Racism I was thinking
Racism
I was thinking about the different approaches to racism that have developed in the Black and white segments of the population. I believe there's a top-down and objectivist bias in the mainstream view, and a bottom-up, subjectivist bias in the Black view. Each view makes particular actions, reactions, understandings and misunderstandings more or less likely My idea, as far as I've thought it out, is to see how those propensities affect our perceptions and reactions when dealing with the pretty much agreed on idea of race and racial identity. The social constructs. I want to consider the strengths of each view from its own perspective and the weaknesses of it from its inverse's perspective.
The problem is, being the bottom-up, subjective type means my view of the inverse—the mainstream view— is of necessity a little hazy. That's okay, because I'm convinced my view of this… in fact, most Black people's view of this… is clearer than most white people's view of Black people's perspective. This is because Black people must deal with white people. White people are part of the environment for almost every Black person in the country, so we got folk knowledge of white folks. White folks, too, have folk knowledge of us, but in our case it's always learned from people with first hand experience. There are vast swaths of the USofA where Black folks are rarer than toucans in Ontario, and people are still prejudiced against them.
Racism is a hard conversation, and when I anticipate a hard conversation I try to start with an agreement rather than a disagreement. We know the disagreement is out there, lurking… Reality is what it is, we all see it. I just prefer grabbing knives by the handle rather than the blade. So in my net travels I've been looking for good material and examples to work with. I'm pretty comfortable talking about my views and I'll discuss what one mind developed while basically on the pointy end of the knife has seen, found reasonable and come to understand. What I need is help translating from one frame of reference to the next.
I guess I got lucky. Following a Google query in my referral list, I found this table at the University of Oregon's Teaching Effectiveness Program web site— I figure if it's fair use for them, it's fair use for me. I'll be using this as a touchstone when if I wander further into the mainstream perspective than I have experience with (as a sidenote, my experience is pretty extensive. No biography, but I've done a lot of things). I'm also interested in how accurate folks feel it is. I've never specifically asked for comments before, but I'm doing it now. If anyone feels this is a particularly good or bad summation of mainstream values and beliefs in the USofA, please let me know.
The Components of White Culture: Values and Beliefs
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| Katz, J. (1985). The sociopolitical nature of counseling. The Counseling Psychologist, 13, 615-624. Taken from Sue, D., & Sue, S. (1990). Counseling the culturally different: Theory and practice. New York: John Wiley |
I would like to add under "Status and Power" somewhere that the ultimate goal since feudal times seems to be "do nothing and have everything." People who see the game know the idea is to get wealth—assets that produce enough income to support you without you having to do anything. That's how the score is kept… not in currency.
I should also mention I'm a fan of Abraham Maslow. His hierarchy of needs is right at the conceptual level one needs to be at to discuss human behavior. If anyone feels this is an unreasonable model of human motivation, I'd be interested in hearing why.
The final heads-up on how I think about these things might be best embodied in this news release: DNA Demands Chimps Be Grouped in the Human Genus. It's vital to keep in mind that we, physically, are animals. Anthropoids, to be more specific. It's a fact that either drives or shapes much of human behavior.
I also found an essay that strikes me as pretty representative. It's on a blog named Properwinston. If you'll scroll down to June 18th, you'll see a post that begins as follows:
That dirty little concept called "race" just won't leave the American public alone. On the same day, one can turn on the television to see images of African-Americans rioting in Michigan while opening up the newspaper to read about President Bush's federal ban on racial profi[l]ing. Both stories reveal, regardless of what the average American of European descent thinks, that a great deal of African-Americans have yet to become "white people in black skin." All decent Americans understand that African-Americans lag behind economically and socially because of their history: the combination of slavery and Jim Crow. Improvement has occured, but in relative terms the gap between African-Americans and the rest of society remains extraordinarily large. Yet, most Americans who aren't of African descent see the condition of African-Americans as either improving or equal to the rest of Americans. This means that most Americans of European descent puzzle at the outbreak of a race-riot.
I'll discuss this post in my next essay (whenever I write it…). I wanted anyone who's interested in what I'm writing to be familiar with it. For now, though, I'm just going to drop a hint: if you can't see a major problem with the line 'a great deal of African-Americans have yet to become "white people in black skin.",' it's going to be a long haul.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 6/20/2003 12:02:19 AM |
