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By Crispin Sartwell
The horrific death of James Byrd Jr., has focused attention on
the persistence of racism and the need for racial healing. Byrd,
who police say was dragged to his death behind the pickup truck
of white supremacists in Texas, was essentially lynched. What
most black folks know that most white folks to not is that we
still live in a deeply racist culture. Incidents of racist violence
such as that visited upon Byrd illustrate that. That so many
people came together at Byrd's funeral to deplore racism is a
very good thing. But the way this incident is understood also
presents certain dangers.
Most white people think that racism today is limited to a few
crazy extremists such as those who allegedly killed Byrd. We
still associate racism with the Ku Klux Klan, with a lunatic fringe
that is still fighting the Civil War, with white separatist militias,
with bigots in the Deep South. Average white people don't think
that they are racists. Because they would never utter the "n-word"
or eat in segregated restaurants or teach their children explicitly
that black people are inferior, they believe that they cannot
be prejudiced. When public opinion surveys are taken, almost
no one responds with what are considered to be racist views, which
has led some "experts" to conclude that Americans have
overcome their legacy of racial injustice. The truth is much
uglier than that. The civil rights movement did not end racism
in this country. What it did was teach white folks how not to
appear to be racists, not even to themselves. White
people learned not to say the wrong words, learned not to try
to produce segregation by armed force, learned not to post signs
that say "whites only."
Meanwhile, American cities and schools continue in fact to be
segregated. There continues to be a huge disparity between the
incomes and employment prospects of the races. And white Americans
continue to harbor the attitudes that preserve these conditions.
When white Americans think of violent crime, for example, they
usually think of black men. And when white politicians want to
talk about race, they don't hurl racist epithets; they talk about
"crime" or "welfare." Because racist talk
is unacceptable, our cultural discourse about race proceeds in
code. That does nothing to solve the fundamental problem; it
only makes that problem extremely elusive.
With a bigot, you know where you stand. But what do you do when
someone smiles in your face and doesn't hire you? Or denies their
racism, then follows you around their store because they think
you are a shoplifter? We white folks have convinced ourselves
that we can't be racists because we don't say the wrong words.
That means that the ongoing problems of African American communities
cannot be caused by racism; they must be caused by the residents
of those communities themselves. White America is committed to
a massive collective delusion that allows us effortlessly to blame
the victim.
White Americans continue to benefit in the most concrete ways
from the results of racism. To begin with, the poor state of
education in inner cities creates a pool of cheap labor; black
and brown folks often perform cheaply the labor white people do
not what to perform. There are also less concrete benefits -
psychological ones. White folks' images of blacks as violent,
ignorant and highly sexual (think of the stereotype of the "welfare
queen:" black, reproducing continually and irresponsibly),
allow whites to construct an image of themselves as civilized,
well-informed and self-controlled.
White Americans' image of themselves is constructed through their
exclusion of black people. White people take themselves to be
the opposite of whatever they think black people are. Thus white
people only understand themselves in what they exclude or segregate
from themselves. This process is as strong now as it ever has
been. The basic racism of American culture has not even been
addressed, much less solved. Everyone should deplore Byrd's lynching.
It is much harder to do anything about the central, subtle racism
that surrounds us.
SOURCE: Sartwell, a resident of Pennsylvania, wrote "Act Like You Know: African-American Autobiography and White Identity," University of Chicago Press, 1998. Reprinted from the 21 June, 1998, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition. Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.(WFI EDITOR: Racism was deliberately devised by the early colonials, as a means of exploiting low-caste Europeans as overseers and managers of non-white workforces, to the benefit of absentee land owners. The notion of "racial solidarity" enabled a poor white person to be used to contain and manage black and native American slaves and serfs. The status-conscious European, who had no status back in Europe, in the colonies was suddenly an important person, this is what has always been meant by the idea that America was the "land of opportunity." Needless to say, that slogan was never floated to entice Africans to migrate to America.There is no true ethnicity called "white" and there is no ethnicity called "black." And anyone who is acquainted with racists [you know who you are] realizes that even the most slight pigment of the skin, can be cause for a racist to accuse the bearer of being "black." Whites can be Russian, Irish or Spanish, and blacks could be Moorish, Tutsi, or Hutu, or many others; what matters is "passing." Many light-skinned black people pass as white every day, among them was Dinah Shore. The notion of black and white "races" is a deliberate effort to divide the American people from within, that has been perpetuated by the slavemaster republic. Only the abandonment of the republic, and the restoration of traditional government, will provide the foundation that will make it possible for America to heal the wounds caused by the hate we call "racism.") |
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