Racism, a white perspective.

Musings on the problem of racism

by a white person

for white people.

Racism is usually presented as simply being unfair or abusive to some underprivileged group, which in this country is generally blacks. (There have been plenty of other oppressed groups in this country, but blacks are consistently on the bottom.) Racism is unfair and unjust, without doubt, and the counter to racism is that we, the white people, ought to be nicer to blacks, basically appealing to our consciences.  This is also valid, and if everyone had a conscience that might be more effective, but it is all too easy to counter "we are being oppressed" with "not by me, that's someone else", not seeing that we all participate in a system that codifies oppression.

There is, however, another issue that almost everyone seems to ignore when discussing racism, and not by accident.  Racism is bad for white people.  This is true for any oppressor actually.  There are two main pieces to this.

First is the point made by Lyndon Johnson (before he was president).:

"I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."  -- LBJ, 1960

Racism's purpose is to keep (poor and middle class) whites occupied while the elite (whites) are raking in the profits. It is not an atavism we will magically grow out of.  It is being actively maintained.

Now the thing this quote does not touch on is the importance of fear.  It is not only looking down on the blacks, but being afraid of them.  In fact, fear is enough.  As long as you keep worrying about the "scary black man"  you won't be paying attention to the fact that you are already being robbed.

Racism has had a long history, but in the modern era it really is about class, just not in the way it is usually presented.  Whites and blacks really are treated very differently, but not to control blacks.  In fact, if all the blacks in this country rose up in anger, they would be rounded up, disarmed, and put in camps (or far worse), and if you doubt that, just look at our history.  We already have a higher incarceration rate than the rest of the world (possibly second to North Korea), and we have done concentration camps before.  What the white elite really fear is the rest of the whites rising up in anger, or worse joining forces with the blacks, because that is something they really could not control, so they keep us distracted.

If this is something that you doubt, consider this:  The only period in US history when race relations actually improved is the mid to late twentieth century when the very wealthy had diminished influence and there was a concerted effort to bring everyone into the middle class.  Now that our society is once again becoming seriously unequal, racism is becoming an increasing issue.  Do you think that is a coincidence?

Consider this picture.  A hundred people all work on a task.  They work hard and while some may work harder than others, they all do what they can.  They get paid a thousand dollars.  One of the men takes the thousand and distributes it.  twenty people get a dollar each.  Sixty more get two dollars each.  The man gives his special friends $20 each and then keeps the rest.  Those who got a dollar each are resentful because they know they worked just as hard as anyone else.  The ones who got two dollars each are telling them they should just put up with it, that if they were better people, they too could get another dollar. The ones who got twenty each make a big show of keeping the two groups apart while making sure that the conflict is the only thing anyone talks about. As long as the two main groups keep fighting, the man who kept the lion's share is laughing in the corner.  

The more we see attempts to address economic inequality in this country, the more we will see race being made an issue by those who prefer the inequality.

A related factor here is the role of racial profiling and police brutality.  On the one hand these practices convince whites that black communities are a hotbed of crime and that white communities are safe, when the reality is that white crime is being ignored or dismissed.  On the other they create a seething resentment in the black community, giving the whites another reason to fear them.  This fear also creates a self perpetuating cycle of police brutality. The civil rights attorney, Constance Rice, noted this in an interview with NPR.

"I have known cops who haven't had a racist bone in their bodies and in fact had adopted black children, they went to black churches on the weekend; and these are white cops. They really weren't overtly racist. They weren't consciously racist. But you know what they had in their minds that made them act out and beat a black suspect unwarrantedly? They had fear. They were afraid of black men."

The tactics used to foment racism in this country are similar in many ways to the tactics of demonization used to start wars and again not by accident.

The second point is that racism has a corrosive effect on those who possess it, whether they are aware of it or not.

Racism, like all prejudices (pre-judgements), is a short-circuit in thinking.  By holding to a prejudice, you are protected from thinking, from striving, from excelling.  All you have to do is be better than those (whoever is the object of your prejudice), and that is easy, because no matter how little you do, or how foolish you are, you are by definition better than them.  Prejudice is to your mind like a hole in a bucket.  You can fill the bucket only so far until you get to that hole.  The more holes and larger, the more difficult it becomes to fill.  The real problem is that prejudice creates ignorance, rather than being created by it.

Prejudice means you cannot recognize another's potential, and so you are not pressed to reach your own.  You are better than the black man who happens to be an astrophysicist while you are a truck driver.  Of course, this superiority falls apart in the face of real evidence, so it is very important not to look at the evidence.  One common solution to that problem is to resort to violence.  If you can physically damage or destroy him and any evidence of his equality or superiority, then you can stop worrying about it.

Relatedly, I think it is not an accident that those societies that conquer the world tend to end up as backwaters once history has passed them by.  They are unable to compete as equals anymore, having given up their ability to see themselves and others in a true light.  I see evidence of this happening with US culture already. 

More things to consider:

Most of racism's effects  are invisible to you, but are definitely not invisible to the people being discriminated against.  "They" are not whining. They have a vastly different experience than you.  When was the last time you were followed through a department store just in case you might try to steal something?  The last time you were pulled over more than once in a day?

"I don't see race" is the worst possible kind of racism.  We already have a default way of thinking that says white people are "people" and everyone else is something else, e.g. blacks or at best "black people".  To not see race is to not see the experience of others and to be unable to see how your experience and their experience interact.  Whites in the 1800s and early 1900s did not believe themselves to be racist either.  They just took it as given that anyone other than themselves were inferior.  We have advanced, but not as far as we would like to think.  And yes, race is artificial (none of the so-called races are significantly different in intelligence or most other factors), but the experience of those of different (artificially defined) races is very real and cannot be wished away.  To disregard these differences in experience is lazy thinking at best and a kind of silent genocide at the worst.