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racism reality
So this may be a long post, but please bear with me.
When I hear about racism, it is often framed as a black and white issue, not meaning black and white people, but as a zero sum, yeas or no type issue.
I believe there are degrees to these issues among most people. Consider this, imagine a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being attending meetings in a white sheet with a flaming cross out in the woods. 10 would be say white christian parents eagerly welcoming their sons commitment ceremony to a black transexual athiest life partner.
I would say most of us fall between the two extremes. Most of life exists in the muddled middle in issues of race, religion, and sexuality. Take gay people, I have no animosity towards gay people, but to be honest, I really hope my son comes home one day with a girl, not a guy. I wouldn't kick him out of the house and disown him, but that is not the first choice. So where does that leave me on homophobic scale? Oh, and for clarification, I am for gay marriage, I ecourage lesbian public displays of affection, but get a tad uncomfortable when I see two guys kiss. Double standard I know, but it is what it is. (upon reflection, I may have some latent jealosy of gay men, I wish I were gay just long enough to get into shape and learn to dress myself well and decorate the house.)
On to ethnicity, and I will begin with a differentiation between sterotype, bigotry, and prejudice. Stereotypes to me are when past experience makes you think certain members of a group will exhibit certain behaviors or traits. Bigotry to me is when you make the active negative judgement of a person based upon appearence or manner without regard to contrary experience with that person. Prejudice to me is more of considering a negative judgement based upon stereotype and protecting yourself accordingly, but allowing opinion to change with experience.
Stereotypes are not always bad, I think of my wife who is chinese. She is an engineer, her two brothers are engineers and her father has a degree in engineering, but actually owned a chinese restaurant. I met three of her friends from college, 2 were chinese, 1 was vietnamese. All were engineers. The vietnamese kid's parents owned a nail salon, one chinese girl's parents also owned a chinese restaurant, and the other owned a dry cleaning shop. Sterotypes come from somewhere. Also, the stereotype about asian driving, if you have any questions, head down to the local chinatown on saturday afternoon and watch people park. Draw your own conclusions. Stereotypes tell me that when I see a 1991 chevy caprice with 22 inch spinner rims and a radio I can hear from three cars away, it might just be a black guy driving. I used to live in a primarily black apartment complex, and in a year there were two drivebys and 4 "cops" style 10 squad car arrests. The neighborhood shifted to primarily a mexican neighborhood, and was pretty quiet, although there where 8 people living in the two bedroom apartment next to me.
I used to sell cars close to a Hasidic jewish community. Whatever sterotypes you may have heard, nothing quite prepares you for the experience of negotiating the price of a car with a Hasidic man, his wife, his parents, and his 3 friends from temple. In a word, formidable.
So my basic point it, I think we are all somewhere on the bell curve, and it should be acceptable to be in the middle. Enough with this hypersensative parsing of every word that comes from a politician's mouth.
I would love to hear comments from anyone interested relating thier own thoughts, reccomend if you would like a little convesation on this.
Comments (7)
If Obama were simply a black man running for president, then I think we could be having an honest conversation about stereotypes, bigotry and prejudice along the lines that you mention. But Obama has made it more complicated than that. He is a black man running for president who:
- found his black identity in the church of black liberation theologist Jeremiah Wright who became Obama's baptizer, pastor, surrogate father, "important mentor", spiritual adviser, family friend, book title inspirer, close associate and (until the scandal broke) member of the Obama campaign's religious advisory council.
- has a wife who wrote some controversial and revealing things in college on the subject of race, and who recently said that she was proud of America for the first time because of her husband's candidacy.
- played the race card several times during the campaign, including saying that Hillary belittled Martin Luther King, and saying that Bill was playing the race card.
- said of Jeremiah Wright, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me."
- said, in an attempt to answer criticism of his remarks about his grandmother, that she is "a typical white person."
- first downplayed the importance of the video of Wright's sermons, saying they were only a few moments in a long and distinguished ministry, then attacked the media for playing them.
- then disavowed Jeremiah Wright six weeks after saying that he could not disavow him, quoting and calling outrageous the very same words spoken by Wright that he had previously downplayed and criticized the media for playing.
So you not only have to talk about the degree of racism, but from which direction it is coming. Clearly racism runs both directions. As for hypersensitivity about politician's comments, tell that to the man who thought it was belittling MLK to say that it took LBJ to pushed through the civil rights legislation of the 1960's.
