#84. Breathing while Black (BwB)

Even Mein Obama is privy to Breathing while Black (BwB)

What is a law-abiding Black person to do when people mistake you for a common criminal and lock their car door when you come near, though you might merely need directions?

What is a tax-paying Black citizen to do when cops pull you over for the petty crime of Driving while Black (DwB)? It is common knowledge that Black people are harassed by the police more than any other race, with Reason magazine reporting:

The statistics are equally telling. Consider Crises of the Anti-Drug Effort, 1999, a report by Chad Thevenot of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a group that monitors abuses of the American legal system. "76 percent of the motorists stopped along a 50-mile stretch of I-95 by Maryland's Special Traffic Interdiction Force (STIF) were black, according to an Associated Press computer analysis of car searches from January through September 1995....Blacks constitute 25 percent of Maryland's population, and 20 percent of Marylanders with driver's licenses." As this story was being written, New Jersey was holding hearings on racial profiling, and one state police investigator testified that 94 percent of the motorists stopped in one town were minorities.

Minorities are not only more likely to be stopped than whites, but they are also often pressured to allow searches of their vehicles, and they are more likely to allow such searches. In March, The New York Times reported that a 1997 investigation by New Jersey police of their own practices found that " drivers who agreed to have their cars searched by the state police were overwhelmingly black and Hispanic."

Reason failed to elucidate who is committing the majority of crimes in America, but we’ll give them a pass. Let’s just be honest for a second: Breathing while Black (BwB) is one of the greatest problems in America, as the poor behavior choices of a large segment of the Black population are enough to worry police, school administration, business owners and virtually every respectable level of society into stereotyping Black people, even if they are successful (just ask Joe Biden his thoughts on Barack Obama).

What is BwB? The Nation explains:

But whether or not we use the word "nigger" or discourage its use by others--or among black folk--the discrete events that trigger that visceral feeling in us will remain as long as black lives continue to have less value than white lives. Because they do. To invoke a newer, insidious rhetorical tool of conservatives, it is white "innocent life" that is sacrosanct, not society's moral outrage against violence and brutality, physical or psychological.


All socially acceptable mitigators of brutal speech are deftly untethered from their more vile origins, too shameful and heavy for those most complicit to bare. But the weight of its impact never lessens on those of us who do not have a choice as long as we're breathing while black.

 Successful Black people who receive unwanted attention from police use this brutality (anytime Black people fail to cooperate with police, the cries of “brutality” aren’t far behind) to justify the institutional and inherent racism in the system that The Man continues to operate, never mind that this same system actively promotes Successful Black people who receive unwanted attention from police use this brutality (anytime Black people fail to cooperate with police, the cries of “brutality” aren’t far behind) to justify the institutional and inherent racism in the system that The Man continues to operate, never mind that this same system actively promotes policies of affirmative action that burden every vocation with intellectual giants.

Those upper-class Black people feel pity and solidarity for Black people from lower classes who misbehave and will march on their behalf, yet will never blame that same lower class mentality whenever the putrid air of BwB becomes overwhelming pungent. Take this Christmas party in Houston where a large gathering of Black professionals were told the “look” of their crowd was responsible for an early ending to the festivities:

December 28, 2010 was the night I and a hundred other denizens of Houston took a time machine back to the 50s where it was an absurd notion and flat out criminal for a group of cultured African Americans to congregate in a white owned facility to enjoy the pleasures of life and friendship in the name of the holiday season. To say that I am still disturbed would be an understatement. I have never in my days felt the limitations of my skin and having to experience this in a time where we have black people in the highest of offices in every field known to mankind makes it not only disgusting but also unbelievable.


At 11pm the general manager turned the lights on, cut the music down and proceeded to explain that the newly built Hudson Lounge would have to be shut down for the evening because one of its owners walked into the club and “didn’t like the look of the crowd”. Obviously shocked faces were present because to have someone flat out tell you that your skin isn’t the image in which they would like to display to their establishment is beyond insulting, its insane. What year are we in again? Oh yeah, 2010.


The audacity of someone to feel like statements such as that is okay is beyond me. I could almost see it if we were uninvited guests but this wasn’t the case. The friends that put the party together met with the general manager on five different occasions, even going as far as sending them a playlist of music that would be played for approval and still we and our money weren’t good enough. Now if you think for a second that the crowd was anything similar to a typical black mass that is fueled with excited by the likes of music like Souja Boy, Wacka Flaka and other ignorant artists of today you are mistaken. If we were that type of crowd I would understand the devaluing of such a beautiful club but this was a group of educated, well-dressed black people from the age of 25-45. Houston’s best and most influential young professionals were in the building and still we were judged not by our accolades but merely the color of our skin.

Newspapers and nightly newscasts are littered with shootings at Black clubs, bars and block parties and the business owner was obviously privy to this not-so-secret information that Black gatherings have a greater propensity to turn violent, let alone be zones for poor tips.

The business owner of the club was merely looking at for his property and the well-being of his employees, for getting a niggardly tip can lead to depression, and we all know suicides go up over the holiday season.

No story can illustrate BwB madness quite like the tale of Black alumni from Harvard and Yale Law School gathering before a football game to share memories together:

Boston may investigate the closure of a Harvard-Yale party the weekend of The Game at which many of the predominantly black attendees were barred from entering the venue.


