Here is an example:
Wise says "Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. "
Do you see this statement as being essentially true?
If you think it IS true, do you think that black people and white people see the world differently because the world (or, more specifically, the US) is actually quite different depending on the skin you are wearing?
Or do you think that our society has changed so much that any perceived difference is just that - more perceived than real?
Julia, thanks for attempting to get us refocused. In addressing your questions, I am struck by how impossible this discussion is in the absence of voices from "black" America. Even with a portion of my blood running to an African ancestry I did not grow up in a "black" area and therefore my experiences do not reflect that perspective.
What I do know is that even the most "assimilated" African-American friends of mine have a significantly different mindset from me. Even being gay does not afford a similar mindset despite our shared experience of "differentness" and exclusion.
I am able to see some of the deeply ingrained prejudices, practices and prerogatives of the white-male power elite, but only those to which I have been exposed. Someone described it as being like trying to describe water to a fish. It is difficult to see one's environment as subjective -- it appears to be so "true" and objective to ourselves.
For me the challenge of the day, and I believe it is what Obama spoke of, is to discuss the subject
as though we know nothing useful about it. Only then will new truths and fresh directions appear.
Some of these discussions, if conducted at a level of honesty and openness will contain hurtful words and messages of pain and distrust. That is the way it is for most people it seems. Despite an intellectual ability to be even handed and open, for some that is possible only because we may not have had to confront the sometimes irrational, sometimes perfectly reasonable wounds that sear the battlegrounds of our national and individual past.
I have yet to read the unvarnished, unprotected words of those who feel the oppression of the past in this discussion here. Without those words I think we are engaged in philosophical masturbation.
