Comments on: “Nation of Cowards” When it Comes to Racism

By: John Thompson

John Thompson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:15:42 +0000

The reason people don´t want to discuss race is because it will always break down into a shit fight.
Imagine the following.

I don´t believe all races are equal.

Even though I could produce 10 pages of facts to support my claim, I would be demonized. I actually don´t have to say any more than the above to provoke a stream of abuse.
Now you know why I don´t bother discussing race.
What this retard wants us to do is all agree that race doesn´t matter, when it clearly does.
Sorry, that´s the truth. Deal with it.

By: Racism, the cure | De'Keither

Racism, the cure | De'Keither — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:31:16 +0000

[...] racismreview.com » Blog Archive » “Nation of Cowards” When it … – There’s still no K-12 curriculum that addresses the history of racism in this country; the Amistad Commission set up to address this educational void here in New York State is remains stalled after four years. The cumulative effect of … [...]

By: racismreview.com » Blog Archive » “Addressing Racial Ills” at the DOJ

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:32:51 +0000

[...] week, I wrote about the remarks of Attorney General Holder in which he suggested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) might [...]

By: Stephen Steinberg

Stephen Steinberg — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:24:32 +0000

The last we need is more Yakety-Yak on Race, as Adolph Reed called the National Conversation on Race in a column in The Progressive (December 1997).

But what we need from the Attorney
General of the United States is action, and Eric Holder could have used the occasion of Black History Month to recommit himself to vigorous enforcement of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which proscribes employment discrimination. Or the 1968 Civil Rights Act against housing discrimination. Or to recommit the Obama Administration to renewing affirmative action policy that has been eviscerated by the Supreme Court, packed with Republican appointees. Or to dealing with the inexcusable disparities in sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine. Or to prosecute racial profiling, including the targeting of minority youth by police for drug violations. This is what we need to hear from the Attorney General of the First Black President, not a stream of banalities about the need to talk across the racial divide.

Now that would take some spine!

By: GDAWG

GDAWG — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:54:36 +0000

D avid let me note that it was Father Bartholome de la Cas who laid the ground work for enslavement of Africans in the west. He wrote to his spanish masters, and the Pope, that as opposed to the Indians, “Africans were constitutionally more fit….” Obviously, is has been said that the Indians, at the time, revered him.
Moreover, and further along in history, in a book entitled “The History of Rice’ because European slavers required the knowledge of west African rice growers (as slaves) to help sustain the initial colony on the Atlantic coast. Because the Africans were institutionally marginalized as chattel property with no rights any man white were bound to respect, there needed to be a easy surrogate to continue the cheap labor (slavery) and their marginalization. The easy surrogate was skin color and their non-european origin. With the end of slavery, again, there was a need to continue the Black peoples marginalization for, basically, cheap labor, i.e., Jim Crow laws. All of which was institutionalized by the Federal govt, “not individual whites”, who, themselves, were just as exploited, but they had an easy escape clause, their white skins. So, in essence, commerce and ‘otherness’ served the European American elite quite well in getting and keeping their wealth at the expense of enslaved Africans, for the most part.

By: David Owen

David Owen — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:01:36 +0000

GDWAG, you may be right about there being an evolutionary basis for our inclination to self-segregate. I wonder what the empirical evidence is for this, and how strong that evidence is. In any case, I think that socialization processes overwhelm and amplify any evolutionary inclinations we have.

Your second comment goes directly to the issue–the fact that the system of racial oppression serves the interests of one group (whites) at the expense of all other groups (people of color). So a simply evolutionary drive to self-segregate would not be enough to explain this hierarchical relation. What needs to be accounted for is why did morphology (especially skin color) become a central criterion of discrimination? The answer is that it took on a particular meaning (that skin color is supposed to tell us something about character and other hidden abilities and talents) BECAUSE is served the interests of those with economic power (who happened to be white). So you are correct to focus on the pathology of the racializing process.

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:56:20 +0000

It is whites who do not have the courage or guts to discuss white racism. People of color do have that courage, every dayl Here is really talking about whites. Yet, Holder’s comment is very tame, and look at the EXTREME white protests. Shows just how the “post-racial”notion is just one more white coverup of the white racism deep in this society. whites are super sensitive on these issues, and you do not need Freud to know why.

By: GDAWG

GDAWG — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:23:38 +0000

Huh? As I have thought about your theory of socialization of racial oppression more today David, it rang out to me how does what you and I noted above, become pathological? That is, how does the need to ‘self segregate’ for survival sake, then translate into the need to disadvantage a group? One would think that ‘the whole’ of a social structure would be advantaged if all parties involved worked, willingly, for the same goals, whatever they maybe. particularly if we as humans, are truly the moral vessels we pretend, or proclaim, to be. But I’m clear that what we humans are capable of is what I would describe as ” moral relativism”. That is, the ability to massage or shape one’s morality to fit a particular circumstance, with survival being the ultimate goal, i.e., warfare of various sorts.
What the record shows in human history on any continent is that what we humans have done from time in memorial, is to socialized oppression of a particular group(s) of various sorts, to advantaged one group over another. This then is pathological to the victims of such actions, and, perhaps, ‘darwinian’ to the victors.

By: GDAWG

GDAWG — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:58:34 +0000

“….Thus, when we are socialized into a social structure that carries with it a legacy of past racial oppression, I internalize that racial oppression. In other words, I become infected by the racism that is already a part of my social context……”
David Owen u r the man! What clarity in the explanation of the analysis of our socialization in society. But I take the more basic construct in that most humans tend to gravitate to those that ‘are like them’ for survival’s sake. It’s probably sub-conscious and primal. Even I notice the tendency in myself. Whether it ‘s defensive mechanism for me in light of our history of oppression here in the USA, or the primal instinct I speak of, is too complicated to speak to in this forum. But it is a convenient escape mechanism.

By: David Owen

David Owen — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:30:43 +0000

Charles Blow of the NY Times brings empirical research on implicit bias to the discussion of Holder’s comments in his column on Feb. 20. He cites Project Implicit’s research that most whites make an implicit and automatic association between whites and good, and blacks and bad.

What Mr. Blow’s piece fails to do, however, is to provide an account of why we have this bias. Mr. Blow does ask the (crucial) question “why do so many people have this anti-black bias?” And Professor Nosek (of Project Implicit) responds that our brains just have this automatic response. But this answer doesn’t really explain the bias–it just re-describes the phenomenon being studied by Project Implicit. We already know that our brains respond this way (his research shows this); your question is “why?”

The explanation of this phenomenon is found in the interrelationship between how the individual self is created and how the norms, practices, and institutions of society are created. Social theorists since at least G.H. Mead (including the work of Joe Feagin) have argued that the self, with its worldview, attitudes, beliefs, biases, etc., and the social structures in which we live are created and maintained in the very same processes of social interaction. Thus, when we are socialized into a social structure that carries with it a legacy of past racial oppression, I internalize that racial oppression. In other words, I become infected by the racism that is already a part of my social context.

This social theory, I suggest, explains the results of Project Implicit’s work. It also should cause us to think more about how our children internalize these structures of racial oppression at very young ages (as you mention in your piece).