Can we come to a consensus what racism is, and what a racist believes?

Great Debates
21

So I’m going through the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, looking for elements that my humane education programs correlate with, when I come across the following standards for fourth-grade social studies (the year that kids learn about North Carolina:

Compare this to NC Census data:

So I got no problem at all with discussing the 1.2% of North Carolinians who are American Indian, the 1.4% who are Asian. It makes perfect sense to discuss the 4.7% who immigrated (or whose ancestors immigrated) from Latin America. And of course we’re going to focus on the 72.1% who immigrated from Europe.

I can’t help feeling like we’ve forgotten someone here. And I can’t help but wonder whether this oversight is deliberate, perhaps because white North Carolinians get a little touchy about the Late Unpleasantness and its causes.

Where, Askia, does this fit into your model?

Daniel

22

That’s pretty accurate, actually, assuming you’re willing to parse semantics.

A few things occur to me.

  1. Maybe it’s a simple error. The continent “Africa” was left off and no one’'s corrected it yet.

  2. Maybe it’s not an error. Since Learning Competency 02 appears to deal with Indigenous Peoples in North Carolina and voluntary immigration to the established American colonies by various European ethnic groups and later, it would be inappropriate to pretend African-Americans belong in that particular category. The impact of transported enslaved labor and insidious nature of white supremacy toward this ethnic group was a whole different situation.

  3. Maybe it’s an oversight. Lots and lots of people still think African-Americans (an specific ethnic group) is synonymous with African immigrants from various parts of the continent (a whole lot of different ethnic groups).

  4. Most likely it’s not particularly relevant. Like in most parts of the country, voluntary African immigration to North Carolina (college students, workers, expatriates) didn’t happen until the mid-twentieth century and they arrived in such small numbers that it has not (yet) made a significant impact on North Carolina history and culture, and may never do so. Any cultural impact African immigrants would have made were most likely already introduced and disseminated by African slaves and their descendants hundreds of years earlier.

  5. Most likely the Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery in the U.S. is covered by another Learning Competency.

  6. Could be it’s a deliberate omission in the entire North Carolina state Learning competencies designed to subvert known facts about U.S. slavery in North Carolina.

If #1, #2 and #5 are correct, it’s a non-issue. #3 might be racial bias, #4 might be mild discrimination. Only #6 would be actively racist and that’s still not a given with the facts as we know them.

23

Language is not intended to provide comfort. Words exist to transmit meaning. Redefining words to increase our comfort level almost always comes at the expense of clarity.

People see discrimination where none exists all the time. This has nothing to do with how we define racism and all to do with paranoia or mistaken conclusions.

I mean, I may think the white guy who looks at me strangely is doing so because I’m black. But it could be that he has thing against tall women (I’m 5’9). Or it could be that I’m too skinny/fat for his tastes. Or it could be that he isn’t thinking about me at all and simply smells something funny.

But if I have a good reason to think that he has thing against me only because I’m black (maybe I hear him say certain things under his breath), then I will not sit there and think to myself:

"Gee, I wonder if he is just prejudiced, just bigoted, or gasp racist? I mean, he hasn’t said anything about white supremacy. He’s not carrying a copy of the Turner Diaries. I don’t know if he believe in a hierarchy of races. Wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions about how racist he is even though I just heard him say ‘there are too many niggra on this train’ “. No siree, wouldn’t wanna jump to any conclusions.”

Based on your definition, I’d basically have to go through all those hoops just to identify his racism. This makes no sense to me.

24

:confused: But that’s not what that competency deals with. To quote it again:

“Voluntary” doesn’t appear anywhere in there. The overarching theme is ethnic groups and the multiple roles they have played. The subcategories focus on specific ethnic groups, including Native Americans, Whites, Asians, and Latin Americans, and then have some general stuff.

If the learning goal really were about voluntary immigration, I’d agree with you; but that’s not what it’s about. I’m having trouble coming up with an innocent reason for the elision of Black North Carolinians when Asian North Carolinians are specifically singled out for comment: it’s not as though Korean folks have had a more profound effect on NC history and culture than Black folks.

Slavery is not drawn out in another competency area, at least not in the fourth grade when students are studying NC specifically: cite.

