Is this for real? Not a April Fools day joke? DF? Is this you? This chick actually used "snap" in a written sentence. I think I might have seen everything now.

Carmen, thats a pretty underwhelming effort thanks for stopping by.

Obama's speech has me asking myself what role black people should play in ending racism. Should they continue to embrace the role of traditional black politicians who use guilt as a weapon? Should they call on black people to stop viewing themselves as victims and take responsibility for the problems as well as the successes within the black community?

Obama seemed to me to be unable to move toward a new kind of politics when it comes to race relations in America. It did not help that he remained a loyal fan of Jeremiah Wright for so long, and denounced his own grandmother's racism, and later referred to her as "a typical white person". It did not help that his speech was in response to a political firestorm, even though he eventually said that he intended to deliver the speech all along. It did not help that his campaign has been using the race card since North Carolina. It did not help that his speech was mostly a history lesson rehashing white America's responsibility in creating the racial divide in today's America. It does not help that so many Obama supporters have stated or implied that a failure to vote for Obama amounts to racism.

I really would like to see a new dialog on race in this country. But so far it appears to me that Obama is going in the wrong direction in that regard.

Blacks receive less than standard medical treatment of a variety of life-thretning illnesses. This occurs even when income and insurance plans are equal. The solution oes not center around issues just in the African-American community.

Black pay more for equivalent housing and are driven to higher risk loans. Fair lending practices requires the paticipation of more than ust the Black citizenry.

Both of the above factors play a major role in the financial and health status of African-Americans The solutions require cooperation of all citizens in addressing biases.

Regarding intra-community action, everyone from Bill Cosby to Al Sharpton has talked about things that the community needs to do for itself.
Many Black individuals and organizations sponsor scholarships for youth aspiring to higher education. The adoption rate in the Black community increased three-fold after the Million Man March. The community is taking action.

There are judicial disparities that impact poor African-Americans who come into contact with the legal system. Equal times for equal crimes is not the way these individuals are treated in either the juvenile or adult criminal justice system. Prolonged prison sentences do not produce productive citizens.

Finally, regarding the educational system their is another problem. I came back from a recent Kiwanis meeting. The head of one state's Economic Development Council mentioned that their college system had produced 700 Physical Ed teachers over a given time span. Not one Physics teacher for the public school system had been produced in the same time period.

The education sytem is in a shambles for everyone.
Poor education effects everyone, not just African-Americans.

I think we might return to a gem of wisdom about what most everyone can do about racism, that actually dates from the early 1950's, when Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific" had us all singing the following lyrics...

You've got to be taught
Before it's to Late
Before you are six, or seven or eight
To Hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught.

Most of us have at many times in our lives relationships with small children, perhaps six is a little too old to start, but let's say three, four and five year olds. (five didn't rhyme with late -- so the lyrics are a little off). There are a zillion ways of getting across the idea that it is wrong to hate by race, class, religion, gender and previous condition of servitude -- and today one must add sexual orientation -- whether it be by story telling, the books you read kids, the way you answer the questions, and yes, the discipline you apply when the kid comes home with language of hate. You teach when you show how you feel when another adult introduces hateful and discriminatory attitudes. If you let them stand without comment to a child, chances are they will assume you agree with them.

It doesn't matter whether you are White, Black, Asian, Arab, South Indian -- you can do this sort of teaching with young children without any special equipment, special training, special ideology -- everyone and anyone can do it. It won't solve all the problems -- there are shall we say, more advanced classes, but if those now teaching small children understood their responsibility as this important, and yes, this simple, the base could be laid for many of the more advanced things that need to be done.

I'm really amused by this piece, especially since I am very guilty of the sin of "asking if what I'm saying is okay," on these topics.

But, really, the role that white people have to play in fighting racism is to not be racist.

Which isn't as easy as it sounds because it also involves accepting some fair measure of collective responsibility for things that we as individuals never did or sanctioned.

I never owned a slave, I've never used the N word outside of its proper rap context, I've never killed a Native American and I've never attacked somebody for being gay or sexually harassed a woman at work. Never, not once, would never happen, not me. But still. Problems between and amongst groups of people can only be solved between and amongst groups of people. That means that some individuals are just going to get caught in the crossfire. We should minimize that, but it can't be eliminated.

If an individual demonstrates to me that they didn't get a job or scholarship that they deserved because of affirmative action policies I really would sympathize with them. But I wouldn't oppose affirmative action over it.

Does that make any sense? (That question is rhetorical if you're white and is meant only for the wisened minorities, especially our noble Native American brethren).

Sorry I thought it was fluff....Needed to be on AOL not here. Just MO.

