The Collateral Damage of Racism

My heart is so heavy today as I write.  I have debated whether or not to write this because I know that to some, it might come off as insensitive, which is not my intent.  This disclaimer is to say that I am crying about the babies and adults that were killed yesterday.  They didn't deserve it.  It was not God's will or judgement on America, as some theologians have already put forward.  It was evil.  Pure evil.

Having said all that, I think that there is an elephant in the room when it comes to these kinds of tragedies, and we need to talk about it.  Because I believe what happened yesterday was a consequence of racism in our nation. Allow me to explain what I mean.

I listened to the news on NPR yesterday as soon as I saw the headline on social media.  I scoured the articles on the Internet.  I watched the news on television, which I don't normally do.  I wanted to know, like many people, how and why such a thing could happen.  I wanted to make sense of it.  The host of the radio program was asking a psychologist if there was a psychological profile for these types of criminals who perpetrate these mass murders.  The psychologist said that there was, but the tricky thing is that not all people who fit that description end up committing this type of crime.  And most of the time, people don't realize the "red flags" until after the fact.  As the conversation continued, I was listening for one other piece of information: the racial identity of the shooter.

I have started to listen for "race" in the news, when it shows up in discourse and when it doesn't.  For example, on the nightly news in St. Louis, I don't normally hear direct references to racial identifications, but there are certain "code words" that the newscasters use to let you know who they are talking about (e.g. neighborhood, street names, physical descriptions, names).  Like most people, I have become accustomed to processing the news in racialized ways.  In the case of the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, I listened and listened.  Not one time did I hear the perpetrator described in racialized terms.  I remember thinking, "They haven't said--I bet he was White."  And so again yesterday, I listened and listened, but never heard once anything to indicate that 1) the perpetrator was White or 2) that the town affected was predominantly White.  So when the radio program host kept pushing the psychologist for a "profile" of "these types" of mass killers, I wanted to shout, "White males! Look for White males!" as if they could hear me and start the hunt right away. 

Now hear me when I say, I am not hating on White males.  I have many White men in my life, including a wonderful husband, sons, and brothers.  What I am saying is that statistically, the majority of mass murderers, serial killers and sex offenders are White men.  Are all White men criminals?  Of course not.  But when you go to check my facts (and I hope you do), it should become clear that there is a racial profile for "these types" of criminals.  In a country where Black and Brown men, along with anyone who looks like they might be from the Middle East, are consistently racially profiled, it is indicative that the very profile we should be on the look-out for is the one we never admit or say out loud: White men.  

The collateral damage of racism plays out like this:

White folks have been socialized to fear Black men.  White towns have fought long and hard to keep Black and Brown folks out (search the term "sundown towns" for more info).  The result is that many small towns and municipalities are currently all White, while people of color are primarily forced into urban areas.  And in these White spaces, there is a sense of security because the "undesirables," the people to be feared, have been kept out.  On the other hand, if you talk about living in an urban area, you will hear White folks talk more about issues of safety.

The governor of Connecticut attempted to give words of comfort to the town of Newtown yesterday.  He said that this was not preventable.  He said, "Today, evil had visited this town."  My reply: Evil was already living in your town.  He lived in a house in your town and had access to guns. Lots of guns.

Initially, I wanted to avoid the issue of gun control, because I thought it was a side issue, although related.  I leaned more towards increased school security, which I still advocate.  But we can't address one without the other, addressing the symptom without first analyzing the disease.

You might think me a conspiracy theorist at this point, but the whole issue of "right to carry" is also deeply connected to a racist system.  First, it is and has always been easier for White people to obtain gun permits than it is for people of color. Throughout most of our history, it was illegal for Black and Brown people to own guns, except during wartime.  Even when it was legal, Black people were seriously prohibited from owning firearms.  Secondly, much of our current White "gun culture" has to do with White militias that were historically allowed to form in order to either hunt Black slaves or just parade around in order to keep the Black population "subdued."  So the argument for the "right to carry" has everything to do with White privilege and the right to form a militia. 

That's why I'm saying this is a consequence of not talking about the effects of racism on White people.  We can notice trends of who these criminals are--White males--and what kinds weapons they use--primarily obtained legally--but we don't.

And while the victims of these crimes are diverse, when the shootings happen in schools, we can notice that they primarily happen at White schools.  But we don't.  

And by "we" I mean us White folk.  Because if a whole town feels secure because "it's just us White people," and everybody owns guns legally, then there is no heightened sense of awareness of possible predators. 

I have been told that there is running line within the Black community that goes something like this: "When our kids bring a gun to school, they might kill somebody on accident.  When a White kid bring guns to school, he kills everybody on purpose."  I don't think this is said with a disregard for the lives of White children, but it does point to a skewed view of reality that White folks would fear a Black man more than a White man.  And it highlights the fact that Black folks have always feared White men for very substantiated reasons. 

Let me say again that this news is devastating.  Heartbreaking.  I hugged my White babies a little closer to me last night and prayed for comfort for the town in Connecticut. I can't read the news updates without crying. But I was also angry.  Angry that people would say that this is an "isolated" event, that schools are safe places, and that there was nothing that could have been done to prevent it.  As a parent, I am not swallowing those answers.   

