Memphis native explains the burden of growing up Black in America | States of America #Shorts

Bennie Smith, a Memphis native and politician who grew up in a dangerous neighborhood in the city, explains why the assumption of guilt reinforces stereotypes about Black men in America and ultimately leads them into a cycle of poverty and violence. “If you're born on the 10th floor, you should make it to the 58th floor,” Smith says. “But if you're born negative 10, you've got to go 10 floors to get to zero.“

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5 comments

  1. What we have here is a mismatch between the civilization that exists and the people that occupy it. Our assumptions of how people will behave is based purely on our own lived experiences with them, not what we learned from our parents or their parents. So many naive young whites walk into wildly dangerous situations without having any clue because they have not experienced it before. They think their parents are racist for simply trying to warn them about what’s out there. This idea that Blacks commit violence because people assume they will is like saying the sun is only hot because that’s what we assume it to be. Whether blacks will or won’t be violent as a people is entirely up to them and will be the same with or without white people in the picture.

  2. Donald Trump racist Democrats Democratic party Racist Show trials tend to be retributive rather than corrective and they are also conducted for propagandistic purposes.[3] When aimed at individuals on the basis of protected classes or characteristics, such trials are examples of political persecution.

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