About race pt. 2

Mark,

After reading your paper and trying to think about some of the questions you posed in the last paragraph of your post, I am stuck with my own thoughts, unpopular as they may be. I can’t just say what I know is “politically correct,” and agree without really meaning it. I really am trying to get inside myself and figure out why I am prejudice and where.
I do have prejudices. I had prejudices about homosexuals before getting to know any. I feared them and what it meant to be one. Pure ignorance. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of homosexuals I don’t like, but it’s because of who they are on an individual level, not because they are homosexual. If you are going to dislike someone, do it for who they are a person, not because of some category you can put them in. I think any person, no matter how homogenous (white, male, etc.) can suffer forms of being profiled, disliked, unwanted or misunderstood. Fear is generally a motivator for hatred. I personally feel it’s this fear that contributes to the desire to label and dismiss people (and cultures.)
Take high school (even all white), you have the self-appointed “elite” making and breaking trends and people. You have clicks where people don’t fit in and are carrying labels that probably won’t ever be shaken. I am not saying this is close to the apartheid experience, just that we are taught at a very early age its acceptable to judge, dismiss and ridicule people vs. trying to understanding their value. Some people thrive on their hate, and it’s the only way they know to build up their self-esteem, or distract them from what is really going on, self-hatred.
In response to your proposed scenario, no, I wouldn’t get on a soapbox and speak out. I would debate with people individually, whenever I heard the ignorance pour forth, and hope reason and logic could open people’s minds to the inequality that exists.

P.S. Are you going to add some of your own personal experiences in the paper, I guess I am curious to know first hand what you have experienced and how/if it has changed you in any ways?

Your sentence "Any system which is not entirely random is, at some level, prejudiced." struck a chord! Just as I believe there is no true altruism, I have to question whether there is true randomness in any institution that depends on human judgement in order to survive.

In light of the lack of postings currently being issued, I am throwing in some reacions from a good friend of mine, with whom I have been bouncing the issues of racism and political correctness. Each paragraph is a seperate response, but it should be clear what she is responding to. She has a native perspective that I can't possibly relate with, and I thought she made some comments that were rather thought provoking.

I read a lot about racism in Social Psychology. They figure it pretty much has to do with schemas ( a mental codification of experience that includes a particular organized way of perceiving cognitively and responding to a complex situation or set of stimuli ) we set up in order to cognitively process things. As for institutional racism, that's pretty much a nightmare topic. Everyone has some form of prejudice, even if they don't even know it.

If someone would have grown up feeling the centuries of oppression of their ancestors, they might have a different take on the idea of political correctness. And no, I don't think it's the same thing as being gay. Primarily because as a gay individual, one's ancestors have probably not experienced centuries of prejudice and hatred, and passed that experience on to their prodigy; unless of course they were a minority as well. I'm not saying political correctness is necessarily a good thing, because it can get pretty annoying, but it has served to some extent to allow society a means to individually right some of the wrongs of prejudice against the oppressed. Political correctness offers a way to honor oppressed minorities by acknowledging derogatory terms previously used, and replace them with less offensive and even honorable terms (if we get creative). In reality, we are not all Americans who chose to come to live in this melting pot called America. Some were forced to become part of "white European America." Those individuals have culturally experienced things "white Euro-Americans" will never understand. Whether it is right or wrong, some oppressed people feel the pain of oppression deep within, and it's not just a matter of "getting over it." The wounds are still too fresh. Consider someone who lost their parents to alcoholism, while living on a reservation created by "white Euro-Americans" and was then forced to live in a missionary orphanage, cut their long beautiful hair, not speak their language or learn their customs, and grow up with little or limited sense of hope for the future because they were regularly called a "primitive savage." Then tell that person who lives in America, and I know a few of these individuals, that they "are coddled into comfortable little boxes under the auspices of political correctness." Can you understand why that person would not want to be called "Savage," "Primitive," or even "Indian Squaw" rather than a "Native American Woman." And those are the kind terms, others I've heard used are "Blanket Ass," "Injun," and "Drunken Indian" to name just a few. Which terms offer more honor and dignity. In my personal opinion, I think political correctness should be used as a healing tool until future generations of Americans have gotten their strength back, and no longer feel the pain or fear their ancestors passed on, of course that would also presume prejudice no longer exists. Labels then may no longer be a necessity. That's just one pudgy, dark-skinned, woman's opinion with a slight Native American perspective. I don't pretend to speak for others though. I know some that would say I'm just a whiner.

Many minorities don't want special, but rather equal treatment. Also, if you offer one group benefits, without offer them to all, you are essentially creating an inequality of sorts. It's all very "dog chasing it's own tail silliness." The bottom line is that race should not be considered a tool to be used for opportunity or oppression.

Speak out and go to jail? Hmm...I'd probably take the subversive one. I am, according to my grad-school mates "The Subversive One." Not having first-hand experience of apartheid I'm not sure how subversiveness would look though.