A few months ago, Tim Wise wrote a widely circulated article called, "Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" which challenged America to take a close look at the hypocrisy of the Right Wing. Now, a Pittsburgh rapper is accepting his challenge in true Hip Hop form. Jasiri X has released a video called "What if the Tea Party was Black." The Hip Hop artist says that he got the idea when Paradise,a member of the pro-black rap group X-Clan, forwarded him a copy of Wise's article. "I saw the article and I liked the concept," says the rapper. So Jasiri hit the studio with producer Cynik Lethal while Paradise grabbed his video camera and they went on their mission to defeat the Right Wing propaganda machine.
Here's the video. Jasiri X has also done a followup piece (here), responding to the critics in the 1500+ comments inspired by this one.
LYRICS
What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would you harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Souljah
Would you leave it to the voters or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack
What if Michael Baisden was on ya FM dial
For 3 hours every day calling the president foul
Would they say free speech or find evidence how
To charge him with treason like see he's unamerican now
What if Minister Farrakhan prayed for the death
Of the commander in chief that he be laid to rest
Would they treat it as the gravest threat or never make an arrest
Even today he's still hated for less
What if President Obama would have lost the election
Quit his job so he could go talk to the left and
Bash the government for being off of direction
Fraught with deception
And told black people they want all of our weapons
And we want our own country and called for secession
Would he be arrested and tossed in corrections
For trying to foster aggression
Against the people's lawful selection
Our questions
What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would you harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Souljah
Would you leave it to the voters or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack
What If black people went on Facebook and made a page
That for the death of the president elect we prayed
Would the creators be tazed and thrown in a cage
We know the page wouldn't have been displayed all these days
What if Jeremiah Wright said that everybody white
Wasn't a real Americna would you feel scared of him
If he had a militia with pictures that depict the president as Hitler
They would kill and bury that
Wait
What if Cynthia McKinney lamented the winning of the new president
And hinted he wasn't really a true resident
With no proof or evidence
Would the media treat it like a huge press event
They would have attacked whatever group she represents
They would have called her a kook on precedent
And any network that gave her due preference
Would be the laughing stock of the news so our question is
What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would you harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Souljah
Would you leave it to the voters or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack
At this university upon a hill,
I meet a tenured professor
Who's strangely thrilled
To list all of the oppressors --
Past, present, and future -- who have killed.
Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.
O, he names the standard suspects --
Rich, white, and unjust --
And I, a red man, think he's correct,
But why does he have to be so humorless?
And how can he, a white man, fondly speak
Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and cruel
Ceremony
That, if performed well, would have doomed
All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies,
And brought back every dead Indian to life?
The professor says, "Brown people
From all brown tribes
Will burn skyscrapers and steeples.
They'll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.
Sherman, can't you see that immigration
Is the new and improved Ghost Dance?"
All I can do is laugh and laugh
And say, "Damn, you've got some imagination.
You should write a screenplay about this shit --
About some fictional city,
Grown fat and pale and pretty,
That's destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse."
The professor doesn't speak. He shakes his head
And assaults me with his pity.
I wonder how he can believe
In a ceremony that requires his death.
I think that he thinks he's the new Jesus.
He's eager to get on that cross
And pay the ultimate cost
Because he's addicted to the indigenous.
Sherman Alexie self-identifies as a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, which he left to attend a nearly all-white high school (where the only other Indian was the school's mascot). His first screenplay,Smoke Signals, was the first major film produced, written, and directed by American Indians. Alexie is the author of dozens of books and the recipient of nearly as many awards (you can read a bio about him here). The above poem is available online here, and in Alexie's recent book, War Dances. (Image source)
In apparent reaction to recent revelations of blatant Tea Party racism, Fox and other news outlets have seized on a relatively ancient video clip, of a black USDA official admitting that she offered a white farmer less help than she could have. The efforts to make snippets from Shirley Sherrod's speech a national story constitute a vintage white whine -- "Hey, black people can be racist too ya know!"
These efforts by Fox and others to spark a media firestorm exemplify a more general common white tendency -- that of finding, often with a sort of righteous glee, examples of "black racism." In my experience, most white people point out random, very specific and individualized examples of black bigotry far more often than they point out individual or institutional acts of white racism.
Also, the timing of such examples tends to be revealing. White people usually point out "black racism" when they're confronted with examples of white racism. In the current case, in a rather breathless piece entitled "Video Shows USDA Official Saying She Didn't Give 'Full Force' of Help to White Farmer," Fox News operatives reveal in their very first sentence just why Today's Viral Video suddenly interests them:
Days after the NAACP clashed with Tea Party members over allegations of racism, a video has surfaced showing an Agriculture Department official regaling an NAACP audience with a story about how she withheld help to a white farmer facing bankruptcy -- video that now has forced the official to resign.
Hmmm . . . I can't help but wonder, how long has Fox News, or perhaps someone else, been holding onto this story?
I wonder because this common white attention to "black racism" usually functions as a distraction, an effort to deflect blame from white people. In a (by now, I hope, classic) blog post, Abagond labeled this white move the Arab Trader Argument:
The Arab trader argument is my name for an argument white Americans often use to defend the evil they do in the world. It goes like this: if white Americans do something evil and terrible it is all right –- or at least not all that bad –- so long as they can find at least one example from world history of someone else doing the same thing. Thus the Atlantic slave trade was not so bad because Arabs traders sold slaves too! . . .
The thing is utterly morally bankrupt. It is the everyone-does-it argument that we tried when we were eight. Our mothers did not buy it then and it does not work now –- except maybe for the morally blind.
I haven't heard Fox News and other pilot-fish media followers described as "morally blind," but the term does fit the way they're pouncing on this snippet from a speech that was delivered not this week or even this month; former USDA official Shirley Sherrod's delivered this speech in . . . 1986!
What Fox and other blatantly conservative media outlets are willfully blind to in this case, as in other similar ones, is the fuller context of what Sherrod was saying. Again, Fox goes ahead and admits what it's doing in this sense; a line in their story reads,
The point of [Sherrod's] story wasn't entirely clear; only an excerpt of the speech is included in the video clip.
Kudos to CNN, then, for holding back a bit on this common white deflection reflex, at least on one of its programs. In the following "American Morning" segment, anchors John Roberts and Kiran Chetry ask, "Does that video tell the whole story?" They also make the effort of simply asking Sherrod what the whole story is, including the point of her anecdote -- while she thought at the time that race was important, she later realized that her treatment of the white farmer was wrong, and that "the issue is not about race, it's about those who have versus those who do not have."
I'm tempted to say that Fox News has already gotten what it and other conservatives want, which is to get us all talking about race instead of social class -- that the ol' Divide-and-Conquer strategy seems to have worked again, and here I am writing a blog post about race, when even the black person in question is saying that we should really be talking about "those who have versus those who do not have."
