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Amber Collins

Problems with Perception

By | Tinted Lens | 7 Comments

A few days ago the ‘Black Guy Breaks into Car’ video popped onto my radar. It, like its 2010 bike theft predecessor on the What Would You Do? show was proof that *gasp* black and white Americans have different realities in how they’re treated on a daily basis.

Really? Despite the facts that, though making up only 14 percent of the population, black men account for 40 percent of all prison inmates; though stopping rates are the same for whites, blacks and Hispanics, blacks are three times more likely to be searched (person or vehicle), more than three times more likely to be handcuffed, and almost three times more likely to be arrested; and depictions of blacks in television and movies is of criminals, reformed criminals, people with rough or ‘street smart’ backgrounds, or auxiliary comic relief to their white (and Asian) counterparts, there are still those who live their lives believing everyone in America is treated equally.

Let me clarify. To be black is to be automatically viewed with suspicion while to be white is to be assumed blameless until proven otherwise.

Hoodie perceptions

Blacks in America are at a crossroads of perception, reality and environmental circumstance. Though Black households give 25 percent more of their income to charities than their white counterparts, they are often depicted as selfish and opportunistic.  And while Black youth make up only 16 percent of public school students and 9 percent of private school students, they account for: 35 percent of in-school suspensions, 35 percent of those who experience one out-of school suspension, 46 percent of those who experience multiple out-of-school suspensions, and 39 percent of those who are expelled (from Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century by Monique W. Morris).

So, how do those of us not wielding a camera work to combat these misconceptions and prejudice?

As my last post suggested, you could cross neighborhood and comfort zone boundaries by trying out a new restaurant in a place you don’t normally frequent, or follow Robyn’s advice to spend money locally in off the beaten path shops in ignored places.

There’s another, more convenient (but in no way easier) way for most of us to fight injustice: your voice.

The microaggression awareness movement has begun highlighting the unintentional and thoughtless yet hurtful things we say to one another on a daily basis. I’ve been called ‘Cosby Black’ on more occasions than I care to remember and have painful flashbacks to being taunted as an ‘Oreo’ when I was younger. The tumbler, ‘I too, am Harvard’ displays how even those at the pinnacle of American education are saddled with the prejudice, labeling and misrepresentation of past generations.

If prejudice is ever to be overcome, it will take daily acts of consciousness. Mind your words, avoid attributing an entire race to one person and maybe you’ll make someone’s day a bit less cringe-worthy.

 

Bridges Between Baltimores

By | Tinted Lens | 17 Comments

Race and crime in Baltimore has been top of mind for its residents lately. With our homicide count at 33 for the year and crime escalating daily, there has been much discussion around our problems and what the community and the city are doing to fix them.

ChangeEngine’s own Hasdai Westbrook, has been inspired to put fingers to keyboard followed up by voice to microphone to weigh in on the topic. With To #SaveBmore, Embrace The Wire, Hasdai’s thesis (and one I tend to agree with) is that to make Baltimore whole, we must actively embrace ALL of its parts, from the shiny and new of Harbor East to the older and a bit grimey of Greenmount Avenue.

When I first moved to Baltimore, I asked for neighborhood recommendations from everyone I knew here. These were my (white, middle class) aunt and uncle, their friends or contacts (mostly white), and my grad school colleague (you guessed it, also white). They pointed me to the safe ‘I’: Canton, Fells Point, Federal Hill, Mt. Vernon, Charles Village, Hampden, Roland Park.

These places were ‘safe’; they were where people had faith that I could start a new life on the right foot. From their perspectives, other neighborhoods were dangerous areas where people like us just don’t go.

The problem with this is that, while I was raised as a Person Like Us, I look more like the dangerous ‘them.’ While Highlandtown, Hampden, Fells Point and Patterson Park may be seen as trendy and the places to be, these are the same neighborhoods some people don’t go into because there’s a legacy of white violence against black people. Dr. Tara Bynum related this history on the Mark Steiner show last week, also highlighting that we are guided by a small subset of people’s idea of safety. The reason race and crime have come to the fore is because a white woman wrote a piece on her fears of living in the city. So, why do we only discuss issues when white people no longer feel safe?

