How to Deal With Racists on the Job and In Your Family: A Message for White People

By Mark Naison (June 15, 2020)

Right now, your Black sisters and brothers are depending on you to make this country a safer place for them to live, work and raise their children. That can only happen if white people hold other white people accountable for behavior which makes Black people feel isolated, stressed out, and in danger.

There is no simple way to do this.

In the long run, we are going to have to change the way key institutions function, the way history is taught, and how resources are allocated, but individual white people do have influence over how their white friends, co-workers, and family members conduct themselves in public

The most important thing you can do is come to the defense of Black people in your neighborhood, on the job, on your team, in your college residence hall or in a store or on the street when they are being racially profiled, intimidated or attacked, whether it is by a boss, a coach, by law enforcement, their teammates or fellow students, or by random people they encounter. In this society, it is the job of white people of conscience to risk their own safety to come to the defense of Black people under attack.

But secondly, you have to police the language of white people around you. Everyone has the right to hold views about important subjects you might disagree with so long as they don’t use threatening or abusive language, but the minute someone in your family, on the job, in the locker room, or at the local bar uses the “N” word or an equivalent reference to Latinos, Muslims, Jews or Gay people, you need to say “Hold It. You can’t say that word around me. If you say it again, I am not only leaving this gathering, I am filming you saying it and putting it on social media”

The normalization of racial epithets in private leads directly to racial intimidation in public.

It’s time white people of conscience risk being hated to make Black people in America feel safe.

Think that’s rough? What’s rougher is what this country will be like if we DON’T do that.

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Why “Demilitarizing Law Enforcement” Will Make the Country Safer

By Mark Naison (June 9, 2020)

If we want to have a society where life expectancy and infant mortality are not at the bottom of advanced nations, and where 50% of the wealth doesn’t accrue to the top 1 percent, we have to gradually shift public funds from prisons and policing to education, health care, and affordable housing.

As we have learned from this Pandemic: NO ONE is safe when poor people and people of color are packed together in crowded residences, deprived of preventive health care, and concentrated in the most dangerous and lowest paying occupations.

As protests continue in every city, town and hamlet, we need to commit ourselves to “demilitarizing” our law enforcement apparatus and investing in a broad array of measures that improve public health and expand economic opportunity.

It is gratifying to see a broad range of leaders in business and government proclaim “Black Life Matters” and commit themselves to an honest effort to confront their own complicity in the promotion and preservation of racism and white supremacy, but without major changes in how law enforcement functions, and how public funds are distributed, these efforts at moral reformation may have little lasting impact on how we actually live
in our communities.

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An Historian’s Thoughts on the Uprisings in Our Cities

By Mark Naison (May 30, 2020)

As an historian, I am am hardly surprised at the uprisings taking place in cities throughout the country.

The murder of George Floyd pushed people filled with rage at their position in Trump’s America over the edge.

It is not just that repeated murders of unarmed Black men and women, by police or self appointed security agents, had convinced many Black people that most whites signed off on policies that terrorized their communities, it is that they saw the rhetoric and policies of the Trump Administration as a daily assault on their safety and security.

In the minds of many people of color, it is wholly predictable– and profoundly infuriating- that a country that could elect a race baiting demagogue like Donald Trump would sign off on the murder of unarmed Blacks, and never send those responsible to prison

Think about it: you are living in country where gun toting, Nazi and Confederate flag waving whites are cheered on by the President while unarmed Black men and women are shot down in the streets and their own homes, and where immigrant children of color are put in cages.

If you think that experience wasn’t making people unbelievably angry, you are ignoring the lessons of history.

At some point, I suspected, that anger, which I know well because I feel it inside myself, was going to break loose. George Floyd’s death may have been the spark, but there were a long chain of grievances which have come to the surface in its wake

I do not know where these uprisings are going, nor how they are going to end.

I do know they have been a long time coming.

Anybody really LISTENING to what their Black/LatinX friends, colleagues,neighbors and family members have been saying over the last few years, in response to provocation after provocation, should hardly be surprised at what is taking place in the streets of our major cities.

