I have read many posts about what people are calling Black racism. I found this definition of racism: “a belief that race is the primary determinate of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
I realize that pointing out the existence of racism and the need to discuss it stirs up sensitivities on both sides. I also realize the need to admit that the white race in this country has historically seen itself as superior to other races, particularly the black race. If you watch the documentary, “Race, the Power of an Illusion,” you will learn that our “founding fathers” intentionally created the myth of white superiority to gain and keep control of property and lands.
While I as a white person have experienced the ugliness of being hated and mistreated for who I am, I do not consider that experiencing racism. When a black person is hostile towards me, I do not view it as racism against me. I do not like it. I do not run from it. I deal with it as best I can. But I do not consider it racism.
I do consider this. African Americans who are descendants of slaves, cross paths with descendants of slave owners every day. Descendants of the people who bought and sold their ancestors. Descendants of the people who raped, whipped and murdered their ancestors. Descendants of the very ones who owned their ancestors, and treated them like animals, considering them 3/5 human. And now these descendants are their teachers, their employers, their merchants, their neighbors and their co-workers.
And many still carry ingrained attitudes of superiority with them, consciously or unconsciously. And these attitudes are conveyed in many subtle, unspoken terms.
I believe that the biggest difficulty in race relations lies in the inability of white people to listen to black people. I mean really listen. Without criticizing. Without defending. Without interfering. Without interjecting our values, our opinions, and our view point. I believe that most of us white people still see life from the view of the oppressor. And from that standpoint, we will never fully understand the views, actions and reactions of the oppressed.
I found this definition of racism: “a belief that race is the primary determinate of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
I don't much care for that definition. I don't know that I've seen any "one sentence" definition that is entirely what racism is and none of what it is not. The definition you've presented will do as a starting point, however. Maybe one day I'll compose one of my of my own. If/when I do, it would include what "yours" does. What I think is missing from "your" definition is (1) verbiage that distinguishes racism from things that are similar and/or related, but that are yet not racism and (2) verbiage that reflects the multidimensional aspects of racism as apart from those things that resemble it or are related to/outgrowths of racism.
I tend to agree with you that it's very, very hard, probably even impossible, for blacks as a class/segment of society to be racist. The reason I say that is that the most odious thing about racism is not merely that one holds the beliefs "your" definition notes, but also that the people holding those views can and do/have, on a class level, act(-ed) on them without comparable and due recourse by the despised.
Blacks, being the minority of the size theirs is, simply haven't the numbers in positions of power to effectually act on whatever racist-seeming notions one, some or many of them may have. If blacks had the numbers, there'd be something to talk about in that regard, but they don't; thus there isn't, nor, barring literally a major whites-only mortality explosion, will or can there be in the upcoming quincentenary. After all, after some 400+ years, blacks are still but some 12% to 14% of the population; they aren't suddenly going to comprise a third or more of the population anytime soon, or not soon for that matter. [1]
Were this a discussion about sexim, one might try to make the case that women could exercise sexism toward men. There again, however, women simply don't hold enough positions of genuine power and authority to with real impact do so. Moreover, because men and women coexist in the same households and have conjoined ends in mind, women displaying sexism, again at a societal level, against men is unlikely to happen for were it, it'd be tantamount to women cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
That's easy enough to countenance across racial lines, particularly in a society where miscegenation is relatively rare. When it bodes for ill affects on one's own household, however, it makes no sense at all. That's a key way in which sexism differs from racism. Most, perhaps all, other "isms" work that way too.
“Race, the Power of an Illusion,” you will learn that our “founding fathers” intentionally created the myth of white superiority to gain and keep control of property and lands.
I don't for a minute believe the Founders created racism. All indications I've seen show it predates their founding activities by several hundred years. Humanity has for millennia been aware there are multiple races, but AFAIK, it was during the Reformation that took root the notion that one race -- Caucasians -- was intrinsically superior to the other two.
