Stop making black neighborhoods testing grounds for white liberal policies
I want to preface this by saying I am a very progressive person. At least that’s how I see it. I will always fight for the underrepresented group, will always side with the new side versus the old one, and believe America is a country with deep, deep white roots that will do their best to stay in power, right or wrong.
And I’ve been called a coon, a sellout, a republican… any snooty black slur you can imagine, so I’m ready for all that smoke. (In fairness, I do play golf so maybe I deserve it)
With that said…
I have been living in Oakland, California for about 2 years. Before that I lived in San Francisco for 7 years. Before that I was in college at Stanford in Palo Alto. Before that I lived in Charleston, South Carolina for a year, and Athens, Georgia for 12 years.
As soon as I left the rich, white bubble that is Stanford and Palo Alto and moved to San Francisco, I was jarred by the socio-economic differences between white and black people. Basically, all the black folks were homeless, and all the white and asian folks were rich. I hated it. It made me extremely uncomfortable. I had just “gotten out” of poverty, and instead of living it up with people that looked like me or were from the same place, I was once again the token black guy. Just this time, everywhere around me, there were black folks begging for money while I walked down Polk St. with my rich white friends.
San Francisco sickened me to the point where I had to leave. I went to Oakland, a place that Dave Chappelle joked “this is where y’all keep all the niggas at”. And I love Oakland. I love being around black people. I love seeing black people happy, something you don’t see in San Francisco. I love seeing black culture and black art and black music, something you don’t see in San Francisco. I mean, shit, I love seeing white people be outnumbered at a restaurant, something you don’t see in San Francisco (unless you’re at an asian spot).
So when I say I love Oakland, I mean that shit. I spent summers with my cousins in Atlanta, the only city as black as Oakland that I’ve been to.
But the way Oakland is treated is unfair. For me, Oakland is the testing ground for white liberal policies, and black folks are the ones that lose. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say black folks are always the testing policies for politicians, whether the policies be liberal or conservative.
In the 80’s it was the (conservative) drug war. Reagan said that we need to crack down on crack, and guess what: there were 16 year old black kids with 50 year prison sentences, just for trying to make a buck on the street. Was it wrong? Sure, dealing drugs is wrong. But can you blame them?
Now, it’s the other way around. I see white kids with rich parents tweeting “abolish the police” that have probably never been to a “sketchy” neighborhood in their lives. I see kids that went to Berkeley by way of Colorado whose Instagram bio is “ACAB”. I see a lot of privileged white motherfuckers with no skin in the game, talking about things they have 1) no idea about, and 2) no real reason to be speaking on.
Ideally, they would just be fodder for comedy or something that I would talk to my black friends about over coffee, mimosas, or any of my other lite-skinned activities. But apparently they are real, tangible forces in today’s political discourse, and politicians are treating them seriously.
A lot of people say that we didn’t actually “defund the police” in Oakland, but I lived in East Oakland (56th & International) last summer and let me tell you, it was crazy. Gunshots every night, murders, carjackings, hit & runs, you name it. To escape that hell I moved over closer to the lake (albeit the slightly more ghetto part than my white friends), and the same shit is going down there. Two months ago, there was a fight in front of my house, they turned the corner, and I heard about 16 shots. My neighbor who was walking home from the lake saw it go down and he said “yeah, he got got”. I’ve seen 4 hit and runs in front of my house. There are armed robberies daily.
Here’s one thing white liberals haven’t caught on to: the victims of crime are also brown and black. My black, latino, and Pakistani (I think) neighbors are pissed. They call the cops, and the cops don’t come. I’ve called the cops (to report a totalled car in front of my house — the dude stole the car and smashed it into my neighbor’s) and they came 16 hours later. What the fuck is that all about? I’ll tell you: the people said no cops, so there won’t be no cops.
You know what’s funny? The fact that now that the Louis Vuitton store got robbed in Union Square, and that a couple chains are leaving SF because of their property loss, now is when there’s gonna an over-correction. There will be a swing back to the right, and the same (totally-not-reformed-in-any-way) police force is going to crack down on black neighborhoods with the same bias and lack of empathy that they did before people started posting black squares. And that’s because the white liberal pet project that was “defund the police” bled back into white society, even though it was a shit show in black hoods the whole time.
The only problem? No one gave a fuck. Because people have BEEN dying in Oakland. If you don’t believe me, come ask them. But America is OK with black folks dying. Just don’t hit up the Gucci store…
Things aren’t as simple as they seem. I hate cops too, but in the absence of Batman I don’t know who else is going to come help me when I get car-jacked. I don’t know who is going to help the asian people that have been getting punched in the face in Chinatown. We need to accept that there are people in our communities doing harm to others, and I don’t think any of us want to be the ones that deal with them (nor are we qualified to). Which is why we need non-racist, non-abusive, non-manipulative police that can help black neighborhoods prosper instead of being stuck in a cycle of violence and poverty. And yeah, that’s gonna take a lot of work and a lot of legislation. But isn’t that why we have politicians?
I’m willing to have long and difficult conversations about the police and about black America. I want to listen, I always have, and I will. I am stubborn, but I will try my damn best. So right now, all I’m really asking is this:
Please, for the love of god, prioritize the needs of the community over the needs of the internet, argue in good faith, empathize and truly care, and stop listening to kids on Twitter who got a car from their parents when they turned 16.
