The Emotional Turmoil of White Racists versus The Early Deaths of Black Folks

This week’s news juxtaposed two interesting stories that cast our structural racism in the spotlight and in stark relief contrasting the woes of being a white openly racist man in America with being an average Black person living in white culture. Let’s present the emotional turmoil news first and then move on to the effect of racism on Black folks.

Pity the White Racist

Over at Wonkette, the last news website, we get a story about the pro-Confederacy, and by pro-Confederacy we mean pro-slavery and pro-insurrection and anti-American individual freedoms, Manatee Middle School social studies teacher Jonathan Papanikolaou.

While Ye Olde Blogge was celebrating Autism Awesomeness month, the good white supremacists over yonder in America’s dangling bits were proving themselves worthy of all of the Florida jokes by celebrating Confederate History Month, by which they mean remembering all of the sacrifices of the brave men and women so were they could continue owning other real live Americans as chattel property.

Racism on Open Display

Apparently, Mr. Papanikolaou is a lot like Ye Olde Blogge and wanted to share his appreciation of his special month with not only his own students, but the whole dern school, so he made his very own special video using his very own special IT skills. In the video, this teacher says the following real live words right out loud using, one presumes, his very own mouth (From ABC-7; emphasis, mine):

• “Every year our state celebrates and memorializes that valiant, brave fight and the countless sacrifices by our men and women during that known [sic] as the Civil War, but may be more correctly titled the War To Prevent Southern Independence.“
• “[The Civil War was fought because of] slaves and property rights, over taxation and a variety of violations of state’s right and sovereignty.”

Of course some lib parents lied and said that the honest teaching on the Civil War caused their little snowflakes discomfort, which is a violation of Florida state law! So, the school district was forced to “investigate” wasting tax payer money and explain to the kiddos that Gawd condoned the owning of slaves as part of the Sermon on the Mount and that’s why it was written into the Constitution that Moses brought down with him from Mt. Sinai and handed to George Washington, allegedly.

Racism Institutionalized in the State of Florida

Since Florida not only celebrates Confederate History Month but also has state holidays for Robert E. Lee’s birthday, Jefferson Davis’ birthday, and Confederate Memorial Day and mandates that no teaching should cause any child of white nationalist parents discomfort, they did a thorough investigation supervised by Ron DerSatan personally (allegedly) and found no wrong doing on the teachers part, everything was good there, nothing to see here, move along citizen.

According to Mr. Papanikolaou’s HR complaint against the school district, his good white supremacist name would not have been besmirched, causing students, parents, peers, and community members to avoid him and ask him embarrassing questions if the district had done as Gawd, Jefferson Davis, and Ron DisneySanctions had instructed and praised his good intentions and judgment instead of investigating how an unauthorized off curriculum video had made it into the morning announcements. He claims that the investigation caused him these harms:

• “Created a hostile work environment”
• “Disrupted students mental psyche” and “receptiveness attitude to learn [sic]”
• Students and staff ask him why he’s a racist and supports slavery.
• He has suffered “grief and awkwardness in the classroom and school exchanges.”

The Consequences of Being a Racist Asshole

According to parents of students at the school, students don’t want to be in his class and aren’t participating in his classroom activities.

Mr. Papanikolaou is decrying the bitter experience of suffering consequences for expressing beliefs that run counter to America’s core principles. He is shocked, shocked, I tell you, that he is being accused — j’accuse! — of being pro-slavery and a racist all because he himself confessed his beliefs that the South shoulda won the Civil War and continue owning real live made-in-the-image-of-God human beings before his school, the country, God, and everybody. What has America become?

This disgusting episode in modern American current events brought to you by White Identity Politics. White Grievance, and White Privilege.

The Grief of Black America

Now, let’s contrast those fat Kyle Rittenhouse crocodile tears with the scientific fact of early death by Black folks due to the stress and strain of living everyday in the structural racism of the United States of Freedom for White Folks, but Fuck Everybody Else.

A study recently published inJAMA and reported on on NBCNews demonstrated that the perennially higher mortality rate for American Blacks has caused about 1.63 million more deaths of real live Americans who happen to be Black and only make up ten percent of the population than whites over the past twenty years. But, systemic racism ain’t real; Black folk jus’ wanna die young. They love dying of preventable causes! They refuse healthcare and shoot each other and attack the po-po when they come by. That ain’t racism. If they’ jus’ be white, they wouldn’t be having these problems, see?

Thanks for that insight, Uncle Inguus.

Disproportionate Death

That’s the pertinent part, isn’t it? According to HHS, Black people make up about 12.1% of the 331.9 million Americans. That’s about 40 million people who are Black in America. About 75.8% of Americans are non-Hispanic White, or 251 million people.

According to this chart from the CDC in their trendy deaths of 2020 report, life expectancy for both men and women pivoted sharply to the right in 2020 like some kind of synchronized dance routine. That’s because of #COVID19 — thanks, Trump! That pivot erased twenty years of progress in life expectancy. Side note: see the sharp decline in 1918? That’s the 1918 flu. That’s how bad that was.

So in twenty years 40 million people suffered 1.63 million more deaths than 251 million people did. That statistic is what you call disproportionate. It’s worse than that, though.

Black people tend to die young, so if you look at years of life lost, it amounts to 80 million more years of Black lives lost than white lives. It’s almost as if Black lives didn’t matter, hunh?

As Stalin said, a million dead is a statistic, one dead is a tragedy. In today’s America, it is a million people dead of #COVID19 or gun violence is, meh, a statistic. One white person dead is a tragedy that must be prevented at all costs. A million Black people dead is, meh. And, one Black person dead is a criminal who if they didn’t deserve it then, probably deserved it for something else, amirite?

Institutionalized Racist Health Outcomes

We can tell that this is institutionalized racism because, just like in counties where there were higher percentages of slaves during the Civil War, there are higher scores on the Harvard Implicit Bias test, the neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930’s because they were too “high risk” for mortgages are just as poor and sick today as they were then. This finding was also true during the #COVID19 pandemic.

Perhaps, the worst aspect of the unequal and unjust distribution of health care and life in our society is that it unfairly burdens the Black community with grief. Everybody in the Black community knows somebody who has died young.

I know from personal experience that grief is a lifelong companion. You spend the rest of your life remembering the people who were important to you that you lost. It keeps coming back in big ways and small. It never truly goes away.

Adding the stress of grief to the Black community just raises the toll of what it costs to be Black in America. The stress of daily discrimination and micro-aggressions and just uncertainty adds up like so much compounding interest. It takes its toll.

The doubt about why things happen to you when you are a minority in a society eats away at your soul. When death is involved, it gnaws from the inside out. The article gives an example from Khaliah Johnson, chief of pediatric palliative care at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Her parents lost two sons, one just after birth and one as a toddler. They were plagued with doubt. Had they been white, would they have gotten different care? Would those boys be alive today?

It’s one thing to wonder if the store clerk who was rude to you was rude because you’re Black or because they’re a jerk, but it’s quite another to wonder if racism murdered your children. It changes how you relate to yourself, other people in your life, and to your country.

The deep profound pain of grief that our Black community carries is one more reason to carry on with Black Lives Matter and to, as a white person, work to end racism. If you ever needed motivation to start digging around in your own secret garden and start pulling the weeds of racism from your soul, the early death and incumbent grief that we inflict on our Black brothers and sisters should do the trick, don’t you think?

Image Attribution

“Crocodile Tears” by Steve Corey is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.