party?

Change? What change?

After 911 President Bush was accused loudly and often of using the tragedy as a means to forward his political agendas. I would like to say that President Obama (agree or disagree with the man, the office deserves respect) is living up to his promise to bring change to politics, but he and his administration are continuing the tradition started long before the Bush administration - the biggest differences between when Bush did it after 911 and Obama doing it now is, President Obama is openly admitting it, and no one is screaming foul the they did when Bush was doing it. In fact using a bad situation to further political ends appears to be not just A tactic, but THE tactic of this administration.

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.” This from the NY Times.

Speaking to young Europeans on March 6th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "Never waste a good crisis."

In his radio broadcast the same day, President Obama said (more wordily) with great crisis comes great opportunity.

These statements set the stage for the Obama administrations economic restructuring of the U.S. And no time is being wasted to set that restructuring in motion. In his podcast of March 7th, President Obama briefly discussed his desire for healthcare reform, and it's importance to the economic recovery of the U.S. The problem is, healthcare reform is not important to our economic recovery. Our current economic situation is directly due to bad practices in the financial sector. The healthcare industry has little or nothing to do with it. In fact, nationalizing healthcare will require increased government spending and increased taxes. Both practices put a damper on investment, research, and economic growth. In the same speech quoted earlier, Hillary Clinton sees this as a time to force industry to reduce greenhouse gases. At a time when the U.S. and world economy is reeling, the billions of dollars needed to do this will not be easy to find, if they can be found at all.

It becomes obvious that the Obama administration is not trying to devise an economic recovery, but to force social change, regardless of the effect on the economy. In fact, a large part of the plan seems to be to remove money and freedom from the taxpayer and use it to give the government as much control over both industry and individuals as can be managed while appearing to most that the idea is to return things to the way they were, but without the risk of another economic disaster.

The most frustrating thing is that the American people could put a stop to this, if they were paying attention, but they're not. Being people, the majority just want to live their lives with as little muss and fuss as possible. If they bother to vote, they vote for someone who sounds like he will keep things going, and then ignore him until the next election. Come on people, you have the power, USE IT!

Wow, I'm right

I haven't been posting it here, but I've been saying since November that bailing out the banks, then GM and Chrysler, is a bad idea. It escalates the national debt and props up businesses who have shown an inability to adjust to changing conditions and manage their resources. Now a nationally recognized economist has said the same thing. The best thing government can do in bad economic times (or any economic times, really) is get out of the way and let the free market take care of itself. Let businesses fail. Face it, GM isn't going to close it's doors. It will go through debt reorganization and hopefully come out leaner and more competitive. But with Uncle Sam Barack Obama and company pumping $30,000,000,000 into GM's coffers every few months to keep it from going under, is it any wonder there is no real effort to decrease expenses in an economically sensible fashion.

It should be obvious that propping up businesses whose problems arise from bad business practices is, believe it or not, bad business. Banks who give loans to people who can't afford them should face the consequences of their bad decisions. And saying that everyone deserves their shot at the American Dream is not a justification. We seem to have forgotten that the American dream has two parts, the first part being that if you work hard and use your money wisely, saving, investing, and being frugal, you can get the second part: a home, a car (or two) and 2.5 (or is it 1.5 now?) kids. In other words, you work hard to be able to buy the American Dream. If you can't afford the home you want, you save more, or find a home you can afford.

Two years ago my wife and I were looking for a new home. Our family had grown, and we needed a larger home. We were offered some truly wondrous ARM's and those fun loans that allow you to pay only the interest for the first 5 or 7 years, then hit you with payments that are 4 or 5 times what you were paying. If they couldn't guarantee I would be making enough to make those payments by that time, I wasn't going to get a loan that would require I make them. If the mortgage company was going to be so irresponsible as to give me a loan that was much higher than I could afford, it was my job to say "forget it" and look for a loan I could afford. But the bank should never even have made the offer.

Twelve years ago my wife and I bought our first home. And we almost didn't get it. We knew we could afford the payments for the home we wanted, but according to the formulas the bank used, we couldn't. We did eventually get a loan, but it was nerve-wracking. And it should have been. Today we have a financial meltdown with banks closing and loan defaults at epidemic levels because it has been too easy to get loans. It shouldn't have happened.

Granted, this is not just a problem caused by the banking industry. Bush was anything but fiscally conservative. He ran the deficit up to record level, which is detrimental to the health of the economy. It would have been nice if Obama would have turned around the spending policies of Bush, but he has taken the ball and is running with it. The world may not come to an end in 2012, but if we keep trying to spend our way out of this economic crisis, the world economy might.