Why is it so hard to talk about race and why are these conversations so politically charged?
Historical roots notwithstanding, the Shirley Sherrod affair yet again points out that we're addressing the wrong problem. President Obama offered that rationale in his now famous Philadelphia speech when he suggested that some of us were stuck in an old racial paradigm that no longer fits the national reality. He went further to insist the new paradigm was quickly moving to a post racial space where whites were less prejudice and could go beyond race to real problems like health care reform and economic recovery.
Coining this space as post racial is at best a reflection of hope that our nation has traveled past its intractable and tortured legacy. After a week of egg-on-the-face of venerable institutions ranging from the White House to civil rights organizations to cable news networks, who could deny that we remain locked in a racial space.
What President Obama got right is acknowledging a new racial reality. But he is not alone in his failure to come to terms with understanding the evolving, new order. It is not framed by a false either/or proposition that tracks between the Jim Crow edicts of the 1950's or color blind enlightenment of the 21st Century. Even if the racial order of earlier decades is largely behind us, race as an issue remains salient and inescapable on the American landscape.
The old order is based on the notion of explicit racial hostility of individuals against other individuals, reflected in explicit institutional policies like segregation of schools and prohibition of interracial marriage. Because race was explicit and we could see its workings everywhere, we assume that if race were not deliberately injected into our policies the issue would be solved.
But what if racial arrangement could be driven by something other than explicit and conscious racial policies? We can tackle this by understanding the three parts to the new racial order.
One is that much of the work of sorting by race is done by policies and interactions of institutions. Take the resegregations of schools by race throughout the United States. This results from drawing school boundary lines and housing policies. The outcome is that children of color continue to be isolated, not just from white children but also from well-resourced, high performing schools. While this segregation happens by "race-neutral" policies, the outcomes, seemingly free of explicit racial hostility, are predictable, structural racialization.
The second aspect of the new racial order requires a different understanding of how the mind works. Many of our feelings and thoughts are affected by what happens at a subconscious level. This is not just true about race, but every human encounter. The vast majority of our cognitive and emotional processes are less than conscious. There is clear evidence that most of us have strong beliefs supporting both racial fairness and racial anxiety. It is not obvious which will be most dominant in a given situation. Negative stereotypes that permeate our culture make positive associations with racial minorities difficult, even when our conscious values are egalitarian. If we realize that we are experiencing racial anxiety, we can check ourselves and tap into our higher values.
There are ways to measure negative anxiety and support our more conscious values of racial fairness. In one test of implicit bias, respondents are more likely to see a smile on the face of a white person than a black person. This negative association can be shifted by positive images, stories and exemplars of black people.
The third realm of race awareness is through the conflict with our conscious value which can make it even more difficult to confront implicit feelings. One of the least effective ways to resolve this racial conflict is by denying to see it. Race conflict doesn't go away, even if it is ignored.
The White House and many liberal pundits have been trapped by the false either/or paradigm that refuses to accept the new racial order. The net result is pandering and/or caving to the right-wings' insistence that to notice race is itself racist. The default position for those embracing a "post racialism" is to retreat to simple platitudes that deny they see it.
Our unconscious bias and institutional policies cannot go it alone. We need to be fortified with a new racial language. The choice is to decode structural racialization and implicit bias or be consigned to a confused post racial world with no translation or escape.
Crossposted from Race-Talk.
And she no longer sends me any e-mail, because I told her to take me off her contact list. So I guess that is as far as my racial dialogue is going to go.
Maybe I'm a jerk, but I don't have a problem with that. If people are free to move where they want, then I'm not at all concerned about where the chips fall.
Racism has a siamese-twin called White Supremacy! The notion of "whiteness" and its absolute preeminence above all "others" must be dealt with.
The socio-political policies and agendas of The United States and Europe can be traced to the goal of "white" genetic determination/domination and preservation above all "others," even the environment.
And how exactly would that be done?
Deconstruction of the ideology and theology of "whiteness" as the evolutionary ascendancy of the "human race."
Recognition that through the systems and means by which "whiteness" controls 'others' through their instruments of money, energy, knowledge, technology, etc., and through those means "whiteness" dominates the ;other' as its self-professed manifest destiny.
This is a destructive world construct and ideology that is destroying people, places and things (environment).
REJECTION of religious ideologies promoted by "whitness" that passifies the 'other' and that exist as mind control tools to weaken the logical and natural response to the psychological assault of "whiteness" on the minds of the 'other' to their destruction,
REJECTION AND SEPARATION FROM "WHITENESS," which by definition and ACTION is ANTI-OTHER.
If the goas of the US and Europe are the genetic domination of whites over others, why are birth rates so low in these places (ESPECIALLY among the whites)?
The notions of race and racism are european constructs, and is a system perfected by europeans as the ideological foundation for world conquest.
Racism practiced as european superiority is the socio-political/economic construct used by europeans to justify and rationalize their destruction and usurpation of people, places and things for at-least the last 500 years.
