typingwhileblack

“The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks. – Michelle Obama, Becoming

I remember clearly when Donald Trump, then a private citizen, began questioning the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship, and birth certificate. The subtext of Trump’s “investigation” (and of the birther movement in general) was clear: Obama’s not one of us, and he doesn’t belong here. It sparked great fear in me, and led me to dig out and examine my own birth certificate, and those of my family members.

**

I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1966. In the race box on my birth certificate it says “Negro”.

My mother was born in Jerome, Arkansas, in 1940. In the race box on her birth certificate it says, “Colored”. On my father’s birth certificate (he was born in 1939 in South Bend, Indiana), same thing: “Colored”.

At the time I was born, and in that part of the country, when two “Colored” people reproduced they had a “Negro” baby.

Three years later, in 1969, my brother was born in Boston, Massachusetts. In the race box on his birth certificate it says “Black”. In New England, at the time he was born, when two “Colored” people reproduced they had a “Black” baby.

**

I cannot remember a time when people did not ask me “what I was”, when my racial make-up was not a subject of intense scrutiny.

Long before sexual harassment became a separate, though related lifelong issue, kids I went to school with, their parents and grandparents, schoolteachers, wait-staff in restaurants, dance and swim teachers, babysitters, camp counselors, and later step aerobics instructors, professors, co-workers, in-laws and others, questioned me about my racial background.

Regardless of the context, age, race, national origin, religion, class background or gender preference of the person asking, the conversations were nearly identical. With little, if any variation, they almost always went something like this:

So, Where Are You From?

Initially I responded by saying where I grew up. I had heard my white peers respond to the Where Are You From question by saying where they grew up. I had noted that they weren’t asked this question with nearly the frequency I was but their response seemed sufficient, and so my much younger self figured (naively) that it would be for me as well.

I quickly learned that this was not actually what was being asked of me however, because it was almost invariably followed by another question:

Where Are You From Originally?

For a while I answered by saying, rightly so, that originally I was from Indianapolis, Indiana. Unfortunately, this too was almost always followed by another question, often with barely disguised frustration (raised eyebrows, looking closely into my face to try and gauge whether or not I was being intentionally evasive) that I hadn’t intuited the real question and filled in the gaps without their having to ask:

Where Are Your Parents From?

Almost all had enough – what to call it? Manners? – not to come right out and ask me directly what my racial make-up was. But they weren’t able to help themselves from asking in a roundabout way. And because the questions were so frequent, and so often asked with a laser-like intensity worthy of the Stasi, they didn’t feelroundabout at all. On the contrary, they felt quite intentional, as did the not-so-subtle subtext: I wasn’t one of them, and I didn’t belong there.

**

After I figured out that in my case Where Are You From was code for What Are You, which was code for What’s Your Racial/Genetic Background, and in an effort to avoid this uncomfortable topic, I began telling people I was black when they asked where I was from. I figured if I answered the unasked/indirect/passive-aggressive question directly that this would end the conversation, and we could move on to less complicated topics.

Much to my dismay, this did not work at all. On the contrary, as often as not, eyebrows were raised further, and frustration turned to outright disbelief. Occasionally I got looks of pity from people who clearly didn’t believe I was black, and thought I was confused.

Though these questions increased in frequency when I reached puberty (mid-70s), they were most intense during the 80s and 90s as the neo-con backlash against the Civil Rights and Women’s movements was shifting into high gear. At that time, neo-cons often accused black people of playing “the race card”. But without fail, it was always white people who initiated the Where Are You From/What Are You/What is Your Racial Background question, who “played the race card” so to speak, with me.