And yes, back in the 1980s, as now, small American farmers of all races were suffering from the predations of big-time Agribusiness. However, as Daily Kos dairist Deep Harm writes, "minority farmers had a particularly difficult row to hoe":
In 1920, black farmers in the United States owned 15.6 million acres of land; by 1999 that number had fallen to 2 million, and it's still dropping by 1,000 acres per day. In 1910 there were 926,000 African Americans involved in farming; at the end of the century, just 18,000 remain[ed], and they're going under at the rate of five to six times the rate of white farmers.
Racism and classism both matter, of course, and for non-white people, the former greatly exacerbates the latter.
The end of the YouTube clip that started this faux/Fox controversy contains a recent statement by NAACP Vice President Hilary Shelton, to the effect that his organization does indeed "repudiate racists within our ranks." The implication of juxtaposing Shelton's statement with Sherrod's is a question -- Will the NAACP condemn Sherrod's actions?
As a white person, I don't think it's up to me to judge the race-related actions of non-white people. However, I wish the NAACP hadn't been so quick to come out against Sherrod*:
"Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the civil rights group. "We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers."
"Her actions were shameful," Jealous continued. "While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man."
As Sherrod herself said in response, it's "unfortunate that the NAACP would make a statement without even checking to see what happened. This was 24 years ago, and I'm telling a story to try to unite people."
To be clear, I'm not claiming that Sherrod did the right thing in not helping a distressed farmer as much as she could have, just because he was a white man who treated her like an inferior. Instead, I'm pointing out the common white tendency that's demonstrated by many of the white reactions to the snippets from Sherrod's speech: pointing out "black racism" in an effort to deflect attention from white racism.
Is there anything else besides that tendency that could explain why this story is now national news?
*As I noted here, my thanks go out to commenter Queen of the Cynics, for pointing out here the problem with this sentence.
Update: Some are saying that the White House, which may have indirectly told Sherrod to "resign," got punked by Andrew Breitbart, the same sleaze-merchant responsible for the ACORN pimp-and-prostitute fiasco. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says, however, that the decision was his alone.
Many news outlets are now reporting the fuller context of Sherrod's entirely unobjectionable remarks. Sherrod wasn't working yet for the USDA when the episode she describes happened; she made up for not helping the white farmer as much as she could have by befriending him and his wife, Eloise, who described Sherrod as a "good friend" who hasn't been "treated right," and who also "helped us save our farm."
How much weirder will this sad, race-baiting parable for our times get?
Update II: This non-story-that's-become-a-huge-story has metastasized into such an extensive series of interviews, apologies, rebuttals, new charges and countercharges that it needs its own blog -- surely one exists? I'd add more links to some of it, but I think they'd be out of date by tomorrow.
So I'll just add a question, in case anyone's still reading here. What do you think of the claim some are making, that Shirley Sherrod is the Rosa Parks of our time?
Swpd reader karinova wrote the following comment for an Open Thread post -- I think it should be its own post instead. And so, here we go.
I have a question for the commentariat. Mostly the white portion.
Back in the rush to the aid of crying white instigators of racism thread, a commenter noted that sometimes, when episodes like that occurred and the POC left the group upset, "the reactions [...] were everyone looking at each other, and then somebody would crack a racial joke or roll their eyes and make a rude gesture, and we'd all laugh and go on with our day."
Which reminded me of something I've been ruminating on; maybe you guys can shed some light?
So, there's this joke.
It's not really new, but it seems to be really really popular in the last few years -- specifically, in movies and tv (which is sort of the apex of the pop-culture feedback loop) -- and it's taken on a... different flavor.
The joke goes like this: a WP says something vaguely or overtly racist, or easily interpretable as such. A POC hears, is offended, and objects.
That's it. That's the whole joke.
I don't get it.
But those in the televisual arts can't seem get enough of it lately. I'll call it the You People joke. It shows up in "Tropic Thunder" -- and is so effing popular, you can get it on a t-shirt, which, let's face it, officially = Meme. (I submit that that entire movie is one long You People joke. God, I'm glad I didn't see it in the theatre. I live in an incredibly white town.)
Thing is, the exact same joke showed up in (off the top of my head) "Anger Management." And in "Me Myself & Irene." There are versions of it in the (terrible!) movie "How to Rob a Bank," in "The Hangover," and in an episode of "It's Always Sunny." I could go on.
WTF? Please. Help me out.
I've asked several white people, and no matter how non-threatening I try to be, it's gone... um, poorly. But I honestly want to know: Why is this "joke" funny? I want to hear from (thinking) white people especially. I can climb inside the white mindset very very well, but I can't quite grasp this. I really feel like it's a White Thing. (At any rate, I don't understand.)
Also, while I'm at it: d'y'all think any POC (specifically, BP) would buy that shirt?
Laughing at it as it goes by in the mixed company of a movie theatre (yet again) is one thing; we're trained to go-along-to-get-along. But sporting a shirt like that seems unlikely to me. Although... it's interesting to note that in the movie, that line, "what do you mean, 'you people'?!" is spoken twice -- once by AC (a white character who wears blackface for 90% of the movie) "in character" to another white guy, and then immediately by an offended Lazarus (an actual black guy), to AC.
Which character did you think of when you saw that shirt? Which do you think the buyers of that shirt are thinking of? What would you think if you saw a BP wearing that shirt? Would it be funny? Would you laugh? (Not the same question, btw.)
I'm almost tempted to make (not buy) one, just to, I dunno, culture-jam the meme.
William Ayers recently published a comic book, To Teach: The Journey, In Comics (illustrated by Ryan-Alexander-Tanner). At one point, Ayers pauses to describe the classroom of this teacher, Avi Lessing:
Ayers then describes (and Alexander-Tanner illustrates) the following, relatively common incident, which happens while a white student of Lessing's is presenting a story that takes place at a skating rink.
What happens here is a common form of white solidarity:
It's worth noting that the victim of racism here -- a double victim, actually -- is a black woman. Given the images of black women that commonly lurk in the white imagination, I wouldn't be at all surprised if such white bumblers would be less likely to spark such incidents with their tears if the victim of their actions were another sort of person of color. I think even the tears themselves would be less likely.
In a blog entry on some differences between white women and women like herself, Dr. Renita J. Weems writes of "the vivid memories lots of black women have of white women whose tears promoted their causes over that of the black women":
Many of us, myself included, have stories to tell of white women crying and taking on postures of weakness to avoid conflict with black women. They cried, they shut down, they ran out the room, and feigned helplessness -- especially when confronted with the criticisms black women had about their racism. It’s almost a rule of thumb that senior black women pass along to younger black women to expect white women to faint, get weepy, and come up with stories about their one black friend when the time comes to talk openly and honestly about their complicity in the status quo. Watch for the dagger that follows, I was once told by my own mentor.
Beliefs informed by stereotypes can be so strong that we take them for granted. As black women we know what it is to be saddled with the stereotype of being strong, aggressive, and animalistic in our sexuality. Stereotyping and projecting our worst memories on each other allow both white women and black women to maintain our places in the status quo. It keeps us from finding common ground and from joining forces to battle against the forces bent keeping women sex objects and breeders.
But when is something a stereotype, and when is it true? Not every white woman you and I know has used tears to get her way. Just a lot. Just one too many. Just enough to keep the stereotype alive, I guess.