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What If You Opened the Economy and Nobody Came?

By Mark Naison (April 20, 2020)

As protests against state wide shutdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19 continue to erupt in many states, people are missing one key point. So long as people continue to die in large numbers from COVID-19 and our health care system is stressed well beyond capacity, a large percentage of the population will continue to voluntarily quarantine themselves and avoid situations which put them and their families at risk.

Given the legitimate level of fear people have of devastating consequences to their health if they resume “normal” ( pre-pandemic) activity in the absence of widespread testing and a vaccine, there will be no sudden rush to take advantage of openings of stores, restaurants, theaters, ball parks, hotels and amusement parks without the most extreme precautions being followed

You can change what governments impose , but you can’t change people’s behavior when it has been reinforced by trauma and death. Enough people now know of people who have been hospitalized or died as a result of COVID-19 that they are going to be extremely resistant to resuming activities where social distancing isn’t rigorously enforced.

The “Liberate America” protesters are a far smaller percentage of the population than those who have been traumatized by COVID-19 and fear what it could do to themselves and their families

If you “open the economy” without taking the necessary precautions, the surge in consumer behavior required to make a dent in unemployment will simply not take place.

When people have been traumatized my something real, they will not change their behavior until the source of the trauma has been removed.

Unless the “Liberate America” protesters are ready to drag people out of their homes and force them to shop, go to school and go to work, their protests will have limited impact on the level of economic activity in the country.

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The Importance of Leaving Footprints: The Lesson of the Slave Narrative and “Footnote Four”

By Mark Naison (November 11, 2019)

During the last few years, it has been a matter of extreme frustration to me that I have been able to do little to prevent our country from “going off the rails.” I saw what was coming four years ago, warned people about it, and had virtually no influence on anybody that didn’t already share my views

In the last few weeks, I have started to make peace with my ineffectiveness as a political actor when it comes to current events. My influence, such as it is, will be manifested over a long period of time, for the most part through the activity of the students I have taught, but also through my writings, my postings on social media, and the data base on Bronx and New York History I have created with my colleagues through the Bronx African American History Project

To explain why I think this way, I want to share two things that took place in the Great Depression that would have their greatest influence over thirty years after they were done

The first was an initiative of the Federal Writers Project, created by the Works Progress Administration, to conduct oral history interviews with more than 2,000 formerly enslaved people who were still alive during the great Depression. These interviews, conducted by scores of young scholars, were placed in the Library of Congress and were neglected for more than twenty years because historians of slavery, overwhelmingly white, only trusted written documents and were only willing to use as source for their accounts of slavery journals and letters of slave owners, newspaper articles, and a small number of published memoirs of former slaves. However, in the late 60’s and early 70’s with the rise of the Black Studies movement, these interviews were not only “discovered” they were transformed into the major source for an explosion of published work on what slavery looked and felt like to its victims. In the process students and the general public were given the first honest portrait of how Black people not only endured demoralizing and dehumanizing treatment, but resisted it in ways small and large.

The second legacy I want to refer to is a Footnote that a Supreme Court Justice, Harlan Stone, placed in a 1938 decision involving federal regulation of milk products. Frightened by the rise of Nazism and of Nazi like and white supremacist movements in the US, Stone suggested, in his now famous Footnote 4 that it was the responsibility of the Federal Jurists, appointed for life, to assume the role of “defender of minorities” as elected officials might well be prone to oppress minorities and deprive them of their rights. For many years, as the nation was preoccupied, first with economic problems and then with war, Stone’s comments attracted little attention. But in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when Civil Rights issues became the focal point of national politics, and in the 1970’s, when Affirmative Action became a hot button issues, federal judges, including judges on the Supreme Court, used Footnote 4 as a rationale for taking an aggressive stance in defending minority rights, especially in the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, that had never before been done in the Court’s history! Harlan Stone’s once neglected Footnote had helped change the course of US History

These two stories, which guide my teaching and my research,give me confidence in speaking out and recording oft neglected voices even if they might not change the world around me. Some day., who knows, historians and activists may see in this legacy a guide to action that with help them change the world they live in.