**

Most of these inquiries happened in controlled settings: hair salons, gym classes, sleep-overs, grocery store lines, department store make-up counters, dorm rooms, weddings, cocktail parties, work events, baby and bridal showers. In less controlled situations, say, on the street, things were quite different. For example, while walking across the street with a friend in SOHO (we had the right of way) a speeding SUV cut us off. Adrenalin coursing through me, and enraged, I shouted Fuck You to the driver. In response, the white woman in the passenger seat leaned out of her window practically to her waist and shouted You Fucking Nigger back. It was an extraordinary moment for a number of reasons, including that given how fast they were driving she could only have caught a passing glimpse of me. And yet, unlike members of the mostly white community I lived in, she seemed to know EXACTLY “what” I was. No twenty questions needed! How to reconcile these wildly different experiences? Was the woman in the SUV very observant, or were the people I interacted with more regularly uniquely obtuse? Or, was asking me where I was from all the time a way for members of the community I lived in to do exactly what the woman in SOHO did, namely to call me a nigger?

**

Naively, I thought that when I reached a certain age, racial and sexual harassment and interrogation would stop. Both continue to happen with disturbing frequency. Recently, during a job interview at an Ivy League medical school I was asked where I was born and where I grew up by a Dean. I didn’t answer the question, and turned to my professional experience. He asked the question again. I again redirected the conversation to my resume, at which point his white female colleague asked Where Exactly in Brookline I lived. Sexual harassment persists, too, and it continues to take my breath away, even at 52, with its intrusiveness, and how different it is in each case, which makes it feel nearly impossible for me to respond to coherently in the moment.

Thankfully, the question Where Are You From/What Are You has remained consistent. Persistent and systemic, but consistent enough for me to develop, after many years, a response:

In the race box on my birth certificate it says Negro. Please don’t ask me what Negro means. We didn’t make up the categories. And no, I’m not confused. This is what black America looks like: everything. Two centuries of mass rape including after the slave trade was abolished to continue creating a workforce means we are, and look like everything. The rape culture everyone’s talking about these days is not new. It predates #MeToo, and it’s central to the country’s vast wealth, military power and global influence. Now, please if you could finish cleaning my teeth or cutting my hair or asking your interview questions (at least some of which I hope will relate to my resume)? I’ll go home and wash your intrusions off in the shower or work them out at the gym, and maybe you can ask yourselfsome questions: Why am I more curious about some people’s racial make-up than others? Why do I feel entitled to ask people I don’t know personal questions about their racial background? How would I feel if strangers asked me similarly personal questions about my race, religion, socio-economic background or gender preference?

Whatever joy I have in the news of last week that immunity has been conferred on several key figures who know where the bodies are buried in Trumpland is partially diminished by my awareness that even if he resigned tomorrow, we would still be left with a significant population that relates to his style of thinking. That is, they employ profoundly immature thinking mechanisms that at core are centered in projecting or externalizing one’s own unwanted, uncomfortable feelings or inadequacies to another person or group. You wonder in shocked awe watching a Trump rally how those in attendance wildly cheering as he talks about crooked Hillary can really buy into what he is screaming, but I think it’s time we take these mobs seriously, and recognize that they are exhilarated by the lies, and especially by the process of “getting rid” of their apparently deep sense that they (as white people) have been cheated out of their privileges by undeserving minorities. It is time that we really appreciate how opposite this thinking is in an American culture that up until recently claimed to take responsibility for whatever happened in a (white) man’s life, blaming no one but oneself for the outcome.

Everyone struggles to some degree with the issue of boundaries, of figuring out moment to moment, life event to life event, “was this my fault or my doing, or were there external factors that I wasn’t aware of or not in control of?” Maturity implies that this is always an active aspect of adult life, and is far removed from the life stage in which one blames teddy for the spilled milk. Well, it seems now that 30-40% of the American populace blames teddy and feels good about it, relieved about it, and in doing so is prepared to entertain stark delusions about “others” in the population, and current factual realities and the nation’s past history are grossly distorted in the process.

As evidence that some phenomenon is out of control, the incidents are piling up that involve white folks (everyday white folks) deciding to become the arbiters of who belongs in the house next door (even when it’s the owner) or who belongs sleeping in the dormitory lounge, or who has a right to the neighborhood pool (pool pass be damned). We should not minimize these incidents; they are instances of aggression and the possibility that someone gets hurt is very high.