Daniel

25

Regarding the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, that’s a pretty big document. It isn’t that Africa was left out of the curriculum, but that its study (along with Asia’s and Australia’s) is reserved for minds more mature than fourth grade. The seventh grade social studies curriculum is much more advanced and encompassing, and includes historical, geographical, and contemporary contexts, like:

26

Using language precisely nonetheless provides me with a lot of comfort. I’m usually pretty clear, but I find myself repeating the same thing OVER and OVER again because a lot of people don’t see things the way I do.

…and over and over and over…

People see racism all the time where none exists. One of these reasons I urge people to look for other racist indicators is that it guards against paranoia and mistaken conclusions. My definition of racism uses racial discrimination as a clue.

Or he might think you’re fine as hell but his girlfriend caught him staring at you and that’s his “Oh, shit – busted” face.

Again, none of this is enough to make me think offhand he’s a racist in and of itself, and I could very well go through the same process of elimination you just did.

But if you were strolling through, say, mid-80s Bensonhurst and encountered this white guy with this reaction, I’d say your hunch about him being racist may well be dead on. The environment and circumstances in which racist acts occur is a pretty decent indicator, too.

Don’t get me wrong. I love inductive thinking. I mean, sometimes, some examples are so egregious you might only need one to arrive at the correct conclusion.

But for something as important as calling somebody racist, again, to me… I like a little more evidence. I welcome the possibility I might be wrong because I like to think people in our society have moved beyond that.

I jump through a lot of mental hoops. While it makes me hesitant it also keeps me endlessly entertained.

Why do you NEED to identify his so-called racism? His racism, even if it’s true, is NOT your problem. That makes no sense to me.

27

One senses almost an eagerness to pin the label. It seems to me that the more damning the label, the more hoops there ought to be.

28

bolding mine

Why is it worse to call someone racist than it to call them prejudiced? Why it is inherently more damning to be a racist bigot than a nonracist bigot? See how when you define racism so that it comes loaded with importance, you implicitly say that nonracist prejudice is somehow less important? You make it okay to be a bigot just as long as it doesn’t cross the line into racism. This is Stormfront’s wetdream. They can always deny being racist by saying they don’t believe whites should oppress anyone else, they just want to live in all-white society as decreed by the Lord. And by saying that, they can attract more moderate sheep to the herd who can accept being prejudiced but don’t want to admit being racist.

Because “racism” has become such a loaded word, people read way too much into it than is necessary and it makes communication difficult (see the thread that inspired this one). Rather than confronting their own prejudices, people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince themselves that they are not racist (or worse, start playing stupid gotcha games). They react hyper-defensively to the mere mentioning of racism because they don’t want to be likened to Hitler (“but some of my best friends are black!”) Instead of looking at the effects of their biases, they get bogged down in rationalizing why they are not being racist. As if it’s okay to harbor their prejudices just as long as they are not being “racist”.

Because it is what it is. Why should I forgo the use of a perfectly good adjective or noun when describing the nature of someone’s prejudice?

29

Left Hand of Dorkness. First, thanks for the cite this time. I had trouble visualizing the scope of the problem until I read through their social studies curriculum. My assumption, as you may have guessed, was that even if blacks were not mentioned in that specific grade level objective you cited, we HAD to been included somewhere else, either in another Competency Goal or social studies grade level.

But having skimmed over the entire North Carolina k-12 social studies curriculum, firstly as a South Carolina-trained and Ohio experienced educator, and then as an Africentric educator, I find it oddly lacking enough in several key areas explicitedly dealing with African and and African-American history (early colonial era, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow era, Civil Rights era, post-colonial era in Africa – all except the last pretty germaine to North Carolina history) to give me pause.

This document is absolutely stunning in its commitment to avoid specifying anything pertaining to African American history or peoples or even the events, people, technological advances and socioeconomic movements of southern life prior to the Civil War – at least not until fifth grade, where they have maybe two objectives:

“4.05 Describe the impact of wars and conflicts on United States citizens, including but not limited to, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, and the twenty-first century war on terrorism.”

(Anybody else see the problem with mandating teaching about seven major international conflicts covering 145 years of warfare with 10 year old students?)

“4.06 Evaluate the effectiveness of civil rights and social movements throughout United States’ history that reflect the struggle for equality and constitutional rights for all citizens.”