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Letter to the President of Georgia Southern University Regarding Book Burning

By Mark Naison (October 13, 2019)

Letter to the President of Georgia Southern University regarding book burning at his school

President@georgiasouthern.edu
Kyle Marrero
President, Georgia Southern University

Dear President Marrero

As a historian of race in the United States, who has written 7 books on the subject, and a professor for 49 years at one of the nation’s major universities, I am writing to express my extreme dismay at the burning of the books of a prominent LatinX author who spoke at your campus. In all my years of college teaching, this may be the single most disturbing act of racial harassment I have heard, both because of the specter of Nazism it invokes, and the chilling message it sends to students of color in an already highly charged political climate.

If students of color at your university are to feel protected from racial violence- and book burning is a violent act- and if your university’s reputation is not to be permanently tarnished, you must take much more dramatic action than you have so far done.

First of all, the book burning must be described as an act of racial violence and harassment, not as a manifestation of free speech. You must say, in the loudest possible voice, that this action has covered Georgia Southern with shame, and that it must NEVER happen again on your campus or at any campus in the nation

Secondly, you must take some disciplinary action against the students involved, ranging from academic probation to suspension. Your students of color will never feel safe unless those responsible for the book burning are punished

Let me close with one more reminder. There was another time when the state of Georgia was known for the use of fire as an expression of rage- the burning of Black bodies during lynchings. If you don’t believe me, look up the lynching of Sam Hose, who was burned at the stake in your home state after his body was dismembered

The history that comes before us should be a guide to greater wisdom, not an excuse for looking the other way when racial violence and harassment occurs.

Please consider what I say very carefully, because it is in the minds of thousands of my peers who teach at universities around the nation

Sincerely

Mark D Naison


Dr Mark Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Founder and Director, Bronx African American History Project

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Choosing Non-Violence in an Awful Time

By Mark Naison (August 3, 2019)

As I sit here in shock and mourning over the mass murders in El Paso, once again engineered by a white supremacist, I feel compelled to share some thoughts about why, when I decided to start a new organization to fight racism, I wanted it to be strictly non violent.

There are two reasons for this choice, The first is that we live in a society with far too much violence, not only violence undertaken in the name of hatred and the quest for power, but violence in our families and communities where no political motive is present. In organizing to protect people under attack, the last thing I want to do is legitimize armed violence as a means of self expression through actions of a group I started. As much as I understand the need for self-defense and the emotional appeal of revenge, I am convinced we need to create ways of protecting ourselves and fighting for things we believe in without turning our country into ever more of a war zone.

The second reason is personal. When it comes to dealing with racists and white supremacists, I have hatred in my heart. As someone who grew up fighting in the streets of my neighborhood and in every school I attended, I have recurrent fantasies of beating up white supremacists who try to intimidate and terrorize people in places where I am present. On a personal level, i NEED to be in a group that practices and promotes non-violence to keep my own rage in check, and to make sure that I do not make things worse than they already are in a fit of rage

We are in deep trouble as a country. We have a huge problem with racism. We have a huge problem with violence. In fighting to solve the first problem, I don’t want to contribute to intensifying the second

I am glad I am part of a great new NON VIOLENT organization
NARA- The National Anti Racism Alliance

Peace and Love to All.

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No Panic at the Supreme Court

By Mark Naison (July 27, 2019)

Last week, I had the opportunity to spend time with someone who just left a position as a law clerk to a Supreme Court Justice. There are many things I learned from the conversation that I can’t share publicly, but two things stood out that I can pass along

First, an atmosphere of civility still prevails. Law clerks serving conservative and liberal justices socialize together and get along well.

Secondly, there is no atmosphere of panic about the nation’s direction. Most of the Republican law clerks, like their Democratic counterparts, think Donald Trump is a clown and a fool, but are convinced the nation will survive his Presidency, whether it lasts 1 year or 5.

