In Seattle, you can really have an "open" discussion on race and racial relations if you toe the political line and repeat the time-worn cliches and bromides about white privilege, black oppression and, under all circumstances, NEVER deviate from them, for example, to ask for greater accountability and cooperation from African-Americans.
You can't bring up the possibility of organizing anti-violence workshops (for within the African-American community) because that would be pointing the figure at black people and, ergo, "racist," even if that community suffers the highest violent crimes rate not necessarily just because of poverty but also because of common attitudes towards violence, machismo, etc., as well as having being trained to SEE EVERYTHING in terms of race--which is to put racial blinders on the whole of life, and be in part responsible for the very condition one deplores.
While the United States--compared to let's say, China, Russia, Thailand, etc. is a relatively functioning political democracy--one should not be blinded into thinking that political demagoguery, mass pressures, and injustice, on all sides of the political spectrum, not just the conservative, do not exist.
America's "liberal" racial politics are impassioned, intolerant. and ugly. An open discussion of race is impossible when there are "Black Lives protesters" ready to shove and scream at those they see as their enemies (and the cause of anything from a minor irritation to larger personal unhappiness), while a majority in even white-dominated parts of the country will readily condemn those who do not parrot in public what is politically correct (and expedient).
The number of persons who have suffered--lost their jobs, subjected to incredible psychological pressure, live under the permanent threat of violence to themselves and their families--in the nationally whipped up witch-hunts to track down, eradicate, and punish "racists" (almost always white and never black) is an unacknowledged secret.
America is a country where white people are taught to hate and belittle themselves, while black people are figuratively put on a pedestal, at the top of the racial hierarchy, which in itself is racism.
Why wouldn't a demographic group which has been the overwhelming majority in this country since the European colonization be dominant?
Although one could argue that blacks, American Indians, and others were never proportionally represented in the power structure--which is true, in fact--which was dominated by an Anglo-Protestant demographic. But this "class" did not meant that every single Anglo Protestant male enjoyed...
Today, a black person can get away with behavior (as in shouting, screaming, cursing, demanding/insisting that others behave a certain way towards them) that would get a person of another color in trouble (off an airplane, for instance).
Everyone is afraid of being called "a racist." Except African-Americans, that is.
For, as white liberals have told me, "blacks can be prejudiced, but not racist." (!)
But which no one has figured out except Donald Trump. Apparently white liberals cannot get enough of being told how worthless they are and how morally superior and how much cooler black people are.
Astonishingly, they see the white working class males Trump appeals to as being deluded self-justifying, self-pitying.
But I see as much delusion in white (and black and Asian) liberals with regards to race in this country.
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What foreigners--particularly Asians and somewhat less so, Europeans--don't "get" is that African-Americans in the United States are held up as no other group as martyrs, an oppressed people who can do no wrong, are so virtuous, strong, loving, and stoic in the face of their long-endured suffering and pain, have no shortcomings as a group and have never caused any pain, and whose whatever unfortunate circumstances are wholly due to the history of slavery, discrimination, and a current unjust system (legal, economic, social, educational, medical...).
Unlike white Americans, African-Americans as a group can never be blamed or held partially accountable for whatever unhappiness or misfortune.
Any irritation, however minor, they feel they can lay at the feet of what some white person did to them, their parents, ancestors, either 20, 100, or 500 years ago or just yesterday. This notion can be broadened to include Asians, Latinos, Jews...
For the past half century, they have been portrayed on film, television, stage, in literature, and in the media as historical or modern-day heroes, saints, literary giants, super-stars...
...from Beyonce to Michael Jordan, Obama to Will Smith, Michael Jackson, Toni Morrison, Oprah Whitney...
Jimi Hendrix, Rosa Parks, Cassius Clay, Duke Ellington...
...to Martin Luther King, Jr., who is America's modern-day saint and probably the most admired American (by Americans), over Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, FDR, and any (white) person.
To the point, America is infatuated with and highly sympathetic towards black people and shows it every waking or sleeping minute, in so many many different ways.
Asians, in particular, need to know--and they usually learn this quite quickly, as far as I can tell--that that they cannot express their real feelings about the way they are treated by black people in this country, unless they are willing to risk being viciously attacked by blacks but also ostracized and soundly criticized/condemned by "well-intentioned" whites and even Asian community leaders.
What you feel and think in private you cannot say in public in America, as "a nobody," even if you're not running for public office (think Trump again).
Think again, if you are naive enough to believe that colleges and universities in the U.S. really adhere to "free speech" (in the light of what has happened at Yale University and other institutions that have forced professors and administrators to resign and/or rescinded speaking invitations under pressure [protests from very vocal groups].
Any disparagement of the individual talents or personality of a black person is considered by so many Americans as racist, although if one did the same of a white American, very few would see it that way (as a way of expressing one's hatred or a dismissal of ALL the black race).
Implicit is the notion that if a black person has been violent, it is because s/he or his/her ancestors were treated with violence, never because of his/her inability or refusal to distinguish between right or wrong, never because his parents and community did not provide better role models or worked hard enough to reach their goals
Or s/he is mentally ill. Or poverty is responsible. (If the latter were true, one would expect to see very high rates of criminal behavior among Asian immigrants).
Black-on-white or black-on-Asian violence is rarely treated as seriously as white-on-black crime, and is either ignored or under reported, meaning that if reported the race of the perpetrator, if black, will be left out.
(Think of the Bosnian man killed by a group of blacks in St. Louis, MI following the Ferguson incident: never reported by the New York Times).
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Don't let any white (liberal) person tell you, if you are a racial minority as I myself, am and who has experienced racial prejudice all his life (from blacks and whites, in the past 20 years, most blatantly from black people), that what you're saying is "racist."
Tell them to "Fuck off, you white racist mother- fucker. You don't know what you're talking about."
The approved language of indignant white liberals when used by oppressed people.
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I am no social psychologist or cultural anthropologist, but I do think and feel as honestly as...
In the midst of madness, an individual has the right and obligation to speak out, even at his/her own expense.
The democracy of, what in effect, amounts to a mob, including its elite manifestations, is only democracy in a limited sense, as the threat of social and psychological--attack can be as difficult to endure as an actual physical beating.
Lynching takes place in the mind as well, and America's Puritanical roots show up in its attempt to rectify past injustice by only more injustice.
This cultural self-blood-letting, generally at the expense of whites, bleeds attempts at reconciliation and progress, in my opinion.
When a mostly white audience bursts into wild applause at the brutal killing of a white woman, by the black hero, as I recall reading in Anthony Lane's New Yorker review of Tarentino's "Django," something is wrong.
America is a contradictory place with free speech an ideal rather than a reality...
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