Explaining racism to my child

As I often do on the weekend, I recruited my oldest sone, Owen, to help me with running an errand. I like hanging out with him and he likes riding in the front seat and feeling like a big kid. Plus, there's the magic of the car ride, which somehow causes kids to open up and talk more than they do when face-to-face in the house.

On the car's audio system we were listening to Blackalicious' "Supreme People." The chorus is pretty straight-forward---"Su-preme (Supreme, Supreme) [x8]", audio here---but something dawned on Owen:

O [looking at the media player display]: Ohhhhh! They're saying "supreme, supreme!" I thought they were saying "seriously? seriously?"

me [smiling]: Yup. That would be funny if he was saying "srsly?!" like you and Marcus do.

O: What does supreme mean?

me: It's similar to being super, or impressive, or very good at what you do. It can also mean that you're the best. 

O: Oh.

me: Do you know who he's referring to when he says that?

O [thinking]: Well, it says supreme people, so maybe he's talking about his friends.

me: Yup. But actually he's talking about an entire group of people. Can you think of who those people might be?

O [long pause]: Black people?

me: Yeah, that's right. Do you know why he might want to say that over and over?

O: No.

me: Well, it's because some people don't think that Black people are very good at things. They think they are inferior just because they are Black. Do you know which group of people often thinks that?

O: Yeah, white people.

me: Yes, sadly. They don't even know they're doing it a lot of the time. But we Black people can feel it. All the time. So we have to pump ourselves up, like Gift of Gab does in this song. We're actually supreme in all that we set our minds to do.

O: Well, I think it's like chess. There are black pieces and white pieces. And I think both sides are good, and I think both sides can win half of the time.

me: That's a great way to think. I wish it was like that. But imagine a chess board where the white side has all their pieces, but the Black side starts with no king, queen, bishop or knight. 

O: Oh, man, they'd get destroyed every game!

me: Well, that's what it's like in our world. The white side gets to start with things like money, jobs, friends with money and jobs, and they make sure the Black side doesn't get good pieces.

(Historical note: Only 2 out of 116 Supreme Court justices, 9/1950 senators, and 1/43 presidents have ever been Black. Of those 9 Black senators, only four were popularly elected; Edward Brooke of MA, was the first. Only 7/500 of Fortune 500 CEOs are Black, and no Black-owned company has ever been in the Fortune 500. Only 20 Black people have been presidential cabinet officers. All this despite making up more than 10% of the US population. It goes on and on for Black people being shut out of American positions of economic, political and social power.)

(Present-day reality note: There exists a 22:1 wealth gap between Black and white Americans today; right now. The percentage of unemployment is a factor of 2 higher for Black people. While the poverty rate has dropped or leveled off for white people, it is rising for Black people. See also the figure below, and this article about how Black people of a given income are more likely to live near poverty than are white people of the same income bracket. Finally, Black people experience less economic mobility than white people, so the American Dream, already known to be a fairy tale for most people, is even more of a joke for people of color.)

O: That's not fair at all. Why is it like that?

me: It's like that because the white player sets the rules of the game and the black side doesn't get a say. And when the black player complains about the rules being unfair, the player on the white side denies that there's any unfairness. In fact, the white player doesn't even like it when anyone mentions "rules." They yell, "I'm not rulesist" and act like being accused of rulesism is the worst thing ever. Or they insist that they are "rule blind."

O: That sucks.

(Historical note: the Federal Housing Administration was established as part of the Federal Housing Act of 1934 under President Roosevelt. However, white supremacists known as Southern Democrats  (aka Dixicrats) ensured that the law could only be enforce at the state level, allowing southern states---where most Black people lived---to deny benefits to Black people. The Social Security Act of 1935 originally excluded agricultural workers and domestic laborers, who were predominantly (70%) Black and Latino/a. 