(I don’t see how you can EVALUATE the effectiveness of the Civil Rights era when you haven’t been required to studied it yet, but maybe that’s just me.)

I mean, the Roanoake Lost Colony is basically a historical curiosity involving the so-called disappearance of – what? – less than a hundred and fifty people? – Yet that gets an entire fourth grade objective to itself – Competency Goal 3, Objective 3.03. Yet they don’t require students to specifically talk about slavery?

This is some saaaaad shit, boy.

My take: it definitely discriminates against black history. But look again: it doesn’t glorify the southern aristocracy, the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan or the organized resistance to civil rights movement. Since this document is at least as guilty of omitting its entire immediate regional history and cultural era or even explicitedly teaching its agricultural dependence on King Cotton, antebellum South culture, states’ rights, the War Between The States, the rise of white supremacy, I wouldn’t call it precisely racist so much as its oppressing a lot of distasteful local history that – let’s face it – a lot of parents want to gloss over. It’s racial bias seems to be pretty much evenly split, pretty much focussed on Pretending Nothing Interesting Happened Here Between 1865 And The Mid-70s.

I’d have to look at approved textbooks to really get a sense of what’s being avoided here. Right now it looks kinda bad.

There are ways around it, of course. If you wanted to teach about these historical facts, you’d just have to tailor currciulum to fit these Competencies and Objectives. You’d have to be the kind of teacher where that’s something you decide is important enough to pull outside resources into your classroom.

I wouldn’t call it racist, per se.

Insiduously biased and discriminatory.

PC, biased, pandering, intellectually dishonest and academically cheap, but not racist.

Quite.

Pretty goddamn close, though.

Social Studies – as taught in most public schools – is pretty awful anyway.

/On Preview:/

Liberal. EX-actly. Whether the ideological label be sexist, fascist, terrorist, feminist, communist, liberal, capitalist, there needs to be some justifiable documented indicators and proof first. People fling around labels to much.

you with the face. I’ll be with you in a minute.

30

It’s worse by racism is more extreme. Racism encourages hate speech, violence, society suppression of another groups rights, and leads to shit like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Because racism engenders a LOT of smaller behaviors I feel it’s more important to attack those. It is important. I take it seriously. Calling every little house fire an inferno distracts from real instances if overwhelming fires.

Yep. Guilty. And I’m sorry if this offends you. If I seem sympathetic to racial bigotry its because I’m a racial bigot myself on occasion. You should hear the shit coming out of my mouth watching heavyweight boxing. It is not okay. I’m intellectually aware of it even though I have not emotionally divorced from it. I’m a flawed human being still working on tolerance and acceptance.

Yeah. That’s probably true. The subtle difference is intent. I’m admitting to bigotry and saying it’s wrong to avoid becoming a racist and maybe eliminate my other racial biases by recognizing them. They’re admitting to bigotry and saying it’s okay to feel that way and to encourage neophytes into becoming full-blown racists and maybe cultivating any other racial biases recruits may have and actually discriminate, hate, hurt, oppress. Funny thing is, my way seems to be working and their extreme viewpoints seem to be increasingly marginalized each passing decade. I’ll stick with what I’m doing, thanks.

I urge you to forgo use of “racism” and “racist” precisely because “people read way too much into it than necessary” “it makes communication difficult” “people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince themselves they are are not racist” and “they react hyper-defensively.” I mean, you ever consider the fact they DO because they AREN’T? The racists I’ve encountered were damn proud to be racist, knew they were racists, embraced their racism and proselytized it to others – unless they were racists in recovery.

For me at least, the best way to get people to examine their possible racist indicators is to open a dialogue using NEW words to describe parts of their beliefs and actions: words like like “bigotry,” “racial bias,” “racial discrimination,” “racial prejudice,” “xenophobia,” and “ethnocentrism” – to replace the catch all, “racism.”

I don’t think anything is inherently wrong with ethnocentrism. Anthropologists have identified it as a common And yeah, I think some racial biases are worse than others, or at least more severe in degree of harm. racial bias is middling. Discrimination is a bit worse. bigotry is NOT as bad as racism. Even worse than racism is ethnic cleansing.

People have narrowed their conceptual vocabulary of racial biases to mean only the most extreme case – racism – in all cases, and that’s simply not an accurate picture of reality or what’s in the hearts of people with prejudices.

