At last weekend’s VMA’s, a seemingly innocuous moment turned into a social media travesty in one thoughtless incident. Rapper Common got on stage to deliver an eloquent speech dedicated to Mike Brown and Ferguson, which he concluded by asking the audience to take a moment of silence with him to honor Brown’s memory and to pray for peace in America and all over the world.
Regardless of your skin color, your socioeconomic standing, your politics, or your feelings about Mike Brown, asking everyone to honor and respect the idea of worldwide peace from Missouri to the Gaza Strip seems like a concept worthy of deference. Well, unless you’re a Kardashian/Jenner in which case whatever vapid bullshit you were texting about was far more important than taking a second of your life to symbolically recognize the need to increase the peace.
While I couldn’t give two damns about what the Jenner children do, it’s a little disappointing to see Kim be so disconnected, especially now that she has a daughter who can, and probably will, identify as being Black. As much as North may have Armenian, English, Scottish, French, German and Dutch in her background, she also is half Black because her father is Kanye West. And if President Barack Obama has taught us anything, it’s that being half-Black can still earn you the full range of xenophobic and racist hate in America. And another thing that the Obama family and many other rich and famous Black families can teach Kim is that North’s wealth and affluence will NOT protect her from discrimination and prejudice.
After Mike Brown was murdered, the resulting protests in Ferguson have proven that the Black community is officially fed up. There are even protests in Los Angeles for Ezell Ford, and marches in New York for Eric Garner, both unarmed men murdered by the police. While on Twitter, my friend Jason astutely noted, “Ferguson has made folks HAVE to take a side. There’s no more sitting on the fence.” That means the days of pretending we live in a post-racial society are OVER. The days of pretending that we have actualized MLK’s dream must come to an end. We need to understand that racism is alive, and it’s claiming Black lives every single day in the United States of America. These are the facts of American society, and these are necessary realities that need to be imparted onto Black children all over the country by parents adept enough to understand what they are up against.
While I take no issue with dating someone from another race, the harsh reality of dating interracially in a racist society with someone you want to build a life and family with, is that experience sharing is an absolute MUST. I’m not saying that it’s an immediate, first date type of topic, but the concept that you’re just going to build a life with someone and approach that difficult conversation the day you become a family is dangerous and ignorant. Besides police brutality and excessive militarization, Ferguson has exposed the fact that we as people have very different concepts of what the Black experience is in America. The gap of racial understanding is incredibly large, and the only way to close that gap is through communication, effective listening, and experience sharing. That’s how you get men like Jon Stewart who understand the complexities of the racial divide.
Growing up, my Black parents made a point of telling me how to navigate our prejudiced society as safely as possible. They taught me how to to handle discrimination before I started grade one, when my non-Black classmates were just being taught to not lose their lunch boxes. They taught me how to address authority figures in grade six, when my non-Black classmates were asking their parents if they could grow their hair long like Kurt Cobain. When I got my driver’s license, my parents immediately taught me how to handle being pulled over, when my non-Black friends were being told to wear their seat belts. And my experience doesn’t make me unique at all. Those were incredibly important and necessary lessons that MANY other Black boys and girls got from their Black parents. If Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride have taught us anything, they are lessons that are STILL relevant today, which means that biracial children will NEED their non-Black parent to be well versed in understanding prejudice and racism.
One of the greatest parts of dating interracially and inter-culturally is sharing your love and learning new things. And while it’s awesome to learn about different foods, the customs of different cultures and the rich history of different families, it’s also necessary to share the not-so-good parts of their cultural experience. There are many non-Black women and men out there who will be parents to biracial children (just like Kim Kardashian), and whether they ever expected it or not, they will need to be able to communicate how to help them in ALL areas. I truly wish interracial couples ONLY had to face the same relationship bullshit that we all deal with, but unfortunately, society hasn’t matured to that point yet.
Photo: Shutterstock, MTV; mrmecc
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Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, he’s an author of the book “You’re Not A Victim, You’re A Volunteer” and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.