We are all susceptible to immature thinking, and we all have lapses at times but through a variety of mechanisms, we recover, “come to our senses”, often with the help of loving relationships that help us “sort things out”. This is good, an essential fabric of our society, because allowing one’s thinking to get stuck in an immature pattern means it becomes more and more difficult to pull oneself out of it. Projection feeds itself, telling the projector that all of the “evidence” supports his viewpoint, and whatever protective action he justifies. Paranoid people tend to be verbally and physically aggressive, and when one is the object of the paranoid’s outburst, it is extremely hard to respond perfectly especially when surprised (which is often the case because paranoia driven people rarely assault in a reasoned way). The imperfect response is then used as justification for the paranoid perception in the first place (almost any black person can attest to this phenomenon).

So, what are we going to be left with when Trump goes down? Will his 30-40% base relinquish this pattern of thinking, modify its rage, rethink its distorted perceptions and their notions of who are Americans? Will there be effective leadership that can bring white folks to their senses?

I can say I was gratified momentarily last week when I heard one of the more learned pundits, David Gergen state, somewhat tentatively, that Trump used projection all the time. I perked my ears up immediately, but a commercial break quickly ensued, and he wasn’t on in the next segment. He’s a political advisor; are there effective politicians out there who can educate us in a recovery? Will there be politicians who can set wise limits on dangerous unruliness directed at individuals and groups in our society?

Typing While Black welcomes this guest blogger!

Maybe it’s a function of the power of social media to spread news almost instantaneously. Then again, maybe it’s representative of a real uptick in incidents in which white people have taken it upon themselves to “police” black adults and kids in incredibly mundane situations: the young woman taking a nap in the common room of her dorm; the 8-year old girl selling water in front of her house so she could go to Disneyland; the man doing repair work on his own house (where he lived!); the young people who moved some grass on a neighbor’s yard; and most recently, a young man who was physically assaulted by a white woman who didn’t want him (an invited guest) in “her pool”.

I fear these incidents represent a societal trend that hearkens back to America’s Jim Crow past. Everyday white folks, meaning white folks who do not work in law enforcement, are tapping into a kind of collective unconscious vis-à-vis race that hasn’t surfaced in a long time. As a person in his late 70s, I remember quite well those days in the 40s and 50s when even in Northern areas, not-so-invisible lines existed across neighborhoods, job sites, churches, schools and social events. The silence about these realities was so profound that we rarely complained except among ourselves. One remarkable incident in my life occurred during a vacation when an affluent white man aggressively pursued a “who are you” conversation with me, obviously offended that my wife and I were on the same tour that he was. It didn’t get overtly racial. His bluster peaked, then (fortunately) self-doused when he learned that I worked for Harvard University, which led him to attack “Harvard liberals” instead.

His anger, like that expressed in several of the incidents I reference above, is curious to me given the fear of black aggression. If it’s a universal characteristic, that we’re all supposedly dangerous Willy Horton types, why bother us at all and risk the dreaded “black rage”? Who’s really angry here?

I find it very worrisome that increasingly white folks seem to relieve the frustrations of their lives by displacing their animus onto black people they don’t even know and that what they’re threatened by seems so broad, ranging from fear of an 8-year-old girl selling water to a boy in a swimming pool. This not a direction I think we want to go in, but it seems that as a society, we are nonetheless charging into this unfortunate abyss.

I have labeled these kinds of incidents “mundane” but they really are not. We all have a finite number of days on this planet. Who has time for unprovoked attacks on one’s right to exist while going through everyday life? As we know from the research the impact of these types of stresses on the psychological and physiological well-being of individuals and the relationship systems they’re part of, is real. In most cases, we don’t have any recourse to address them effectively and so we absorb them, generation after generation. We had, or at least we thought we had the benefit of a couple of decades of some semblance of sensitivity or caution thanks to white-despised “political correctedness”. Unfortunately, even that appears to be crumbling as white people feel free to “break out” and summon up their old prejudices, which they apparently felt cheated out of airing.

