People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully
(-Depeche Mode)
Except in urban areas with highly diverse demographics, I don’t think Americans are, as a whole, any less racist, clannish or stereotype-prone than anybody else. You might argue that there are more “melting pot” or “crossroads” scenarios in the USA than anywhere else, which may be true. But people are people. We are wired by evolution to have a group we consider “our own kind”, and to circle the wagons when another group is perceived as entering “our territory”. With education and some amount of conscious effort, we can get past these automatic bias tendencies. But they’re there just the same, and if you don’t care to make that effort or never received the education to counter the tendencies, it’s the default behavior for a human being.
While it wasn’t the first time I’ve come across that argument (which to me is common sense), the current issue of Scientific American: Mind has an article on this very topic citing some control-group research to back it up.
To hijack this slightly, which would you prefer: overt (to your face) racism, or subtle (behind your back, or lying with a smile) racism? Ruling out “overt racism” that crosses the line to something physical and dangerous, like some kind of violent hate crime, or something institutional like Jim Crow or Nuremberg laws.
In college, two friends of mine (both black women) took a road trip from NYC to Alabama to visit some relatives. One of them grew up on Montclair, NJ and the other in Cleveland, OH, and were somewhat apprehensive of what kind of racism they might encounter “down South” (this was in the late 1980s). Their trip lasted just under two weeks. When they came back, they reported no incidences of overt racism: they said they felt less of it than they had growing up in NJ, Cleveland or even as students in NYC. Everybody they spoke and dealt with was pleasant, polite, friendly and welcoming. Yet at the same time they said they felt an undercurrent of silent discrimination: they were on several occasions unable to obtain goods or services for reasons that were explained away, which they took at face value at first, but began to feel uncomfortable with as the trip went on.
The first night they tried to find a hotel room to stay in, they had to try two times, as the first place claimed to be fully booked up, even though it was a weeknight and not over a holiday – they ended up in a somewhat run-down roadside motel. So they planned ahead and made reservations at a place in the next town they would be stopping at; when they arrived, they received a profuse and personal apology from the manager, but there had been a clerical error and there were in fact no rooms. He offered them vouchers for free nights at some date in the future, but they were on a one-time road trip and would not be able to use them.
They also felt table service for them at diners and restaurants was noticeably more rushed than for other patrons (where they were often the only people from out of town, as well as the only two black people), as if to get them out the door quicker. Or maybe not.
Were these innocent events and they were “reading too much” into them, a case of someone finding what they were looking for? Or were they right? Either way, their reaction was summed up by saying they greatly preferred an upfront I-don’t-like-you attitude in your face to the lies-behind-a-smile. They found the latter far more emotionally stressful, partly because they were constantly doubting themselves whether or not it was really going on.