Yes, this common white tendency -- and I'm sure there are white male versions as well -- is really a way of avoiding conflict, isn't it? And when it's a black woman, a seemingly (O noes!!) Angry Black Woman, then acting as if you're the injured party can seem especially, and ridiculously, prudent. The tears* can function like a false flag, which that loudly signals "Injury!", but also hides fear. I was about to surmise that running away in tears at such moments is also a way of maintaining dignity, but I think what's actually being maintained is a white sense of superiority.
It seems to me that white people who recognize how they're continuously encouraged to be racist by the world around them should prepare themselves for this kind of moment -- a moment in a discussion of racism when someone white suddenly claims that they've been hurt. We should think about how something like a reflex may well lead us to jump to the aid of the perpetrator of racism, instead of helping out or standing by the victim.
I think we should ask ourselves how, instead of expressing solidarity with the white "victim," we could instead express solidarity with the real victim. We should also think about why the latter doesn't immediately feel right. Until it does immediately feel right.
* I like the name that Ayers gave to the crying white girl -- "Misty." What Misty does in that cartoon, of course, is a classic form of a white pathology, widely known as WhiteWomen'sTears.
My thanks to Barry Deutsch, who's got me thinking now about the times that I've been this white person (because I'm sure I have), and just what forms my asking for such reassurance have taken.
Have you encountered this common white tendency, either in yourself or in others? The more I think about it, the more I think it's very common, so I'd bet that you have encountered it. Or, if you're white, that you've enacted it, in some way or ways . . .
Other excellent cartoons on racism by Barry Deutsch appear here. Scroll down, for instance, to the one on "White Lies."
About 35 seconds into this clip, Bill O'Reilly -- Fox News' racisme provocateur -- tells a black man, Marc Lamont Hill -- who happens to be a Columbia University professor -- that he "looks like a cocaine dealer." They're discussing President Obama's decision to send troops to the Mexico-U.S. border. (Watch also for Dr. Hill's comeback.)
Bill O’Reilly: “Let's say you’re a cocaine dealer -- and you kind of look like one a little bit.”
Marc Lamont Hill: “As do you . . . you know, you actually look like a cocaine user.”
This example of ignorant white aggression reminds me of another, bitterly iconic scenario, Professor Cornel West's struggle to catch a taxi (as described in his book Race Matters):
I dropped my wife off for an appointment on 60th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues. I left my car -- a rather elegant one -- and stood on the corner of 60th Street and Park Avenue to catch a taxi. I felt quite relaxed since I had an hour until my next engagement. At 5:00 P.M. I had to meet a photographer who would take the picture for the cover of this book on the roof of an apartment building in Harlem on 115th Street and 1st Avenue. I waited and waited and waited. After the ninth taxi refused me, my blood began to boil. The tenth taxi refused me and stopped for a kind, well-dressed smiling female citizen of European descent. As she stepped into the cab, she said, "This is really ridiculous, is it not?"
Ugly racial memories of the past flashed through my mind. Years ago, while driving from New York to teach at Williams College, I was stopped on fake charges of trafficking cocaine. When I told the police officer I was a professor of religion, he replied "Yeh, and I'm the Flying Nun. Let's go, nigger!" I was stopped three times in my first ten days in Princeton for driving too slowly on a residential street with a speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour. (And my son, Clifton, already has similar memories at the tender age of fifteen.) Needless to say, these memories are dwarfed by those like Rodney King's beating or the abuse of black targets of the FBI's COINTEL-PRO efforts in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet the memories cut like a merciless knife at my soul as I waited on that godforsaken corner.
Since the day West is describing here is the day that he was photographed for the cover of his book, you can see what he was wearing -- a formal, thoroughly professional looking suit, complete with tie, and vest. I can't tell if Marc Lamont Hill was also wearing a vest, but the rest of the "professional" uniform is there. And yet, looking as educated, professional, well-heeled, well-monied and so on often doesn't matter, does it? For Bill O'Reilly, as for many white people, the image of a drug dealer as a black man persists in the "darker" recesses of our minds.
So that's a fairly obvious common white tendency exemplified by that clip, and I hope that electronic cards and letters of complaint are pouring into Fox Studios as I write this post.* However, another, less obvious white tendency (less obvious to white people like me, that is) also seems to emerge here. As Zuky notes,
Bill O’Loofah started worrying that this sharp dude (Marc Lamont Hill) might be on the verge of taking him down intellectually, so he threw in some gratuitous gut-rot racism as a degrading distraction. White folks do this all the time.
Yes, gratuitous derailing gut-rot racism. It works every time. Or, almost every time.
And half the time, or more, we don't even know we're doing it.
* You can complain by writing to askfox AT fox DOT com
So what is Rand Paul -- an ordinary white racist? Or a more sinister sort of closet racist?
In response to an onslaught of what he terms "liberal media attacks" after a recent interview with Rachel Maddow -- in which he argued against federal restrictions on business owners' "rights" to refuse service to whomever they like -- Libertarian whiz kid Rand Paul is now claiming that he actually supports the Civil Rights Act.
“I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person. I have clearly stated in prior interviews that I abhor racial discrimination and would have worked to end segregation. Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws."
Like his initial claims in the Maddow interview -- basically, that he's against racial discrimination, but also for allowing businesses to refuse service to whomever they like -- Paul's official response to the firestorm that he's provoked is nothing short of bizarre. It's a blatantly self-contradictory stance being expressed by a (suddenly) national figure (which, come to think of it, isn't all that unusual).
How can Paul logically be for the Civil Rights Act, which forbids businesses from discriminating on the basis of race, and also for the "right" of businesses to do whatever they want, including discriminating on the basis of race? And how can he be for an act of law, but actually for the "intent" of that law? Basically, he can't. And yet, like so many other adherents to Libertarianism, he simply ignores the fundamental contradictions that arise when simplistic theories get tested in the real world.
I think it's great, and pretty entertaining really, that this example of Libertarian ideology -- which Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul both hold so dear -- has been exposed as illogical so early in his candidacy. Rand Paul's bumbling attempts to address his self-contradictory stance, all while completely failing to address it, just might bring about the kind of sunlight that could disinfect a lot of the rising and similarly bankrupt Tea-Party ideology (its adherents fervently support Rand's candidacy).
Such attention might also help to expose an apparently new common white tendency -- explaining away racist actions by saying they're not a problem, because the free market will take care of them.
Rand Paul made this particular argument when he said the following, in explanation of his position on business rights and civil rights: "I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant."
Got that? Paul's implication is that businesses that refuse their services in a racist manner will suffer or even fail, presumably because in our "postracial" society, most people will spend their money at businesses that don't practice racial discrimination, because most (white) people aren't racists anymore. The free market is sacrosanct and magical, you see; if the dastardly liberals who supposedly control everything would just let market practices be "free," all problems would be solved. Including racism!