One aspect of this situation merits close watching: many of these white confronters attempt to use police and 9-1-1- calls to enforce their wills on “offending” African-Americans. Given our problems with racially motivated police misconduct, black people’s intense anxiety about these situations is quite appropriate. Police’s ability to judge accurately whether or not these types of situations warrant action on their part will be stressed to the limits. The demand that black people “knuckle under” to police authority has been a core feature of many instances of excessive police force. How will that play out with everyday white folks demanding the same authoritarian privilege?

Typing While Black welcomes this guest blogger!

The cornerstone of a functioning democracy is 1 person, 1 vote – it’s one of the key things that distinguishes the United States from monarchies, plutocracies, oligarchies, anarchies and dictatorships, yes?

If a cornerstone of democracy is 1 person, 1 vote, why has Republican leadership supported voter intimidation all over the country – ranging from gross misinformation to threats of violence – to deter voters from showing up and participating in the democratic process?

If a cornerstone of democracy is 1 person, 1 vote, why has Republican leadership supported re-zoning, in which voter bases and communities are segregated and otherwise undermined?

If a cornerstone of democracy is 1 person, 1 vote, why have conservatives on the Supreme Court voted to allow corporations to function as people and flood local, state and federal elections with money?

Is it a coincidence that felons can’t vote while incarcerated, on parole or probation and that since the 1980s black men have been disproportionately targeted for felonies and incarcerated, undermining their lives in inestimable ways, including their ability to vote?

If 1 person, 1 vote is a cornerstone of democracy, why does Republican leadership continue to support President Trump, who has openly expressed his admiration not of democratic leaders, institutions and processes (including the election process), but of brutal dictators around the world, including Duterte and Putin?

If Republican leadership is actively engaging in efforts to thwart 1 person, 1 vote and supporting a president who lacks more than a basic understanding of and little if any respect for rule of law, don’t we at some point have to question whether or not Republican leadership really still supports and represents a democracy?

And if the answer is a resounding no (and I think it is) don’t we also have to ask what it is that Republican leadership DOES want?

Is it possible that Republicans and others, in response to projections that the country will be more black and brown than white by 2050, are quietly moving to disenfranchise black and brown voters and to consolidate power among wealthy white elites?

Is it possible that the militarization of police departments may be part of this move toward a white-minority-ruled apartheid-esque state, along with unmistakable efforts to erode trust in the justice department and other democratic institutions, the corporatization of the prison system, and refusal to implement sane gun laws?

Can it hurt that as a result of the 2008 economic crisis many have lost homes, savings, equity, jobs, can’t afford skyrocketing rents and so are primed to be relocated to shanties on the outskirts of major U.S. cities while wealthy whites return to them?

Does anyone worry that we’re being treated like frogs in that famous experiment – that rather than being placed in boiling water (which frogs register as dangerous and jump out of immediately), we’ve been placed in lukewarm water that Republican leaders are heating up so slowly and incrementally (with one strategically fascist policy after another) that we aren’t going to know just how badly we’re being burned until it’s too late to hop out of the pot?

If these are all random coincidences, what IS the explanation for their occurrences –

if not a concerted effort to move the country toward a white-minority-ruled apartheid-ish state, then what?

What other explanation exists for this clearly undemocratic and clearly intentional direction Republican leaders are moving in/toward?

And at what point does it become too late for us to push back and make a stand for democracy?

It seems important to take note that today is possibly extremely important in national and world history. On this day the president of the United States has issued a direct threat to Russia, with the major comment being “ the missiles are coming.” A major problem is that the president (who will be called 45 from here) has more than Russia to contend with; he is under escalating attack internally; the raid on his lawyer’s house and office has, to all reports, completely undone him, provoking what is reported as a constant, helpless rage. In typical fashion, he calls the raid as “an assault on democracy” somehow equating his personal misfortunes with a threat to the country. Interrelating the country with himself though is precisely the problem that we should all be extremely worried about, and I can’t say that I see an appropriate level of anxiety expressed on the media as they still talk about Stormy Daniels.

