Re: Race Dialogue Is Back, But . Did Racism Ever Go Away?

so you admit there are different races ?


"Von Bailey" <ovbailey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:rmcu22l2ggvjhch317p55194cabsqsj7kh@xxxxxxxxxx
Author, Tim Wise, appearing before the Urban Issues Forum last week,
stated that "Whites don't get it" when it comes to understanding their
own privilege, racism and how it affects others not part of the
"in-group." "Whiteblindness," as Wise called, is a refusal to
understand their own pathology with respect to race prejudice, the
privileges that seeing race affords them, denies others, causing
society (largely themselves) to ignore some very fundamental "danger
signs" that, because of their own race biases, don't frame all white
males as suspects, which caused the Columbine school massacre and the
Oklahoma City bombing to occur despite all signs-two events hidden by
white America's "blind spot"- while causing every Black (male), Arab,
Muslim, and now Latino (because of the anti-immigrant backlash) to be
met with suspicion, and be perceived as the biggest threats to
society, profiling them as un-American, un democratic, un-patriotic
and un-governable (terroristic). White radicals who terrorize are just
sick, troubled or misguided [sic] and suspicions are limited to their
individual acts.

-----
A point I agree with. I'm reminded of it whenever I see a white
person on television proclaiming how they are shocked that something
terrible happened in their neighborhood.
_______________________________________________-
http://www.blacknews.com/pr/dia101.html

Race Dialogue Is Back, But . Did Racism Ever Go Away?

By The Anthony Asadullah Samad

America is talking about race again. With Crash winning the Oscars and
Ice Cube co-producing a series on race called Black/White, on the FX
network, race dialogue is back! But did racism ever go away? Or did it
just change forms and go underground?

It has been well documented over the past five years (since the turn
of the century) that the racial disparities of the last half of the
20th Century are still very much in evidence today. In some instances,
they are greater than they were 40 or 50 years ago. These studies,
from major universities to private research institutions to civil
rights, all said the same thing, that race is still very much
prevalent in American society, whether we talked about it or not.

So since race differences never went away, can we also assume that
racism never went away? Of course, we can. Thus, the need for a
renewed race dialogue. America is not colorblind. It's so blinded by
color that it just can't see racism. Like looking into sun with
Ray-Bans, the glare doesn't make that object in front of you
disappear. You will still run into it if you don't make an adjustment
in your vision. America never made the adjustment. That's what the
movie, Crash, was about . our refusal to acknowledge race until it
confronted us.

Race dialogue took a decade long hiatus (since President Bill
Clinton's attempt to raise a national dialogue on race almost ten
years ago) as America came up with race "fatigue" after the Soon Ja
Du, Rodney King, O.J. Simpson racial episodes of the early 1990s. Of
course, Clinton's efforts was an attempt to bring forth what some
called "the Third Reconstruction," to address the racial disparities
left over from the unfinished work of the 1960's war on poverty that
was interrupted during the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. By
the time the Reagan Revolution come along, Reagan had declared that
poverty had won, and it was time to end "race policies," By the time
George Herbert Walker Bush came into office, America had developed
colorblindness and public policy initiatives were "race neutral" and
any discussion about race, race differences, and most critically,
racism were now persona non grata in social circles and viewed as
politically incorrect in the public domain.

Nobody wanted to talked about race anymore, and opinion leaders went
through great lengths to convince us that race no longer mattered.
Foolish proclamations were made by a new phenomena, the Black
Conservative-a new type of Negro that was used to deflect any
discussion on race and racism. One such fool, Larry Elder, went on
national television (20/20) and said, "There is no racism in America."
When I want comedic relief, I don't put on Steve Harvey, or Cedric
"The Entertainer," or D.L. Hugley. I put in that tape of 20/20 of
Larry Elder saying "there is no racism in America." America, as a
nation, tried so hard to believe that racism no longer exists, that we
just began to ignore even the most obvious demonstrations of racial
mistreatment.

Hurricane Katrina was a revelation for many who came of age in the
Post-Civil Rights era, the era where the notion of race-neutrality
also came of age. It's also the age where America came apart-so much
so that Colorblindness became the new "Jim Crow." White flight to the
"burbs," deconstruction of affirmative action, economic boons of the
1980s and 1990s, re-emergence of white privilege, the decline of
public education and the 9/11 attacks were all reasons to ignore race
over the past 30 years. The separation in wealth, knowledge, geography
and the nation's shift in political ideology allowed us to deflect the
race debate on every front.

Now America got a chance to see how a simple natural catastrophe had
such stigmatizing racial implications. While the debate is much more
stratified (multi-focal) than the historical black-white (bi-focal)
race politic, race was (and is) still the underlying factor in a time
when class conflict (the politics of the rich versus the poor) is
emerging as the biggest social threat in America today. While race has
long been at the root of the poverty question, there were some still
that refuse to believe that the evacuation delay in New Orleans, and
the subsequent evacuation support efforts in Houston, and other
cities, wasn't about race. America still can't see what it refuses to
acknowledge. They just now know that a refusal to see something
doesn't make it disappear.

Author, Tim Wise, appearing before the Urban Issues Forum last week,
stated that "Whites don't get it" when it comes to understanding their
own privilege, racism and how it affects others not part of the
"in-group." "Whiteblindness," as Wise called, is a refusal to
understand their own pathology with respect to race prejudice, the
privileges that seeing race affords them, denies others, causing
society (largely themselves) to ignore some very fundamental "danger
signs" that, because of their own race biases, don't frame all white
males as suspects, which caused the Columbine school massacre and the
Oklahoma City bombing to occur despite all signs-two events hidden by
white America's "blind spot"- while causing every Black (male), Arab,
Muslim, and now Latino (because of the anti-immigrant backlash) to be
met with suspicion, and be perceived as the biggest threats to
society, profiling them as un-American, un democratic, un-patriotic
and un-governable (terroristic). White radicals who terrorize are just
sick, troubled or misguided [sic] and suspicions are limited to their
individual acts. Driven by xenophobic fears of Whites and passed on to
sub-culture populations, the biases we all have been driven by the
dominate culture's attitude on race and race tolerance.

America has crashed and burned on the race issue the past two decades.
But now, at least, the dialogue has returned through the subtle entrée
of art imitating life. Or is it life imitating art imitating life.the
race dialogue being a throwback of white minstrels imitating Blacks by
wearing blackface then acting out their pre-defined perceptions of
black intellectual and cultural behavior, allows us to watch movies
and television to sympathize with acts of racism and differences in
racial treatment we thought were days long past, but Blacks knew-had
never went away. It only went away in the eyes of Whites refusing to
see race. As we know, turning one's head doesn't solve the problem. It
just allows the trash of racism to pile up in the house until the
stench becomes unbearable, somebody has to say something or somebody
takes the trash. Well, the movie, Crash, and Ice Cube's Black-White
series have decided to say something, calling out the stench.

Colorblindness was a ploy to refuse to acknowledge race, but racism is
as plain as it's ever been. Thanks to the arts, we again smell the
stench of racism. Now it's time to take out the trash.
__________________________

von
---
There is no conversation that I can have that threatens my reality and I
don't see how anyone can live with such a precarious state of mind.
---
God isn't the problem, religion is. Something that doesn't exist
can't really be a problem. Worshiping something that doesn't exist
is an entirely different subect.


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