There’s absolutely nothing I have to apologize for. This discussion has run its course.
This thread is a fascinating microcosm of the difficulties of using argument to effect change. All the basics are present: unclear definitions, extreme examples, ad hominem attacks, moving the goalposts, inserted irrelevancies, refusals of partial acceptances, and insistence on the perfect over the good. It should be a course in pragmatics over semantics, but it has failed miserably.
I blame the teacher. Please hear me out and do not stop reading.
I think so. I think that the overwhelming majority of people in the thread think so. You sabotaged yourself because of your lack of clarity in laying out the argument and your defensive insistence that nothing about it need be changed because it was a perfect phone call. Wait, sorry, that was someone else.
The good. We mostly agree with you. We mostly agree that racism is inherent in American society. We mostly agree that it needs to be swatted down everywhere it appears. We mostly agree that the country is in dire danger. We mostly agree that eliminating internal racism is a necessary start. We mostly agree that everything you call for is a good thing.
There’s always a but. But we do not necessarily agree that racism is simply equatable to antiblack attitudes and policies. Even where we do, we don’t necessarily agree that it is primus inter pares so that it takes precedence over the myriad of other us v. them conflicts internally and externally. We do not necessarily agree that process and progress is sufficient without a firm goal in place. We do not necessarily agree on what steps constitute progress. We do not necessarily agree on the proper mixture of internal improvement and external interaction. We certainly do not agree to take one person’s - your - course and hold it above all others. We’re a collection of disparate and contentious individuals who are distinguished from the average member of society mostly by having the skills to dispute arguments using written text in an online forum, while otherwise displaying the faults and virtues of the many.
I’m sure that every one of us has constructed a unimpeachable argument for some end in our heads that fell apart because it didn’t emerge as perfectly when we say or write it, and failed to consider points other deem even more important. That’s discourse. (No trademark.)
You said a good thing. It didn’t come out exactly as you wanted it. People pushed back in ways that distressed you. Your takeaway nevertheless should be that people thought seriously about the problem in America and offered serious commentary on the issue. (Or at least as seriously as a bunch of white people can without a Kendi-like presence eviscerating their platitudes.) And take this as a part of your process and progress from it.
I can’t remember where I read it, but I read that people in Africa feel the same way when a black person from the US goes there and feels it is a unified continent based on skin color. Africans do not view themselves as a unified block of black people.
It would be like if you took a white person from India and dropped them off in a random caucasian country like Lithuania, Ireland or France and they said ‘its great to be home amongst my people’
Don’t dwell on me, forget about me, I’m nobody, I’m one grain of sand on an immense beach. Stand up for the cause and shout it out is all I’m saying.
“When you’re drowning, you don’t say, ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me.’ You just scream.” (John Lennon)
When you’re drowning, the thing to do is to go on a big rant about how awful people with Dry Privilege are.
Moderating:
OK, no attacking the posters and no personalizing please.
Not only @Johanna & @Babale but great examples as the last 2 posts.
This thread is very close to being shutdown as more trouble than it is worth.
Its also just your strawman, not an argument anyone made.
I appreciate your recognition that your childhood religious tapes inform your personal approach.
I hope that you recognize that many of the rest of us who do not have the same tapes playing are also horrified by what our current government is doing, to many groups.
For you personally a focus on your own interior, your conscience, your soul, a constant battle to fight off bad thoughts, seems useful.
I’m more interested in how we can win elections that change policies. I am on guard for my own ignorant actions. And I recognize that I will not be 100% successful. I can do my best in the company I work for to advocate against policies that are not explicitly racist but have racist and classist impacts.
I do not think your trying to convert others to your focus on our own interior worlds is useful. IMHO.
Help me out here. If someone is 23% racist (however we measure that), It’s OK to compare them to the evil Klansman? If they’re only 1% racist, still OK? 0.00001% racist? Still just an evil racist, as bad as the worst, because it all has to be rooted out.
I’m not arguing for the preservation or excusing of racism - I’m not. I don’t disagree that it has to be rooted out wherever it exists, but how can you acknowledge that anyone ever made any progress in dealing with their own residual racism if you hold that any amount is as bad as the largest and worst amount?
I think in all of those activities, the measure of success so far is able to be acknowledged and celebrated at the same time as recognising there is more to do, perhaps always more; if no progress is being made - for example child poverty is on the rise in the UK - that direction is absolutely worthy of complaint and focus on failure etc.