This interrelating of self and country is reflected in 45’s speech, the associations are clear, and any thinking person has to wonder what will 45 do to “fight back” if international and national stresses are so entangled in his head? He has been the master of distracting the nation, including the press, from colossal levels on ineptness, boorishness, and breathtaking dishonesty, but extending his willingness to distract to threatening a fellow psychopath like Putin with a missile strike? That’s the response of a madman, and who is applying the brakes? Maybe there are grownups somewhere who have say in the White House, and maybe even some who can countermand patently dangerous, ill-considered militaristic commands, but if so, we little people “ on the ground” have no reassurance about that. How will we all sleep tonight?

As the student-led movement to establish reasonable gun control laws intensifies, Betty and I have every reason to be sympathetic to and supportive of their efforts. The unfortunate fact is that we both have been profoundly affected by gun violence, or at least I, speaking for myself can attest to this. There is not a day that goes by without my thinking, one way or another, about my sister’s self-inflicted gunshot using my father’s pistol which had sat in his bedside table. That was 55 years ago come July, and that’s a long time to have a recurrent multifaceted tragic life event surface in many different forms, all negative connotations.

The gun had been there for years, unfired to my knowledge except maybe once back in the 1940’s when Joe Louis defeated Billy Conn for the heavy weight title, daddy may have gone outside to fire it into the dark evening sky, confirming how hungry we black folks were for anything that enhanced our racial self-esteem. We kids knew about it and the several bullets that were also always in the table. I flirted with disaster once when as maybe an 11 or 12 year old took my friends upstairs to show off the gun. Of course picked it up, and I don’t think I let anyone else to do so, but whether I did or not, I was obviously on a slippery slope to disaster if at some point, some immature kind of judgment intervened. I have no idea what Chester or Sarah experienced with that gun’s lethal presence in the house, especially close to her bedroom one door away from his room. It’s hard for me to think that Chester didn’t do some examination of that weapon, probably I’d think pushing the envelope further than I did.

I’d guess that the gun was there for the reason most people give for keeping them around, for protection. Mother was sensitive to the presence and presumed dangers from “prowlers”, creatures who lurked around people’s yards at night. When I was very little, it was the war years and the ending of the depression, so as I recall there actually were derelict/homeless folks around. I don’t remember though daddy’s ever hauling out the pistol when mother would send out the alert that a prowler was about. I remember once we came home, all of us from some activity and it was felt that the house had been broken into, but on that occasion, Chester snatched the sword from the mantle and brandished that while the inspection of the house began. All of these are kind of haunting, hazy memories for me, which of course might be more rigidly defined in my mind if anything had happened other than the unconfirmed threats. The point is, I don’t remember daddy’s turning to the gun even in these incidents….the upshot is, that as far as I know, the gun idled in its potential lethality, for at least 2 decades (in 501, I don’t know about the Frances street house) before my sister turned it on herself, so easy to operate that she, who was definitely mechanically challenged, could figure out how to fire it.

I guess I have always had “reasonable” views about guns, like Sarah using her own free will picked up the weapon and shot herself with it, the gun didn’t jump into her hands and pull its own trigger. I have no doubt though that if the gun hadn’t been there, she likely could not have killed herself, but then again, I don’t know, because it was clear from her notes that it was not impulsive. One factor in my thinking is that we grew up with guns, bb guns, pellet pistols, and target shooting at boy scout camps And like any other challenge, it was fun to shoot. I got another chance to shoot a serious weapon in some context or another in the army, I don’t remember the context, to fire a recoil-less rifle, which weighed a ton and was incredibly unwieldy. I was to aim it an a burned out tank maybe 100 yards away, and fortunately a drill instructor was there to hold up the front end or I might have fired it straight into the ground. I ended up missing the tank by yards.

