This is the third part of a paper I wrote for my Media, Race and Politics seminar. You can see the first part here and the second part here. I lied… there’s one more part. I’m going to post that on Thursday.
Every time someone tries to engage someone else on the issue of race they run up against the same fundamental issue; that those in the racial majority have been brought up to not believe in racism. We (I certainly include myself in the majority) might acknowledge the existence of race and racism in America, but we have also been taught to proactively dispel thoughts of race and racism in our own worldviews.
Our parents were the first generation to come to adulthood in the post-civil rights era. This is the lesson that has been passed onto their children: that racism is behind us, that every human being is equal, and that everyone deserves to be judged on the basis of their actions rather than the color of their skin. These beliefs are the beliefs of my generation and they have become fundamental to our ideologies.
`
I didn’t include this part in my paper, but reader, please examine yourself right now. Have your eyes glazed over? Have you heard this before? Think it applies to someone else, those examples of personal prejudice, not to you? THAT is the problem— these issues are always deferred, never personal. But its not about placing blame… back to the paper, i guess..
`
Issues of race do exist. They have not disappeared; rather they have mutated into a different form. The present day form may actually be more damaging than ever before— the majority race so badly wants to believe in equality and a non-racial world that become closed to evidence to the contrary. But believing in such a world is akin to fully believing every commercial, every sales pitch.It is only the advertisement, the sprucing of the walls that still stand. Forgetting that race remains a key issue (and educating your children thusly) is only worsening the dialogue and hindering progression
One of the first articles that we read, the Newsweek cover story “Is Your Baby Racist?” dealt with this issue—that a child would come to racial conclusions on their own, especially when dialogue on the subject of race does not exist. Furthermore, with parents influenced by Reganomics and capitalism, my generation has been brought up to believe that a person’s socio-economic status is an accurate reflection of the quality of their character.
`
Did you, reader, ever have a conversation with your parents about race today? With your teacher? Not just about the history of racism, and what it is… but what it means, how it thrives today?
`
So when a young person of my generation enters a black neighborhood they are met with poverty, crime, and violence. Portland, Oregon, where I grew up, has a black population of only three percent. The neighborhood that they have localized in (centered, of course, around Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd) is generally regarded as the worst neighborhood in the city. Both my family and my school have inadvertently told me to never enter that neighborhood.
What else am I can I learn of the black community other than that it is isolated, poor and violent? I am told to judge people based on the quality of their lives rather than the color of their skin. I learn to judge people unjustly, without regard for their racial heritage, their histories or their situations.
`
BTW, if you’ve read this far… thank you so much.