If you grew up poor and black in Baltimore, there are neighborhoods you may never have been in because they were outside your reference area. To top it off, going to a newly trendy, but historically racist neighborhood is neither enticing nor economically comfortable.

On the other hand, if your opinions are shaped by your lived experience being white, middle class and informed by mass media, it is easy to live in fear of the Wire-inspiring streets of East and West Baltimore.

So how do we mix the two cities? Bike Party each month strives to cross neighborhood boundaries and take folks where they may not usually go, but that’s from the comfort and safety of your bike seat. How do we forge meaningful relationships between neighborhoods?

Healing the city takes more than talking about it. It takes stepping out of your comfort zone and working with people different from yourself towards what we all want: a safe place to life, learn, raise a family and go about the everyday business of living.

So volunteer at a community garden, tutor a student, clean up a park, go to that restaurant across town that looks interesting, but you have never stopped in. It sounds cliché, but every little action adds up.

Wait, Is That Art?

By | Tinted Lens | 4 Comments
Russian Editor-in-Chief Dasha Zhukova

Russian Editor-in-Chief Dasha Zhukova

The latest outrage graced my Facebook feed last week. Did you see it? Russian fashion editor and debutante Dasha Zhukova posed at her desk atop a ‘chair’ made of a bound and contorted black woman. When I saw it, I did not feel outraged; rather the picture engendered a sinking feeling of ‘yup- I’m sure she did.’ This heaviness in the pit of my stomach is something that comes with seeing yet another example of accidental racism.

My disappointment over this depiction of a white woman sitting on a subjugated black woman contrasted with my appreciation of the work of Nate Hill mere days before. Hill is a black artist from Brooklyn who has begun a selfie series called Trophy Scarves (NSFW). In these photos he is dressed formally with a naked white woman around his neck. While others have called his work blatantly sexist, I found it to be an imaginative social commentary.

So why do I consider one to be great art and the other to be bigoted stupidity?

Intention.

The chair Zhukova used was an homage to the 60’s artist, Allen Jones who did several in a series where women (both black and white) were shown as tables and chairs. Though she posted the picture to her Instagram herself, Zhukova insists that “This photograph, which has been published completely out of context, is of an artwork intended specifically as a commentary on gender and racial politics.” This homage, however, was entirely lost on the viewer as Jones was never mentioned, his work being used seemingly only to portray how edgy and fashion-forward Zhukova’s magazine Garage is.

Hill’s Trophy Scarves project, on the other hand, is meant to shed light on the social phenomenon of some black men using white women as status symbols. The project’s mission statement is “I wear white women for status and power.” He is deliberately portraying these women as accessories to confront a deeply ingrained and problematic societal perception — as he said in an interview with Vice, “there are people who see certain races as status symbols, and someone had to comment”.

Nate Hill and one of his Trophy Scarves

Nate Hill and one of his Trophy Scarves

Therein lies the key. To be a provocateur, one must put thought into one’s actions. If an image takes an article worth of context, it is best left off of social media sites that only deal in snippets and tag lines. It is fine to outrage people, but you have to guide them into your thinking if you want anything meaningful to come of that outrage. When attempting a commentary, see your work through the lens of others and make sure your audience knows what you mean to say.

Martin and the Media

By | Tinted Lens | 4 Comments

Yesterday, people gathered to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by attending prayer breakfasts and service projects, continuing to forge community through fellowship and action. His image was run in news stories, remembrances and his memorable quotes were posted widely on social media.

This is notable, given that generally people that look like Dr. King are largely absent from news, television and film as anything more than criminals, comedic foils or window dressing. Only this Saturday did SNL debut its first black female cast member in over a decade (alongside two black female writers found during their casting search). Onscreen and in the writer’s room, the voices and talents of black artists are not present to be heard and realized in the final product. This leads to both news and entertainment programs (reflections of how we experience the world) being created by a select group (read: cis white upper or middle class males).