Among the key questions of that period was whether indigenous people of Asia, Africa and South America had souls, thereby making them be, indeed, human. The Roman Catholic church decided they did, and Calvins and other Protestants, impelled by their need to distinguish their belief system from Roman Catholicism, disagreed for quite some time.
Religion thus became the thing that defined what it meant to be human, and basically being a pagan meant one was not. If one wasn't human, it was as acceptable to enslave them as it was to domesticate a horse, cow or donkey and put them to work as beasts of burden.
That "philosophical" doctrine/justification, of course, had to change as more and more Africans, Native Americans and Central and South Americans converted to Christianity. At the same time, there were economies depending on slave labor. It was in that period that the Founders arrived at their impasse regarding the nature, role and practice of slavery in the nation they aimed to form.
That dilemma was at once caused and "solved" by various European thought leaders' inventing zoological, biological and botanical rationales that conferred humanity on blacks and browns, but a lesser form of it. Additionally, in the 18th century, among the then emergent leaders in disciplines of ethnography and anthropology, the central question became "what happens when the races mix."
In that age, Africa, Asia, Australia and the South Pacific were rapidly colonized while British, French and Spanish colonists engaged also in their North American colonial expansion, which brought them into brutal contact with Native Americans. As a result of colonization, native people around the world were disappearing. The most extreme cases, found in Tasmania in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, resulted in Tasmanians being literally wiped the off the face of the earth, while the Maori population of New Zealand was reduced by more than half in a period of a few decades. Their extinction was in large measure due to disease. European thinkers were fascinated by this, particularly given their ignorance of the role of germs, viruses and bacteria.
What did they observe, but not fully understand?
They saw "colored" folks "dropping like flies" as soon as the Europeans put them to work as slaves and concluded the native non-Europeans people must therefore be an inferior form of human. That was all the "science" they had to go on, so they went with it.
I suppose one can't really blame them for that, for nobody then knew that it doesn't matter what race one is; if one has never been exposed to a disease or virus, one cannot have developed a resistance to it. One can, however, hold plenty of blame over later individuals who perpetuated those notions of inferiority well after it'd been discovered that epidemiological factors, not race and any inherent inferiority stemming from it, had everything to do with the observed events.
That's about where the state of knowledge was about race, and what it entailed and didn't, when the Founders constituted the U.S. of America over the course of 1787 to 1790. [2] They definitely didn't do a damn thing to dispatch any racist ideas, though some did try. Trying is nice, but results are what matter, and as goes squashing racism from America's foundations, they got none. Thus they perpetuated, rather than created, racism.
While I as a white person have experienced the ugliness of being hated and mistreated for who I am, I do not consider that experiencing racism.
That's a huge hurdle for any white American to cross and be comfortable in their own skin after having done so. Damn near everyone I know well is white, and, truly, not including my kids [3], I don't need two hands to count the ones who've arrived at the same place you have. I need two hands to count the ones trying to get there, but it's not easy for them even as they want to get there. I give those folks props for trying, encouragement on their sojourn, and grief for not having yet succeeded.
many still carry ingrained attitudes of superiority with them
I don't think racism is ingrained, not in the way that, for example, curiosity, hunting and chasing is ingrained in a cat's being. Racism is ingrained only insofar as and by dint of being taught, just as how to kill successfully, and then eat their catch, are things a queen teaches her kittens. If one doesn't teach racism, and one also teaches against it, one's kids won't become inculcated with it. Obviously, one cannot teach that of which one is ignorant, but one overcome that if one sincerely wills to do so, but it takes an open mind and a secure conscience to actually do it. [4]
I believe that the biggest difficulty in race relations lies in the inability of white people to listen to black people. I mean really listen. Without criticizing. Without defending.