In the North, the FHA set the rules for home loans, and loans were denied for purchases where the white population dipped below a certain percentile [known as redlining], while Black people were barred by racial covenants from purchasing houses in better neighborhoods. All of this was perfectly legal. The same with other New Deal provisions as well as the GI Bill. White people built wealth , attended college on the government dime, and won high-income jobs during this time period while Black people struggled to find places to live and work during the so-called "baby boom." 

Think about this the next time you try to talk about the problem being class instead of race. Yes,  Black people tend to be in a lower economic class. But it's by design. It's hard to face, but every time you think about sending your kids to a predominantly white private school or consider moving to a "nice neighborhood," you contribute to this problem. 

As a personal note, my grandfather served in WWII but did not benefit from the GI bill, did not attend college, nor own his home. Thus he could not pass down wealth to his children. My father owned a home, but white people moved out of our neighborhood where I grew up near Fergesun, MO, a phenomenon known as "white flight." Tragically, my dad eventually had to sell the house I grew up in at a loss while houses in white neighborhoods in St. Louis were being sold at huge profits to white homeowners.)

--------------------

At this point we were walking into the electronics store and Owen was off to check out the latest iPad while I looked for a wireless USB headset. We met up at the front of the store and waited in the checkout line. As is usually the case, there was a ton of "impulse bait" in bins along the sides of the line. Sigh...

I spotted a Nerf dart gun and said, "Oh man, Marcus would be begging for that right now. I'm glad we're good at only buying what we went to the store to get, not what the store tries to get us to buy."

Owen quickly dropped the bag of gummy worms he was investigating and said, "Uh huh." :)

But then I spotted a tiny dart gun, the smallest Nerf dart gun I had ever seen---and being the father of two boys, I know the Nerf lineup pretty well. We were close enough to the front of the line that the checkout clerk remarked, "That'd be a pretty good gun for a sneak attack." This got Owen's attention. He asked, "How much is it, Dad?" I gave it to the clerk, who scanned it and said it was $4.99. I said, "You could put that in your pocket and surprise Marcus!" The clerk chimed in, "Yeah, you could be all, 'I have some candy, wanna see?' and then BAM!"

We all laughed and I totally gave into the impulse buy (I'm good at teaching some lessons). We headed out to the car and started driving home.

O: I wanna make it fair between white people and Black people.

me: I would, too. Do you know who Martin Luther King was?

O: Ummm, he freed the slaves?

me [dying a little inside]: That was Abe Lincoln. Martin Luther King said that we should change the game to make it fair for everyone in America.

O: But it didn't work?

me: Well, kinda. It got white people to stop being mean to Black people to their faces, at least on a daily basis, which was an important step. He also helped make it so the game wasn't obviously rigged and he helped end segregation. But white people are pretty clever, and they still managed to keep the rules unfair. And they definitely complain a lot when the Black side wins despite the rigged rules (Reference, reference, reference)

(Note: Here and elsewhere I refer to white people as a whole, since as a racial *group* they hold more power over Black people *as a group*. Individual results may vary, but the averages matter most and tell the tale of racism in America.)

O: Oh. That sucks.

me: Yeah

[long silence]

O: But what about Mom?!

me: Oh...uhhhh. Right. Mom is white. But she's aware of the situation. She's down with the Black people, so she's definitely cool!

O: No! I meant, what will Mom say when I sneak-attack Marcus?!

And...end scene.

---------------

Do you have questions, doubts, concerns? Would you like to help end racism in your institution? Knowledge is power, so here's the list of books and articles that informed my views.

