Introducing Chad Crow: Racism in 2016

Kim Zahnd IV ©2016


Dear white people,

I was directed to an article by an author named @themagicalnegro that coined the term Chad Crow, Jim Crow's more laid back relative. It was pretty profound to me. I've been grasping for a concept to break down to my fellow white people what racism looks like today. That we may not live in a Jim Crow society, we absolutely live in a Chad Crow society. 

What do you mean by Chad Crow, Auntie?

Have a seat folks, this might get wordy.

We all should know what Jim Crow looked like. Chad Crow is an undercover version of Jim Crow. Chad Crow, in his mellowness, looks like: 

• PoC rarely lasting until the end of the movie.
• It looks like you believing your "harmless" racist uncle everyone ignores, who happens to be a loan officer, is able to contain his "harmless racism" when he makes loan determinations.
• It's reprimanding and punishing POC for hairstyles, clothing choices, dialect/language etc, while having those same things lauded on the covers of white-centered magazines as the next, new, groundbreaking style, or the next new, brilliant ad campaign tagline.
• Chad is a bunch of white people opening marijuana dispensaries, farming marijuana, making astronomical profits, while people sit in jail for marijuana convictions. That their release, and record expungement, is even up for debate is ridiculous. That most of those are POC is unconscionable.
• It's per capita, POC being the victims of police violence at far higher rates, and cities like NY pay out $754 million over a decade, plus legal fees, to settle police impropriety law suits, says Chad Crow is more interested in paying hush money to cover up systemic racism, instead of actually dealing with systemic racism.
• When ‪#‎OscarsSoWhite‬ is a thing, and had to be a thing, because it's obvious that they -are- so white.
• It looks like using failed strategies like broken windows policing and Stop & Frisk in POC areas as a means to prevent crime, (even though white people commit as much crime) coupled with direct and implied quotas, and Chad strikes again. POC end up arrested more often, and imprisoned more often.
• It looks like an amendment to the constitution that outlaws slavery in every instance except in the matter of prisoners. That the war on drugs targeted POC, and the advent of for profit prisons erupted, who use prisoner labor to make a vast array of products and services, it's blatantly obvious it's slavery reconfigured.
• Chad interferes with an overwhelmingly POC voter base though legislation pertaining to felons not being able to vote. Even though those felons have paid their debt to society.
• Chad looks like George Hamilton portraying an "extra crispy" version of Col. Sanders when the common "joke" answer for why Black people have Brown skin is "because God cooked them too long." Implying a whole host of things from POC having thicker, "crispier," "tastier" skin, to it's cool to be black guy on TV as long as you're not actually a Black guy on TV.
• Chad Crow is what makes Fox News a major network. Chad believes they are reputable.
• Chad Crow wants to vehemently hang on to the Confederate flag because of history and heritage, a history and heritage forever indelibly connected to slavery, a sting and blatant reminder to Black people that people romanticize the era of slavery and all it stood for, conducting Civil War recreations to celebrate the battles, while simultaneously telling Black people to stop talking about slavery because it's over.
• Chad Crow is what has festered into Donald Trump being the Republican presidential candidate.
• Chad Crow is the media digging and finding the worst photos of POC victims, digging up the best photos of white perpetrators, and convincing the world the POC VICTIM had it coming.
• Chad Crow takes a mass murderer of Black church members to Burger King, dressed in a bulletproof vest, before going to the station, while Sandra Bland's death is justified because she was "arrogant."
• Chad looks like a POC mass murderer being called a terrorist, while white mass murderers who blatantly target POC via manifestos, etc., are called lone wolves and mentally ill, instead of calling them what they are, terrorists who terrorize people of color. Chad looks like only considering attacks against whites terroristic activity.
• Chad looks like a 12yo boy getting gunned down in under three seconds, and the nation having a debate whether A CHILD WITH A TOY deserved to die for being a child with a toy.
• Chad looks like student loan payments being astronomical, when Black women are the largest segment of the population earning degrees.
• Chad Crow looks like schools being funded by property taxes, white flight while redlining, assessing comparable property in POC neighborhoods lower in value, not only making POC investment have a far lower return, but the education of the youth is compromised.
• Chad is a police officer shooting a Black, degreed, behavioral therapist with his hands in the air, first because he "didn't know" why, and then the story changes to because he was aiming at an autistic, POC man holding a toy truck. After he'd been advised of both men's identification. And he was a specially trained SWAT team member.
• Chad took down the No Blacks signs and replaced them with store security, and employees, who follow POC customers while they shop.
• Chad is the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians, and all other teams that mock Native peoples.
• Chad is the repugnant state of reservations in this country, because we've ganked on every promise we've ever made to indigenous peoples.
• Chad is white people calling Bud Light their spirit animal, completely disrespecting and mocking a deeply held spiritual belief, because you think it's cute.
• Chad is vacationing in Mexico, or drinking Tecate, or Modelo, or Corona, while thinking Mexicans are criminals, moochers, and wanting them deported. While living in states that used to be a part of Mexico.
• Chad is Flint, Michigan, a predominantly Black community, still having lead poisoned water, being threatened with losing their property, and in some cases, custody of their children, if they don't continue to pay for poisoned water that can't be used. All while those in power who knowingly allowed the poisoning to occur, have not been held accountable in any way.
• Chad is Bill O'Reilly having the pugnacious gall to flippantly dismiss the fact that white men made money off of Black slaves who built the White House, and then excusing that fact by saying those slaves were well fed and housed. Chad is the millions of viewers who agree with him.
• Chad is an insidious little you-know-what.
• Chad has a uniquely consistently cumulative effect. There is no respite.

Unless you're dealing in the realities of who and what Chad is, and you're consciously addressing all things Chad all the time, you're in cahoots with Chad.

Your silence is cooperation.
Your denial is beyond callous and selfish. 
Your blind eye is murderous.
You are Chad Crow.

"The separation of the races is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it." - Albert Einstein