Yes, I think that defensive thing -- a thing borne out of internalizing what blacks and other minorities are saying -- gets in the way more than anything else. I know that's a key stumbling block for the friends I noted above. They hear/see "white people" and their brain says "me, Tom" or "me, Mary." Seeing "white people" and construing it in the abstract is among the hardest things one might ask them to do. Even when they start out comprehending the term in the abstract, it morphs into "I'm white. Someone's pointing at me." [5]
It happens less often now than it used to, but occasionally they still revert, upon hearing remarks about racism, discrimination, etc., thinking that somehow the speaker might be referring specifically to them. Unless the speaker happens to be someone who knows them really well, there's no way it's them to whom the speaker specifically refers.
The task is for them to consider being said and ask themselves, and then to and for themselves, answer honestly whether the described behaviors/thoughts are ones they exhibit. They don't have tell others that they've made the same mistakes. They just need, in their own mind, to "own" whether that is a failing they have, and if so, commit to eradicating it and not spreading it.
I remember being on my own journey, so to speak, and the black partner (we were only three partners strong at the time) in my firm once in a while talked with me about race. I bought up the "welfare as lifestyle" one time. You know what he said to me?
He said that while what I hear from him is a message about what whites can and need to do to get rid of racism, what I don't hear is what he says to the impoverished "welfare kids" and their parents about what they need to do make "the American way" work for them. He straight up said -- and I'll never forget this -- he said:
I was a poor kid born into a profoundly poor family in the backwoods of Alabama and there is no child -- nary a nig*er, white, Asian or Hispanic -- that's had a harder way to make than I. I have more hard truths to tell you and those kids in Southeast and my kinfolk in Alabama than any one of you will ever hear. Just 'cause you hear me tell you things that challenge you does not mean the don't too. We all have hard truths to learn, and ain't none of us going to learn them unless someone tells 'em to us and we take it heart. So you focus on fixing yourself and let the "welfare kids" focus on fixing themselves, because this issue of whose self fixes who first is BS and won't get anyone anywhere.
I may have missed a word or two there, but nothing important. It's not about who takes the first step. It's not not about who succeeds first. It's about accomplishing one's own objective regardless of what anyone else does. That was something I understood quite well when it came to school work as a kid and college student and in a business sense when I finished grad school. It took the combination of him and my wife for to "get" that on a personal level.
Does everyone have that combination of collaborators, mentors I suppose, who can perspicuously get that message across to them? I don't know. I found the right people who did so for me scholastically, professionally and, in my wife, and Shawn, my business partner, personally. All I can say is that one must seek them out. I think those individuals are looking for "you" too, but "you" have to help them find "you," and "you" do that by looking for them and receiving them when they arrive.
I believe that most of us white people still see life from the view of the oppressor.
I don't know if for most white folks it's quite as overt as that statement makes it seem. I also don't know that it's quite as simple as that statement makes it seem, though, admittedly, I think nothing about racism is simple. It might once have been unalloyed, but if it ever was, it is no more.
There's an essay I read some time ago. I've attached it to this post. When one has some time (it's about seven pages long), that is those who can read it without getting defensive and flustered and read it from the perspective that the author is trying to be helpful not hurtful or accusatory, it's worth reading. For white individuals not at that point, and/or not trying to be, I'd say don't bother for it'll just annoy you. And quite frankly, I don't really want to, nor will I, engage in the type of conversation that'll issue from the ire that essay can inspire, at least not with people here whom I don't know well on the personal level that one needs to respectfully and honestly have that kind of conversation. Were I to know the other party well and be in an venue where we can converse face to face, I'd engage, but not here. I have neither the will nor patience to do that.
I believe that most of us white people still see life from the view of the oppressor. And from that standpoint, we will never fully understand the views, actions and reactions of the oppressed.
White folks can, but they won't if they don't spend enough time -- years -- being an obvious minority. I'd like to say that living as such in a place where being white is soemthing that's looked down on by material quantity of people would speed the process, but I don't know that such a place exists; thus the issue is more one of there being minimal opportunity than it is lack of actual ability. It's not hard to find places that have deeply entrenched racism. What's hard to find is places where merely being white is sufficient to precipitate it.