This is the same excuse given, for instance, by that racist justice of the peace in Louisiana. Remember Keith Bardwell, the one who refused to grant marriage licenses to interracial couples? He said that his refusal wasn't racist (of course), because he only meant to protect the children produced by such unions. Then, after the couple obtained a license elsewhere, Bardwell said this:
I'm sorry, you know, that I offended the couple, but I did help them and tell them who to go to and get married. And they went and got married, and they should be happily married, and I don't see what the problem is now.
Got that, all you racism chasers? Bardwell is basically saying, without saying it outright, that even if his actions were racist, that's not a problem, because the couple was free to get their marriage license elsewhere. The market took care of it! And Bardwell himself was supposedly just expressing his all-American, God-given personal right to serve, and not serve, whomever he liked.
I don't know if these two examples justly represent a "common white tendency" (can you think of others?). However, they do help to explain why such an overwhelming percentage of Libertarians are white, and also why a lot of them -- although they'd never admit it in public -- are flatout racists. As Niky Ring writes (in a post entitled "Libertarianism: the ideology of American racists"), "Why are people shocked when a libertarian flips over and there's a Klansman on the other side?"
That's not to say that all Libertarians keep pointy-hooded robes in their closets. But it is to say that it's not difficult to see why the ideology itself attracts so many adamant racists. Now that we have another ardent Libertarian on the national stage, one who's aligned with the similarly, thinly veiled racists of the Tea Party (you know, those crowds of white people clamoring to take "their" country back), here's hoping that the "liberal media" will keep up the "attack" on Rand's self-contradictory stance on the Civil Rights Act. Maybe they'll also be able to figure out just what kind of racist he is too.
In the following video, a teacher named Brad Wray (who's apparently a really cool teacher) sings a song that he wrote on the various types of cognitive bias; he wrote it to help his students study for a Psychology exam.
Which of the following biases do you think are most applicable to common white perceptions of, and interactions with, non-white people? (Maybe . . . all of them?)
Also, why not open this up a bit beyond stuff white people do -- what was the best teacher you ever had like? What did he or she do that really got through to you?
[Lyrics below]
I'm biased because I knew it all along... hindsight bias... I knew it all along.
I'm biased because I put you in a category in which you may or may not belong... representativeness bias... don't stereotype this song
I'm biased because of a small detail that throws off the big picture of the thing anchoring bias...see the forest for the trees
I'm biased toward the first example that comes to mind availability bias... to the first thing that comes to mind
Oh oh bias don't let bias into your mind
Bias don't try this
it'll influence your thinking and memories, don't mess with these
but you're guilty of distorted thinking
Cognitive bias
your mind becomes blinded
decisions and problems you've been forced to solve them wrongly
I'm biased because I'll only listen to what I agree with confirmation bias... your narrowminded if you are this
I'm biased because I take credit for success but no blame for failure self-serving bias... my success and your failure
I'm biased when I remember things the way I would've expected them to be expectancy bias... false memories are shaped by these
I'm biased becase I think my opinion now was my opinion then self-consistency bias ...but you felt different way back when
Oh oh bias don't let bias into your mind... Bias don't try this, it'll influence you thinking and memories, don't mess with these but you're guilty of distorted thinking.
Cognitive bias your mind becomes blinded; decisions and problems you've been forced to solve them wrongly!
I'm trying to come up with some handy replies to the white people I sometimes encounter who feel that whites have been getting an increasingly raw deal. These are the people who, when you get right down to it with them about the subject of "race," express worries that further advances for people of color (especially for black people) will come at the expense of white people like themselves. They see relative racial (white) advantage and (non-white) disadvantage as a zero-sum game, and as a game that whites have been losing for decades, in large part because non-whites have (supposedly) been gaining.
In a post at Working-Class Perspectives about the racial composition of the Tea-Party activists ("Tea-partying while White"), Jack Metzgar says the following on this topic.
What would you say to people like this relative of his, "Helen"?
At a recent extended family gathering a relative of mine asked me, “So what do you think of your President now?” I indicated my firm support, briefly explaining why I thought health care reform was really important and good, and then asked for her opinion. “I don’t know enough [about policies] to say, but he just scares me.” I asked why, expecting something about the deficit or “big government,” but she said, “I don’t know why. He just scares me.” I tried to probe for specific reasons, but she reported that she wasn’t sure and didn’t “want to talk politics.”
I teach my students in undergraduate critical-thinking courses that it is not legitimate to attribute negative motives to people unless you can credibly explain how these motives are related to what the person actually says. This is a particularly important principle, I say, if you disagree with someone – and even more important if you strongly disagree. By that standard, it would be wrong to charge Helen with “racial prejudice,” let alone “racism,” but in the absence of specific reasons to be scared of Barack Obama, it’s also hard to imagine that her fear does not have something to do with his being a black man.
Helen (not her real name) is a white senior-citizen widow living almost entirely on Social Security in a modest one-story house that she owns outright. She never attended college and worked as a clerical worker after she helped raise her three children as a stay-at-home mom. Her husband, who also had no college, was a front-line supervisor in a steel mill now long gone. Later in another fleeting conversation she expressed interest in and sympathy for the Tea Party.
I’ve known Helen most of my life, and I have never heard her use explicitly racist language or express anything but a kind of paternalistic sympathy for the plight of African Americans, with whom she has had almost no experience. There are many nonracial reasons why she would not and did not vote for President Obama. She is a life-long Republican, a small-town Protestant, and in her early ‘70s, somebody who is rooted in a more traditional set of gender roles and family arrangements that Democrats seem dismissive of. But she also lives in an atmosphere that is common among the white working class as I’ve experienced it -- an atmosphere infused with a free-floating anxiety that any gains for black people will come at some loss to white folks like her.
This atmosphere is not specific to working-class whites, but my guess is the anxiety is more intense for the working class than among more securely affluent whites. It is this anxious atmosphere of a racial zero-sum game that I suspect informs many of the “supporters” and “sympathizers” of the Tea Party movement, not the boldly explicit racism of the 10% who have told pollsters [PDF] that “racial prejudice against Barack Obama” is one reason for their support of the movement. . . .
Metzgar's post is useful for delineating the kinds of racism that exist among the various sorts of white people who comprise almost the entirety of the Tea Party "movement." And again, he raises for me a more specific question, about how to answer the common claims and fears expressed by white people like his relative, "Helen."
For one thing, the implications of the little that Helen had to say about race counter what she probably professes to believe. People like her probably believe that racism is a bad thing that should be denounced whenever and wherever possible. But then, if gains for people of color are costing white people, Helen and white people like her are against such gains. And so, if racism accounts for non-white losses that are made up for by such gains, then Helen and white people like her are ultimately in favor of racism when they worry about or fear such gains.
Privilege only works when someone else doesn't have it, and white privilege is no different.
But then, does it really follow that whatever gains people of color make must come at the expense of white people?
Of course, it's certainly not the case that people of color are now generally doing better than white people. White people do still benefit from racism, in both material and psychological ways, so when various forms of racism decline, such white benefits also decline. When loan officers, for instance, extend more loans at equitable rates to the people of color from whom they'd formerly been inclined to withhold loans and equitable rates, getting such loans and rates is more difficult for white people than it was for them before. And when hiring practices become more racially equitable, de facto "white networks" don't work as well as they did before, making it more difficult for white people to get jobs than it was for them before.