I am reminded that all of these years I have kept a bb gun that I got when I was maybe 12, and I even lent it to Leonard Brown for him to years ago to shoot at woodpeckers marring his house siding. They ignored the bb’s (which have been loaded In the gun for now 60 plus years; there’s no getting away from the fact that I have secretly valued having this gun. When cleaning out 501, I looked hard for a pellet pistol too which we had along with a target, which we fired at in the basement. This pistol looked like a serious weapon but had disappeared at some point.

I don’t remember anything about my neighborhood friends (white boys) had real weapons. They must have had bb guns, but I don’t remember anyone talking about even 22’s, which were popular in that era. I don’t remember anyone hunting, or anyone’s father having a protective pistol. That lack of any memory of such doesn’t compute for me but that’s what it is.

We plan to attend the march 24^th for gun control (actually we’ll have to see how that is defined) and we learned last night that David and Maura are going to the DC demonstration. That will be a first for me, I have ignored all of the Internet solicitations about gun control because it has seemed futile since high-powered weaponry is so out of control, but now seems like a pretty serious effort is underway.

Another memory: grandpapa for many years had a shotgun which was stored in the rafters of the garage, but it had disappeared by the 90’s when I was cleaning out the house. There was other hunting equipment there too, like a hunting vest. There was a story that daddy had gone hunting but had only shot an owl, but whether that was true or not I don’t know. I should coda the story of daddy’s pistol; as far as I know, the police confiscated it after her suicide.

Another gun-relevant note: I rescued grandparents’ now ancient record player (his master’s voice) from the house at 501 and it has sat in the garage now for 25 plus years, waiting for some decision on it. I really wished we had space for it somewhere. Anyway though, inside its front grillwork (for lack of a better word) there was always a bullet pushed into it that was there even at 501—who pushed it in there? I don’t think that I did, but it seems like maybe I could have, but why?

There’s just no escaping the fact that if there hadn’t been an unused gun in our house, it’s likely Sarah would be alive today, and there’s no doubt to me about the impact all those years with her would have had on my life and especially personality, and inner sense of self. Maybe it’s long, long overdue to get going on the anti gun, anti-violence movement.

In closing, my question is “how many guns are out there sitting unattended in bedroom drawers, awaiting use as protectors Of the household, but in fact, more likely to be, intentionally or accidentally, a source of tragedy and grief in the household?”

Typing While Black welcomes this guest blogger.

Trumpty Dumpty wanted a wall.

Many advisers told him this was a bad call.

But Trumpy Dumpty had a great deal of gall.

So he ignored others’ advice and said: It’ll be like building a mall!

Donald J. Trump has been so outrageous during the first few months of his

presidency that more and more mental health practitioners, including psychiatrists,

are weighing in on the subject of Trump’s diagnosis. Psychiatrists are even joining

in the conversation despite the longstanding ‘GOLDWATER Rule “ which was

instituted after psychiatrists engaged in a diagnostic frenzy during the 64 election;

the basic rule is that psychiatrists shouldn’t make psychological formulations

on public figures whom they have not personally attended. Obviously, the uniqueness

of Trump is demonstrated by the growing numbers of clinicians who feel compelled,

almost duty-bound, to express their opinions.

A letter to the editor in the February 14 NY Times clearly has a “ this is the definitive

word” tone to it as the author, after stating that he wrote the criteria for the DSM

narcissistic personality disorder, states that Trump doesn’t have that condition because

“he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental

disorder.” I must admit that I have issues with that criterion, because looking back

on my 50-year career as a psychiatrist, I have certainly diagnosed many people who

were oblivious to any personal sense of distress as they rampaged through life as

manics, psychotics, or character disorders. Maybe a more useful topic to address rather

Than to condemn “amateur” diagnosticians might be to analyze why Trump has galvanized so

many mental health clinicians to speak publicly.