It is the JUSTIFICATION for EVERY ACT of aggression and destruction against ANY PEOPLES ANYWHERE europeans found themselves in WANT or PERCEIVED NEED that they had.
Science, theology and philosophy are rhetorical tools used by eurpeans to assert, defend and justify their acts against those not defined as "white" on this planet, historically and right-up through the present.
No, "white supremacists" are not the only racists, only the most notorious.
Blame genetics and social evolution for low birth-rates among "whites." Due note that in several countries in europe governments promote childbirth among the population through financial subsidy while their foreign policies and global institutions war against population growth in areas of the planet among people not defined as "white."
Our EEO stuff isn't perfect, but it's not really awful, either. People seem to detach better than our politicians on this issue.
They imagine we all sit around thinking about race.
Wierd.
Beside race relations are not the issue. Despite the progress we have made the racial divide in terms of overall outcomes have not changed. Racism is deeply embedded in the American psyche. If you were to ask the average American to put a face on poverty or welfare or crime. The image would be that of a person of color.
Recently, Anderson Cooper recreated the Clark Doll Study. The majority of the children, of all colors and races identified the smarter, more attractive and person with better moral character as the whiter and lghter person. The orginal study was done in the early 50's and it was crucial to the argument that separate schools were not equal.
How is it that nearly 60 years later children continue to hold the same views as their counterparts in the 1950's?
The disparities in wealth, housing, imprisonment, educational and health outcomes continue to widen, with blacks and others of color fall furthe behind. Either the system is the problem or the people. If you think it is the latter then you are an out and out racist. If it is the former, and you are unwilling to do anything to change it then you are a complicit racist.
It is time for a national definition of racism and a national conversation. This, however, is merely the start, and it will not be painless or pretty.
Every time a White person proclaims 'we want our country back' (s)he is stating implicitly that the default American is viewed as European American since their origins are seldom, if ever, used when referring to them.
I'd say that many a European American has 'race' as a constant backdrop in their thoughts as the demographic inevitability of the 'browning' of America has clearly driven some of them insane; protests against our President by Tea party affiliates, and the constant subliminal scare mongering by many a media outlet, who have taken to using euphemisms such as 'inner city' and 'urban' to paraphrase the source of what they believe to be their impending doom...
Then again, their are those in complete denial who desist from openly indicating their bigotry, but reveal themselves in the ignorance of their prose...
We're all in the same boat on this one.
It's frankly offensive. No, our system isn't perfect. Yes, there are yahoos in all levels of our system who are incredibly blind to the concept of fair. Of course, we're all at least, minorly prejudiced. Your culture is different from mine. I get it that you don't get me. You get it that I don't get you.
oh please, people
Doesn't this remind us all a bit of "Desperate Housewives" time?
Seriously. I don't know a single soul in my life today is truly like the evil KKK stereotype in movies. I don't know a single soul who is some rapper-drug dealer either.
I'm sure they both actually exist. Somewhere. But not in my world, thank God.
And not in your world, either, I assume.
There's always going to be shadow worlds. That doesn't mean the rest of us have to jump.
No idea. Never saw it and hope to never see it. You got time to watch that cr*p?
That was the gauntlet. No white woman could jump those hoops, and Hillary certainly couldn't.
But I questioned the real love of this country for anyone willing to play that game. I think the conservative dismissal that he loves our country is correct. He really proved it in that primary.
He will never be the one to help race relations forward. He used it politically, for his own personal gain.
And for that reason, he'll never earn my personal respect.
"Hillary Rodham Clinton played the race card yesterday as she dismissed Barack Obama as a candidate who will have a hard time winning support from 'white Americans.'
"It was the most starkly racial comment Clinton has made in the campaign, and drew quick condemnation from some Democrats....
"The Obama campaign declined comment, referring to spokesman Bill Burton's statement to USA Today.
"Burton...said the Illinois senator will appeal 'to Americans from every background and all walks of life.'"
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/item_8Tqkc88EMgEZPRZy18uuxO;jsessionid=E897BF779FF4223E0603FCA183279353
I would love to see this fellow grab his tin foil hat and go on Glen Beck - I think it would be too funny to see them trying to out do each other with their pseudo intellectual phrases.
Those who have not been on the recieving end are very cavilier and dismissive. That is the essence of how racism works in our society. It has always been that way.
We just can't achieve perfection.
And be careful about the idea that battle is always the answer.
Actually, I'm convinced that role modeling is the true answer, and I'm pretty sure that battling was suppose to arrive at the point faster, but that's failed.
Back to commonsense. Role model.
Where are Blacks and Whites having "legitimate" policy differences?
What's not OK is to call conservative black people "uncle toms."
That's destructive.
And it's wrong.
It seems the right wing would like us to believe that the only thing preventing our unconscious biases from magically disappearing is our continued insistence on discussing race.
Claiming to be colorblind in the United States is akin to being pathological in one's ability to deny the obvious. Claiming to be colorblind only increases hostility and division.
You don't get that - do you?