It’s the automatic position that any reducing amount of remaining task means we’re no better than when we started, that I think is unhelpful and counterproductive. If your golf score improved (however they measure that - I don’t play), you don’t immediately dismiss that because it’s still not perfect.
Whooooooaaaaaaaaa. That seems to me like drawing a very unrealistic bright line between thought and action that does not at all accurately reflect how systemic bias works.
Are you saying simply that we shouldn’t make systemic racist bias into a form of “thoughtcrime” to punish people for it? Sure, that’s true. Legislation, policies, etc., have to confine their prohibitions and punishments to observable acts, rather than presumed or inferred thoughts. Anything else is 1984 territory.
But recognizing that doesn’t mean that we have to endorse a deliberately naive presumption that systemic racist bias doesn’t exist unless and until we see it manifested in an observably racist action. That’s silly.
Saying that “everyone is racist” is kind of like saying that “everyone has microplastics in their bodies”. We’re talking about a broadly pervasive consequence of living in the world as it is, a consequence that’s everywhere in our society. Demanding that we have to test every individual’s body for the presence of microplastics before we can make such general statements about universal phenomena would be silly. And demanding that we have to refrain from acknowledging the universality of systemic racism until and unless we observe an overtly racist act is likewise silly.
And similarly, to say “if everyone is racist then there aren’t any good people” is like saying “if everyone has microplastics in their bodies then there aren’t any healthy people”. Again, these are not bright-line binary distinctions that we’re talking about.
First let’s get the terms clear: “Systemic bias” is also referred to as “structural” or “institutional” bias. They reflect policies, rules, things about the nature of the systems that may just be historic inertia that result in unequal outcomes. No individual biases or ill intent need be at play, although of course can be or was historically. Currently the government is trying to create more institutional inequities. One very basic less ill intended example - various sensors were normed using white subjects more than people of color just because they were available more, but then would give systematically misleading results when used on patients of color resulting in bad clinical decisions. Policy is the level of attack. That’s not what we are talking about here. Here we are talking about “implicit bias.”
Implicit bias is when there are biased behaviors that result from an individual’s unconscious attitudes, stereotypes, assumptions, and associations, ones that the individual is unaware of possessing. They are definitionally unconscious but result in divergent behaviors that can be measured.
A private conscious thought of this person is X so therefore they are likely Y is not implicit bias, and to some degree is easier to fix than behaviors that more akin to conditioned responses. To use a medical example that is not Black focused - the presentation is a confused teenager - in one case a kid who looks like “white trash” and the other a neatly dressed Asian child. The tendency to first think drugs in the former and to consider a neurological issue in the latter could be implicit bias. To the Black white divide: a tendency of physicians as a group to downplay complaints in Black patients relative to white ones, with Serena Williams pregnancy issues being a poster child.
Hard to become consciously aware of biases that are unconscious until you have stepped back and tried to evaluate your own behaviors objectively. Even doing those Implicit Association Tests - can get one to recognize that your answers reflected biases that you consciously deny but big step from there to changing behaviors. Being aware of guidelines and when you veering away from strict adherence in any direction slowing down and questioning if some implicit bias may be contributing to why. Recognizing the shorter conversation with someone more different than you. Intentional exposure to experiences that cut across the biased expectations, diminishing the conditioned response. Audits that make one consider the fact that you have in fact prescribed differently to different groups, despite no conscious belief that explains it.
I’m using medical examples because that is the world I know but true in all domains.
The surgeon who explicitly has some racist beliefs but in practice treats all their patients equitably is less of a problem in my mind than the one who has never had any loathsome racist thoughts slip into the conscious realm but who still just tends to relatively discount Black patients pain reports without any recognition of the behavior occurring.
I read the OP when there were no replies. I started thinking about how xenophobia tends to be a feature (or rather bug) in most societies. When coming back to the thread and seeing a boatload of replies I read and got ever more confused. I was thinking of bringing up the persecution of the Romani during the bubonic plague in Europe, the persecution of the “Moors” in Spain in the 15th century (and how it defines being “Spanish” to this day.)
It would’ve been helpful @Johanna if you had framed the issue as being U.S: centric. I’m not saying that there is no racism in my part of the world, quite the opposite. It exists, however, in a totally different context. Your argument that there was no racism in the ancient world is bizarre.
