I don't write a lot of diaries. In fact, I haven't written one in a long time. I don't live on this site, as great as it is, like so many seem to do. But I try to peep it as often as possible. But yesterday's diary by Tim Wise shook me from my Wall Street cocoon. I have to start calling him "T.W." or "T-Dub" or "T-Wise", something cool. Mr. Tim Wise is a badass white boy. He has his shit together like no one else. Let me explain below the croissant.
I've been reading T-Dub for years now, and have been amazed at how insightful he is about "The Situation." And I don't mean that fool on the reality TV show. I mean life in these Disunited States.
Look, I move about in some high-brow corporate circles. I travel the world. But I've never met a cat like T-Wise, white boy extraordinaire, who actually gets it. No, he FEELS it. He knows the pain and not just the rain. He can viscerally relate to what it is like to be black or brown or Muslim in this world, including the Disunited States of the 1%, while being so pale of skin he's practically translucent. Black folks in particular appreciate that, probably because it is so rare. And in T.W.'s case, so legit. T-Dub ain't slummin' y'all. The Mac Daddy of speaking truth to power is for real.
Yesterday's words of wisdom, as he predicted, were viciously attacked by the very same scions of whiteness not used to having their civil rights crapped on. T-Dub hit it out of the park when described his own reaction to the revelations from Spencer's crime (yes, what he did was illegal, face it) as nonchalant. That's the way every man, woman and child born with a natural sun tan reacted. We yawned. Nothing new here. What's for breakfast? We're used to being spied on, followed around in retail stores by "undercover" security, stopped and frisked, pulled over on the highway for DWB, being falsely arrested, prosecuted, wrongly convicted, and outlandishly sentenced. My white colleagues still can't believe a white police officer would deliberately harass a motorist because of the car he is driving or the neighborhood he's driving in. It must be because we're criminals!
Go here, in case you missed it yesterday: Tim Wise Speaks
Tim, keep it coming, bro'. PLEASE.
Now, some might ask, 'Why focus on this particular shortcoming in our otherwise progressive and well-meaning white brothers and sisters?' Some might think it divisive for a brilliant intellectual and author like Tim Wise to bring this up. True dat. The risk of bruising feelings was definitely there. But Tim is a believer in truth. He's no corporate shill under instruction from Public Affairs to soften his message. He plays hardball not wiffle ball, because he knows from history that you may get under some people's skin in the short run, but this is a long game, and the maestro just wants you to wake up. This shit ain't new. He wants to level set (to borrow corporate speak). Although we who seek equality for all are on the same side, we're not at the same place. We need to be at the same place. We need to be tight, to present the strongest possible opposition, if we are to defeat the motherfuckers on the right--the racists, msyognists, homophobes, jingoists, and other assholes.
That's my interpretation of Tim's words. In my opinion there is a method to his madness. Too many of my white brothers and sisters responded as if he was nothing but a bomb thrower. And that's a pity.