Making honest talk on race safe
Stu News does a public service as a safe forum for honest talk about race, including Dr. Debby Bowes’ commentary “Committee on Race” in your April 9 edition. We appreciated encouraging words of black college professor Carol Swain affirming, “In this country, where you start out in life does not determine where you end up.”
Swain’s optimism is reminiscent of Michele Obama’s expressed hope that in America, “The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.” Former NBA star Charles Barkley’s upbeat sloganeering about black self-reliance is a similarly well-intentioned narrative to shift the focus of young black people from fixation on race victimology to identification with achievement and success.
It is true that whatever one’s race, being an American is a winning ticket in the global existential lottery, but there is no nation or society that is both racially diverse and post-racial. Clearly, the U.S. has entered a new phase of self-awareness about racial irresolution. In that context, Dr. Bowes questions the School District’s hypothesis for anti-racist education.
None of us want students in local schools indoctrinated in misdirected white guilt ideology. That risks beguilement by the easy idealism of a post-racial society and white absolution that merely relocates the comfort zone for more nuanced rationalization of white privilege.
However, Bowes seemingly puts words in Professor Swain’s mouth asserting “systemic racism” is “nonsense.” Again, seemingly in her words not Swain’s, Bowes insists “systemic racism” narratives lead “black youth into a dead end of self-pity and despair” and “use of race as an excuse for why they are not performing.” In the view of many, Bowes wanders into “generalities” as she admonishes the Superintendent’s Anti-Racism Education Committee” to avoid.
True reckoning about race justice isn’t about taking sides. At one extreme racial inequality is blamed on surrender by black Americans to race victimology, and at the other extreme white incomprehension and denial of white privilege are equated to active intentional racism condoning white supremacy and race hate.
We still struggle to find common ground and shared truth in a broad bandwidth discussion of unrealized need for reconciliation of race equities. It remains a reality equal rights and opportunity are denied to black Americans and other people of color, preventing realization of full potential no matter how hard a person works to succeed.
That’s why for every Professor Swain, Charles Barkley, or Michelle Obama who rightly celebrate rights enabling all Americans to succeed, there are black Americans who do not want their success and high achievement to be used to rationalize discrimination. Racism still disproportionately denies access to the American Dream for too many black people and black communities.
Overcoming unfairness, prejudice, and injustice is part of the American character and heritage, and from childhood people of every race and ethnic identity must overcome justice denied. But for black Americans it remains true that the index of discrimination and unfairness is higher than it is for fellow citizens who are white.
Many Americans forget racial segregation ended in our lifetime. Reconciliation obviously falls somewhere between extremes of black racial despair and wishful white thinking that the civil rights movement in the 1960s ended racism. We even had a black President, so get over it, right?
It’s true the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that federal and state laws segregating races were unconstitutional racial discrimination. After a bloody and murderous decade of domestic terrorism by white supremacists, Congress finally passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enforcing the court’s 1954 ruling. It wasn’t until 1967, after the Beatles released the Sgt. Pepper album, that courts ended enforcement of state laws making interracial marriage a crime punishable by prison.
Dr. Bowes seemingly insists optimistically that in half a lifetime the social effects of a century of post-Civil War race segregation are sufficiently mitigated and there is no “institutionalized” or “systemic” racism. Perhaps the real question is whether we’re talking about economic, political, legal, cultural, educational, or other “systems” in our social order.
Right here in “progressive” coastal California, one example of institutionalized and systemic racism implicates local, county, and state governments, acting in systemic synergy with local community. Anyone benefitting from use of the public commons and LA County Lifeguard Headquarters on prime ocean front real estate in Manhattan Beach is part of the legacy of past racism and current systemic white privilege.
The country lifeguard building and property were confiscated illegally by the City of Manhattan Beach in 1924 after eviction of Charles and Willa Bruce, the black owners of a successful racially integrated beach resort. This was how the city and community dealt systemically with black business owners, after members of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter committed acts of violence against the resort and guests.
Decades later the city transferred the property to LA County, despite city and county knowledge it was acquired through acts of institutionalized and systemic racism. Only in 2021 did LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn lead efforts culminating in a State Legislature bill to return the property to descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce.
Did those descendants alive today suffer discrimination directly resulting from institutionalized and systemic racism? Was the loss of equal opportunity to work hard and prosper greater than challenges or setbacks faced by white children and adults in white society? If so, should children and grandchildren of the Bruce family be paid restitution and reparations by the city?
What monetary value would any of us place on unlawful denial from 1924 to the present of the benefit of owning the land where the Main Beach tower or the newer headquarters are located?
Perhaps the Bruce family saga would be a good case study to include in curriculum being developed by LBUSD “Anti-Racism Education” committee.
Howard Hills
Laguna Beach