Obama is the last person in America who should be telling us to do something about racism because he sat there and listened, with his kids, to the racist and anti-America rants of Rev. Wright for 20 years and DID NOTHING.

I have to agree.

As a mixed race person, also half Asian half white, I got a little excited to see a mixed race person talk about the issues we sometimes observe from a 3rd person perspective and may therefore have insights about.

However, after visiting Carmen Van Kerckhove's site, reading some of the posts, and watching a little of her video, it's pretty lightweight fluff. IMO she has a bad case of pundit syndrome, which is when a person's paycheck depends on them speechifying a problem or controversy, manufacturing one if necessary, and offering catchy solutions delivered in essay or lecture form.

For example, some of the things she says that sound like manufactured controversies imo:

She claims people often interrogate mixed race people and attempt to force them into rigid categories. I've rarely heard of that in the US and know many mixed people. Usually people are just curious because they can't tell. Especially if they find it attractive it makes them curious. I know from a social worker who helped mixed race kids deal with those issues in SE Asia 20years ago where it was a real problem, largely due the social complications of American GIs and prostitution. Now a lot of the top models in Asia are mixed.

She claims that many people think racial mixing is an easy solution to racism and use that as an excuse to sit back and do nothing. Which sounds like baloney to me. Some people see mixing as a gradual erosion of traditional race barriers, which is true. Some people point out this is inevitably happening over the long term and that most are already mixed to some degree. Which is also true. But it's rather rare, almost non-existent, for people to claim we're all going to be mixed eventually and therefore racism isn;t a problem today.

Another fluff issue she "tackles" is alleged racism in the comic book industry, the smoking gun being a dark skinned character colored lightly on a couple comic book covers. ... Unfortunately, she seems ignorant about production art. Much of the art production is outsourced globally, with characters being drawn and colored by different artists all the time, each drawing and coloring the character differently. Most comic book characters (and other mass produced illustration and media) tend to look alike. They're generally non-racial amalgams of stylized features which are easy to draw and copy many times over. For example, they typically have small pointy noses, high cheek bones, pointy chins, strong jaws, etc. Not large and bumpy Western European noses, not wide African noses, not flat Asian noses. Not complex facial structures or realistic arrangement for any race.

Why? Because a small pointy nose is easy to draw and the closest thing to a one-size as a part of every race has relatively small and pointy noses. Same goes for the rest. That's done for cost efficiency because it speeds production to bang them out and allows multiple artists to work on the same character without too much variation.

Anyways, rather disappointing stuff. I'm afraid Carmen Van Kerckhove won't be on my Racially Mixed Global Domination Strategy reading list.

Kozmik,

It would be easier to take your argument about the post "lacking" seriously if you hadn't clearly just jumped over to racialicious and scanned so quickly you didn't even have time to read the bylines on the posts.

It's nice of you to try and write Carmen's bio based on a glance or two at her website, but maybe you could actually read the post she has up here and respond to that.

The concept of "fighting racism" is too weak.

I like "We've got to practice for the way it's going to be in heaven." That phrase comes from two pastors' wives planning a womens' meeting that brought together churches from different racial traditions.

I hunger for events like my mother's report of all the county employees in a rural Georgia county organizing a cookout in the nearby state park, comparing potato salad recipes, and never pausing to notice that they'd just checked off an item of Dr. King's list--the one where "on the red clay hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will sit down together at the table of brotherly love."

I want the concreteness of issues like Alice Walker still feeling uneasy in libraries and discussions of who does and who doesn't wish we all still called each other Mr. and Mrs.

Those things are about how we can do the actual living and breathing and hugging and feasting and dishwashing of being one community--and do it where everyone's casseroles are welcome at the same potluck supper.

Doing that stuff doesn't just mean fighting bad ideas and those who advocate them. It means a life where people from varied backgrounds become part of your own identity.

When my son was nine, we saw a newscast about the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, and I asked him to imagine life if that decision had never happened. He did that boy thing of getting very still and not speaking for a while, and then he whispered one word. "Christopher." He meant that the friend he ate with at school that day would never have been his classmate: someone precious to him would have been kept out of his life.

To become one people, to listen enough and share and enough to belong to one another--that's the real work. More like knitting than fighting, and more like making a bigger family than anything else.

Sporcupine,
What about 'wrestling for racial equality"? I like the verb 'wrestle'. It evokes 'gristle' which has substance, a chewy quality, and it's physical. As is the term 'wrestle', which implies we need to strip down, get sweaty, and grapple with the ideas. We need to do the work. What do you think?