I think there might have been less opportunity for some definitions of racism in the ancient world, simply because people didn’t tend to travel so much, didn’t trade so much with faraway cultures, and didn’t have media that presented those cultures to them (as well as presenting views about those cultures, including unacceptable views).
‘Racism’ in the strict pedantic and not-always-useful sense - of the kind where people get to argue in defence of horrible prejudice and bigotry by saying ‘that’s not really racism because (X) isn’t a race’ might have been less frequent in the ancient world just because of less frequent exposure. Prejudice and bigotry and such has probably always existed because it’s baked into our tribal little brains, because at some point in our evolutionary history, generalising that ‘the tribe in the next valley are evil’ was functionally the same as a nuanced view of why you might not want to wander alone into someone else’s territory (where you are the stranger).
I’m going to try to frame a debate here based on the issues that I think the OP was proposing a specific action plan for, but more broadly -
Accept that our current environment, not just in the United States, has moved toward more institutionalization of discrimination of various sorts, and more othering in general. Accept that many have explicit beliefs that they think are justified but are in fact racist and otherwise -ist, anti-, and -phobic. Accept that as a general rule we all have unconscious biases of various sorts that shape our behaviors in discriminatory ways, and that some who do not believe it is so (and that short of demonstrating it to them by behavioral audits and such there is no way to prove to them they are not the exception to the general pattern).
Accept that we are doing all we reasonably can do on the policy side, doing what we can to fix the structural/institutional factors, even if it currently feels like swimming against an undertow.
How best to combat the rest of it?
The explicit racist and othering beliefs the holders of which see as truth?
The implicit biases in people who will state that they do not believe any of the othering beliefs, racist and otherwise, but whose behaviors are still biased just by cultural training?
Returning to medicine as the case example. We have all had the education on implicit biases. I think most even intellectually accept its reality. Even that they likely aren’t immune from it themselves. That knowledge though isn’t usually enough to prevent these biases from still coming through. Using guidelines rigidly is not a great answer. Constant audits are not realistic. Exhortations from a mount or soapbox with a megaphone at least to investigate their souls and exterminate the hidden vermin thoughts hiding in its walls and crawl spaces won’t help, more often is heard as accusation and pushes away.
Can we, realistically, do more than the basic education about these biases? Are there solutions found in any of your fields?
Are we better off putting more of our addition energy to addressing the systemic institutional factors? Because that feels like a losing battle too.
I absolutely think it’s a constant tightrope walk. We need to pay attention to what we’re doing, and to whether any unconscious bias is affecting our actions. Being content in saying, “I have no unconscious bias,” is dangerous: it’s like not going to the doctor because you’re convinced you never get sick. But also, preening about how aware of our own bias we are, ostentatiously wearing the hair-shirt and self-flagellating, doesn’t get much does either. Sure, we’re all sinners; what now? Try not to sin, and also put energy into trying to do good stuff.
In education, in some circles, there are folks who treat anti-racism work like a prestige hobby. Go to all the workshops, talk about the workshops, print out flyers about words not to use, ask people if they’ve read their Hammond and their Kindi and their Tatum and so on. I don’t have much time for that. Get some basic education under your belt, and then focus on doing what you can with the kids in front of you. If your Ibrim X. Kendi book club isn’t resulting in clear and specific action, you may as well be reading Sarah Maas (no shame in that, mind you).
So, yes: the work is systemic. And yes: the work is personal. But if it’s too focused on the internal, it’s not much different from yoga.
(Story from today: a student turned in a beautifully-illustrated and painstakingly inked comic for our school paper. He was so proud! Unbeknownst to him, it included some images that looked very much like 19th-century vicious racist caricatures, to the extent that if we published it we’d probably go viral, for all the wrong reasons. I consulted with a Black co-worker whose levelheaded analysis I trust, and we met with the kid to explain that first, he’d done nothing bad, but second, our history is kind of terrible, and in that environment his comic would need to be changed before it could be printed. Poor kid: he got a real lesson in history today.)
Another thing is that sometimes, something isn’t “racism” so much as it is just people jostling for resources in a zero-sum situation. College admissions is a prime example of this. You can either admit more black students, more Asians, more whites, or whatnot, but you can’t admit bigger numbers of them all together. The student body is capped and limited. You can have no racist bones in your body as a school administrator or politician and yet still be forced to give one race some sort of benefit at the expense of another.