I think we may be closer to agreement than we were a few posts ago, even if you don’t yet agree with me (and may never agree with me) that “racism” is devalued by overuse.

31

Thanks for the answer; it helps me to think about it (to be honest, I’ve never looked at the Soc Studies SCOS for fourth grade before today; as Lib says, the SCOS is a massive document, and I’ve been looking at it bit by bit as I study it in different classes).

It’s something that I worry about as I get ready to go into teaching. I’m in my third semester at my second college for being an elementary teacher, and both schools have had lily-white teaching programs. I had a pretty wonderfully pinko social studies professor at my last school who strongly emphasized the need for diversity in social studies education, but he never pointed out the SCoS’s shortcomings, possibly because he never once referred to them in-class. (I should probably send him an email: this is the sort of specific that I think his class lacked). I live in Asheville, probably the most racially segregated city I’ve ever lived in, but the public schools are not, thankfully, segregated.

I guess I worry about teachers who will teach from the SCoS. From what I’ve observed, those teachers are gonna be white, overwhelmingly white; but their students will not all be white. Of course all students need to learn about the history of African Americans in their state (in various contexts, including slavery, Greensboro sit-ins, Zora Neale Hurston’s Hillsborough days, etc.), but it seems to me that, were I a black student, the omission would be especially glaring. It certainly wouldn’t help me believe that my teachers gave a shit about me.

Some teachers can bring it in, of course; one of my most powerful school experiences was reading Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry in the sixth grade and I and my classmates doing projects based on the history of racism. But that was with a spectacular teacher; it worries me that the mediocre teachers may have no impetus to talk about such a component of NC history.

My wife says I need to send a letter to the folks who write the SCoS. Maybe I should.

At any rate, there’s the idea of institutional racism. Would you agree that, even if the folks who wrote the SCoS can escape charges of racism (maybe out of a misguided belief that The Late Unpleasantness is too unpleasant for nine-year-olds), the result is institutional racism?

Daniel

32

Well, there’s also

3.05 Describe the religious and ethnic impact of settlement on different regions of the United States.

and

3.06 Compare and contrast the roles various religious and ethnic groups have played in the development of the United States with those of Canada, Mexico, and selected countries of Central America.

in fifth grade.

And then once you get to 8th grade:

3.04 Describe the development of the institution of slavery in the State and nation, and assess its impact on the economic, social, and political conditions

3.07 Explain the reasons for the creation of a new State Constitution in 1835, and describe its impact on religious groups, African Americans, and American Indians.

And Competency Goal 3 in general deals with antebellum NC.

Then in 11th grade, you get:

1.02 Analyze the political freedoms available to the following groups prior to 1820: women, wage earners, landless farmers, American Indians, African Americans, and other ethnic groups

2.06 Evaluate the role of religion in the debate over slavery and other social movements and issues.

3.04 Analyze the political, economic, and social impact of Reconstruction on the nation and identify the reasons why Reconstruction came to an end.

7.03 Evaluate the effects of racial segregation on different regions and segments of the United States’ society.

and

11.02 Trace major events of the Civil Rights Movement and evaluate its impact.

There’s also a seperate African-American studies curriculum.

But you’re right, it is pretty scarce, and it all comes late in the student’s curriculum.

33

The lateness is, I think, pretty significant. We had it drilled into our proto-teacher heads over and over that students who feel the curriculum doesn’t reflect their life experiences are apt to decide school isn’t relevant to them, and are apt to draw away from academics. If nine year old black students see the experiences of Asians, Latin Americans, Whites, and Native Americans getting specific attention, but the experiences of their ancestors and family get no attention, they may draw conclusions that, by the time they’re fourteen, are too solidly entrenched to be reversed. The Asian, Latin American, White, and Native American students may also draw the same conclusions about their Black classmates, although they’re less likely to be aware of it.

At any rate, it’s just mindblowing to me that you could study specific ethnic groups in North Carolina without studying African Americans.

Daniel

34

Not so much in education, generally. Not anymore. To my mind, institutional racism only exists in organizations where racial discrimination and racial bigotry exist alongside racial violence, the threat of racial violence and racial hatred. These conditions are either expilcitedly condoned, ineffectually reprimanded or simply allowed to occur without censure or punishment. We’re talking about isolated factions in military; federal, state and local law enforcement; militia groups; the penal system on local, state and federal levels; certain sports leagues; ethnic criminal organizations. I don’t think it’s accidental that institutional racism predominates in aggressive institutions dominated by men.

