The truth is rarely pleasant: racism, white denial, and some thoughts on being

--Housing segregation has been so extreme in St. Louis over the years, that approximately 75% of all blacks in the city live in neighborhoods that are virtually all black, and disproportionately low income. The same is true, of course, in many urban areas of the United States;

--This hypersegregation has been no accident, but the result of deliberate discrimination by real estate appraisers, landlords, and mortgage lenders. As far back as 1941, underwriters in St. Louis were complaining about the "rapidly increasing Negro population," leading to massive discrimination that was essentially legal for the next 27 years, and even since, has persisted in more subtle forms. All across America this was the case: blockbusting, redlining, steering, and outright intimidation intended to prevent people of color from obtaining homes in more prosperous neighborhoods;

--From 1934-1960, whites moving to St. Louis area suburbs received five times more government-underwritten FHA home loans than folks in the city, who were increasingly people of color. This preferential treatment for whites continues to have an effect today, as those homes pass to the descendants of the original owners, and become accumulated wealth. Nationally, over $120 billion in housing equity was underwritten by the FHA during this time, and only 2% went to African Americans;

--Throughout the metropolitan area, children of color are roughly three times more likely to live in poverty than their white counterparts, and have infant mortality rates that are two-and-a-half times higher; figures that remain remarkably consistent most any place you look in the country.

But to some it isn't the indicia of oppression that deserve our attention or consternation; rather it is the pointing out of these grim realities; the reminding of ourselves and others just how unequal things really are and why, that gets folks bent out of shape. And it's not just a few whites in St. Louis who feel this way. No indeed: Two years ago, I was all but banned from Omaha, Nebraska by the Mayor, who canceled a city-sponsored event rather than to allow me to speak at the gathering. Later, when the event was rescheduled, it was explained to me that he had been concerned I would "stir up trouble," and inject "divisiveness," into the city along racial lines, by speaking on the anniversary of a racial lynching that had occurred 80 years ago.

Before my eventual speech to the Omaha Human Relations Commission, I had breakfast with the Mayor, who afterward confided in me his love for black Omaha, regaled me with tales of his many black friends, and made clear that he didn't want me to be "divisive," the way some of "those SNCC people" had been back in the '60's. He didn't actually come to my speech, but if he had, I'm sure he wouldn't have liked it much: especially the part where I mentioned how divisive I thought his new policing strategy was; one about which he had bragged actually, and which involves low-flying helicopters with bright flood lights, swooping down over black homes throughout North Omaha. Nice, real nice.

Then there were the white students at Cal State-San Marcos, who, in 1997, editorialized in the school's paper against having a day of speeches on racism--including a few by yours truly--and suggested that the "Unity Day" events should be more upbeat and positive. We should focus on what "brings us together," they insisted, not that "which keeps us apart." Perhaps ethnic food and dancing, one suspects, but not those "divisive" subjects like the state's rollback of affirmative action, or attack on immigrants.

Of course, the editors who penned this commentary neglected to mention the real source of divisiveness surrounding this particular day: namely, the death threats made against a black professor and myself by racist followers of Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance, and the promise to detonate a bomb on campus if the event wasn't canceled. In retrospect, I guess it would have been less "divisive" if I had just stayed home, the professor resigned her position, and the event planners caved in to the Nazis. But if so, this just indicates how meaningless the term really is, and how irrelevant it should be to those working for justice.

So to those persons of color who have been fighting the good fight, trying to force those in power to heed your calls for justice, keep it up. What you are fighting for is not divisive. It is that which you are fighting against that is the problem. And remember that by our defensiveness, by our protestations of innocence, by our denials that anything is wrong, my people are signing their confession. They may not be able to handle the truth, but that doesn't make it any less factual.