May 12, 2008 5:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
What. Ever.
The stuff you're talking about is garbage. I anyone cares, they're probably a Republican anyway.
May 12, 2008 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
otto, i am personally telling you to shut up! your rantings are so shallow and now i am personally calling you racist and i am not talking about being in the middle-you are extremely so.
for the record, obama is also part white. i guess your biggest problem is the fact that he is not willing to cast one aside for the other. i read your little list and it is nothing short of more 'guilt by association filth". do yourself a favor and run up the same list for HRC and McCain. You will be surprised. Neither HRC nor McCain can afford a "guilt by association" mission against them and so far the media is content to play unfairly and give them both free passes. Should the media ever wake up, you would be totally disenchanted.
If that is not convincing enough for you-let's start comparing actual negative words and or gaffes latent with racial undertones/white supremacy/divisive and polarizing agendas coming from the candidates' mouths and HRC wins again with McCain coming in a close second. You judge Obama unfairly and I can only say at this point that you are doing it on purpose. It is ok to dislike him, but it is not ok in this age of technology to continually repeat falsehoods and turn a blind eye to the truth.
Obama has never personally played the race card and I challeng you to append links to your smears stating otherwise. I agree that some of his supporters may have fallen in to that trap, me included, but only in response to HRC's camp, namely Bill C playing it first in SC. HRC is comfortable with that card now-"Whites will never vote for a black man". Her surrogate "E Rendell stating that some PA's will not cast that vote for a black man. Ferraro stating that Obama would not have made it if he wasn't black-very insulting b/c he would have been the nominee already if he was anything but black considering he played fairly and beat HRC fair and square by any metric. The list goes on and all of these people are part of the Hillary camp.
You are just another voter so I cannot really attribute your prejudice/bigotry/racism or fanaticsim-choose one or several, to HRC but I can hold her accountable for what she says and what she allows those who work for her to say.
Please be fair
May 12, 2008 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
also, some hispanic woman stating that hispanics would never vote for a black man. these people are either really stupid or just too dumb to realize the implication of what they are saying. they are saying that whites and hispanics are racist and would never cast that vote for a black man. if you are so upset with the racist label, write a letter to HRC and ask her to stop saying it. You are ok with her stating that you are racist as long as it assures her a handful of votes but you are upset if an Obama supporter follows in HRC's footsteps and say yes, HRC's supporters are as racist as HRC is claiming. How can that be Otto?
You reject it from her first and then we can have a discussion.
May 12, 2008 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
by the way, I am hispanic and i was deeply insulted with that lady from the West called herself speaking on my behalf. .....she is wrong bc alot of us will vote for obama even though we were once loyal to hrc. after what she did to richardson, i am determined that she has been hiding a side of her that is less than becoming..
May 12, 2008 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Racism isn't just about white people, it exists in everyone. So I did not mean to suggest that only white people have racist tendencies, and I really don't care that much about how this effects the elections.
I think there is a basic feeling that is natural for a person to stick to thier own kind, however that is defined by your situation. It may be by race, or religion, or country of origin, political ideology or some other factor. This self segregation often leads to distrust of outside groups.
May 12, 2008 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
of course i agree with you poster! the problem is no one questions where the votes have been coming from in the past and what color/creed was helping the status quo to win. it was always a given that people of all shades would come out and make a choice b/w one white man on the left or center and one white man on the right. this time is a bit trickier--we have 3 candidates, two white, one mixed, but neither really fit the status quo. we are so confused and now the real ugliness in all of us is forced to rear its ugly head. do we stick with what we know and vote for another white man or do we take a chance on a white woman who is not as scary as a black man? or do we go with the unconventional and give that charismatic black dude a chance? in record numbers, the dems have decided and continue to decide to give the new kid on the block a try and yes he is bi-racial! now we have to wait for the GE to see if we really do come together or split at the seams over nonsensical things such as melanin, or stick together by focusing on those things that unite us!
the truth is, racism is alive and well in america and this is our chance to see how well we measure up against all the "shoo shoo" that has been going on under the table, behind closed doors for years. the good news is there are more of us from this era than those from the other more divisive era.
let's hope in the end, the open-minded prevails! change is in the air and who would have dreamed that our kids were actually listening to us when we were paying lip service to equality and unity!
May 12, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
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