Cynthia Dagnal-Myron: Why I'm Not Surprised by Arizona's Racism
[Cynthia Dagnal-Myron has a blog on openSalon.]
As someone who's lived in Arizona for over 20 years now, I'm not shocked by the recent immigration law. Partly that's because I know how common profiling is here on the border. It's not controversial in these parts; it's just how it is. It's a practice as old as, well, Geronimo.
But I'm also not shocked to see the supposed resurgence of racism in America -- aimed, many feel, at Hispanics rather than African-Americans. Many people of color my age, who grew up constantly aware that they were in real danger, every single day of their lives, are difficult to shock. We've lived through so many varieties of racism that we're slightly amused anyone really fell for that "post-racial" America stuff being bandied about during the Obama campaign. That bubble burst pretty quick, huh?
Chris Rock once quipped that he saw America as that rich uncle who put you through college after he'd spent years molesting you. After I laughed myself sick, I realized: That was no joke. My relationship is exactly that. I've gotten everything from this country that I could've wished for and then some; when I travel outside of the States I am aware of how truly well off I am. But I'm scarred soul deep, too. It's hard to resist biting the hand that feeds me some days. Just to even the score some.
I grew up on Chicago's South Side -- born in the pre-civil rights movement '50s to parents who'd made the Great Migration from the South a couple of decades earlier. My first neighborhood is known for its blues joints and as the birthplace of many future civil rights luminaries and legendary entrepreneurs, from the still well-known Johnson family to my own godfather, Dr. James Scott, who built the first black hospital in the city.
In fact, my fifth grade teacher was Emmett Till's mother -- you may remember him. He was lynched for whistling at a white woman. His body was pulled from a river somewhere, bleached white and bloated -- he looked like a beluga whale in the awful photos splashed across the front pages of the black newspapers in our neighborhood. She kept a photo of him on her mantel to remind all who entered. And told her students that picture was a symbol of the ignorance she was sending us out into the world both to deal with and to change....
Read entire article at Salon.com
As someone who's lived in Arizona for over 20 years now, I'm not shocked by the recent immigration law. Partly that's because I know how common profiling is here on the border. It's not controversial in these parts; it's just how it is. It's a practice as old as, well, Geronimo.
But I'm also not shocked to see the supposed resurgence of racism in America -- aimed, many feel, at Hispanics rather than African-Americans. Many people of color my age, who grew up constantly aware that they were in real danger, every single day of their lives, are difficult to shock. We've lived through so many varieties of racism that we're slightly amused anyone really fell for that "post-racial" America stuff being bandied about during the Obama campaign. That bubble burst pretty quick, huh?
Chris Rock once quipped that he saw America as that rich uncle who put you through college after he'd spent years molesting you. After I laughed myself sick, I realized: That was no joke. My relationship is exactly that. I've gotten everything from this country that I could've wished for and then some; when I travel outside of the States I am aware of how truly well off I am. But I'm scarred soul deep, too. It's hard to resist biting the hand that feeds me some days. Just to even the score some.
I grew up on Chicago's South Side -- born in the pre-civil rights movement '50s to parents who'd made the Great Migration from the South a couple of decades earlier. My first neighborhood is known for its blues joints and as the birthplace of many future civil rights luminaries and legendary entrepreneurs, from the still well-known Johnson family to my own godfather, Dr. James Scott, who built the first black hospital in the city.
In fact, my fifth grade teacher was Emmett Till's mother -- you may remember him. He was lynched for whistling at a white woman. His body was pulled from a river somewhere, bleached white and bloated -- he looked like a beluga whale in the awful photos splashed across the front pages of the black newspapers in our neighborhood. She kept a photo of him on her mantel to remind all who entered. And told her students that picture was a symbol of the ignorance she was sending us out into the world both to deal with and to change....