Round and around and around and around we go

Short post for today, mostly because I’m pretty sad and disenchanted right now.   I imagine I’ll get over it by tomorrow, but still…

In my everlasting optimism, I thought that folks in Alameda would be able to grasp the concept of what I call the “Fact of Life theme song concept.”   As in you take the good, you take the bad, you take them all and there you have the facts of life.   It was interesting to see how quickly the discussion yesterday devolved and how exactly what Ta-Nehisi Coates challenged us all to do was summarily dismissed.   That policies that may have been handed down at a federal level, but were enacted at a local level should be discussed nationally, but that we should never examine ourselves in our own communities because we are somehow beyond reproach.

It was especially of interest to me, as a non white person, to be told what is racist and what is not.  It was interesting to see folks take umbrage at the fact that even having the conversation of what Alameda was and how it got there (see Chip Johnson piece) was to be called a “racist.”  It was interesting to be told that bringing up race in context of Measure A was somehow “race baiting.”   It was interesting to have my agenda questioned because I have an opinion that was somehow in opposition to what some people felt about the same topic.   It was interesting to be told that because my opinions are different that I don’t care about the quality of life of Alamedans.   It was interesting that I was “apologizing” for Chip Johnson even though my only reference was to muse on how new residents may not have understood the racial context that Chip Johnson was referring to.   It’s interesting that someone concluded that I must be trying to gain “points” with political powers that be and that I am some sort of “mouthpiece” for those powers that be because that person disagreed with my opinion.   It’s interesting that someone posted yearbook photos of a track team from the 50s as though the existence of Black folks in 1950 Alameda is indicative of something other than the fact that Black people existed in Alameda in the 1950s.   It’s interesting that some folks were so interested in talking about everything including whether I intended to sell my home when the market rebounded except for whether or not race relations may have played a role in the passage of Measure A.

Instead of asking why or discussing why some people may perceive Measure A as exclusionary toward people of color and low-income families folks will talk about everything else, and that, I think, speaks volumes.   Some folks would rather dwell on how offended they are because in some roundabout way they perceived that they are being called racists because they think Measure A is a good thing.

Until we are ready to discuss why people feel as though Measure A was exclusionary and get to the root of those accusations as well as understand that making a judgment about a certain law is not making a judgment about someone’s moral character then this conversation will always remain in this unproductive and ugly cycle.