The rest of the time it’s just institutional discrimination, institutional racial bias. The word racism is almost always an inaccurate catch-all.

I’d email that professor before writing that letter.

/On Preview/

Captain Amazing. I saw grade five 3.05 and 3.06 – but as I said they’re not all that specific. A teacher could deliberately omit all African American contributions or avoid discussing socioeconomic impacts – and still technically meet the needs of those objectives.

I must have skipped the 8th grade altogther. I don’t remember those two at at all.

Dorkness! Aren’t you glad you waited? :smiley:

Still, eighth grade, to me, is pretty late to be getting all that. You’ve been in school NINE years (counting preschool) before you get into more significant subject matter?

Where did you see reference to a separate African-American social studies curriculum? Is it mandatory for all students or an optional studies? Or you could just give me a link.

35

It’s right here:

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/socialstudies/scos/2003-04/072africanstudies

I’m assuming it’s some sort of senior elective.

36

Here’s that link, Askia. I’m writing to the prof now.

Daniel

37

Well, I have to forgo it precisely because the term has a loaded connotation that encourages such reactions. If you play close attention any of my posts, you’ll notice that “racism” or “racist” are not all that prevalent in my usage, even when the shoe fits. It’s unfortunate that I have to do that; it is not a good thing when words take on such weight that their use derails a whole thread and grown adults start screaming.

Catering to that lunacy isn’t the answer. Confronting it is. Explaining to people that racism is prevalent precisely because it is insiduous and often times unconsicous takes us one step closer to progress.

That’s only because you define racism in such a way that they have to know of their racism to be racists. Circular reasoning, here.

Not all racial biases are racist, I agree, which is why in the other thread I never inserted “racist” for racial.

I think we both identify that there is a problem when it comes to productive race-related dialogue and that that problem revolves around the word “racism”. You seem to think its overuse causes problems because people and ideas are called racist when they are not, which leads to hyper-defensiveness and anger. I, on the other hand, think people read too much into the word “racism” and because of that, it invites hyper-defensive reactions even when it is applied appropriately.

I think we both agree that focus needs to be on the more practical side of things. We just disagree on how to get there.

38

Also, if you look at the honors US history course suggestions (warning:PDF document):

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/curriculum/socialstudies/scos/2003-04/honorsushistory.pdf

you see that the PBS series “Africans in America”, Thoreau’s “Slavery in Mississippi”, Theodore Weld’s “American Slavery as it is”, George Fitzhugh’s “The Universal Law of Slavery”, John Calhoun’s “Defense of Slavery”, copies of the newspapers “Liberator” and “The North Star”, David Walker’s “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World”, excerpts from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, Booker T. Washington’s “Up from Slavery”, W.E.B. Dubois’ “The Souls of Black Folk”, Langston Hughes “Sharecropper”, the PBS documentary “Jazz”, a PBS video on Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois’ “A Portrait of a Race”, the works of Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston, MLK’s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the PBS series “Eyes on the Prize”, and Henry Louis Gates’s “Behind the Color Line” are all recommended resources.

There are also a lot of recommended activities that deal with race, slavery, and the civil rights movement. Of course, this is for an honor’s course, it’s late in the school curriculum, and it’s “recommended”.

39

This makes me suspect even more that the educators responsible for this curriculum are trying to protect fragile young minds from the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow, thinking they’ll get plenty of that when they’re old enough.

I just think that’s a terrible idea. Sure, you don’t necessarily want to be showing photos of white people having lynch-mob parties to nine-year-olds. But if you’re going to discuss the history of ethnic groups in our state, you can talk about the history of slavery, of civil rights, and other topics without going into all the nightmarish gory details. When you’re talking about Scotch-Irish immigrants, you don’t need to be reading A Modest Proposal, either.

Daniel

40

Hmm. Askia, I realize that this is starting to become a major hijack of your thread. I prefer to work with specifics, because it’s easier for me to wrap my head around them, but I don’t want the entire discussion to be about this one specific, since the issue is much broader. If you want, I can pull this over to a different thread.

Daniel