Are All White People of a Certain Age Racist?
A month ago, in a speech in Philadelphia, Barack Obama said it was time America had a serious conversation about race. Instead of that, we've been treated to ever more polarizing racial politics. To their credit, Steve Blow and James Ragland of The Dallas Morning News took seriously the challenge of having a racial dialog. But, as usual, it's Jim Schutze of Unfair Park who offers the most insightful commentary.
Living in Detroit, and having black friends who cared enough to speak candidly to me, I learned a long time ago that all white people of a certain age are racist. That includes me. It includes Steve Blow.The bad news in this is that racist attitudes run so deep that Schutze holds no hope of ever washing out the stain from individuals. The good news is that Schutze holds out the hope that our children and grandchildren don't have to carry the stain themselves.
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Racism is a kind of spiritual astigmatism. It distorts everything. You can’t argue with it, because the person suffering the distortion can’t understand what you say. So, anyway, that’s why I decided a long time ago that people need to keep their mouths shut.
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I don’t think talking about it does as much good as it does harm most of the time. So [Steve Blow] thinks the names of black children sound funny. That’s a marker. That’s a big clue for all the other gut-level feelings he has about blackness. Do we really benefit from hearing it all out loud?
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Like I say, I don’t put myself in a class apart from Blow. I’m white. I’m old. I grew up in Whitesville. I just happen to think that Blow and I could do the universe a big favor by taking a lot of the bias we grew up with, clutching it close to our bellies and taking it down with us into the grave where it belongs. Our kids, meanwhile -- his and mine -- will do much better.
Schutze's thesis is that the best way to keep our children unstained is for us, the stained, to just shut up. There's not much logic in that, otherwise Schutze himself would never have published his own contribution to the dialog on race. And it does, just as the conversation between Blow and Ragland does. Revealing how deep-seated (neurological, Schutze says) and unrecognized racist stains exist in all of us is valuable. Admitting there's a problem is the first step towards dealing with it.
Are All Hispanics Illegal Immigrants?
Tod Robberson, doing his best to prove the old saying that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, tells of his irritation at visiting his neighborhood park this week, only to witness a Hispanic woman, after changing her baby's diaper, dropping it in the street and driving away. Tod Robberson titled his anecdote, "Illegal immigrants and assimilation."
Most Hispanics are illegal aliens.
That woman in the park is Hispanic.
Therefore, that woman is an illegal alien.
The faulty logic is obvious. Whether it's also racist depends on defining the term. I use the word stereotype as meaning a blanket notion of a group, allowing for no individuality. And prejudice as meaning making a decision about a person based on a stereotype. And racism as meaning prejudice based on a person's race or ethnicity. Given that, it's fair to say, as thefncrow says, that the presumption that any random Latino you see on the street, without any further information about the person, is an illegal immigrant, is racism.
It's not surprising that the person making that presumption would not see it as prejudice or racism. As Jim Schutze said on Frontburner, "Racism is a kind of spiritual astigmatism. It distorts everything. You can’t argue with it, because the person suffering the distortion can’t understand what you say." This thread is a case in point.
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