American Slavery, American Freedom, Edmund S. Morgan

When Affirmative Action Was White, Ira Katznelson

The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action, Terry H. Anderson

The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson

Monster: The Autobiography of a Los Angeles Gang Member, Sanyika Shakur

The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, David Simon and Edward Burns

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, Sudhir Venkatesh

Seeing White: An Introduction to White Privilege and Race by Jean Halley, Amy Eshleman and Ramya Mahadevan Vijaya

Leaving: A Novel, Richard Dry

High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society by Carl Hart

The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem by Deborah Meier

Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) by Claude Steele
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Jeanne Theoharis

Online:

The Case for Reparations (The Atlantic), Ta-Nehisi Coates
How you can tell who didn't read The Case for Reparations

Segregation Now: The Resegregation of American Schools (The Atlantic), Nikole Hannah-Jones
The Angry Black Woman blog's reading list

Killing Rage chapter of book by the same name by Bell Hooks

Jamelle Bouie's articles over at Slate.com

ill doctrine: a hip-hop video blog by Jay Smooth

Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic (pronounced tah-nuh-hah-see)

These ten charts show the black-white economic gap hasn’t budged in 50 years

Trends in U.S. Family Income Mobility, 1967–2004 Katharine Bradbury and Jane Katz

TV/Netflix:

The Civil War by Ken Burns
Eyes on the Prize (PBS American Experience)
Four Little Girls by Spike Lee
Crips and Bloods: Made in America
The House I Live In
Malcolm X by Spike Lee
Twelve Years a Slave

On my to-read list:

Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 (Historical Studies of Urban America) by Arnold R. Hirsch

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America by Nathan McCall

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander and Cornel West

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David W. Blight

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton Classics) by Thomas J. Sugrue

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Eric Foner

Sweet Land of Liberty by Tom Segrue
Family Properties by Beryl Satter
Fear Itself by Ira Katznelson
American Apartheid by Douglass Massey and Nancy Denton

Supreme People

[Hook]
Supreme (Supreme, Supreme) [repeat 8x]

Supreme people living with they backs aligned
Up against the wall cause these days are asinine
Living in a money matrix, how cats survive
Some will fade away and wither, others will blast a 9
Kings and Queens working 9 to 5's
And making nothing searching for a deeper purpose in life
This can't be life, with all this work this can't be right
Without no money in my pockets I just can't see right
I used to try to preach to younguns like, "Do right kids"
Now-a-days all that I can say is, "Get it how you live"
Live how you get it, shit!
Don't nobody wanna get...
A promotion up to fry cook like little Calvin did
Some would rather take a gamble, hey they might do bids
The allure of fast money in this hell-bound system
Got you look at two-hundred bucks a week
Versus, like a thousand in a day
Tell me what makes more sense to these

[Hook]

Trapped like rats in mazes for the cheese
Every natural resource is here, we don't really need money
But certain people need power over people
They act like that cause they're trapped inside their ego-sphere
And now you can't feel free
Without material possessions, you can't just be
And without 'em you're left stressin', so anxiously
So you grab the Smith & Wesson, then aim, then squeeze
To get what's comin' to ya
The block's so hot, it blew the top off the thermometer
The rush for drama is more appealing than a plain life
Cause life is insane, so insanity is a sane life
It's so easy to see, simple as day and night
Supreme people born out of the way of the light
In the darkness, trying to fly straight
To some folks it's like being a fish swimming with sharks, shit!

"Perhaps not since men turned their ears to the preachings of a mere prophet 2000 years ago have the words of humble men reached so many with such force. And, perhaps because it has been burning so long, now smoldering, now bursting into hot flames, now hastily covered over to smolder again until the next outbreak"

[Hook]

Supreme people only want the best and a
Supreme people won't settle for less than a
Straight from royalty put inside projects and a
Capitalist system that don't make sense to ya
Supreme people put against the fence, get up
Get irate and hostile if you ain't fixing the
Problem you created that make these conditions up
A little reparation for your acts are sent to us
Supreme people ride or die to get the bucks
Some by any means so, hey, lock your benzes up
Tuck your chain and watch and keep your defenses up
All they wanna do is live it up like you cause they're

[Hook]

Supreme
Supreme
Supreme

Edit the description to add:

• Historical context: Historical context.
• An explanation of the overall story (e.g. "In this song, Eminem corresponds with a crazed fan who...")
• The sample used for a beat.