Let’s spend
a few minutes thinking about race in our society. And racism.
Tim Wise,
a phenomenal speaker and teacher, suggests that more people in our country
believe that there is a chance that Elvis might still be alive today than
believe that racism is still an issue in society. (The video linked to "Tim Wise" is an extremely important talk, I cannot recommend it highly enough.)
As a member of the white race in our society,
it is far too easy to not ever know that racism remains. Though many believe
that we have already fixed this issue through the high-profile activism of the
1960s, I will discuss here my belief that my generation’s general passivity on the issue
is a profound piece of the promulgation of the problem which is now not only
still immensely part of our daily lives, but is more silenced and masked than
times past.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 16, 1963
As Dr. King
so eloquently describes, as long as oppression of any one person still exists,
all of us are ultimately negatively impacted. One of the barriers with this
issue, though, is that while one group of people experiences oppression,
another experiences privilege. A difficult and controversial idea that
underlies the issue of ‘isms’ in our society is that to achieve equality in our
world, those with the social power need to understand and be aware of that
power and the profound and unspoken human cost by which we enjoy it, and indeed, we must ultimately be willing to relinquish some of that power for the sake of creating equality.
The
privilege we (white people) enjoy is not always easy to recognize; the deeply
rooted nature of it allows for many to not even know that it is there. Or worse
yet, to see social privilege and believe that it is solely self-created or a
product of one’s own actions, and that those without social power (people of
color) are the creators of their own destinies as well. Such denial, such unawareness.
Indeed, having privilege or not is about the schools that we attend and the way we are treated within
those schools; it is about the communities we all grow up in and the
perspective that that context offers us of the world; it is about the opportunities
that are available to each of us and the future that they allow for; it is
about the physical and emotional safety we all feel and the impact that feeling
can have on our lives; it is about the looks that we receive from other people
and the way that they translate into perception of ourselves.
It is about
being privileged enough to take these things for granted.
I suggest that
to be “colorblind” is far too limiting. The solution to this problem is not to stop
acknowledging that we, as a human species, have different shades of skin than
one another. Rather, it is to appreciate and RESPECT our rainbow of skin colors
and the culture, history, and stories of each individual and their ancestors. It
is to increase awareness of one another and our contexts, and to escape the
culture of fear that is so perpetuated by negative media outlets, segregated
communities, and a reluctance to explore the unknown. It is to recognize and accept the inequities and the privileged culture of supremacy over others that we, as white folks, are raised within at the cost of all others.
It is to constantly strive for a society in which being born in a certain place or with a certain color of skin does not dictate the circumstances and privileges of our lives.
Rather than only a few minutes, let’s spend a few thoughts everyday on racism... And how to passionately and thoroughly combat it.
In honor of
Trayvon Martin,
whose crime was no deeper than the color of his skin.
