It’s time to end it. “But how?” you plead. “Because we are blind. No, not colorblind as we had hoped, but blind to our own prejudice… How can we rise above … our tribal selves to reclaim our humanity and move forward together as one country?”
Well, there are models…
Let’s be honest: The notion of racial identity in the US today is a fabricated social construct based loosely on historical generalizations about national and/or cultural behaviors. Humans have always had a dangerous ability to separate into categories, to create stories on the flimsiest evidence in which they are the heroes, (the “people”), while demonizing the “other ( “the enemy”). These “differences” — undiscoverable by any analysis of DNA, evolution, or other actual science — are identified in the modern day of radically mobile (and mixing) cultures, almost exclusively, by a single identifier: skin color.
This is why, throughout my posts I hesitate to even use word race or racism: skin color is NOT a race. Even if it were, our modern history has proved that any presumption of limitation on human capacity based on the skin color, sex, culture or orientation, is demonstrably false.
Yet systemic racism which seeps into our culture, our habits, our laws is based on this lame identifier: white skin or brown. All those people who have pink skin, in this construct, are white. The negro “race,” the latino “race,” the muslim “race,” the native American “race” are, for all practical purposes, just the brown ones. But no matter how stupid or transparent, that “skin-deep” identification opens a Pandora’s box of prejudice and discrimination. In the U.S, impacts can be as intentionally humiliating as police stop-and-frisk actions, as indeterminate as social hesitancy in a “mixed race” setting, as disenfranchising as barriers to voting or owning a home, as demonic as being sentenced — in wildly disproportionate numbers — to years of incarceration or even death.
It’s time to end it.
“But how?” you plead. “Because we are blind. No, not colorblind as we had hoped, but blind to our own prejudice… How can we possibly rise above this distasteful remnant of our tribal selves to reclaim our humanity and move forward together as one country?”
Well, there are models: Germany’s steps to understand the atrocities committed during WWII were spurred by the trauma of the war loss, but they have made its people ever mindful of how easy it is to slip into the most heinous evil against an identified “other.” In South Africa, the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” brought both sides into confessional contact, breaking through each other’s myths, in the course of dismantling one of the most potent structures of racial discrimination in the world. Those successful reconciliations appear to follow at least a few common steps:
- Learning our REAL history. One skin color and/or advantaged class does not make our history. It is important for the majority culture to know and accept all its diverse influences, including its success and it failures. (See my previous post about the darkness at the heart of U.S. history.)
- Reconcile person-to-person. Experiencing the humanity of the “other” in a face-to-face setting of forgiveness and acceptance seems to be an important step in propelling readiness to commit to lasting cultural change.
- Commitment to change. Out of step 2 grows a commitment to replace the destructive supremacy myth with new history, new habits, even new language. A more compelling incentive, of course, is massive, historic failures leading to collapse of the system itself. The German disaster of WWII and the collapse of apartheid in SA left no alternative in those two countries. Perhaps a disastrous race-based election that has morphed into an existential threat to our own democracy will be the flashpoint in the U.S.
- Concrete actions. It’s not enough the want change. It is necessary to marshall all tools at our disposal and find a political center consensus to rebalance racial injustices that have crept into national systems of opportunity and justice. (See my post on Cory Booker/Rand Paul’s Criminal Justice Reform.) Tools include re-training and better training, addressing administrative assumptions that have a stealth racism, policy and regulatory directives, and, where required, new laws.
- Vigilance to recognize and head off warning signs of backsliding to primitive behaviors under a different banner, especially in uncertain times.
This is a “no-fault” victim/victimizer process; confessional, not accusatory. It is premised on the notion that it is more important to understand each individual citizen’s part in perpetuating a structure — than it is to try to affix blame.
Sadly, with the murder of Abraham Lincoln by southern secessionists, the US never went through that process. Reconstruction, overtly planned as racial/cultural reconciliation by Lincoln, became the rise of the “new” white South in the hands of Andrew Johnson. This was the continuation of a disappointing pattern in the U.S.: each advance in the US of human rights, has been followed by a troubling relapse into white supremacy and egregious discrimination. Up to the present day, where many of the gains established in law during the civil rights era have been wiped away, declared “solved” by the Supreme Court, and otherwise rolled back by the “Southern” alignment of our politics. This happened with the complicity of even nominally supportive political interests, including centrist Democrats like Bill Clinton.
