To continue the arguments about racism and liberalism and all of this, I thought I would start off this piece by telling the holy liberal in America something that may very well surprise them: When I was growing up as a young kid, I wholeheartedly believed, probably until I was about 19-20 years old, that America was ,at the very least, 30-40% percent black. That's right. 30-40% percent. Not for a particular city or a particular town. No, the entire country. I literally believed that close to half of this country was black.
For the astute and studied liberal, and even to myself now, the fact that I ever believed this sounds *absurd*, but once upon a time it was true, extremely true. And the main reason that I was led to believe this was very simple: the particular city that I grew up in was, surprise surprise, overwhelmingly black. To the point of being 60% black. In addition to that, there was something else that was very important which led to my massive misunderstanding about the USA. This thing was called music . When I was growing up in middle school and high school, the vast majority of artists that my friends in the neigborhoo listened to were, yet again, **almost exclusively black**.
Was I aware that white artists had, once upon a long ago, existed? Yes I was.Vaguely, at first. But did it seem as though they had, at some point, vanished into the oblivion? Yes, it did. What did this lead to? It lead to just what i'm telling you: a poor white boy who was convinced, for his entire teenage life and even his early 20s, that the country he was living in was , at the very least, 40% black. It basically always seemed like a half and half battle of some sort to me. Like a fair fight, to tell you the truth. Yes. A fair fight. I thought we both had the same amount of troops behind us. In fact, when it came to contemplating certain areas of society where a number of family members of mine have gone, I was frightened, becuase I knew, for a fact, that I would be quickly outnumbered. Outnumbered by blacks. So in so many ways, the entire story about America seemed to be very, very black. 40%, at least, as I keep stressing.....
I still always remember the very first time I ever got curious, when I was about 23 years old, I want to say, to see just what the xact statistical percentage of blacks was in th United States. I used Google of course, and I'll never forget how absolutely shocked i was when I actualy realized, for the first time, that in terms of the entire nation, blacks make up a mere 10% of the country. I was in absolute shock. I couldn't believe it. It didn't make any sense to me, aftre having living all my life with such a seriously heavy black presence all around me, whether in reality or in media. It also, you might be surprised to know, didn't make any sense to my relatives and friends, whom I promptly went and explained this startling 10% fact to. I can still vividly remember the night I sat across from my mother and my stepfather, and asked them if they knew that blacks were only a mere 10% of the country. My mother, who has lived her entire life essentially with no Internet and in this 60% black city, began to actually accuse me of lying. She got mad at me. She told me the Internet was telling me false facts. There was no way, in my mothers mind, that this country could only have merely 10% black people.
It could not be, she said over and over again. It could not be. There is no way that they could make up that smal lof a percentage of America. "It is the case," I said, "I swear to God, it is the case: they are only 10% of the nation. This northeast city is just one of many American cities, and many of the others, it turns out, especially in the midwest and the pacific northwest, or even in Maine, are oftne just whites."
My mother was in shock. She still, to this day, if the conversation comes up, seems in shock. She does not ever seem to really believe me, still, about all of this. And of course -- just to make things clear-- my mother , and even I, was in **even more shock** when I came to find out the real statistics of Roman Catholics and Italians in the USA, that being ourselves: 'What in good hell do you mean only a mere SIX percent of Americans have Italian ancestry? Everyone we've ever known intimately, on thato ther side of town, has Italian ancestry, and is Roman Catholic. What the hell are you talking about...there's no way the number is that low. THERE'S NO WAY!"
Yet it is. It is that low. Statistically speaking, only a mere 6% of Americans have Italian ancestry. It is mind blowing to us. It makes us feel like we are in a country that...isn't ours. My mother always seems especially perturbed and deeply disappointed by the fact. Because it just seems very odd, and strange...as though we are living in a country that we actually don't seem to really kow much about. A country which, as you can see, we only seem to know a very miniscule part of. And this of course brings us right back to the blacks as a minority thing that I think many liberals just aren't getting, because when liberals read the story of the blacks, something tells me that they've been reading it ..from the GET GO ... knowing that blacks are only 10% of the country. They are reading it as a nation wide story. They are book learned folks; they are actually aware of the big picture ...from the **beginning**..
This, I must keep stressing, is the entire problem with their approach. They are literally not seeing the reality I saw, when I, as a young kid, thought half my country was black. They are also not seeing the reality that the blacks themselves see, many of whom might believe, just like my mother believed about her Italians, that they are a considerably larger presence in this country than they actually are. After all, if I,an Italian boy, grew up in a world that felt half black, I can only imagine what many actual blacks, in a black neighborhood and a 95% black high school, might feel.
I think many of them grow up and walk out into the American world at large,assuming they get the chance, and just feel utterly bewildered. What the educated liberal needs to understand is that most people, you know, they don't go to Google - easy as it is -- and look up Demographics, or statistics, especially when they are young. Most people growing up do not realize all of this, and all these middle aged generations --who do not use the internet so intimately -- **definitely do not realize any of this**. As you can imagine, the middle aged crowd went on living with the mistaken idea that I had as a boy. The Internet never corrected the false belief for them. They are sitting there as 60 year old people, and even though they keep hearing "minority minority" , I think many lower whites sincerely believe blacks make up a far larger portion of the population. ...
Now why is this important to say? Well, it is because of what I said earlier: When someone mistakenly believes that blacks are a significantly higher part of the percentage than they actually are, it leads to that someone **also** being able to believe that blacks are able to fight back just as much as they are. It leads you to think , as I said before, that this is mor eof a fair fight than it really is. It leads you to looking at a city, like my own city, and thinking something like ..."we got our neighborhood here on these 5 streets, and they got 3/4 of the city..so what the hell is th god damn problem? What on earth are these people on this TV talking about?"
And all of this of course leads to this very specific grou pof white people, who come of age and can't shake the false idea that these politicians do a whole lot of talkin' about black folks, but they never do any talking about white folks. White folks who now, if you're poor, and in certain cities, are actually minorities **within** that particular world. Poor white folks who, just like poor blacks, have never traveled beyond the "borough" and gotten the chance to see that a huge state like Oregon, it turns out, is almost completely white, etcetc. Poor white folks who only know one specific slice of America. A slice of it is that is particularly black.
In fact, my mothers life experience as an Italian-American is so closely connected to blacks that, when I then explained to her how the Internet told me Rome, Italy was literally 90% Italian, she told me, yet again, that I was lying, or that the Internet was mistaken."It is not collecting the real data." she said to me, "There's no way that a place can be 90% Italian. There's just no way." It was literally almost as though she thought that **even in Italy** all of the cities are now half black and half white, just like in America. She couldn't really imagine a city of just Italians. It now seems bizarre.
So when I showed her the statistics, and then explained to her that most Italians in Italy "probably just live 3/4 of their lives solely with other Italians" she said it just seemed downright "silly". Which, from an American persepctive, it really does, doesn't it? For how on earth could anyone in the 21st century still be living insuch a small and contained quarters of racial homogeny? Yet it is still the case. It is indeed still the case in many countries, just like it is indeed the case that many areas of American cities are "Little Puerto Ricos" or "Little Africas" or "Little Chinas" etc....
-- notes
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