But then, just because white people have had it easier than people of color in such ways, and in so many other ways, doesn't mean that advantages that "just happen to be white" are right, or ethical, or just. So when white advantages recede and non-white chances move closer to even, the white people who complain about that mostly do so, I think, because they're not seeing and understanding white privilege. They're also not seeing the racism that resulted in that privilege, and still results in it; they seem to believe that the racial playing field is already level. If that's true, then when non-whites gain and whites seem to lose as a result, those whites who complain about that don't do so because they realize that their racial group is losing ill-gotten gains. They instead complain because they think they're being cheated.
I think I'm just scratching the surface here of the many causes of this common white tendency -- the resentful and fearful belief that gains for non-white people come at the expense of white people. It's complicated, in part because while some gains for people of color actually do come at the expense of white people, others do not. And again, many (all?) of the gains that white people lose when non-white people gain have been illegitimate gains in the first place.
So what would you say to white people -- who do see their generation generally faring worse than previous ones in economic terms -- when they admit to such ultimately racist suspicions or convictions, that improving the lot of non-white people will (and has) unfairly cost white people like themselves? Where would you even start?
Finally, do you know of any good writings or other sources on this matter?
This is a guest post for swpd by Brenda, who writes of herself, "I'm a half black, half white young woman trying to discover what it means to be both and neither. After 19 years, I still haven't figured it out."
I’m black. My skin is what I have self-described as "caramel," my eyes are green, and my hair is curly (although these past few years I‘ve been straightening my curls, adding to people's puzzlement). Yet I have been asked countless times by white people, “What are you?”
When asked to a white person, this question is met with confusion. But for me, it’s an inquiry about my race. No one had to tell me, even as a child, that “What are you?” meant “What race are you?” I just knew. My answer used to be, “I’m mixed,” which would raise other questions about what I was mixed with and how much of it. “Mixed” was never a good enough answer.
So, during a racial epiphany in my teens I realized: I’m black. I never thought of it as a choice, to choose to be either white or black, despite being mixed with both. I knew that “mixed” wasn’t working for me, and I just felt black. I thought that once I started fully considering myself black, and telling people who asked that I was black, this whole “What are you?” problem would be solved forever. However, that simply raised another, more offensive question:
“Really?”
And the occasional, “You don’t LOOK black…”
Perhaps it's because I don’t have that stereotypical “black girl attitude.” Maybe it’s because I don’t wear Jordans and say the N-word. Or maybe it’s because I have light skin. Whether it be a combination of every reason or just one, the message is clear: I’m not allowed to be black without a white person's permission.
This message is further exemplified in an episode of the tv comedy “Scrubs,” in the beginning conversation of what would be an entire episode about the subject:
Dr. Cox: That laughing had better not be aimed in my direction, bro.
Turk: "Bro?" Dude, bros don't even use "bro." You're not as hip as you think you are.
Dr. Cox: And you are?
Turk: I'm black. God knew my people would go through some struggles, so He gave us a lifetime supply of cool to compensate. Just like He knew white people would be rhythmically challenged, so He gave y'all this dance.
(Turk does a cheesy dance.)
Dr. Cox: You're black? Because last I checked, you had a nerdy, white best friend, you enjoy Neil Diamond and you damn sure act like a black guy, and these, my friend, are all characteristics of white guys. Please understand, I'm a big supporter of the NAACP, and if you don't know that stands for, it is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. And quite frankly, I always thought they should change the "Colored People" to "African Americans" but then, of course, it wouldn't be the NAACP. It would be the N-Quad-A, or NAAAA, and I know this probably sounds like a digression, but it actually leads me back to my original point. Do I think you're black? NAAAAAAHH!
So maybe it’s not a matter of skin color that Turk (Donald Faison), a black man, has his blackness refuted by Dr. Cox, a white man. Maybe it's instead because he acts “white.” At any rate, while the show is fictional, the real life comparisons are not. I feel under constant pressure to prove myself to white people, to prove that I’m black. I study slavery, racial and social issues, problems in countries in Africa, all the things that (I assume) white people look for when determining if someone without typical black characteristics can receive their “Black” stamp of approval.
Unfortunately, this white racist way of thinking carries over into the black community, and I find myself not being taken seriously when I tell other black people how I feel. I’ve been laughed at and I've received the same confused expressions that I get from white people. This may be because of the reasons I've already listed, but also for another: calling myself black and being treated as a black person are very different things. Very few times have I been blatantly discriminated against because of my perceived skin color, and I’m sure I’ve gotten away with things for the exact same reason. It’s possible some black people don’t see light-skinned people as having the same struggles and social disadvantages that they themselves have. I know my skin color is envied in this country, where dark skin often isn’t considered beautiful. And because of this light skin and the treatment from whites and some blacks alike, I feel robbed of the true “black” experience. I have the feeling I could be white with no problem from most white people; it’s the being black part I have to prove to their satisfaction.
Still, all this effort seems futile. In grade school, my brothers and I, who all have the same white mother and black father, were marked as different races in the school's information system. My brothers were labeled black, but I was labeled white. While it’s true both my brothers have darker skin than me and appear to white eyes as African American, the three of us were glanced at through these same white eyes and labeled differently. It happened in an instant, with one click of a mouse; it happened without a thought. Only my mother's outrage changed what the school considered me. With their permission, after my mother stated her case, I was allowed to be black.
I’m wondering if this problem is uniquely my own. I like to believe that it’s not. I know without a doubt that never has a white person accepted that I’m black when I tell them. I know that it always requires explaining, and that it’s always slightly awkward thereafter, as every time I’m asked and misunderstood, it’s another wedge between me and any white person I try to befriend. I know it’s still a personal struggle to understand what being black means to me, and how my blackness, or lack thereof, affects the white people I discuss it with. Every quizzical expression and stiffness of the words, “Oh… I get it,” while they lie through their teeth, is encouragement, or perhaps forced motivation, to keep proving myself to them, and to myself.
With this article, I hope to find insight into the question that has plagued me since childhood.
In the following CNN segment (sorry if a commercial appears first), Tim Wise briefly summarizes his most recent viral-post, "What If the Tea Party Were Black?" A Tea Party leader, Jenny Beth Martin, then enacts a common white tendency -- refusing to acknowledge the racism that someone else is pointing out -- by spilling a bunch of Tea Party talking points instead.
As Wise points out, the topic of this CNN segment is actually the topic of his post -- the differential treatment of differently raced protesters -- but that topic just doesn't interest Martin. As usual for white folks, other things seem more important than racism, which I guess is just, you know, a kind of side issue, something for the minorities to whine about in their limited way, something that actually died a long time ago, and if it didn't die then, it certainly died on that fateful, hopey-changey day that Barack Obama became president (and so on, etcetera, ad nauseam). And just because I as a white person am almost completely surrounded by other white people, and just because practically no white people, including the white-framed corporate media (with the kudo-worthy exception of Don Lemon), find that a racial problem, when it would find similar crowds of non-white people a racial problem, well, that's nothing alarming, or even worth pointing out, really. Unless you've got some kind of old-fashioned ax to grind. Or race-card to play. Or pet cause to promote, because you're really trying to hypocritically advance your own self-interest.