On the one hand, I found this reassuring. Those involved in our federal courts- at the highest level- feel confident that Donald Trump will not shatter the separation of powers and take us down the road to Presidential Dictatorship

One the other hand, there is a deficit of courage when it comes to speaking out against the President’s words and actions which spread hatred and division, especially within the Republican Party.

Either way, it gave me an insight into the thinking of very smart young people within the Republican Party trying to walk a tightrope during the Trump Presidency.

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It’s Hard to Intimidate Righteous People

By Mark Naison (October 27, 2018)

My heart goes out to the families and friends of those killed and wounded in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, and to everyone who feels a little more vulnerable and a little less secure as a result of this horrendous act. Everyone stoking the flames of hatred bears some responsibility for the political climate that makes actions of this kind more likely. How can people feel safe in an atmosphere filled with so much rage and division? We desperately need healing; what we get instead is provocation. I hope that people will come to their senses and realize that the path we are on is destructive to everyone.

I come from a line of Jewish scholars on one side, and of Jewish warriors and justice fighters on the other. I carry the weight of a tragic history inside me, of people who have seen the worst that humanity has to offer.

And from that I make this proclamation- Nothing you do can make me cower in fear. Nothing you do can stop me from fighting for justice. Nothing you do can prevent me from identifying with all people fighting persecution, intimidation and violence.

Your bombs and bullets and threats have no weight against the moral and spiritual force I carry within me.

I’m not scared of pipe
bombs
Or threatening talk
It’s easy to incite
fools and cowards 
It’s hard to intimidate
Righteous people.

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Why Teachers are Rising

By Mark Naison (April 3, 2018)

For the last twenty years, beating on teachers has been the national pastime, as popular among Democrats as Republicans, among liberals as conservatives. Teachers have been the nation’s most convenient scapegoat for rapidly rising levels of inequality and have been the target of an immense array of accountability measures which funnel profits to test companies while depressing teachers salaries and crushing their morale.

Is it any wonder that there a nationwide teacher shortage and that teachers are fed up with their stagnant salaries, diminishing pensions and plummeting levels of respect, conditions which have made them have to work several jobs to stay afloat and has saddled them with intolerable levels of stress?

No one is off the hook for this state of affairs, from Elizabeth Warren and Al Franken on one side, who never saw an accountability measure they didn’t like, to Betsy Devos and Jeb Bush, who are seeking to privatize what was once a public trust.

And teachers know this. Which is why they are rising up all over the country to demand that their salaries elevate them above poverty and that they be treated respectfully by Governors and Legislatures.

It’s long overdue!

Remember: Teachers working conditions are student learning conditions.

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The Price of Upward Mobility

By Mark Naison (February 8, 2018)

The people I grew up among in Crown Heights Brooklyn, second generation Italian Americans and Jews, were just getting a little breathing space in 1950’s America after being beaten down most of their lives by poverty and discrimination. Many were convinced that the country would never really accept or respect people like them, but they had hopes that their children would have an easier time. I observed their rage, their mistrust and their hopes as i surveyed my future, knowing that because of sports and academics, I would be one of the few kids in the neighborhood selected for training in one of those great centers of elite socialization, Ivy League colleges. What would I do when I got there? Would I run as far and fast away from the people I grew up among as possible? Would i do whatever was necessary to become rich, famous or successful, even if it violated everything I learned in my home and on the streets?

One part of me wanted desperately to be accepted in the new world I was entering and become like the people running the show, wanted to dress like them, talk like them, eat like them, and become comfortable around them. But another part, which emerged very quickly when I got to Columbia, was deeply offended by their arrogance and willingness to sacrifice people who made them uncomfortable, be they poor, be they black, be they uneducated, and push them as far away as possible.

So I never wholeheartedly embraced the elite socialization I was exposed to. I pursued success, but not at all costs. I rebelled, first a little, then a lot. At a time when many other people were rebelling.

But i don’t want to act like I am too proud of myself. These institutions still do a great job of taking people like me and cleaning them up, making them mirror images of the people who looked down on the people they grew up among. Rebels are far and few between. The machine keeps grinding on, taking the children of the working class, and the poor, and turning them into protectors of the status quo.

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