A more focused approach to understanding the Trump phenomenon from a mental health

perspective would be to hone in on Trump’s repeated use of projection in his speeches.

Can anyone forget the expressions “crooked Hillary” or “lying Ted”, used repeatedly

and apparently with devastating effects? Projection involves the attribution to another

person traits or thoughts or feelings harbored by the self, but they are so internally

“unwanted” that they must be projected. Projection is thought to be a psychotic

mechanism, not an intentional conscious strategy . Given that Trump has been

performing on the public stage trying to win an election (and now trying to hold onto

his office) one could understandably argue that this mechanism of attributing self-

perceived inner weaknesses to others is just a strategy.

I’m not so sure of that, given the automaticity of Trump’s turning to this mechanism,

now even after he has won the presidency ( or, has been handed the presidency).

There are clearly intra-psychic inadequacy demons disturbing a man who desperately

fights with the press over the size of his inaugural crowd compared to President

Obama’s? As for whether he lies or projects, how do we explain that all of these patterns

have escalated since he has taken office and has secured the position he sought? It

seems indisputable that Trump’s calling Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz liars given his

outright lying (which now is finally confronted by the press) is preposterous and

clearly emanates from the mind of a disturbed person who cannot tell a lie from

the truth, and wants forcibly to make everyone else join in the delusion.

Another element to the identification of projection as a mechanism to examine;

Trump over the past few weeks has “beat down” the issues of his family involvement

In the running of his businesses (rather than real divestment) and more importantly,

Important tasks in the running of this country. This is the emergence of a paranoid

family seizing control of the nation’s management. His daughter, sons, and son-in-law

have no capacity to provide neutral and especially informed counsel to this president.

This is all there, plain as day, for us to see. I agree with the demurring psychiatrist

who firmly states that the solution to Trump is political, but the urgency to finding

that solution is heightened, in my opinion, by facing up to the fact that the country

has turned, cynically and nihilistically, to a disturbed charismatic man who operates

on the notion that his personal responsibility is never in play, that there’s always

another individual or group to blame.

Typing While Black welcomes this guest blogger!

One might reasonably assume that anyone elected president would be aware of what CBC means in a political context. But, let’s give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt and say that he did not hear what April Ryan said at his news conference last Thursday. When she spelled out Congressional Black Caucus, he immediately went on the attack. First, he spoke to her rudely; then he assumed that she was talking about friends or that being black, she would automatically know them since they are black.  That she, a veteran reporter of 20 years covering the White House , would become his scheduler. “Do you want to set up a meeting?”, he challenged.

How long will professional women be treated like errand persons or assistants? How long will it be assumed by some that one person of color knows every other person of color? Did President Trump lash out at Ms. Ryan because she had uncovered a vulnerability – his not knowing what she was talking about initially? Or did he lash out to show himself the strong man to satisfy his base? Would he have lashed out no matter what question she asked?

All of those things matter. It was gratifying to note that news people picked up on the “black people know all other black people” piece of Trump’s stumble. That is progress because I doubt very much whether that would have been so even ten years ago. There would have been questions about why any of us would take exception to his remark. News people also wanted Ms. Ryan to be upset about it, but she refused to do so. She did not talk about race; instead, she said she is a seasoned reporter and was just doing her job. She left it to others to be upset about the racial aspect, and that is just what she should have done in my opinion. It is time for white people to be upset about such things and not to expect us to express their outrage for them. So while we have made some progress, we still have much more to do. Erin Burnett on CNN did everything she could to elicit an angry response from Ms. Ryan, and finally a colleague spoke out saying that Ms. Ryan was being very gracious.

While it is clear that Mr. Trump has much work to do to get up to speed on matters of race, we must not let that obscure the work that the rest of us have to do. It is not enough for black people to be the designated angry person when racial outrages occur. We must all express our anger in constructive ways when it is warranted.

Typing While Black welcomes this contribution from a guest blogger.