A PDR caller laments that some, specifically people of color, rarely get the opportunity to fail without it being fatal to their profession.
Opportunity to fail?
One of my Politics Done Right listeners called into the show with a statement that brought up so many memories about a reality that afflicts virtually every person of color in America. Ray, the caller, wanted the teacher’s utterances in the Magic School bus to be true. Unfortunately, we don’t all get the chance of unfettered tries as the toleration of failure is not equal.
I wrote a serialized book titled “Tribulations of an Afro-Latino Caribbean man: Racism didn’t Stop My Smile, Hope, Or Journey Forward,” where I provide several stories about what I have gone through as an engineer, businessman, and journalist in this country. As I wrote it, I relived every feeling and thought I had then. The worst part is the willful ignorance of those who want to insinuate that it is in the heads of POC.
I am Panamanian by birth. My parents are Panamanian. My father worked in the Panama Canal Zone as a fireman. Working for the Americans was a coveted job because it paid much more relative to the local pay scale. Many Panamanians move to the Canal Zone after a major riot. There were two school systems in the Canal Zone: American and Latin American schools.
The Latin American schools received meager resources even though we did not realize it. Our teachers were dedicated and produced great outcomes. Our leaders fought to integrate the school. To be clear, the schools were not segregated on race but on nationality. But of course, most Americans sans military were anglo.
We won integration while I was in the 10th grade. I remember well what my parents, along with the parents of many, instructed us. When we enter the white American environment, we will have to work at least twice as hard and be twice as good for similar success. Most of us from that time continue to hear that message as we are always reminded that it is more real than not.
President Obama’s repetition of MLK’s quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” may be right. However, the fact that the majority of white America reveres Trump, the instantiation of all that is vile above President Obama, the person who perfectly fits the “American model person,” says it all.