If there was ever a healthy interracial dialogue in America, there isn't one now. In place of a realistic appraisal and discussion of race relations, we've substituted a crude morality play of perpetual victim and villain.
The script is a simple one -- accusations and invective from half of the cast, ritualized introspection and self-denunciation from the other. Uncomfortable realities are avoided by both sides in favor of safe pieties. Double standards are rife. The result is simulaneously condescending and unjust.
Who suffers most from this?
Certainly not middle-class whites in their well-policed suburbs. As with so many things, it's the socially and economically vulnerable who suffer, particularly the third of the black community mired in the underclass. We can't realistically address minority poverty and social decay so long as "endemic racism" is the only permitted primary cause. Scapegoating others may be comforting, but it doesn't accomplish much else.
Racial reconciliation is so very necessary. No one who cares about social justice can see the marginalization of black America and not want to do something about it. However, will real reconciliation come unless everyone can approach the table as equals, without fear of being verbally battered into shamed silence?
Posted by Discoshaman at février 2, 2005 12:59 AM | TrackBack
The worst part of the race relations issue in the United States is that those who purport to be leaders of the black community are thugs and hypocrites! Why does Jesse Jackson go around the country and shake down the corporations? Why do groups like the NAACP throw derision and scorn upon people who stand up and Tell The Truth, like DR. Bill Cosby, Colin Powell, and DR. Condoleezza Rice, three Americans who made it on their own who just happen to be black...by calling them Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemima?
It's gotten to be total BS from the leaders of the black community. Face it, PUSH and the NAACP and even the Nation of Islam only want to continue the victim mentality of American blacks and want the whites to pay them reparations.
I REFUSE be held responsible for the sins of my ancestors. This is NOT Qo'noS! This is the US of A! I WANT to work hard and be successful. There is NO reason whatsoever why blacks cannot do the same.
Posted by: Macker at février 2, 2005 07:03 AMIn leu of such tense relations here in the good ole South, I have forgone relationships with blacks at all. It is unfortunate as I am a transplanted Yankee, but segregation (imposed by ourselves and nothing else) is alive and kicking here. I recall living in NY and L.A. and not facing such hatred of the white race as I face here. I cannot understand how the sins of SOME white peoples families is continuing to destroy relationships today. In America of all places, the land of opportunity, we are still hearing of injustices, and racial inequality. But I tell you, the only inequality I have actually seen, is aginst whites. I do not consider myself to be racist, I grew up with friends of all colors and never thought twice about it, until my experience here in the South. But it seems that blacks are getting things handed to them, in the form of Equal Opportunity, and Affirmative Action, and yet blacks still think we are, as a nation, anti-black. Seems to me that Affirmative Action is a handicap in the country of opportunity, and that black people would want to stand up AGAINST it, but they embrace it, and that I cannot understand.
Posted by: ML at février 2, 2005 07:32 PMAre black and hispanic and Asian people really of a different race...or are they a part of the human race?
Posted by: Stacy at février 6, 2005 02:29 AMStacy-
I'll assume you're making a larger point than what your question seems to be asking. Obviously blacks and Asians are all part of the human race. Equally obviously, there really are something called "genes", and ethnologists and sociologists use these "genes" to broadly classify people into "races."
So the answer to your question depends on whether we're speaking in a final sense about humanity, or whether we're speaking demographically about subgroups within humanity.
I sense you have some deeper point to make. Please state it and I'll be happy to chat with you some more? :-)
Posted by: Discoshaman at février 6, 2005 02:42 AM