Now those crimes and their excuses are firmly embedded in U.S. History and are frankly, continuing to punish and morally compromise current-day descendants of those earlier times.
Several recent analyses of voting and opinions in 2016, have identified race, and particularly white racial fear, as a key voter motivation expressed by Trump’s voter base. One can see the origins of such thinking: the inevitability of demographics; the grievance felt by resentful whites of having to recognize and redress discriminatory practices, and the age-old manipulation and magnification of these grievances by cynical well-heeled political operatives. In spite of the direct interest of Republicans in nurturing this evil for political gain, it’s not a stretch to suggest that do-little politics of racial-identity-is-an-automatic-vote-for-us as practiced by Democrats has played its own role in providing fertile ground for this resurgence of white supremacist sentiment and the dysfunction of our politics
Who is racist, and when? Oddly, while responding to the most racist Presidential campaign messaging since George Wallace, most Trump voters will vehemently deny that they are “racist.” Assuming they are honest, why? And are they different from Democrats who firmly believe that they, too, are not in any way racist?
I think the answer is that we ALL do a fabulous job of suppressing evidence of direct racial animus even — and mostly — from ourselves! This is why it frankly does little good to try to expose each individual’s moment of racism — the “blame game.” On the other hand, it is an important principle to recognize that not even the most liberal and empathetic is totally free of at least the hidden prejudice of your own times. For goodness sakes, even Abraham Lincoln held a belief, from time to time, that the best thing for US black people was to resettle them in Africa.
I argue, then, that attempts to identify and correct individual prejudice boils down to a counterproductive fools errand, frequently as likely to expose the unconscious racism of the accuser.
Hands-on racism, vs systemic racism. No matter what each individual tells themselves about their own hands-on racism, it is undeniable that systemic racism — the structural racism the emerged from slavery, the Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the “bad deal” of the New Deal for people of color, and today’s incarceration epidemic — continues to deny vast numbers of people of slightly differently colored skin the opportunities to succeed that are plentiful for “white” Americans. This kind of racism, because it is culturally derived, can seem quite invisible to those who are not targeted by it, or who nurture it. But over time systemic discrimination is the true killer of hope and opportunity. It’s a devious box built for dark-skinned people by the majority culture to keep them locked away from success! And, even if not directly responsible, we advantaged white folk may find ourselves mostly “going along to get along” with policies that may not affect ourselves much, but which have an egregious effect on people of color. Can we just stop doing that?
If we could only see it completely for the sickness it is. It’s our heart of darkness, and we are all responsible for both the condition and the cure. Can we, as the radical center restore balance and humanity to our political discourse, and come together as moral citizens to create substantive change and reconciliation to this festering outrage? Can we put to rout the actual racists, as well as the cynical manipulators, and their “fellow travelers?” Can we finally end this national shame that never dies, but merely seems to resurrect itself in a different form in each era? No more important question — or answer — exists for the future of our country.
Check our my collection of magazines on the Flipboard platform.
Metadada ‘Pocalypse Review is a catch-all magazine and media repository for articles I am writing or have written…
Radical Centrism Review is my search to recover a dynamic center to our politics
Culture: Wars and Pieces is relating books, movies, music and art to the current state of our social and political structure.
Let me know what you think!
Comments are closed.
MetaDada 'Pacolypse 
OK, Pat..You are now on the clock..You are President of the US (not king or emperor, mind you) and you have veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate..The SCOTUS isnt going to
be able to declare anything you pass unconstitutional..What are you going to do?
I dont want generalizations or platitudes or feel good “let’s all love one another..” proclamations.. I want to know what you are going to pass, right now to change things in daily life? You cannot change hearts and minds, you can only change laws.. What are you going to do right now?
While you are thinking about it let me point out some things you might have missed.
Dark skinned East Indians dont seem to have very much trouble ascending to the highest levels of performance here. They integrate into society and have no problems ascending academic and social ladders. And you dont see them driving around waving Indian flags and demanding everyone speak their languages and put up signs in stores in Urdu, or their dialect..
Asians of all skin tones have to be prevented from taking 100 % of the spots in most top tier colleges because they so outperform everyone else..Talk about reverse racism- virtually every medical school could fill 100% of their classes with Asians, if based solely upon raw performance and grades..Why is that?