"It should be reiterated that racism, as Carmen stated is "a system that benefits whites at the expense of people of color." It's not limited to personal experiences of bigotry, but also includes things like having your neighborhood red-lined, the incredible levels of segregation still present in the US, the fact that we economically exploit People of Color abroad, and many other things. Because racism is more than simply personal biases, fighting racism entails social, political, and economic action as well as engagement on a person to person basis. Just "Not being racist" doesn't help change these situations; it takes active ANTI-RACISM."

I agree, I'm just suggesting that effective social, political, and economic action stems from a grassroots movement of people who are willing to form relationships across racial boundaries, and begin to address their own biases. It's not the entire solution, but it's a great place to start, and it's a great step towards active anti-racism.

Carmen - Thanks for asking an important question about what white people should do with regard to racism. I have to say that, levity aside, the ‘cookie’ point is one that really sticks in my craw: I find it really irritating when I hear white activists, or organizations, describe themselves as ‘anti-racist’ (I’m white, perhaps I should say, and I have worked for a variety of racial justice organizations). The irritation, first, is that it has the ring of posturing. But on a deeper level, I think that this mode of self-characterization, and all that it connotes, defeats its own purpose. So allow me to air a pet peeve, in the hopes of making a larger point.

First, I can’t help but read the ‘anti-racist’ label as stuck in the framework of individual racism, concerned mainly to address bigotry and hatred by groups of individuals. This is not the deepest obstacle to racial justice, but the individual framework is I think the dominant way that we (maybe I mean whites, maybe I mean all of us) conceive of racism. What we really need to focus on if we are going to make any progress towards a more equitable society is structural racism, the more impersonal ways in which society has evolved to confer more resources on whites than on others. For example, today whites have, on average, ten times the accumulated wealth as blacks at the same income level; a major cause of this today is the practice of redlining two generations ago, a practice that meant that white parents, upon dying, had equity to leave their heirs, and black parents did not.

Second, given this, I just don’t see that identifying as an anti-racist really means that much. Materially speaking, anti-racist whites benefit from these structural arrangements just as much as other whites do; our collective commitment to opposing racism means very little if it doesn’t result in an effective plan for structural transformation. But, to the extent that my first point is correct, the very identification sets us off on the wrong path. And to the extent that my third point is true, our commitment to serious work on the right path is questionable, too.

Finally then, third, calling myself an ‘anti-racist’ seems a way to set myself apart from my less enlightened friends and relations. That’s both disingenuous and counterproductive. I am no less a product of my social ecology than anyone else, which is to say, my commitment to racial justice does not imply that I’m not, at some level, a racist myself. That’s not such a deep point, but I worry that the anti-racist label, for whites, is an act of setting oneself apart from the perhaps less perfect community of whites who aren’t even as far along as we are. But if we’re going to achieve any progress in overcoming structural racism, we need a bigger coalition, and a stronger national commitment to policies that distribute resources more fairly. To do that, whites who are concerned with racial justice need to expand their numbers. We can’t do so with postures give other whites the idea that we think we are some kind of political bodhisattvas walking among them.

I don’t mean all this to disagree with Carmen, to say that whites concerned with racial justice should remain in a “state of constant self-flagellation.” But I disagree with the commenter who said that the most important thing that whites can do is challenge other white people’s racism. The most important thing we can do is to help build support for policies that will make a material difference in what resources and opportunities are available to those who have been historically excluded from them. We can do that in part by very legitimate appeals to enlightened self-interest, true, as well as appeals to our collective sense of justice and fairness. But we won’t get far by telling other whites that they just don’t measure up.

Devon Kearney

I'm coming in a little late, but I absolutely agree with your point, Carmen, that white folks ought to think more about race, and figure out what they could DO about racism.

White privilege is, as Peggy McIntosh says, a "fugitive and elusive subject" for white people. Like her, they can hardly remember any insight about race, and especially about their own race, unless they write it down. I've been doing that on my blog--writing down, that is, what whiteness seems to be, or rather, what it encourages white people to do:

Stuff White People Do/

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If we're going to get people on board with fighting racism, we need to appeal to their enlightened self-interest in some way. But how? If we define -- as many activists do -- racism as a system that benefits whites at the expense of people of color, then how do we convince those reaping the benefits to change the system?

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A white person not fighting against racism is like a person not fighting against animal abuse because they're not a dog. When injustices happen it's our duty to make a change for the better in my opinion. Calgary Business Cards Concrete Cutting

These arguments are somehow funny, but not in the ha-ha sense. From what I understood by reading your article, there is no real way not to be racist at some point. Just by entering a pro or anti racism discussion, you become one :(. The world is heading toward globalization and there are millions of global visas accepted every day. We are mixing up and soon racism will be a thing of the past.

Sensitive issue. Racism is everywhere. Only education can help fight this.
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