Three Harvard graduate students had booked the venue, Cure Lounge, after the Harvard-Yale football game Nov. 20. The club shut the party down when it became clear that most of those waiting outside were not carrying Harvard or Yale IDs, even though the organizers had provided a guest list. Attendees who were interviewed said they think the rejection was racially motivated, but the club denies this accusation.


Boston City Councilor At-Large Ayanna Pressley sent a letter to Patricia Malone, director of the Mayor’s Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing, asking that she launch an investigation of the incident, Pressley’s chief of staff James Chisholm said Nov. 24.


“I am dismayed that the mere presence of black Harvard and Yale alumni on a Boston street would result in an overreaction of this sort,” the letter said.


Attendees of the event disagree with the club’s management about what happened that night. As a line of Elis and Cantabs in cocktail attire gathered outside the club, bouncers from the venue refused to admit those who could not present a Harvard or Yale ID. In response, party organizers argued that most of the guests were alumni and therefore would not be carrying school IDs. The club kicked out those it had already admitted around 11:00 p.m., according to an e-mail party organizer and Harvard Business School student Michael Beal sent to invitees.


Chisholm said undertrained security guards might have played a role in the incident.
He added that Boston has a history of white gangs, but that it is unlikely that a bouncer would be concerned that a group of white people in cocktail attire would attract gangbangers.


“What’s very telling is that there were no reports of fights after they shut down the party,” Chisholm said. “Everyone in line either went home or went somewhere else. It suggests to me that there were no problems in line to begin with.”


Beal’s e-mail blamed the event on racism and said the club’s management told him his party might attract “local gangbangers” and the “wrong crowd.”


“We were perceived as a threat because of our skin color,” Beal wrote in the e-mail.

BwB makes it impossible for successful Black people to congregate peacefully in respectable venues, for a past event that was majority Black must have forever tainted such parties in the mind of the business owner.

Many bars use dress codes in a bid to keep out unwanted customers whose character is obvious by their accoutrements, but the propensity for Black people to engage in socially unacceptable behavior means that BwB will continue to be a major problem.

Perhaps few examples of the BwB problem can be illustrated as beautifully as this story:

This story would actually be pretty funny if it wasn't so sad and racist.


It all started in a suburb of Chicago, when a butt dial went horribly wrong.


The wife of a Winnetka school employee called out the SWAT Team, because she feared her husband had been kidnapped and was being held hostage.


Why did she think this terrible thing?


Because she received a call from her husband's cell phone, but no one was there and all she could here was the sound of hip-hop music playing in the background.


"You know how when you sit on your phone when it's in your back pocket and it calls the last number that was dialed? His wife was the last number he'd dialed," said Winnetka police Chief Joseph De Lopez. Apparently,what she heard led her to believe there was someone holding him hostage so she called the police.

This makes sense!


Because whenever you hear no voices and hip-hop music playing, it must mean the caller is being held hostage by mean black men.


It then stands to reason that he can't speak and has struggled with his dying breath to grab his phone with his one free foot and desperately dial you for help.


"He was listening to music and he had, I don't know, hip-hop ... or music like that, where there were lyrics that were gangster-like," explained Mark Friedman, interim co-superintendent of District 36.


After a frantic 911 call from the school employee's wife, more than 30 gun-toting officers converged on Carleton Washburne School, which also houses the District 36 offices where the man works.


Armed with automatic weapons and wearing bulletproof vests, SWAT team members circled the school searching for a reported gunman who might be holding a hostage.


The all-clear sounded nearly three hours later, after the man was found safe at home by police.


The paranoid wife later explained to Friedman that "there were lyrics on the radio as he was driving home, and she listened to it and became concerned."

Rap music is synonymous with violence, though Black people deny such obvious links. The prevalence for BwB thinking has now infiltrated the white mind as any playing of Hip Hop music leaves them paranoid that the absolute worst is about to happen.

Successful Black people could do the sensible thing and denounce the growing Black underclass as having values that are antithetical to theirs, but instead stand in unison with their Black brethren screaming racism whenever hate facts are tossed around to corroborate the large numbers of Black men in prison and the consistently high failure rates of Black students despite the most spending per pupil in the world (hey, the educational system works for whites and Asians).

Breathing while Black will be the Stuff Black People Don’t Like because successful Black people can never admit that a large segment of their population has failed, just as Black people cannot abandon Detroit. If Black people abandon Detroit, they abandon the city whose fate was sealed when they took over.

If successful Black people abandon the incredibly huge underclass of Black people, they will be castigated as acting white or being the token Black. Even worse, an Uncle Tom. So they have sealed their fates and cast their line into the dirty water inhabited by a Black underclass that provides the ammunition on daily basis for justifying the notion of Breathing while Black.

Haiti can’t be abandoned, nor can South Africa. The bad behavior of Black people must always be blamed on white people, which only perpetuates the problem of BwB by ensuring that all criticism of the Black underclass will be forever silenced as racist.

If you still need proof of that underclass, consult the archives of this blog.

The movie Crash helps explain the problem of BwB in all its tragic beauty. 

View it here and here.