Duluth, Minn. is predominantly white, and a recent three-year Knight Foundation study said, in part:
The [Duluth area] community significantly underperforms against the comparison group overall in four of the seven individual openness measures.… Fewer residents than in other comparable communities say it is a good place for racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, young adults without children, and talented college graduates looking for work.
So community partners came together to form the Un-Fairness Campaign with the slogan I stole as a headline, and this:
Racial justice will never be achieved until we as white people address white privilege and work to change it.
as their mantra.
I live in East Haven. It, too, is predominantly white and it is currently struggling with the recent arrest of four police officers for racial discrimination against its growing Hispanic/Latino community. Members of the Hispanic/Latino community say the bad behavior has been going on for years. As far as the white privilege enjoyed by the bulk of the town, I’ve said:
Bad behavior continues when the righteous stay quiet. We who have whined about the town while sitting on our hands are complicit. The town will become the kind of place we want only if we get involved.
You can have these conversations and they stop flat if people (white or otherwise) are oblivious to discrimination and I can’t help wondering what it would take to get the town — the whole town, not just a handful of right-minded people — talking about this.
And thanks, Leftover, for the link.
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6 Responses to It’s hard to see racism if you’re white
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So true. Until anyone ACTS any talk of how things should be (idealism) is just rhetoric! I don’t think behavior can be mandated but when racism shows itself and it’s blatant, it should have consequences.
I’d like to get to where I don’t often have to have someone point it out to me.
No offense, Susan, but I couldn’t disagree more with your headline. I don’t live in Duluth and I don’t live in East Haven, but I refuse to allow anyone to say that I am less able to recognize an improper act on the basis of race simply because of my race. That’s ludicrous, no matter what the Knight Foundation says.
A voter who votes for Obama just because his father came to the U.S. from Africa is just as racist as a voter who votes for Romney just because his father came to the U.S. from Mexico or a voter who votes for McCain just because he is purely white. If you make any decision based solely on race, that’s racist, no matter what your race is.
Happy Friday!
Speaking as a 30something white male who grew up in the deep south, I can personally say that it was (and still is, to some extent) extremely hard for me to understand my own racist tendencies. Classism aggravates rasism, and visa-versa. This often happens recursively over many generations. Ultimately the people who abandon bigotry, prejudice, and racism are empowered in a profound way to understand their own place in a high functioning society. Those who do not are trapped in a world which multiplies their insecurities; and when when a given local community is overbalanced with the former sort of person, that community as a whole suffers. The challenge is finding catalysts to change hearts and minds which undoubtedly yearn to put down the burdens of primitive thinking and behavior.
White racism is extinct and has been for decades. The only racial discrimination left is exactly the sort of blatant anti-white racism displayed on these billboards.
I do not know on what you base this idea that white racism (racism perpetrated by whites, I’m assuming) is extinct, but I do not agree with your premise, your sentence, and your use of the letter “e.” Basically, I disagree with all of what you wrote — or my interpretation thereof. What did you mean?