It is a fact that tribalism and violence is a way of life in primative societies everywhere..The Arab slave traders got their slaves as the defeated black tribes in Africa..It wasnt about skin tone, it was about territory and intertribal violence.. Before the Spaniards conquered and enslaved the indigenous people of Meso America, they were quite good at doing the same things to each others..Violence and warfare was a way of life and the defeated became human sacrifices to the primative Gods.They didnt need whites teaching them how to do that, they were already very good at it
The most reviled people in this nation are not African Americans, but poor whites– Poor White Trash, to Liberals..You know, the Deplorables.. Tell me about what White Privilege they enjoy?
It is ok for comedians and politicians to say things about them that would get them banned if it were about Blacks..Why is it ok?
Ok, times up…What are you going to pass to insure within 10 years we have a truly race neutral nation with no further trace of any legal vestige of Jim Crow or any other discrimination? And, the Golden Chalice for all Liberals, not only Equal Opportunity, but Equal Outcome.. The world is waiting President Mega-MetaDada.. Open the curtains and step out onto the balcony and address your adoring populace–just dont take Blanket out there and hang him over the balcony railing because that trick has been tried before…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your central question is a good one. Your comment and my reply are too involved to just remain comments. I will try to answer thoroughly in my next post.
LikeLike
I think the next step question is incredibly important. I think there are policy changes that even the playing field without taking race into account.
1) End the federal drug war immediately. No DEA, no federal drug laws. Hopefully no state drug laws other than for prescriptions. Vacate drug convictions. Zero evidence of success. Incredible levels of violence. Insane incarceration rates. When you look at the study by Raj Chetty, et al, http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_summary.pdf, the only areas where black boys did well were where there were father figures in the neighborhood. Putting so many young men in prison has been a huge drag on our culture and economy.
2) End occupational licensing where there isn’t a demonstrable safety issue. The Nebraska Occupational Board Reform Act http://ij.org/press-release/nebraska-legislature-sends-landmark-licensing-reform-governor/ could be used as a model.
Many other areas need help, but these are significantly less complicated than things like education reform.
LikeLike
[…] what would I actually do? It’s spelled out pretty clearly in the post you were responding to. It’s based on honest truth-seeking, persuasion, direct human-to-human contact, […]
LikeLike
too complex… let’s boil this down
All laws are, or should be, completely race blind..
You cannot change hearts and minds, ,you can only make the law work and protect equally..The answer to individual hearts is blending family genetics so that we all tend to be tan..Nothing like a cute racially mixed baby to end Granpa’s racism.. You cant hate what is your own flesh and blood..If you still do, there is no hope for you as a human being
End the insane War on Drugs..I am going to say it again, END THE INSANE WAR ON DRUGS.. I still think pushers and professional people who make their living out of spreading misery and creating addicts need to be locked up.. The users need mercy and treatment, not confinement..we simply cannot afford as a nation another generation of black males incarcerated, as opposed to taking care of their kids
So, which brings me to the 900 pound gorilla in the room that you have tip toes around..Are you in favor of reparations? Yes or No? If you are, we have no common ground on this point because I am unalterably opposed to creating a windfall for people and parasitic politicians just because someone in the remote past was enslaved… If you go back far enough with all of us, you can probably find a slave.. My folks were slaves in Egypt..Doesnt entitle me to anything now..I lost family in Europe before WW2..I dont want a penny from Poland or Germany
You want something more than 20 acres and a mule now? How much percentage allows you to be enrolled in that program? It is a hugely bad idea on top of what other entitlements we have..
And as far as Poor White, yes it is our underclass for certain.. Look at the numbers of opiate addicts and deaths, smoking related deaths, under employed and reduced life expectancy.. Most of small town America, which is comprised of poor white citizens is circling the bowl.. No one is looking to help them
One final comment..The militarization of police and the oppression of black citizens by the police has to stop, and stop right now.. It is a national disgrace..Being a police officer is the hardest job I can think of.. My own, non scientific assessment is that 1/3 of them are the best, most heroic citizens we have; 1/3 are burned out and in survival mode just trying to finish their careers alive; 1/3 are psychopathic power hungry people who are looking for a way to act out their perverted fantasies on some poor person who gets in their path..Subject to adjustment of the percentages up or down..We need to do some serious profiling of the psychological condition of police recruits to wean out these before the become part of our community
LikeLike
Shal and Rick Camp,
I think these specific actions would be a good start in terms of our CURRENT iteration of racism. I would also turn all marijuana offenses less than 8 ounces out of prison, re-calibrate the “crack cocaine” racial penalty, and release those who’ve served time and a whole bunch of other actions in a sweeping criminal justice reform (see my next post on Rand Paul and Corey Booker). Here’s the problem: we are hard pressed to take any action as long as so many people can even “see” it as a problem.
