The Current State of Race Relations in America
Editor’s note: it is our policy to place appropriate and relevant photos with every article. For this post, the task proved to be too difficult. The choices available were simplistic and potentially offensive. For that reason I am running Brian’s article without photos. -ian
by Guest Contributor Brian Robinson
When I told a good friend of mine that I was going to write a little about the state of American race relations in 2009 she replied, “Can’t you write about something light?” Now, it wasn’t a slam on me, race or racism and whether or not it exists in our country. It’s just something that most Americans just don’t want to talk about very much.
And, when I say ‘most Americans’ I am not just talking about the majority Caucasian population, either. I mean ALL of us. While you may hear more mention of the topic in minority populations (of which I am a member) it’s still usually mentioned as a short comment or shared conclusion rather than a full, deep, intellectual conversation about it, why it exists and/or one’s participation in it.
First of all, for the sake of our discussion, let me define what I consider to be racism. I see it as a belief or value system where one race is considered INHERENTLY superior to all others (or even just specific races, if not all.) This takes into account that, in my opinion, any one of any race can be a racist. (I don’t subscribe to Spike Lee’s apparent theory that African-Americans cannot be racist since black people don’t control any major institutions of society or industry in America. That may hold true when discussing ‘Institutional Racism’, but that does not cover racism on an individual level.)
Last year during the Presidential election there was an elliptical national conversation going on about what an Obama win would mean for race relations and racial attitudes in our country. While nobody in the national media was really willing to confront the belief that it would solve our national stigma of historical and ongoing race issues, there was a sort of quizzical, unformed question that seemed to be in the wind: Would a black US President mean that racism in America would cease to exist? I think there was a good reason that pointed question was never really addressed en masse: it’s hopelessly naive to think that one man getting one job could do something like that. I don’t think anyone ever really expected such a fundamental change in the hearts of humans overnight. Also, isn’t it unrealistic and even more naive to constrain the conversation about racism to just blacks and whites? Unfortunately with our national tendency to want to reduce all issues to right vs wrong, left vs right and, yes, black vs white, we end up creating supremely simplified concepts that really don’t even address the real world issues and situations we face. There is a lot of gray in reality that we just don’t like to deal with, it seems.
Whenever the word ‘racism’ comes up in conversation in the US, I would bet a year’s income that the vast majority of people would think it’s in regard to ‘white vs black’. But, racism has an almost infinite capacity in the minds of human beings; unfortunately we seem to be able to find a reason to hate everyone for something! As Americans, we tend to not consider that racism affects and attacks the spirits of many different people and allows for someone to hate someone of just about any and every race in some way! I mentioned Spike Lee earlier and I want to bring up his film ‘Do the Right Thing’ for just a moment. If you have never seen the film, it’s the story of the hottest day in the hottest of New York City summers that boils over into a race riot in Bed-Stuy. Though I think Spike is dead wrong about blacks not having the capacity for racism in America, I think his film proves MY point (and leads me to believe that his opinion actually matches mine) that individuals of any color can be racist. When the film was in theatrical release I had a conversation with an African-American cousin of mine. He mentioned that he’d seen the film and I asked him what he thought of it. He replied that “it showed how fucked up white people are!” I was flummoxed! I felt that he had missed the entire point of the movie in that it showed very clearly that in this melting pot experiment of America, racism flourishes in the hearts of some people of every race. There was ugliness from Koreans, African-Americans, Africans, Italians and others…nobody’s hands were clean in that movie. And if you think that since 9/11/2001 that list has gotten any shorter, you haven’t been paying attention.
Ironically, since Obama’s election, it seems that we have become even more racially fractured as a nation. There seems to be more tension and division than before. But, I refuse to blame Obama himself for that inflammation. I can’t objectively point to any political or governmental action he has taken that could be tagged as the reason for the ugly state of race relations in the US right now. As a matter of fact, I think he’s gone out of his way to avoid injecting the subject of race into any of the national conversation, policy or otherwise. (That’s with the possible exception of the ‘Beer Summit’ fiasco of the summer, though I see that more of a PR blunder that had to do with his friendship with the professor than Obama taking the opportunity to inject race into a situation.) But, it seems clear to me that the mention of ‘magic negro(es)’, monkeys, ‘Half-rican American’, ‘Obama’s baby mama’ and ‘porch jockey’ were all injected into the national conversation by those other than Obama or his surrogates. And, you will undoubtedly find those who will defend those terms on the basis of humor or political satire and nothing do to with race. I find those defenses hollow and immature at best. One can certainly be identified as a racist without hearing a racial epithet as ugly as ‘nigger’ pass through their lips. It is action that determines that ugliness in one’s heart, not the utterance of just one word.
