Crazy Sometimes

I think my favorite reading in part three of White Privilege was Leonard Pitts Jr.'s essay, "Crazy Sometimes." I think it kind of relates to the controversy surrounding Kanye West's claim that "George Bush doesn't care about Black people." He was attacked for making a hurricane into racial issue. The fact is that Black people were stranded in numbers infinitely larger than Whites. How would the reaction have been if Mike Myers had stated the same claim Kanye had? Perhaps then people would have paused and considered, but because it was a man of color making the claim, he was laughed at as another Black person bringing race into the discussion where it had no place...which, is completely and totally the opposite of the reality.

My favorite part of Pitts's essay was the discussion of Ted Koppel's interview of a group of Philadelphians who had bullied a Black woman out of their White community. The residents cited that they were worried about "crime" and the "woman's effect on property values." They wondered about "what sort of neighbor she might have been." The fact that these people continued to deny the racist ideology behind their statements is completely ridiculous to me. How could they not realize that their assumption was racist when they were worried that because this woman was Black that they saw her as a criminal who by living in their neighborhood would lower the value of the neighborhood and also pose as a threat to the safety and happiness of their neighbors? Koppel then asked: "How much money would they each require, he wanted to know, before they'd be willing to give up their white skins forever and become black?" A man said that he would require $50 million, because then he said, "I could live anywhere I want. I wouldn't have to deal with any racism." His realization is one that needs to be had over and over again where individuals come to grips with the fact that race is very much ingrained in their minds as a reflection of other traits.