Ad nauseam. I sometimes get nauseous from trying to get obstinate white people to see racism. Do you?
[transcript below]
Transcript:
TIM WISE, AUTHOR, "COLOR BLIND" (via telephone): Well, the premise is very simple. We, as a country, tend to view white political anger very differently than anger or even just, you know, activism when it's evidenced or evinced by people of color. I just wanted people to think about, for example, you know, what would the public perception be? What would the discussion be on FOX News, for example, if thousands of mostly black protesters who were angry about some particular bill that was being considered by the Congress went to Washington, surrounded lawmakers on their way to work and yelled at them? Forget the whole spitting or the racial slur piece of it, just the yelling at them to do what they wanted? How would that be perceived? The fact is we know the civil rights movement knew they couldn't act like that. A, they had too much class. B, they realized that if they had done that, they would have been viewed as an insurrectionary mob. Likewise, the comments made by, you know, traditional mainstream conservative talk show hosts are the kinds of things that no black or brown commentator could get away with.
LEMON: I want to let Jenny Beth get in here. Does what Tim says make any sense to you? Does the racial makeup of the movement make any difference in terms of your tea party message?
JENNY BETH MARTIN, CO-FOUNDER, TEA PARTY PATRIOTS: We're ordinary citizens standing and we're standing up for three things -- fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets. And these three principles, they transcend race and they apply to everyone. The out-of-control spending the government is doing right now, it's going to affect our children and our grandchildren. Regardless of race, it's going to affect all of them, and that's what we're concerned about.
LEMON: So you don't think that the racial makeup, you don't think Tim's argument has any credence? You don't buy into it?
MARTIN: I don't -- I don't think so. We don't have --- we don't tolerate racism within tea party patriots. We focus on those core values. And when people aren't listening, sometimes you have to raise your voice.
LEMON: Yeah.
MARTIN: There's anger out there right now, and anger is OK as long as it's channeled in the appropriate manner.
WISE: You know what, Don? Don, there is a lot of anger on the part of Arab-Americans who are being profiled all the time since 9/11. But you and I both know, and I think Jenny would agree, that if Arab- Americans were to voice their displeasure at racial profiling, and frankly the way in which neither party, Democrat or Republican, have taken it very seriously, and were to go and yell at lawmakers to pass some type of anti-profiling bill, that they would be seen as terrorists. They would be seen as insurrectionary. I mean, that's the difference. And so, Jenny, you know, is talking about her movement not being racist, that's not the topic this evening. The topic is do we perceive mostly white folks' anger over whatever topic, whatever the issue is differently than we would if it was people of color? I think the answer to that question is obvious.
LEMON: Tim, you have a new book coming out, Color Blind, and I think it's very interesting. It's a very provocative point in your book that President Obama, and maybe some Democrats, might be doing the country a disservice when it comes to matters of race. What do you mean by that?
WISE: Well, the argument in the book is a little bit deeper than that. What I talk about in the book is that unless we are willing to call out the problem of racism in housing, in education, in health care, actual acts of discrimination, which I document fully in the book, what ends up happening is that, number one, by not calling it out, we reinforce the denial that is so prevalent, particularly among white America, that the problem is real. The second thing we do is in the case of the president, if he's not willing to call out some of the blatant racism, which I think is behind, for example, the Arizona SB 1070 or the blatant racism which occasionally manifests in some of that tea party opposition, the more radical edge of it, he's not willing to call it out. I think it actually undermines his credibility. When things are that obvious and you're not willing to -- some credibility in the public and that's one of the points I wanted to make.
LEMON: John is sitting here. I don't think John agrees with you.
RIDLEY: I don't quite agree. I do think when there's racism, you've got to call it out. And you see what's going on in Arizona. I don't think anyone has a problem saying that there are elements of this law that are clearly racist. But I do think one of the big problems that we're facing moving ahead in the 21st century, it's more socioeconomic. If you are a person of color --
LEMON: Hang on. Hang on. I'm going to let you finish your point. I'm going to let you finish your point. But even the Congressional Black Caucus and some very prominent leaders, Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, a number of people are saying the president is not focusing on issues that are important to African-Americans. Some are saying the president is not focusing on issues, including immigration is not strong enough on issues,
WISE: Don, it's not just -- it's not just that.
LEMON: Or for brown people. Go ahead, Tim, real quick.
WISE: Don, it's not just that, I mean, the claim that it is mostly socioeconomic. Let's take health care.
I document in the book specifically how the racial disparities in health care between whites and people of color are not mostly about economics. It is not mostly about do you have coverage or do you not. The studies are very clear that the reason people of color, especially black folks, have worst health outcomes are two things. Number one, the cumulative effect of racial bias over time and secondly, the actual dispensation of unequal care by doctors.
RIDLEY: Tim, I would just jump in very quick.
LEMON: John, go ahead.
RIDLEY: Sometimes when we start to segregate some of these issues and say they are merely black issues or white issues, you start to go away from the fact that they are our issues. Again, for people of color who are not economically challenged or doing well, those issues are very different from anyone who is economically challenged and facing those same issues. So I think as we move ahead, yes, we should call it racism when it's there. Again, in Arizona, we see folks doing that, but I think that we do get into a rut as people when they start saying, this is merely a black issue, this is merely a white issue, and not -- and President Obama is president of the United States.
LEMON: And he does have to walk a tightrope when it comes to this.
RIDLEY: I think he does have to walk a tightrope, but he is our president.
This is a guest post for swpd by Rain, who writes of herself, “I am a heterosexual college student. I'm West Indian, and I have Black and White blood running through my veins. I'm often mistaken for being Hispanic, Black and Asian, or mixed Black and White, which is what I am. I don't identify myself as anything other than me. . . until people remind me.
Matters of race, racism and interracial relationships have always been interesting to me, and even though I'm a newb reader of swpd (about 3 months), I've learned a lot in picking up on racism and battling it. I also learned that sometimes I shouldn't give people the benefit of the doubt. That said, let me talk about what happened a few days ago.
For my screenwriting class, all of us were to create a script written for stage (our teacher’s way of making us well-rounded). Considering that I like to go for shock value and I like to make people think, I created a story that had the air of the classic film Imitation of Life (I apologize but I must be vague for the sake of my story [copyright pending]). It involves a bi-racial girl, married to and living with a white man. And here is where the ignorance starts.
We were workshopping our scripts and that day it was my turn; during the weekend the entire class got a copy of my script to read, comment on and discuss during class. My story dealt with the culture of "passing" during the early-mid 20th century. I can understand that there are certain things people might not know about other races, but some of the things that my white classmates said were just downright ignorant and offensive!
