We're all racist, so can we please move past this?

Pacifist Patriot

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Fri Mar-21-08 08:20 AM
Original message

We're all racist, so can we please move past this?

Edited on Fri Mar-21-08 08:43 AM by Pacifist Patriot

I am dead serious.

There are legal definitions, sociological definitions, pseudo-scientific definitions of the term. It is related to, but not necessarily equivalent to discrimination, bigotry and prejudice and bias. It results in condescension, isolation, oppression and violence.

Racism is a personal belief in the superiority of one race over others, it is the belief that members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race. The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular racial group, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief. The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism as: "the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others.

But most importantly in my opinion, racism is less a matter of private bigotry than institutional and systemic constructs. And we who live within the institution have a damned hard time identifying it when we see it. It is an insidious invisible evil. A statement attributed to philosopher George Santayana. "We cannot know who first discovered water but we can be sure that it was not the fish."

We're inside the fish tank folks! Very few of us have the true ability to hold our breaths long enough to leap from the tank and reflect on its contents. Despite my progressive and hopefully non-discriminatory views I still have trouble shaking the notion that Asians are better in math and that African Americans are better in sports. Despite knowing that the Asians doing so well are working their asses off for their education like everyone else who succeeds and they don't represent all Asians. Despite knowing that professional sports is so dominated by African Americans because their economic circumstances and the cycle of education in their communities encourages atheletics as a viable means out of the dangers of that cycle.

Let me give you an example of institutional racism that may very well still be perpetuated today.

Many of us may have worked for, or currently work for, companies with a seniority policy when it comes to layoffs. You may wonder what that has to do with racism. I mean it�s only fair those who have worked for the company longest keep their jobs when times get tight, right? Besides making poor business sense�I won�t get into why you keep the most productive rather than the longest employed�in a given point in time it could indeed be racist. Consider a company that recently began hiring minorities, but then hits a rough spot in the business cycle. What happens? The minorities are the first to go, never to rise to positions of leadership and once again you have a white dominated business.

I look at my County Commissioners and City Council and have to wonder where black power operates in our community. Having listened to arguments for and against the renaming of on short, but central road to Martin Luther King Blvd., watching the proposal defeated and the subsequent loss of the alternative proposal to rename the City Auditorium after Dr. Martin Luther King, I cannot interpret the results as anything but institutional racism.

For those of us who are familiar with America before, during and after the Civil Rights movement we must guard against a terrible tendency to assume integration is racial justice when it consitutes assimilation. It is not!

To quote, Obama:

"For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. ....We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change."

In the larger context, saying someone's grandmother was a "typical white woman," strikes me as a rather petty string to wrap around the axle. My white grandmother was probably born a decade after Obama's and I'll say it with absolutely no reservations. She WAS a typical white woman...in her time and place. She was not significantly different from her neighbors and larger civic community.

I realize these have been a lot of words, but they shall be my last ones on the subject.

Obama is racist.
I am racist.
You are racist.

Now let's go bring our troops home, train some teachers, build some schools, repair some bridges......

Edited to add: I am in no way calling out individuals as bigots. Please take a moment to read the post in its entirety and understand I am calling out our society as a racist institution. As such, many of us may be engaging in racist attitudes, language and actions without even realizing it. When that is absolutely the last thing we would ever intend! Therefore, I do not find it particularly surprising or alarming when individuals utter remarks, either intentional or unintentional, that highlight the stereotypes such a system engenders. It's indicative of the problem, but not necessarily either a symptom or the disease.