Note for the readers: This is a two part series on race in America. Part I deals with a lot of the misconceptions about racial conflict, and Part II deals with the new racism that we are experiencing as a country.
"Part I: The Misconceptions"
As a member of the upper middle class from an overwhelmingly white
suburb of Chicago, I really can't say that my ethnic and racial background is much of a story by itself. However, because of the way I've grown up, and because of some of the people and experiences that I've had in my life, I feel like it is proper, and timely during this election campaign, to talk about an issue out of my normal 'realm'; that being race in America.
First of all, let me point out a few key things:
- Despite what many people are starting to believe, the rise to Democratic Presidential nominee of Illinois Senator Barack Obama and the statistical backing behind the increase in socioeconomic status among many African Americans *does not* signify the end of racism in America. As I will discuss in more detail later, it is part of a new wave of subtle, creeping, and dangerous bigotry.
- A recent poll reported that *only* 10% of white people still hold an "unfavorable" view of blacks as a population. Many commentators have interpreted this as another signal of the end of white racist attitudes towards blacks as a major political and cultural issue. However, I happen to take issue with that interpretation. Surely this is a sign that we still have very far to go in ending racism. After all, how many people are willing to admit, even to a pollster, that they are racist, if they are even aware of their prejudice? Additionally, how is 10% of the largest racial grouping a 'small' problem? This means that out of ten white people, one of them has an inferior view of blacks simply because of the color of their skin. This statistic proves, once again, that actual attitudes have changed little while a façade of diminishing racism becomes commonplace.
- Sociologists use the term "hypodentrification" to define a cultural tendency to refer to someone of mixed racial or ethnic heritage by the more 'minority' identity. For instance, Barack Obama, who happens to be half-black and half-white, is portrayed, in large part, as an 'all-black' candidate instead of being called 'mixed'. This absolutist identification tends to polarize our society along these lines, by creating a rift that cuts everyone into 'neat' little groups (Divisions of the 2000 Census). This is a dangerous mindset for one of the world's most diverse countries to have because it forces people to be one thing or another. This separates entire groups of people along fairly arbitrary lines.
- For many groups, especially young white people, exposure to inner city black culture, which should be understood as a subculture and not universal, can largely be limited to hip hop and rap. From these musical forms, the symptomatic stereotypes can be misconstrued as actual values of the larger black community, something that if you've listened to any mainstream rap lately, can be very treacherous. Perceptions built upon these unrepresentative values can result in ruinous perspectives of the larger black culture. This link contains a paragraph called "Damaging Media Images" that really dissects this issue.
- While our main racial conflict throughout our history has revolved around how whites view blacks, what people may not know is that the percentages of blacks that openly view whites as "unfavorable" is fairly higher than the 10% of whites who admit to racist feelings towards blacks. While the actual number of blacks who view whites negatively is less, the fact remains that this is not a one-sided issue. Furthermore, the conflict between blacks and Hispanics is far more tense than any attitudes towards whites, as the unfavorable views of each exceed more than double their negative perceptions of whites. The race issue isn't about one ethnic groups views of another, it really is a societal issue.
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With these issues in mind, let me tell you why I wanted to write a piece on race. Not only has it been an issue during this Presidential campaign, but the racial scars of this country remain open and unkempt. In order to format lasting change in this area, we don't need just one race to carry the burden of making amends, but we need all members of every race to speak up, including the typically least vocal on the subject: white people. One thing to note is that while
whites sometimes do speak up on race, it tends to focus more on the problems of an ethnicity and not the positive relationships that could be formed.
So I've got a top five list of people, alive and dead, that I'd like to meet, and two of the top five are black political leaders (Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr.). While they seemingly have little direct responsibility for any of the rights that I as a heterosexual white male from a fairly nice suburb have, they promoted something that we all share as freedom-loving people of the world: the idea of having equality in our liberties. This is something that democracy thrives on, and in fact, we don't have a democracy unless we have equality in liberty.
Because we share this essential ideal as one of our core political and personal beliefs, we can work together to solve any conflict that we have with each other. So how do we deal?
(To be continued...)
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