A message from Talk Show Bob Law

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Subject: Bob Law Note

A few days ago I responded to a comment from Mae Jackson here on Face Book My comment provoked at least one response. Let me be a little clearer. I appreciate Jack Uhrich’s concern for my using a term like “most whites support white supremacy.” However, I believe we are better served if we stare into the harsh glare of reality, rather than embrace comforting clichés. Perhaps the truth can still startle people and compel them to appropriate action. Since my comment someone has posted a poll on face book, asking “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.”

We have also seen white crowds with signs calling the president everything from a Nazi, to Satan’s advocate, and of course, congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst in congress, calling Obama a liar.

It is interesting that Blacks are often told to be careful of what we say, or how we might express our anger and frustrations, because we endanger the prospect of coalition building. For over a century, Blacks in America have marched and protested against every perceived affront. Blacks have marched and sued for equal rights, minority rights, woman’s rights, poor peoples rights, gay rights, voting rights, and immigrant rights. Blacks are the leading coalition builders in this nation. We have held hands, sung songs, fasted and prayed with everyone. Yet we have barley moved an inch economically and politically in terms of real power and influence.

In my years in the civil rights and human rights movement, I have known whites who worked tirelessly for justice. However, they have never been a majority representation of the white community. Blacks are most often urged to chase an ambiguous romanticized notion of alliances with other groups without any explanation as to how these alliances are to actually benefit and empower Black people.

I point out that there is a prominent white preacher, Reverend Steven Anderson, of the Faithful World Baptist Church in Arizona, openly calling on God to kill President Obama and there are no prominent white theologians, or major white organizations or editorial boards denouncing this murderous theology. Very different than the white response to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

When we marched in Jena, Louisiana in support of the Jena six, few whites joined us. I gathered some 200 people on the steps of New York’s City Hall in support of the marchers in Jena on that same day. White organizations and individuals did not join me. Most whites ignored us. The same was true when we marched down 5th Avenue in New York City, to protest the police killing of Sean Bell. The marchers were 95% Black. Most whites ignored our mobilizations.

Jonathan Kozol, a progressive white educator in his book, “The Shame Of The Nation”, reveals the restoration of apartheid schooling in America to the demise of Black and brown students. There is not one city in America where a significant number of whites have worked to change this appalling condition. There is not one city where a significant number of whites have worked to eliminate what Kozol calls these “Savage Inequalities.” Most whites have tolerated these injustices in city after city.

In his lectures, Tim Wise, who is white, points out that most whites benefit from white privilege in this society, and there is no real indication that most whites want to change that condition.
In the same way that everyone both Black and white feels free to point to the contradictions in the Black community, perhaps we make meaningful progress if we are just as candid about the contradictions among whites.

Racism, white privilege, white preference (that’s what white supremacy is) are still very real in this society, and Blacks still seem to be the ones, who in significant numbers, are working most diligently to eradicate these evils.