When we were discussing how my protagonist permed her hair straight, one of the most abrasive and aggressive human beings I have ever had the displeasure of meeting in my entire life (who also happens to be white) said, "Permed? No. . . perming makes your hair curly."
I just wanted to pull a Zack Morris and call for the enter scene to "pause" while saying to the audience, "Did this White girl just tell me, a Black person, about what a perm can do to a Black person’s hair?"
Press play.
Even my teacher, who is also white (one of the more "enlightened" ones I might add), was like, "Actually, ________, I think you're wrong," in that way he does when someone says something really stupid. It was even more painful, because when your work is being evaluated by your peers, you are not allowed to speak, but I jumped right on it!
"No, no. . . perming can make your hair straight. Black people aren't born with straight hair," I said, in the most calm and non-angry-Black-woman way that I could muster. Is it just me who feels that this should have been common knowledge? Hasn't she ever looked at a Black person’s hair and wondered, "Hm. How did they get it straight?" I can't possibly imagine that she thought Black people were BORN with straight hair!
I apologize if I have difficulty expressing what I feel exactly, but I can't find the right word. Is it ignorance? Plain stupidity? Neglect?
I feel like, to not know something like that. . . you have to be a bit neglectful. Ignoring. Look at it this way: if a black person were to say, "White people have blue eyes? What? You mean there are people actually born with blue eyes? You mean they aren't wearing contacts?!" If a Black person said that, they would be laughed out of any room, for their stupidity.
Another point of interest is that I go to school in Nassau County, in New York, which also happens to be, in statistical terms, one of the most segregated communities in the entire country.
After I calmly offered my correction, the girl who can never shut up and accept defeat then says, "Oh. . . well, that's why my mother is a hairdresser in [nsert predominantly rich White area in Nassau].” So that should be an excuse? As the daughter of a hairdresser, you have EVEN LESS of an excuse to not know something like that. AND she is 23. Considering how large the Black haircare market is, and how ingrained in Black culture having good-looking hair is, why wouldn't anyone know something like this? It's in the movies, it's in pop music! You'd have to do a lot of ignoring not to notice.
And if that wasn't bad enough, a close friend of hers in the class, a white (Italian American) male in his early 30s, then chimes in, "But. . . no matter what a Black girl does. . . there is nothing she can do to make her hair look like a White girl’s. No way."
I wish I could have captured my teacher’s face on camera: "______, I think you should just stop . . . now . . ." He was trying to save the guy some embarrassment, and I had to keep it together from giving him a tongue-lashing right there.
This guy then added about my story, "How could her husband not know she was Black?"
To which my Professor responded, "Are you not familiar with 'passing'?" to which this man, who always claims to not know anything, says "no."
Have they been walking around all these years with their eyes closed and corks in their ears? Genetics is a very fickle thing. Have they not heard of the families that have one white parent and one black parent, the family has twins, and one is blonde haired with blue eyes while the other is brown-skinned with black hair? Both of my parents can pass for white, but I came out darker than both of them!
I held myself together, in part because I wasn’t supposed to speak as they discussed my story. As the class finished they could then ask me questions, and then my teacher gave me the floor to say anything I wanted. I understood that this was not the time or place to drop some knowledge on that guy and girl about how offensive and ignorant the things they said were, so I just addressed the guy.
A quick note about myself, I have what you might call the "typical" hair of someone who is bi-racial. (Here is a link to an example). So I said to this guy in my calmest, non-angry-Black-woman voice, with all eyes on me, "_______, . . . I just wanted to let you know something. I don't perm my hair. But when I go to the hairdresser, my hair looks and feels like White hair, like that of any person you would see in this room."
And there was a bit of an awkward silence, in which this man threw his hands in the air and leaned back in his seat in the most defensive way. In the most, "I'm white! How should I know?!" way.
When my Professor couldn't take it anymore, he said, "See, _______, you learn something new every day!" to lighten the mood. We moved on, but . . . then I felt bad for letting him know.
I just want to know, swpd readers, am I crazy? Does their behavior seem neglectful to you? Should I not be so sensitive?
And have you encountered white people who use their being white like that, as a kind of excuse for being ignorant about racial issues?
This is a guest post for swpd by fromthetropics, who writes of herself, "I am mixed cultured, and always feel in-between -- both here and there, but neither fully here nor there."
In Australia, I often hear people say, “(White) Australia is a very tolerant society. It’s more tolerant than most places.” I hear it from both whites and (assimilated) people of color alike. I'm sure you hear this too about other white-majority countries. When people say this, I sometimes wonder who they’re comparing white culture to. Are they comparing Australia to developing countries and the like, where social upheavals often result in whole ethnic groups targeting other ethnic groups for killings, or to countries which have a high level of ethnic homogeneity, like Japan or Korea? I feel as though they are saying, “At least those things don’t happen here, because we are a tolerant and multiracial/ethnic/cultural society.”
Either way, the underlying message is that white-majority countries are superior because they are more 'tolerant' than countries populated by poc. Those who claim that their country is more 'tolerant' seem to be saying that white-majority groups are open to having pocs joining them, but poc groups like to self-segregate and be homogenous. Either way, it looks as though white culture is superior because its members are more tolerant (i.e. less racist/prejudiced), and poc culture is inferior because its members are less tolerant (i.e. more racist/prejudiced).
I struggled with this idea. I look around, and on the surface white people making this claim seemed to be right. But, something about it bugged me.
You see, I try very hard to understand white culture in Australia in order to integrate. I have to. I live in a white majority country, so I can’t escape it. I go into white spaces and feel uncomfortable. So I’ve spent years trying to overcome this discomfort. I have read race blogs for months on end, gotten my head straight about race issues, dealt with my own internalized racism, learnt how to identify and deflect ignorant questions/statements, and so on and so forth. To say that I have expended a lot of effort on all of this is probably an understatement.
These days, my efforts are finally paying off. Lately, I feel as though I have finally learnt how to ‘code-switch’ into white Australian culture (though mainly middle class, as that’s the people I associate with, mostly through work). By this I mean, I am now better at talking and acting like a white Australian. My code-switching skills are far from perfect, but they’ve significantly decreased my discomfort in white spaces. It actually feels very weird to consciously notice yourself go through the process of ‘assimilation’ by learning to code-switch. Suddenly things are so much easier.
And I am such a great learner (/sarcasm) that I’ve even caught myself looking at another Asian who looked uncomfortable in a white space and thinking, “She really needs to just go get some confidence and get over herself.” Of course, a second after, I said to those thoughts: “Shut the eff up. You remember how it felt don’t ya? How uncomfortable it was? Now go talk to her and help her feel at ease. That’s your job as someone who has integrated and can now play ‘host’, not hers.” But it’s hard not to forget that she’s there. It takes conscious effort.
Now, what about when white people go into poc spaces or poc-populated countries? Do they expend this much effort into integrating? As far as I know, most of them just feel uncomfortable and avoid it. Recently I heard one white friend who was living in an Asian country say, “It’s really hard at the workplace because they speak in their own language a lot instead of in English. And I just can’t get used to the culture.”
