thebreakfastreport-blog

[thebreakfastreport-blog]

Trying Not To Learn

My favorite documentary is called Hearts and Minds.  It's a 1974 protest film about the Vietnam War (released while the war was still happening), and there's a scene in there that is lingering in my head.  They interview a pilot who did countless bombing missions and you get to watch a real-time revelation take place as he talks about how Americans have never experienced the level of devastation that we were unleashing upon the Vietnamese.  He talks about how he never had to see a child burned by napalm from his position in the cockpit.  He then thinks about his own children having to suffer from what he was dropping from the air, and he breaks down crying.  After a pause, the interviewer asks, "do you think we've learned anything from all of this?"  To which the pilot responds, "I think we're trying not to."

I feel like this is the darkest truth of the American identity.  We refuse to even acknowledge when we do something wrong.  I remember being told when I was younger that the Vietnam War ended in "a tie."  That we've never lost a war.  That we're a perfect nation, that we represent freedom, yet our history is laced with absolute atrocities.  We have to say #blacklivesmatter because we apparently need to be reminded.  I grew up in Saginaw Township and now I live east of the river, and having done a ton of interviews for my documentary, for non-profits, for community organizations trying to make positive change, I wanted to share some thoughts.  I do not intend this as a manor of virtue signaling, but a message to my white friends who still may not get it.  Please feel free to jump in with corrections if I misspeak.  I'm a work in progress, and I'm angry.

There is White America and there is Black America.  White America, at large, doesn't seem to care about Black America.  The Township attitude towards the east side that I remember was that people "over there" are just lazy, that they need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.  Racist passing remarks about welfare queens, broad stereotypes, and the overt use of slurs.  I remember being stuck in a conversation with someone at an event in Bay City, and when I told them I was involved with community work in Saginaw, he lowered his voice, leaned in closer, and said, "You wanna know what the real problem is?  All those monkeys running around shootin' eachother."

My generation was raised to think the older generation dealt with these problems in the 60s.  We were told that a black man made a speech that made us all feel better.  We were told about Jim Crow like it was just as far away as slavery.  We never learned about redlining.  We never learned about the string of race riots that were started by false rumors which prompted white people to burn entire black neighborhoods and kill people in the streets.  We didn't talk about domestic terrorism by white supremacists, and today we continue to refuse to acknowledge that it even exists ("Very fine people on both sides," said the President of the United States on neo-nazi's marching in the streets, yelling about Jews, and murdering an innocent person).  We didn't learn about discriminatory (but "colorblind") legislation that absolutely decimated black communities.  We didn't talk about how the dream of a national interstate highway system came at the expense of the complete annihilation of black neighborhoods.  We didn't learn about the war on drugs in any meaningful way other than "don't do drugs."  We didn't learn about the prevalence of police brutality.  We didn't learn about the Klan being directly integrated with the Sheriff's Department.  We were taught the Pledge of Allegiance and told to respect the badge.  

This country is fucked.  This is why the youth is so disillusioned.  An entire part of the country is in this bullshit daydream, just distanced enough from the real problems of the world so they can look down upon them.  Sitting in a suburban enclave, never once being targeted for driving down the street while white.  When I was a teenager, I made a short film where I wore all black and had a convincing rifle with a scope on it, all for a dumb student film about a "hitman."  And then I think about Tamir Rice and realize that making a dumb skit could've cost me my life if I was black and in a different zipcode.  

This has been simmering for decades.  Centuries.  We've never settled racial tensions in America.  Riots don't happen because people want to steal a TV.  That's called opportunism.  Unrest comes from a deep, deep place that White America has never understood.  Nor has White America even tried to listen in any earnest way.  Any discussion of race is treated as if you're fanning flames.  Any critique of police brutality is taken as an assault on police, and you can see the projection take place in real time as white people are quick to make an assumption on the "deservedness" of a murder, based on the fact that the victim is black.  

If you're a police officer reading this, and you're thinking about how these are things that YOU don't do, good for you.  That's great.  We need this type of shit to stop and maybe you are part of the solution.  Maybe there's workplace accountability that needs to happen.  I shouldn't need to show you the photo of the group of police officers standing by while George Floyd was murdered.  If you think someone deserves to be choked to death for a counterfeit $20 or selling loose cigarettes, and I mean this with all the respect I can muster, go fuck yourself.  The seriousness of this problem has me struggling to be less candid on social media, but living in a predominantly black neighborhood, feeling the lack of resources firsthand, getting a sinking feeling of hopelessness as White America obliviously flounders about, bursting with entitlement in an SUV full of today's haul from Bed Bath and Beyond.... I'm just furious.  I'm furious that my friends are targeted and beaten for being black, yet it can't even be explained without a white person attempting to diminish the experience.  I'm tired of White America thinking that being poor and white and being poor and black is the same thing, and being lectured with self-righteous tales of endurance, while my black friends tell me about family homes being stripped away; family landmarks being destroyed.  Stories that require an unimaginable level of endurance and tenacity, while the biggest complaint in White America is that we can't get haircuts right now.  Something is going to give, and it's not going to be good.  

I don't even know what else to say.  In doing my documentary, I remember being stunned by the glaring differences between the way white people and black people talked about Milton Hall's murder.  Yet somehow, I have found that discussions around race with the black community are productive while the conversation can't even begin with white people.  The feeling of helplessness really sets in when you realize we're not even living in the same reality.  My fascination with old buildings and trying to understand what happened to downtown Saginaw morphed into the realization that nearly every single change in the last 80 years has been soaked in racism.  I know people love to say "slavery was 150 years ago," but that's just a chapter in the Black American experience.  In fact, it's chapter one.  Keep reading.  Listen more.  Just shut up and listen.  For the first time in history, Black America has a platform that doesn't need to go through CNN to reach millions of people.  And they're sharing video after video of police brutality.  The murder of George Floyd was exceptionally brazen, yet it just seems like "another one."  Being a respectable nation takes consistent effort, and I feel like half the country has just given up.