That grand world envisioned by King where one is not judged first by their skin is far from being a reality when the depictions of people of color are forged from the assumptions of whites. When young black girls and young black boys don’t see reflections of themselves onscreen, they internalize the images they do see.

Less than           Violent                Undereducated                 Criminal               Helpless              Unstable

The messages the media bombards us with daily from advertisements to movies imprint on us what the ‘ideal’ is, who can be counted as good and trustworthy and who is to be questioned and regarded with suspicion and distrust.

These stereotypes play out every day in the way media spins stories. Did you see the recent on-field interview with NFL player Richard Sherman? He is being decried for screaming and generally coming off as crazed, but really, he was just riding an intense adrenaline wave. Think about it, not only had he just made the play that would take his team to the SUPER BOWL, but he had just survived a game where no less than four people had to be helped or carried off the field! Wouldn’t you be acting erratic and excitable too?

King’s Legacy itself has been sanitized for public consumption; he has been immortalized as a man of faith working for peace and nonviolence, not as a purported communist that was investigated by the FBI. The March on Washington for Jobs and Justice is widely remembered only as the occasion of the I Have a Dream speech while the larger issues and lists of demands continue to be omitted or pushed to the side because they make people confront uncomfortable truths. Americans are so quick to distill people down to idolized heroes that their essence gets lost in the process. For crying out loud, even the monument to Dr. King in DC is white!

With President Obama’s election in 2008, some have questioned whether America is a post-racial society. The reality remains that we have a long way to go. Until a broader range of the American experience is represented both onscreen and in the writers’ rooms and more people of color are brought on news programs as talking heads and experts, America denies the daily reality of almost 40 percent of her people. When the stories of American life are being written by whites painting blacks and other people of color as the ‘other’ we will all continue to be depicted as stereotypes. This prevents us from being able to start from a blank page and relate first as humans, let alone move forward together as a society.

It is incumbent upon all of us, black or white, to question what we’re being told. Ask yourself why media focused on a drug arrest in the inner city, but not the suburbs; why sitcoms are mostly intra-racial; or why dark skinned people rarely get to be the protagonist. Challenge stereotypes. Question your assumptions. And remember, if you’re not actively working against racism, you are serving the structures that perpetuate it.

#SaveBmore – Why You’re Only Hearing About Income Inequality Now

By | #SaveBmore, Tinted Lens | 6 Comments

Income inequality is rattling around the collective consciousness of late on the backs of President Obama’s remarks and Pope Francis’ denunciation of trickle-down economics in the first lengthy writing of his papacy. The gap between the poor and the super-rich in the United States has been steadily widening for decades but only recently has it risen to the top of the agenda for the media, citizens and politicians.

Why? Why only now? Why has this issue been largely ignored for so long?

Because the effects of the wealth gap for the past several decades have mostly been felt by people of color.

Here is where I could trot out the numbers highlighting how the middle class has shrunk since the 1960’s, the map of the U.S. if land were distributed by wealth, the comparison of CEO pay ratios, or the number of hours of minimum wage earning it takes to afford an apartment. But I’ll leave that for others.

According to the 2008 census, in Baltimore City, half of all African-American households earned less than $35,000 per year, while only one-third of white households fell under this low-income threshold. The prevalence of poverty among black city residents is almost double that for whites. While the Black middle class makes up 40 percent of the African-American population, this has always lagged behind the number of middle-class whites. This smaller number of middle class citizens is attributable to the wealth gap between blacks and whites. In 1984 there was an $85,000 difference in the wealth of white households over their black counterparts determined by an Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) study; over the following 25 years, it ballooned to $236,500. That’s a $151,500 increase!

IASP attributed the national wealth gap to home ownership, household income, unemployment, and financial support/inheritance while writings on Baltimore have highlighted education, pathways to careers and discriminatory hiring practices as our major obstacles. In a city that is 70 percent black, this level of poverty and inequality drags the entire city down.