“Yeah, it would be,” I said. “It’s fine for the short term, but you might not want to do it for the long term. Integrating into the culture there is indeed difficult.”
It was as though I was trying to assure him that, yes, I understand that the people and place are not as multicultural as white-majority countries which take in many immigrants. That’s why white people don’t feel comfortable there. It’s hard.
Then I heard a record scratch.
Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch! Wait a sec. I speak English. I’ve spent my entire life learning how to code-switch cultures at a highly-skilled, sophisticated level to integrate. In fact, it’s expected of me to do this. And yet, only now do I feel more integrated. (This is not to say that there aren’t white people who have tried to reach out to me. There have been and I am grateful to them. But I’m sure it’s the same with the Asians who know my white friend.) But this white guy hasn’t learnt the local language. He’s only spent a short period of time in the country compared to the time I spent trying to integrate into Australia…Well, no wonder he can’t integrate. What was I thinking?
Did I then turn around and tell the guy off? Of course not. He’s a friend who is having a hard time. I know what he’s going through. So, okay, I didn’t tell him off, but I must confess that I couldn’t resist pointing out that I have a hard time too in Australia.
So, I’m thinking -- white culture appears ‘open’ and ‘tolerant’ not because white people are naturally more open, tolerant, and therefore superior, but because poc are doing a bulk of the work trying to assimilate and code-switch, thus making it easier for white people to accept us and mingle with us.
It's similar to when Western men say that they are less sexist compared to men in Asian countries because they don’t hoot at women or harass them as they walk down the street. They say this as though Western men are inherently less sexist. They like taking credit for this. However, they forget that they have come to this point thanks to the work of many feminists who have fought to force men to be less sexist. Women did a bulk of the work to make men act less sexist.
Likewise, white people for the most part are not doing all that much to help pocs assimilate. And then, some of those who go to other, non-white countries complain when their relatively minimal efforts to fit in don’t pay off quickly. In both cases, white people seem unaware of what pocs go through in the assimilation process, while poc are relatively aware of white people -- aware of both what they go through in the ‘assimilation’ process, and of the pressures they put on us when we’re going through that process. So, maybe white people seem more tolerant because a lot of poc work hard to assimilate, which then makes it easier for white people to think that they're more tolerant.
From "Noam Chomsky Has 'Never Seen Anything Like This,'" by Chris Hedges (@ truthdig):
Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of “brainwashing.” And as our nation’s most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.
“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”
"The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen," Chomsky went on. "Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response.
"What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election."
"I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime," Chomsky added. "I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies."
"I listen to talk radio," Chomsky said. "I don't want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. 'What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.'"
In response to the science girl's recent post here and its many testimonial comments -- about the all-too common white tendency to see a potential criminal in every black person -- a commenter name Mr. Byte provided an example of another common white tendency:
It ain't right. It will change, because it has changed. Slower than molasses pouring in winter, but not so many years ago, "Driving while Black" would likely be punished with a severe beating followed with a "Resisting Arrest" charge a lot more often than I believe it happens today.
Things will change, you see. So just have some patience -- such white-talk usually implies -- and while you're at it, how about you stop complaining too?
I talk to white people about racism frequently, especially when they say or do something racist, and also when race is related to what we're talking about, whether the other white person realizes that or not (and usually they don't, which is why I bring it up).
I think I'm a pain in the ass this way for many of the white people I know. But they rarely say so; most of them are too polite. Most bear with me, and some actually listen, and even help with my efforts to delineate this or that example of racism or de facto white supremacy.
However, one tendency that I've been getting more frustrated with, and a tendency that I know a lot of white people almost reflexively feel or thinkin response to examples of racism in our times, is to embrace the belief that "things are getting better."
I've come to think of this as "white racial gradualism." It's a belief, even a feeling, that racism was really awful back in the day, when whites treated Indians badly and enslaved black people, and then there was like, you know, Jim Crow segregation, which was also bad, but it wasn't as bad as the stuff before. As for today -- the white racial gradualist is thinking while hearing about racism -- white racists do still exist, but they're dying out. This person might even admit that most or all of today's white people still have some racist tendencies.
But, none of that is as bad as it used to be, right? As Mr. Byte wrote -- way down in a comment thread that's full of examples of blatant, stressful, hurtful, and life-threatening racism -- "It will change, because it has changed."
As I said, I find expressions of this belief, that racism is gradually, inevitably declining, more and more frustrating lately. My awareness of this white racial gradualism is also frustrating because I know that even more white people think it than say it.
It seems to me that a common consequence of this belief is that when most well-meaning white people witness or hear about a new act of racism, or encounter new evidence of institutional racism, it doesn't stick with them. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, because things are getting better, so why remember it? And so, the example doesn't get added to the many earlier examples that they've witnessed or heard that also didn't stick with them. The evidence doesn't accumulate into an understanding that racism is nowhere near going away, because in response to the latest example, something inside of us often says, "Well, that's sad, but hey, things are getting better. Eventually, that kind of racism won't happen much at all anymore. Just like racism in general."
So when I try to talk about racism with white people, one thing that's blocking their reception is this sense that it's not as important as I'm trying to say it is. Because, you see, things are just not as bad as they used to be, and they're certainly going to be better in the future.
This kind of thinking sort of short-circuits serious consideration of today's racism; it also lets white individuals who are willing to at least acknowledge racism off the hook in terms of actually doing anything about it.
And, of course, in many ways, things are not getting better; they're actually as bad or worse than they used to be. Fifty or sixty years ago, for instance, the overwhelming majority of prisoners in the U.S. were white; now the percentages are reversed. In many American cities, neighborhoods are more racially segregated than ever before. Rates of unemployment, wealth disparities, health care disparities, educational funding and the lack thereof, a myriad of microaggressions . . . When I'm talking to a white racial gradualist, I could go on and on like that, and come up with a wealth of evidence that in many ways, things are the same or worse than at this or that before.
But then, something inside that person is saying, "Yeah, in some ways it may be worse. But, overall, things are getting better."
Why do white people so often feel this way?
I'm not a racial statistician, so I can't say for sure that in terms of racism, things in general are not getting gradually better. But even if they are, they're still bad, and again, in some ways they are worse than before. Racism still causes a hell of lot of pain; it also still endows white people with countless forms of unearned access and privilege. Why not acknowledge that more fully, deal with it, fight against it?
"Because that's not my job," many white people seem to think. "And one reason it's not my job is that things are already getting better without me. Things don't need my help. So have patience, you complainers -- things will get better because they have before, and so they will again."
This sunny disposition about the supposedly imminent demise of racism is the result of not having to suffer the debilitating trauma that it causes for people of color. It's also the result of a long history of white subjugation and dehumanization of other people, which continues to make it difficult, and perhaps impossible, for white people to empathize with people of color.
Do you encounter this white gradualist belief? (And by the way, by labeling it white, I don't mean that people of color never believe it as well; I'm writing about stuff white people do.)
Even if white people don't express this blithe racial gradualism, do you still sometimes sense that they're thinking or feeling it? And that those gradualist thoughts are preventing them from taking racism all that seriously? All that, personally?
