"I am not a racist"
George A. Fox is the City Manager for Ridgefield Washington. He made this comment because he fired the only African-American police officer in the town (it apparently is very small). He protested that the firing was not for racial reasons and ended with that quote. Here is the Oregonian article that attracted my attention.
http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/metro_north_news/113375310522870.xml?oregonian?nn&coll=7
I have no idea of the circumstances of this case. But I do have a problem with that quote. I hear things like that regularly. He is a racist, she isn't a racist, I am not a racist, etc. It's like saying "I don't have red hair." "I am left-handed."
It drives me crazy.
Saying that some people are "racists" and some people aren't implies that there are a finite number of people who are. And that you either are or you aren't. This is a very unsophisticated way of looking at our society.
We are all racist. We all in this country make divisions and comparisons on the basis of race. And as we have now discovered that there is no scientific basis of race, only a cultural one.
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm
So all of us together perpetuate the cultural idea that someone races are different. And that there are races. Some of us work hard and spend our entire lives trying to unlearn and unteach those divisions, but then still make comparisons. Racism is powerful and pervasive and historical. All anyone can do is work very hard to think about what they are doing and whether or not they are making distinctions and divisions on that basis. And that poor City Manager needs to come up with another line of defense because that one won't work.
http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/metro_north_news/113375310522870.xml?oregonian?nn&coll=7
I have no idea of the circumstances of this case. But I do have a problem with that quote. I hear things like that regularly. He is a racist, she isn't a racist, I am not a racist, etc. It's like saying "I don't have red hair." "I am left-handed."
It drives me crazy.
Saying that some people are "racists" and some people aren't implies that there are a finite number of people who are. And that you either are or you aren't. This is a very unsophisticated way of looking at our society.
We are all racist. We all in this country make divisions and comparisons on the basis of race. And as we have now discovered that there is no scientific basis of race, only a cultural one.
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm
So all of us together perpetuate the cultural idea that someone races are different. And that there are races. Some of us work hard and spend our entire lives trying to unlearn and unteach those divisions, but then still make comparisons. Racism is powerful and pervasive and historical. All anyone can do is work very hard to think about what they are doing and whether or not they are making distinctions and divisions on that basis. And that poor City Manager needs to come up with another line of defense because that one won't work.
posted by Portia | 12/12/2005 04:04:00 PM
2 Comments:
I think racism -- or whatever other kind of ism applies in a given culture -- is a pretty ingrained evolutionary trait. Humans, in the interest of survival, benefited by being able to distinguish members of "their" group from those of "other" groups, and it is simple common sense at work when a person jumps to conclusions based on their own personal experience and that shared with them by other members of their group, in the absence of more complete information. Ten thousand years ago, if you concluded that the rival tribesman coming up over the ridge "was a person just like I am," you could very well have ended up with a spear through the head as you jogged up to greet him. This is essentially what prejudice is -- guessing you know a person based on outward characteristics or their similarity to others you've known who share those characteristics. In America, race happens to be the clearest signifier of difference, but even in nearly homogeneic societies like those of East Asia, people can recognize subtle differences that would be invisible to Western eyes, and draw conclusions from them. Often very wrong conclusions, of course, on their side of the pond and ours. But you're absolutely right to conclude that this is a long slog of unteaching and unlearning, because we're overcoming millennia of until-quite-recently very useful evolutionary development.
I agree with a slight difference. Putting things in categories is a natural biological function of the brain. (This has a seat, it is a chair even though it looks completely different from that other chair)
And discrimination based on those categories is a totally natural evolutionary brain function. (I am going to sit in this chair rather than on that cactus)
And extrapolating that kind of discrimination based on experiences with different types of people is something we have done throughout history. (You're a man? I have seen men do this!! You're a Saxon? A Saxon killed my father - I'm an Anglo!)
It's when it is passed down through families, communities, societies and cultures that it becomes insidious. (My father told me that the Scottish are violent liars who stab you in the back and stink. And here you are, slightly smelling, so it must all be true. I will base my entire Scottish policy on those assumptions.)
And then when we had a really strong economic reason to justify discrimination based on skin color (the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - it started so many things that we still use today: using gold as currency, piracy, cross-continent trade, racism) it became an institution. But a relatively modern institution. Discrimination based on nationality or religion goes back much further.
So hopefully because it started so recently it can be changed more easily than some of those other old hatreds. But it is one of the building blocks of our country and so we can't deny it. Or pretend it doesn't affect us.
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