I’m not that interested in arguing about how substantial it is, or how directly it flows from segregation. I agree both are reasonably debatable.
But I do want to contest your contention that identifying minor effects of structural racism somehow dilutes the term.
If you want to think about racism as a personal transgression at all (and sorta the whole point about talking about structural racism is to observe that it doesn’t actually depend on the bigotry of the people carrying it out), then it would be better to think of it is as a categorical transgression, like violating someone’s property rights, rather than a specific offense like rape. If I complained that my neighbor stole 3 feet of my backyard space by planting their hedgerow over the property line, it would make no sense for someone to retort that I’m diluting the concept of robbery or diminishing the category of property rights. Similarly, identifying and complaining about things like inappropriate hair touching doesn’t actually take away from complaints about lynching or observations about the whole network of structural racism.
I have minimal exposure to this phenomenon and am wondering if you have any handy literature (or even just recommended search terms.) To better educate myself.
It seems to me that it’s mostly the issue. The behavior of the kids was natural, normal child behavior. The only solution, it seems, is to make it so ‘afro hair’ is seen as a normal, unremarkable thing (in the eyes of the children). It’s the structure in which these kids are learning that needs to change. Not individual behavior.
I think both can be helpful. A lot of people really believe that natural afro-textured hair is ugly, unprofessional, unattractive, etc. I think many of their minds can be changed.
I guess what I’m getting at is yes, in theory there are clear steps and actions that can be taken to eliminate most structural racism. But the real-world obstacles are just that, real. In order for these changes to be made to “level the playing field” for blacks, then those people who control the means to make those changes must change. That seems like an almost impossible task.
But don’t they need more exposure to such diversity in order to change their minds? I don’t think simply talking them out of it would be too effective.
Yet in this thread, racism or structural racsism is the reason kids wanted to touch ‘huge, sculpture like hair’ and not the fact that the hair in question is huge and sculpture like.
Note, in the interview Bell says:
So, we can state confidently that the white kids in the school have seen and know other black students. We can state confidently that the white kids in school have seen black hair that is, most likely, not huge and sculpture like.
Therefore, the most likely explanation for the kids wanting to touch this girls hair isn’t because she is black but rather because she has huge, impressive hair.
Do you think this kid has a lot of other kids wanting to touch his hair?
But that’s mixing the two. Structural racism vs. individual or direct racism. I’m saying that things like redlining is an example of substantial structural/systemic racism. A 5 year old touching another 5 year old’s hair is being described as the same way, as structural racism. This associates hair touching with redlining. But these two things are worlds apart. So far apart that using the same term to describe them to me calls into question the value of the term at all. That’s what I mean by dilution. Calling out 5 year old hair touching as structural racism dilutes the term when calling out redlining as structural racism - it’s independent of lynching.
If we’re having a conversation about redlining and we’re all up in arms about the practice, but then a person says, yeah, 5 year old hair touching is terrible too! I’m going to back away and then reassess the person’s sense of perspective. Redlining is still just as bad - but any future statements made now need extra scrutiny because of the wide disparity in assessment that has been identified.
Huh. That quote changes things, and thanks for finding it. The OP mentioned him saying the school was diverse but not black enough for him, and I took that to mean that it was diverse along axes other than black/white. If this didn’t happen because white kids at this school are unfamiliar with black kids, I’m not sure where he’s getting the idea that it’s racist from.
What really bothers me is that this conversation started with a discussion about a little girl’s experience, but the interesting thing, the thing people want to talk about, is not the little girl, and the impact on her, but about the white kids–were they racist? Inquiring Minds Want to Know! This is why conversations about race are never productive: we always put the white person as the main character, and make the minority a McGuffin, the object there to test the character of the white person.
Identification is a problem. For example, when people tell a story about an interaction with a teacher, I always identify with the teacher and I always look for the way to interpret the story in the way that most flatters the teacher. Because that’s who I see myself as, and I hate to think that even my stand-in might be unfairly maligned. White people struggle to understand that a story that involves a white person isn’t about the white person. It looks so different when you make the white person the McGuffin, hold them static, and think about the other agent.
In this case, whatever the intention or motivation of the other kids, there’s little doubt that the girl will come to interpret this as evidence of otherness, that it will make her feel like her blackness makes her more an interesting object than a peer. I don’t think it would have that same effect on a redhead, because they won’t have that message reinforced by a thousand other instances of being singled out as different. So I don’t think there’s any question that she’s experiencing racism, and a prudent parent would want to help her process and contextualize that appropriately. I don’t think the parents should spend a lot of time worrying about whether other kids meant it or not: that’s not the question that matters here.
Bell is the one who brought up the idea that the other kids were being racist.
I think the discussion has moved beyond “the white kids were being racist” to “white society is racist”. I don’t know if you would think of that as making white people the main character.
I do. I think we are more concerned with whether white people are good/bad/whatever than with to what degree minorities are suffering. I think we tend to think that that is what matters.
Overall I think you make a good point - that identification is an important consideration. However, I don’t think it follows that the 5 year old is experiencing racism, structural or otherwise. The idea was introduced by her father. Absent that, there’s nothing to suggest that the girl herself would consider it racism. She was uncomfortable, the same way a redhead may be. Is it of critical importance to determine if her discomfort stems from her internalizing the idea of racism, or more that unwanted touching is not okay?
The perspective of the girl in question is important, but it doesn’t make it always reasonable. If a person is buying groceries and the cashier says “hello” to them, they may actually feel like that is racist, and that can be their truth, but it’s not a reasonable interpretation.
I disagree that discussions of race and racism tend to focus on the white people. I think far more often the reverse is true: we talk about racist treatment as if it’s some kind of feature of the black person. We say he was [shot / denied a benefit / mistreated] because of his skin color, instead of this person [fired / denied him a benefit / mistreated him] because of racism.
That’s one of the central points made in Racecraft, which I highly recommend.
The problem, and the reason we can’t have a productive discussion about race, is that a certain subset of people won’t accept the idea that there is any source of the problems besides white/systemic/structural racism.
The little girl in the OP got her hair touched. Those who touched her had no racist intent, and it wasn’t because there were no other black kids in her school. But it can’t be because they haven’t been taught not to touch other people without permission. So we have to talk about systemic racism.
But we do have productive discussions about race – I’ve been a part of many on this board, and I’m pretty sure you have too. I think this is one of them – disagreement doesn’t mean that a discussion isn’t productive. And I’m pretty sure everyone in this thread acknowledges that there could be other sources of these problems involved aside from various forms of racism.