I know one sure way whites can fully comprehend it is the way my wife came to do so. For her, it was the contrast in attitudes among American whites, blacks, etc. and those of the people in the countries where she lived until coming home to the U.S. for college. She spent nearly twenty years of her life as an white American female who never lived in the U.S. I don't know that it'd take one some score of years, but I know merely going few times on vacation to XYZ place, or spending six months doing some sort of outreach/charity "thing" isn't going to do it. One has to come to fully know a different way a life to fully "get it" upon returning to the U.S.
Will plays a huge role too. I don't think I'd "get it" but for having spent a lot of time working outside the U.S. and really having and wanting to "get it" to make my marriage work. I know for myself, it was far from an overnight, or even decade's worth, of journey to get there.
More importantly than that, however, is that I don't know that what you're talking about, OP, what my wife developed, which is genuine empathy, is what anyone has to arrive at. I think right now, what whites need to arrive at is knowing what behaviors and attitudes "cross the line." Unfortunately, I think not nearly enough whites know where lays that line, and too many -- for whatever reason -- think they do, and rarely do the more subtle forms of racism register as having gone too far, so to speak. I think, however, one can learn those things, but lacking a way to truly become empathetic, it's still going to take a degree of faith to at least sympathetically accept that, yes, those subtle things too are forms of racism and must therefore be eschewed, deplored and derided when observed.
Notes:
- As some whites I know say, "Sh*t. There aren't enough blacks to waste my time and energy being racist toward them. If I'm gonna summon up the energy to hate, I'm at least gonna hate someone worth hatin', and in America, the only people there's enough of to be worth hatin' is whites, and I damn sure ain't hatin' myself, and since that ain't happening, I don't have time to be racist. I got better sh*t to do." That's not exactly how I'd phrase the same sentiments, and I'm not entirely sure they fully understand racism, but I "get" what they mean, and I'm pretty sure those individuals will give anyone a fair shake regardless of their race. I guess one can't ever be "that into someone else's head," but as much as I can be, that's what I think.
- I suppose, strictly speaking, one could cite 1776 or even the "Articles" period (1777 - 1787), but those years haven't quite the same gravitas as do 1787 to 1790. I mean really. Declaring independence in 1776 officially started an insurrection, but it didn't make us a be nation; it made us, in our Founders' minds, be not part of England's empire, i.e., a part of no nation. The Articles of Confederation, technically, made us be a nation, but not much of one insofar as it produced what amounted to a cabal of geographically demarcated "tribes" and little, if anything, else, thereby teaching the Founders that if they carried that "states rights" sh*t too far, sh*t is exactly what they'd have as a nation.
- My wife (deceased) made a huge effort -- far, far more of one than I'd have been able to make but for her -- to make sure our kids weren't taught or permitted to form ideas about others based on race. She grew up a white girl who, until boarding school in Europe and then college in the U.S, lived nowhere whites were the majority race.
Before she passed, she insisted that all forms of racial generalizations, jokes, innuendos, etc. be unacceptable and sternly punished in our home. She just wasn't having it, none of it -- not the patronizing, not the "colorblind" kind (She used to say, "If you tell me you don't see someone's color or race, you're a blind liar, which means you're blind to the fact that I know damn well you're lying."), or any other subtle manifestation of racism.
I honored her wishes after she passed. I'll say too that in some instances, my kids in some ways learned what she was teaching faster and more effectively than I did, especially my oldest. Every so often, he'd catch me slipping up in some way that didn't register for me, and he'd call me on it. I didn't have much choice but to own my mistake and give him props.
- I think a lot of folks don't, or don't know know how to, teach teach their kids to be confident in their own skin without being bumptious.
- I struggled with that, but even before I met my wife, I was well on my way to developing a mindset that told me "I know you don't know me, so you can't possibly know whether you're talking about me. I know, and I know you don't." That helped me a lot with the abstraction thing. It also helped with allowing me to question myself and be truthful with myself in answering the questions.