How do we save our sinking city? Well, according to the Baltimore Ethical Society, we can overcome our apathy and get mad about it. Spread the YouTube video on inequality; if you’re in a position to hire, re-examine how you’re evaluating candidates of color; mentor disadvantaged youth, or better yet, give them apprenticeship opportunities if you work in a trade. Consider cooperatives as your next start-up business model and utilize Community Wealth by looking to and building on a neighborhood’s existing assets.

The shocking thing is, what will #SaveBmore is already here (as my fellow ChangeEngine blogger Robyn Stegman argues). We have the population, we have the innovators, and we have the entrepreneurial spirit. What we need is for the two Baltimores to talk to one another and we’ll set the world on fire.

Tinted Lens

By | Tinted Lens | 10 Comments

“I don’t want no peace, I need equal rights and justice” –Peter Tosh

Language. It encourages the exchange of ideas and information. But merely by opening one’s mouth, it can also betray where you’re from and how people will label you. The words we choose convey much more than their face-value meaning.

But what happens when members of a group use different words? Or the same words with different meaning? How do you move forward? How can you ensure you are actually working towards the same goal?

A few weeks ago, a friend was in a community discussion. She noticed that while the black and longer-term white activists spoke of ‘social justice,’ most of the other white community participants spoke of ‘social change.’

Let’s unpack this: ‘Justice’ is the quality of being just, impartial or fair; the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity while ‘Change’ means to become or make something different.

When people speak of social justice, they hearken to a movement rooted in the concept that there is nothing inherently wrong with the black (and wider low-income) community. Rather, social justice takes issue with everyday ‘norms’ that serve to oppress and marginalize that community. The media perpetuates these ‘norms’ whether it be through reports of crime ‘in the black community’ or advertisements showing whites as good/pure while the black actor or model is evil/primal. These seemingly minor yet persistent depictions and images serve to imprint our collective minds with the thought that one type of people (black) is not to be trusted, that they aren’t as educated as the rest of us (white) and that any poverty is due to their own laziness. Social justice then, seeks to eradicate these lies and other barriers and to paint everyone in the same light, judging all by the content of their characters, to quote Dr. King.

This is intrinsically different from “social change,” which seeks to change behaviors, relationships and interactions independent of larger frameworks at play. It’s the difference between asking “what can we do to change this?” rather than asking why things are that way in the first place.

The social justice vs. social change dynamic can cause schisms and failure even when groups are authentic and well-intentioned. I worked in one community where half the group pushed for more community days (social change) and the others wanted to build mentorship programs and civic engagement training (social justice). The group split up and eventually the community day side was successful; but three years later there was only a minor difference in crime and unemployment was as bad as ever.

Social change is (by comparison) easier, it’s sexier, it results in happy photo ops with food and music. Social justice is work. It is shoulder-to-the-wheel every day, countering habits of privilege people don’t even know they have.

In this neighborhood, aligning successful adults with community youth, both ‘at-risk’ and successful, could have provided role models for youth that lacked images of success in their own homes or blocks. Helping youth and young adults vote, participate and make their voice heard in local issues could have lent a student perspective to school board decisions like the removal of music classes and extracurricular activities.

Here, both groups wanted to improve the neighborhood; one thought it could be done only with breaking bread together while the other wanted to tackle the larger issues without regard to celebrating the small successes. Social change is a part of social justice (it’s hard to imagine an effective mentor program without trust) but unless the larger WHY conversation is had and language explained, there is a disconnect and neither will succeed.

It is this place, at the juncture of two cities: white Baltimore and black Baltimore, that I will endeavor to explore in this column. As a mixed race Baltimore transplant, the lens through which I see this city is tinted by my experiences as a black woman raised in a largely white setting. Right now I have a foot in both Baltimores and am unsure of how to move back and forth between them. I look forward to examining that discomfort zone and discovering just how tinted our lenses really are.

 

IMAGE CREDIT. [Amber Collins].