Every so often something comes up that brings race and racism to the fore front of many people’s minds. For many these topics are often at the forefront, for some of us white folk it sits absent in the back of our mind until something comes up.
For a lot of people I know, the issue recently came up, prompted by two different events. First, the issue of race was starkly brought up around the events of Hurricane Katrina. If folks didn’t pick up on it from the get-go, they most certainly did after Kanye West made his bold confession on national television. One of the major issues was the bias (though a LOT of people disagree on this) news stories. Also, for those with a little awareness, the clear overwhelming majority of people that where stuck in New Orleans and the slow response of aid should have been disturbing both from an economic and racial perspective.
Second, the movie Crash recently came out on DVD and was viewed by a number of my friends. It is a very in-your-face approach to a lot of race issues and problems. The movie lacks any clear attempt at a solution and that has both a positive and a negative effect. I think on a positive note, they recognized that there is not a simple solution and to attempt to convey one might come across as naive or ignorant. At the same time, the lack of any solution presented leaves some people feeling that there isn’t any solutions, but also that that is then okay and acceptable. I worry that too many people left that movie feeling that that is just the way life is, and that we are all good people in the end, so we shouldn’t make a big deal out of it.
I’m a well-to-do white male, so I’m the last person to be spouting my thoughts and opinions on race, but I will take every opportunity to speak up and add a voice to the cry for justice. There is FAR too much racism in the world today. We must all rise up to the challenge and respond. Do not sit silently as you hear a racist joke, speak up, at the expense of your own reputation, it must be stopped.
In light of all this, I was very interested in providing a way for people to share their personal feelings about race, and about how others have treated them in regard to race. I’ve always found the statement promoted for communication and conflict resolution: “I feel…When you…” I’ve put together a small website for people to have the opportunity to share those feelings and put them out in the open for others to read and learn from. Please stop by and add your feelings.
Did you really mean to imply that the only way we could watch Katrina and not see overwhelming racism was if we were ignorant (without “a little awareness”)? I watched and studied the situation very closely and although it was not handled very well, I don’t think race was a factor. Especially not at the higher levels. FEMA’s incompetence does not make them racists.
Did you know that, as of 2000 (the most recent census I could find right away), the New Orleans population was 67% black and only 28% white? Of course the vast majority of the people stuck were black!! The vast majority of the city is black!
As far as Crash, another positive note that I found was that it caused me to really think about the issue. The end of the movie really hit me hard, and made me think about how easy it would be for me act the same way the kid did. (I’m being intentionally vague so I don’t ruin it for anyone). Personally, I left the movie thinking that’s the way life is and it sucks! I need to make sure I don’t act that way ever!
I think we both know that we differ in opinion on this subject quite a bit, but hopefully you also know that I honestly do respect your opinions and I appreciate where you’re coming from, even if I don’t always agree. Thanks for making me think!
Now, maybe I miscommunicated, or maybe I allowed for assumptions, but that isn’t quite what I meant. I didn’t mean to say that the response, or individuals, FEMA, or other specifics where “racist.” I DID mean to say that the situation reveals RACISM. Was there ingrained racism that caused the slow response? maybe. Was there racism in the media bais? maybe. Was there racist comments made after the events? Most definitly (I heard many with my own ears). Were the events from Katrina revealing of racism in the past? I would venture to say so. I’m not saying the number of black people stuck in New Orleans during the Hurricane is racism, I’m suggesting that it maybe revealed some of our racism from years past.
It’s helpful to keep in mind the two inter-related levels of racism.
First, there’s the kind we all picture when we hear “racism”: it’s the curt-faced snack-shop owner cooly telling two African American teenagers to get the hell out of his shop. It’s grandpa using the N-word to refer to the new next-door neighbors. It’s mom going biserk, refusing to eat, crying for days in her room when she finds out her son’s new girlfriend dosen’t share the family ethnicity. This is the individual level of racisim: it’s the kind you can see.
Then, there’s the the second kind. We don’t think of it–and we often don’t believe in it–because we don’t see it. It’s buried in the very norms and structures that pattern “the way things are done” and “the way things are.”
Take the city of Chicago for example. The University of Chicago offers some fairly detailed socio-economic information in a series of maps found here . If you were to take the neighborhood-type map (which designates neighborhoods by family type, urban-index, income level, etc.) and overlay it with the race map (which designates areas by majority race), you would find that there is pretty nearly an exact correlation between race and neighborhood condition. Blacks and hispanic-majority neighborhoods are in much worse conditions than “white”-majority neighborhoods.
This is “the way things are” in Chicago. It’s the power-pattern that’s so ingraned into the actual earth of the city that it has become the city itself. The city is a living embodiment of racial division and inequality. As you can imagine, this deep-structured racism is built right into mental grids of the people who make up the city; and they can barely even see it. They just live in it, around it–anything but against it, because that’s not “the way things work” around there.
We must be careful when simply pointing out that the “New Orleans population was 67% black” before the hurricane. Before the hurricane, the city was also among the poorest of US cities.
Here’s the clue: if we wash ourselves of individual racisim, we will be able to see that people with black skin aren’t poor by definition. Instead, we will recognise that our cities, as group entities which produce and allot surplus resources, are sick with cycles of patterned oppression. This oppression is not something that we do and feel as individuals; it’s an oppression that orders and is fuled by our very assumptions about how the world works.