Where does the blame lie for this division? I don’t know and couldn’t dare to know the hearts of men and women who trade in racist beliefs. Has it been ever thus? Did the racial divisions the we suffer from today start with Babel, or even before that? Is it part of human nature to want to side/identify those we look like to band together against those who don’t? And to what end? I can be fairly certain that when I wake up tomorrow morning, I will still have to deal with, relate to and for various reasons partner with people of different racial backgrounds. The desire that my world would be better without that opportunity has not been made apparent to me. I don’t want to live in a world where its better to hate first and ask questions later.
Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Interesting post. For me, the key lies in the definition of racism. I grew up in suburban Colorado, and as a kid I was taught that racism was this seemingly strange belief that one race was inherently superior to others. It sounded so ridiculous, and so foreign to me – that were it not for the civil rights tapes we were shown in 8th grade – I would never have believed such a strange phenomenon had existed. But it seemed like something that was surely dying away, something quite certainly of the past and not fit to be in the present.
A few years ago, I moved to Washington, D.C., the first place I ever lived where a significant portion of the population was black. I realized how sheltered I had been from the racial dynamics in my own country as we spent more time there. One one occasion walking home from the grocery store I was told that I was not welcome in the neighborhood as a white person. As time passed and we made friends in the city, we also became aware of the horrible situations that faced our black friends on a consistent basis, like employees at department stores following them as soon as they entered the store, getting pulled over for no good reason, and unexplained police harassment (unless you consider race).
Suddenly the way I looked at the world was different. Every daily interaction, no matter how minor, was suddenly loaded with the element of race. I became hyper-aware of all of my actions, as simple and genuinely innocent gestures or words I feared would be interpreted through the race lens (and sometimes were).
After my time there, my conclusion was this: racism is not merely a cerebral concoction that asserts one color (let’s not talk about shade) as superior than the other, at least not initially. Rather, in my experience, it emerges as a primordial sentiment and reaction, the result of profoundly hurtful experiences that one has with one ‘group’ of people. We all have formative experiences, especially while we are young, that tell us how to deal with other people. And as I understand neuroscience (I’m not in the field at all, but only read about it), we are hardwired to size up other people to determine who we are to them, and who they are to us. When we have consistently painful experiences (I can think of few more painful encounters with strangers than when I have been treated poorly for something I could not change, such as the country I was born in or the color of my skin) with enough people that we can identify as different from us, whether it be yellow T-shirts, red hair or skin color, I believe there is an instinctual reaction to put up a guard and view these people as ‘the other’. As a consequence of this, I believe this sometimes rises to the conscious level of believing ‘those people aren’t as good as we are’ (bottom-up), but I do believe it comes from a place of hurt, most of the time, rather than an intellectual conclusion leading to racist behavior (top-down).
Of course this isn’t universal, but I wish someone would have explained this definition/kind of racism to me while I was young.
Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 2:01 am
Fantastic piece Brian! I doubt humans will ever not notice skin color or cultural differences, but I do think that more & more people are finding differences more acceptable and appealing as they become familiar with people of other races & backgrounds. With each generation we become more open to others, which makes me hopeful. Yes, we still have issues, but we are making progress and that’s a good thing.
Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 7:08 am
ADavis – thanks so much for a thoughtful and informative response. I agree that one’s personal, subjective experiences certainly play a role in this subject. I like that you didn’t take the rude and ridiculous comment about being “not welcome in the neighborhood as a white person” as a signal to run and separate yourself from the new place you moved to. One ignorant person or rotten experience should not dictate where you live and whom you choose to associate with. I agree, there is a ‘primordial’ tendency for us to want to size up an entire group of people, but what differentiates us from much of the rest of the animal kingdom we are a part of is our ability to reason. We can, and have in very obvious and tremendous ways, rise above our tribal instincts and find ways to connect between races.
Kris – I agree that we will never NOT notice differences, and that’s not a bad thing. Its what we do once we do notice differences that counts. I once had a Psychology professor who pointed out the biological need for our brains to stereotype — we have to classify things as we go about daily life or our brain would always be starting from scratch to identify what we constantly see — but that we don’t take those stereotypes and apply unfounded, inappropriate and subjective truths along with potentially faulty conclusions. I think that’s a natural struggle we all have to deal with on some level.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 11:17 am
Good article and comments here. Looking forward to reading more from you Bri on this subject.