It’s Just The Whiteness of You by sam enderby

Eliza Gilkyson

Its probably an indication of my age that most contemporary music is a distant planet for me. I realize the marketing geniuses cater to a much younger crowd and, I guess, why not, as I was that crowd once but of course a funny thing is I didn't have much to spend once upon a time and now in my yeatsian gray years I still don't which just goes to show how I have managed my erstwhile earning years however thats for another time for right now I wish to relate before the daily haze of my existence sets in another fortunate connection (because here at the Joyful Moocher we're always trying to connect) that makes my unemployed hours (except for this pecking time) almost bearable for it involves my Ipod- yes, I did splurge a while back during a win streak (i.e. my wife's credit card) and a few tunes that I hadn't heard before kind of caught me by surprise- a happy surprise. The tunes were written and sung by someone named ELIZA GILKYSON, whom I never heard or at least couldn't remember hearing before although she does sound a little like a singer I had heard long ago but never got the name but there was something about the voice and the melancholy lyric long since forgotten and, anyway, I was and am particularly taken with the songs on this album- called , uh,uh -wait ..."Roses at the End of Time" and one especially- a satirical gem called 2153 - as in the year 2153 ( and no, it ain't like Zager and Evans or whomever ). You never hear this on the radio, at least I never have and so far still haven't - and the album, I believe, is a few years old already. One of the verses states :

" Oh, they went for the literal translation 
Of every text and symbol sacred work and screed 
They obsessed over minor variations 
Misconstrued the truth to justify their deeds."

Another title, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" also appealed to my yeatsian yearning and what a state of affairs it is between the cable companies and the commercial radio conglomerates ( I haven't even heard her on Jonathan Schwartz). Still whats a redblooded American old man listening to music do when confronted by an unknown voice and song? I googled.( Not bing-ed. Bing is for Johnny Burke and Harry Warren.) And I found her, natch, and found out that not only has she been recording off and on for over 40 years (they don't show) but that she had recorded on a label that

The Wonderful Utah Phillips-Labor Organizer, Folksinger, Poet, Gandy Dancer

also recorded that lovable Bruce UTAH PHILLIPS who I once saw perform in a basement of a Greenwich Village apartment building way back when when I was part of the crowd enjoying moose turd pie and she has a husband, Robert Jensen,  who is sort of a radical professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin who is forever tweaking the noses of the school machers and speaking out against American imperialist interests and has distinguished himself by writing (teaching?) about the insidious racism that has infected this country for hundreds of years (there are some good things going on down there at least in Austin, I mean, c'mon doesn't Willie Nelson still cook there?). I have read one of his essays, "White Privilege, White Supremacy" - originally published by CITY LIGHTS ( remind me to tell you of the time I walked out on Allen Ginsberg at Brooklyn College) in a book called the Heart of Whiteness. It has been included in another book called WHITE PRIVILEGE, Essential Readings On the Other Side of Racism. Professor Jensen cites a 2004 study by United for a Fair Economy that just shreds any doubt anyone may have regarding inequality in the United States. If I may mooch some examples:

• At the slow rate that the black-white poverty gap has been narrowing since 1968, it would take 150 years, until 2152, to close.
• Black unemployment is more than twice the white race, a wider gap than in 1972(Prof. Jensen uses "race" in this fashion although I would qualify such usage before)
• Black infants are almost two and a half times as likely as white infants to die before age one, a greater gap than in 1970. ( In other words-from the time I graduated from high school (!)- I know its hard to believe- until now this stat has only gotten worse. Thanks "Sam's Generation".
• White households had an average net worth more than six times that of Black households -in 2001 (!)

Dr. Dorothy Brown, Professor of Tax Law at Emory University Law School, writing in the December,2012 issue of Forbes, wrote that "the median net worth of white households is now 20 times that of Black households." Dr. Brown explains some of the huge disparity in house-value as a harsh corollary to the old there-goes-the-neighborhood response:

"If you think this is class and not race, you are wrong. A 2001 Brookings Institution study showed that “wealthy minority neighborhoods had less home value per dollar of income than wealthy white neighborhoods.” The same study concluded that “poor white neighborhoods had more home value per income than poor minority neighborhoods.” The Brookings study was based on a comparison of home values to homeowner incomes in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, and it found that even when homeowners had similar incomes, black-owned homes were valued at 18% less than white-owned homes. The 100 metropolitan areas were home to 58% of all whites and 63% of all blacks in the country.

Those conclusions are supported by a large body of research. Put simply, the market penalizes integration: The higher the percentage of blacks in the neighborhood, the less the home is worth, even when researchers control for age, social class, household structure, and geography.

A 2007 study by George Washington Universitysociology professor Gregory D. Squires comments on why most whites avoid racially diverse neighborhoods: “Evidence indicates that it is the presence of blacks, and not just neighborhood conditions often associated with black neighborhoods (e.g., bad schools, high crime), that accounts for white aversion to such areas. In one survey, whites reported that they would be unlikely to purchase a home that met their requirements in terms of price, number of rooms, and other housing characteristics in a neighborhood with good schools and low crime rates if there was a substantial representation of African Americans.”

When blacks buy homes in majority minority neighborhoods, we increase the racial wealth gap. Whites who want to experience racial diversity at home also pay dearly."

Of course Prof. Brown IS writing for Forbes here and there is some of that "Blacks should try investing more in the stock market like the white people" and perhaps some of this income-wealth disparity will diminish. Anyway what's important to see is that these brutal statistics still continue. Our (white) privileges still have fatal consequences whether we care or not.

sam enderby | March 30, 2013 at 4:00 pm | Tags: 2153, Allen Ginsberg, DOROTHY BROWN, Eliza Gilkyson, Forbes, Harry Warren, Johnny Burke, Jonathan Schwartz, Robert Jensen, University of Texas at Austin, UTAH PHILLIPS, WHITE PRIVILEGE, Willie Nelson | Categories: american culture, BOOKS, RACISM | URL: http://wp.me/p2W55H-rK