Brian,
Might I suggest that there need not have been people who are racist for systematic racism to be a factor. Was there a systemic imbalance of power/resources that advantaged or disadvantaged a certain race that exacerbated the problems that exist.
I’ll give you an example of impersonal racism. I’m currently in the process of raising support for my ministry with InterVarsity. One of the problems that plague ministries where staff have to raise their own support is the fact that racial minorities generally have greater difficulty raising a certain amount than the racial majority. This is because there have been, and still are, factors that result in racial minorities having a lower income in general, and thus less money to give. In such a situation, you cannot point at any one person or group and say that they are racist, instead it’s a systemic problem in the society in which we live.
The problem/question then becomes how do we level the inequities caused by systemic racism, and how do we get people to join in the fight against systemic racism when neither they nor their communities participate in personal racism.
Ariah and Richard,
Thank you – that makes a lot more sense and I appreciate the clarification. I agree with everything you said in the above two responses, although I still strongly disagree with the view that Hurricane Katrina revealed our government’s and President Bush’s racism (as expressed by Kanye West, among others).
Systematic racism is another issue, and a serious one – do you have any ideas on how to begin fighting it?
Oops – Sorry Dave. I didn’t mean to ignore your comment, I just completely didn’t see it the first time I read the comments. Anyways, you are right as well.
It seems to me, that our (and by “our” I mean “our country’s / our government’s”) attempts so far to fix this issue have been counterproductive. Welfare is a nice idea in theory, but in actuality it encourages poor people (of all races)to do nothing. Why work when the government will give handouts? Affirmative action is even worse – not only does it potentially give jobs to less qualified people, but it forces companies, schools, etc. to consider skin color. Isn’t that the exact opposite of what we want to do? Don’t we want to get to the point where we don’t even consciously realize that people have different colored skin?
My point of view is that we get to the point that we are aware and appreciative of the differences between us because of the color of our skin and our cultures, but that neither the difference in skintone nor differences in culture would affect our access to power or resources.
Part of the need for Affirmative Action*, and other programs that do take race into account is that a lot of the problems that systemic racism brings about are self-perpetuating. The way I’ve read it described in the book “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria and other conversations about race” is that systemic racism is like a moving walkway in an airport. Even if you are not actively walking forward on the walkway, standing passively will still move you in the same direction. If you don’t want to go where the walkway is leading, you have to actively walk backwards.
As far as how to actively walk backwards, I don’t have many clear cut answers, but I can point you towards the aforementioned book with the long and unwieldy title as well as the much more succinctly titled “Being White” both of which are excellent books, the last one looking at the issue from a perspective of Christian Faith.
*Affirmative Action done right should mean that an underqualified person is never put into position. The basic outlines of how it should work (as described in the book with the long title)is that you take a pool of people who are qualified for the position without regards to race, and then when choosing the person to get the job you choose someone from this group who fits with the company’s goals of multi-ethnicity/multi-culturalism
Brian,
Thanks for your thoughtful responses.
The final question you pose here puts us in a very real tension. One one hand, all of us want to shout “Yes!”; we want to live in a world where color plays no part in determining power. Yet, at the same time, we realize that just shouting “yes” does little to bring us toward this kind of world. If we are to live toward an “uncolored” world, the structure will have to change. The way things work will have to change. “Whites” (I put this in quotes, because, if you think about it, this term isn’t an ethnic description, it simply symbolizes who’s in control) will have to give up power.
I think you are a bit harsh and generalizing in your comments on welfare and affirmative action. Yes, you will find individual instances where the story you have told fits the bill. But these are real and meaningful attempts to provide structures that counteract the larger oppressive structures of a city and/or society. They need to be tweeked, as any learning system needs to be tweeked, but I think they are good policy-level beginnings.
Structures only change over time, and they only change as the values and intentions of significant blocks of the population start to change. Am I wrong in seeing that we are still pretty much infatuated with our own selves, and perhaps our closest peeps (who usually look like us)?
Structures can change when people who have power use that power in order to empower those who are structurally oppressed. There’s a place here in Boston called Emmanual Gospel Center that does this quite effectively. I’m also a big fan of models like assets based community development. Ariah’s written some fine articles on ways the individual can begin to sacrifice for the sake of just systems. There’s lots of ways to say to “the way things work” “this will not be the way you will always work!” You just have to want it bad enough.
I’m referring to “Don’t we want to get to the point where we don’t even consciously realize that people have different colored skin?” – I didn’t see your last post.
I have to go, but a quick comment on that book’s view of Aff. action: my whole point with the Chicago map thing was this: real differences between races DO exist becasue of structural systems of oppression that have operated for generations. Kids with darker skin arn’t getting the same educational opportunities, the same same familial stability, the same economic and vocational opportunities as Kids with lighter skin. They are literally geographicall seperated from eachother because of the very fabric (the moving sidewalk, if you will) of the city. Colors must be recognized as powerfully significant as long as the system divides by color.
Racism is the idea that one race is superior to another. There’s also “clasism” or “elitism” and “culturism”. Skin color is related to the amount of pigmentation in your skin. Heredity, determines the amount, much like the genes that create eye color, hair color, and everything else about a human being. It’s amazing to me, that so many people seem to lack the intelligence to realize that there is one race, the human race.
Don’t have any answers to how to end raisism, except perhaps through education of the young children.