The process I laid out in my post “Readers React” is an effort to go beyond the colorblindness required of the law, and try to directly deal with the underlying attitudes toward race that have become such a drag on our culture.
That’s why I suggested the Nelson Mandela process… there was no pretense during that process that blacks and whites somehow had the same experience, and the atmosphere of confession and forgiveness allowed people to find their humanity and their empathy. This process laid the groundwork for almost two generations of reasonable comity between what had been political arch-enemies. Regrettably, that coalescence is beginning to fray now, but there is still hope that South Africa can find its equilibrium again, given its strong start as a bi-racial nation.
To answer Shal’s question about reparations, I haven’t really been tiptoeing around. I really don’t have a formed opinion on it. But I will say that the idea is appealing morally and intellectually — mainly because real damage was and is being done. As well our culture doesn’t seem to value anything that isn’t measured in dollars. So putting an actual economic value on it seems like a good way to make people treat it as a serious issue, not a side issue. There is no reason to pretend that a century and a half a systemic racism has not deprived that whole group of people of significant economic freedom which actually persists in bad neighborhoods, bad schools, bad justice to this day.
But the concept has the problem of all great ideas that SOUND fair (like communism):
Who gets to decide which are the winners and which are the losers?
It’s in the meting out of so-called justice that corruption, power, and resentment explode in your face. So I’m inclined to believe that direct reparations would not work, and would only cause more resentment.
Still there may be measures that could be a targeted relief that could in some minor part make up for those lost centuries: a special home-ownership and home-improvement bank for redlined neighborhoods? Special investments in road, walkway, and utility infrastructure as well as parks and recreation facilities in those same neighborhoods. Federal funds to address loss of property tax funding for schools due to redlining and disinvestment in minority neighborhoods. To make any sense, these investments would need to bring these disinvested neighborhoods to come up to the level of quality experienced in neighborhoods where mortgages and home improvement loans were plentiful.
Another strategy might be funding or encouraging funding in existing non-profits that do concentrate on minority populations post-secondary education. Loan funds for people who have been imprisoned and for minority-owned businesses.
Like universal service, these latter are complicated programs especially symbolically, so they must be approached with great caution. But using the geographic theory, the programs might also deal with some poverty neighborhoods in Appalachia, the South, and throughout the country.
So in answer to Shal’s question about reparations, I would answer a qualified yes, in theory, but, in practice, actual direct payments would likely be counterproductive.
Still, I will say, it’s very easy to demand laws and programs that are “colorblind” as white folks — and get in a high dudgeon because of racial preferences (I can hear it now!). BECAUSE our past policies WERE about race. It was about being black, black, black — and then blamed for shitty neighborhoods, bad schools, unemployment. And because of this ugly history, we white folks are sitting on about 900% more wealth per family than black families. Just another Catch-22 for minority families, I guess.
LikeLike
[…] Because of our troubled history in this country with racist thinking in all its disguises (see my LAST POST about systemic racism), I have little confidence that people can even identify their own racism, or […]
LikeLike
I think the best way for white people to get radicalized is not so much through “ reconciliation”because really wtf is that and in what forum could it take place? For white people, there really is not much to “reconcile”… that would be an exercise you are suggesting Brown people should do, which they may not be ready to do. I think for white people it’s much much more about falling in love and actually becoming friends with people who are different culturally or racially. Even if you are not PC or see yourself as a radical person you are much more likely to defend the human rights of another being if you think of them “as your own” which you can only do through love/ friendship.
I think that instead of wishing blame was not part of it, white people should seek to understand brown and Black anger, and that they could be at some point a target for that anger. Ie in Oakland where it is rapidly gentrifying, I am frequently grouped into the zone as a “gentrifyer” and you know what, there is a reason for that. There is A LOT for black and brown people to be angry about, and a lot of people to assign blame too, especially because the govt is still perpetuating many many dehumanizing unfairnesses. I think expecting no blame/ anger to be a part of this process is silencing those who we seriously need to hear from. If my unarmed son was killed by the police for example,or if I was raising children on my own due to mass incarceration of black males… you can’t take anger and blame out of it. White people just need to get that they might be blamed / hated for things they were not directly responsible for… no way around it.
LikeLike