if this board is going to have a discussion on race -- which i can't imagine happening soon since i get the impression most members are from the dominant culture or connect with it one way or another -- i'd like to see "minority" races step forward.
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Ah, is it that time of year again? Time for someone to announce the lack of discussions about racism on lbo-talk?
Yes, I suppose it is.
Okay then, here I am, an official Black guy (wait, I’ve got that member card somewhere), brown like a cup of coffee with a bit too much milk (what’s that called, café au lait? - the legacy, no doubt, of some plantation miscegenation and oh yeah, there’s, more recently, the Cuban dad too; so all sorts of “minority race” stuff going on ova heah).
Does my minority status grant me special powers of perception? In some ways yes and in others no.
How do we go about discussing racism, or, to rephrase that, how do we discuss racism without lazily falling back on time worn stories of “dominant” culture perfidy – the ‘White guy doing wrong’ tale? Yeah. And there’s that other danger too, a debating cul de sac, the supposedly bold statement that is usually shouted for maximum effect – America IS a Racist Country! Well, okay, but what’s next in the analysis comrade?
Oh, and there are other problems as well. There isn’t just one kind of racism – a flawlessly working 24/7-hate machine directed against non-Whites – but many. These racisms form a kind of electromagnetic spectrum of tribalist action (why “tribalist”? – well, isn’t this what racism, at the ground level of person to person interaction, really is?). Each tuning, or nodal point, has a different character, a different signal to noise ratio.
The kluxer is at one end and the well meaning PBS contributor, who, despite being ideologically opposed to racism, still feels a twinge of discomfort at seeing her daughter coupled with a darker dude who’s not wholly within the empathy circle, is at another.
Most Americans probably fall somewhere within the great middle with quantum spikes in one direction or another occurring at stress moments.
And there’s this other fact which cannot be ignored: people divide themselves up for all sorts of reasons – region, political affiliation, accent, etc – if the chief problem were racism, instead of, say the human capacity for internecine war of varying intensity then Europe and Africa (to juxtapose the supposed opposites) would, within their own worlds, prior to the age of interaction have been peaceful paradises of “mono-racial” harmony.
But of course they weren’t and aren’t. Something in us, as a species, prevents this.
Enough loose philosophizing…back to America with its overflowing jails, balkanized housing patterns, police fondness for “minority” ass whupping and so much more.
And now I’m roaming, like a bit of interstellar rock, liberated from the gravitational well of larger celestial bodies but directionless. Is this because I don’t have a POV? No, it’s because the topic is immense, it covers too much ground, it spreads in too many directions, it starts in the deepest recesses of the still mysterious mind and moves outward into the world of things – of social relations, of politics, of capitalism, of mating habits, of so much.
Perhaps this is why you don’t see the ‘discussion on racism’ you desire. The discussion is ongoing but split into fragments – of necessity.
.d.