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Racism or Why We Don't Understand You

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on June 26, 2003 - 12:57am.
on Race and Identity

I chose this post to comment on because it struck me typical of the kind of statement that Black folks react to in ways that confuse the hell out of white folks. We start with premises that a person who truly desires not to be racist could honorably hold.

People,

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 profilling. 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'd previously dropped a hint about the problem this paragraph exposes. I think everyone, including Grant, got the point of the hint although some may have gotten a little carried away making supplemental assumptions.

That "the average American of European descent thinks, that a great deal of African-Americans have yet to become 'white people in black skin.'" implies the average American of European descent thinks that's what should happen. That is the problem, not whether or not one specific blogger feels that way… and for the record, from this post alone (which was all I knew of him at the time) there's no way to tell if it's the case. A subsequent post made clear he disclaims it, and recognizes the attitude, taken to an extreme, is actually white supremacy.

A significant number of Black folks also see the attitude of "the average American of European descent" as existing on a continuum which has white supremacy on the far right hand side. I appreciate Grant having made the statement; such sentiments are much better received by the mainstream when made by a white guy than by a Black guy.

Another problem is the fact that, though our position has improved in absolute terms, relative to the mainstream it has not. Since CalPundit has already done the work showing that not only has income inequality increased, but income mobility has not increased…which means if you start poor you're pretty likely to stay poor…I'll simply point to his worthy efforts.

Does this mean that African-Americans have no agency? Are they victims of history, a colonized people within America's borders? Answering today, one could easily say no. Beyond the truism that racists exist in America, one must acknowledge that no de jure racism survives in America's legal and political system. Then how do the effects of slavery and Jim Crow persist if they legally disappeared from all American institutions, both public and private? One might point out that surreptitious racism keeps African-Americans from climbing the social and economic ladders. With so many federal and state laws (and departments) dedicated to eliminating all forms of racism this explanation would have little explanatory value. An alternate answer would be that slavery and Jim Crow were successful by socializing African-Americans (pardon the grand generalization) to act in irresponsible ways. We all know the list: single mothers, high drop out rates, dependency upon others (the government), etc.

I had also said I found this post representative of views that must be dealt with. Typical of a top-down approach, it says, in essence "We got rid of one problem, so we should see some results." So we see thing we can only see when we go "[b]eyond the truism that racists exist in America."

Trouble is, we're not beyond racism. Bottom-up, we see that de jure racism is a problem but not the problem. If every racist statute ever passed was still on the books but no one was racist there'd be no problems at all. If someone wanted to be orthogonal about it and wipe out the racists statutes everyone would be like "Hey, no problem. We forgot about them muthafukkas." On the other hand, if every racist statute every passed was eliminated and everyone was a racist, you'd have racist using every legal means at their disposal to discriminate against whichever race or ethnicity gets their particular goat.

A scenario a number of your Black friends would find familiar.

This isn't rocket science, and folks get real suspicious when the public debate constantly overlooks this very simple point.

As for the number of government agencies dedicated to stamping out racism (the number of laws doesn't change the point made above) I will just say that if a person espouses smaller government and tells me to depend on the government, I'm feeling he has as much regard for me as for the government.

Anyway, so far we have white society's attitude about Black folks on a continuum that includes white supremacy, and suspicion because a simple, obvious yet critical point is continually overlooked.

If this is true, then African-Americans should be hopeful because the barrier to improvement lays not in the actions of powerful others but in the choices of African-Americans themselves.

But, of course, it's not true, because after "[b]eyond the truism that racists exist in America" we never came back to it. We've consciously (it seems) excluded relevant data and proceeded to conclusions that we could never reach were the relevant data included.

This is not to say Black folks' actions have no impact on our position in American society. Were that the case, we'd be extinct or chattel. It is to say that white folks' actions also have impact and it really, really looks like white folks would rather not notice that fact.

Now we have white society's attitude about Black folks on a continuum that includes white supremacy, suspicion because a simple, obvious yet critical point is continually overlooked, and a denial of shared responsibility that is only made possible by a conscious decision to exclude relevant facts.

Now, let's flip the script.

Suppose we had a Black society's whose attitude about white folks was on a continuum that includes Black supremacy, that made you suspicious by continually overlooking a simple, obvious point that was critical in understanding you, and justified dening shared responsibility by consciously excluding relevant facts.

What would you think of that society?

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