Because if something happens to my child, I want to know how it could have been prevented.  

Mass killings are not isolated events--they happen frequently.  The psychologist on NPR (and other sources) reported that mass killings have not increased in recent years.  The number of deaths has remained steady, but certain events have been more high profile because of the number of victims and the public nature of the crime scenes (e.g. movie theater, school).

Schools are not safe places--not in Black neighborhoods, not in White neighborhoods, not in integrated neighborhoods--unless we make them safe.  In many urban neighborhoods, there are metal detectors installed at the front door with a taser-carrying security guard looking on. Police officers routinely patrol the area around the school.  In some ways, this could be part of the impact of the stereotyping of Black and Brown youth.  However, in hearing from Black administrators and teachers in the wake of this recent tragedy, I think the security measures are largely in place because Black communities, unlike the governor of Connecticut, are not surprised about evil.  They know that there are people who would try to hurt them and their children.  They don't live with a false sense of security because they have never been afforded that luxury. 

Finally, this type of tragedy must be preventable.  To start, I believe White folks need to have the tough conversation about the false sense of security and entitlement that we feel in our White communities. We need to talk about gun control and question why White folks feel entitled to carry a concealed automatic weapon.

If we continue to ignore the elephant in the room, ignore the collateral damage of racism, these types of incidents will continue to happen.  But for today, I agree with the prayer that the President prayed, that God would heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds. 

Race wrestling and race talk dilemmas

I feel that I have come full circle in my readings this summer.  I started in schools, and now am ending in schools.  At the beginning of the summer, I found myself shocked and amazed at a new understanding of “race,” how racial difference is socially reproduced in schools, and the fact that racist attitudes and behavior still “happen” in our society. 

At this point, I am less shocked.  As I read Colormute by Mica Pollock (2004), I could see patterns already at the beginning of her story.  She painstakingly laid out the details of a multi-year qualitative study of a multi-racial high school in California.  For me, it seemed too slow.  As I had already immersed myself in theories about racialization and racial stratification, I wanted to point out the “problems” immediately and seek to redress them.

I see great wisdom in the careful, longitudinal approach.  Already someone close to me had warned that people like me go “to graduate level classes where you learn racism or learn hate of people labeled racists” and eventually, “after having become sensitized by reading all this material that you will see racism under every tree, bush, rock…”  This accusation haunted me throughout the summer reading course, and apparently still has a sting.  

 I did start seeing racism, seemingly everywhere.  Each social interaction and news story took on new meanings and dimensions.  My whole framework for understanding “race” and racial difference had been replaced.  I learned new nuanced definitions for racism, as it manifests in both blatant and covert everyday attitudes and actions.  And sadly, I did react harshly with white folks I felt didn’t “get it,” as I unintentionally initiated conversations that confirmed the worst of what they already thought of me. 

The brilliance of Pollock (2004), as with so many other scholars I have read over the summer, is that she goes to great lengths to give a thorough account of what happened on a daily basis at “Columbus High School.”  She is a white woman who taught one year at this racially diverse school, so as she began to collect data about how students, faculty and staff talked (or didn’t talk) about “race,” she was also in process of working with all the stakeholders.  Therefore, she goes out of her way not to paint participants as “racist” people, but simply as they appeared in the drama of the school.  She also includes her own contributions, missteps, and omissions to the racial dialogue of the school, which essentially incriminates her along with anyone else who might be “blamed” in her unfolding story.  Essentially, she does uncover racism, although she rarely names it as such.  

One might argue that is precisely because she was looking for discussions that included or omitted racial terms.  However, she has a few strange twists and turns in her study going for her.  The first is that she initially started out with the question of how “race” affected the way that students “got along” with each other.  As she began to collect data, she began to notice a predictable pattern of how people in the school did and did not talk about “race.”  She then changed her research question to examine when “race” did and did not appear in conversations. Secondly, half-way through her study the school was “reconstituted,” meaning that all the faculty and staff were replaced with new people in an effort to improve school outcomes.  She was able to continue her study with the same students, but all new adult participants.  During this time, she noticed the same patterns in the way that the adults talked or didn’t talk about “race” in the school, and this from a group of complete strangers! 

The general conclusion of Pollock’s study was that the adults at Columbus shared in a “colormute” discourse.  In other words, while they did talk about “race” in matter-of-fact ways in some instances, discussion of “race” and racial groups remained absent from faculty meetings and public communications.  Predictably, adults spoke of racial groups for multicultural events (e.g. “The Samoans are going to do their traditional dance”) or in instances of violence in the school (e.g. “The Filipinos were fighting the blacks”).  Adults also commented in private conversations about “race,” such as the on-going debate about what do about the black students in the hallway and whether it was really only black students.  But these private conversations never surfaced during meetings or discussions with students, and so in the case of the students in the hallway, nothing was actually done about the situation that so many faculty and students noticed.  

Likewise, while patterns student achievement could be analyzed in terms of racial groups, this was never explicitly done.  There was discussion from the predominantly white faculty of how to help all students, who were mostly “low-income minorities,” there were no explicit attempts to examine which racial groups in the school fared worse.  These statistics showed that blacks and Latinos were disproportionately disciplined, had lower achievement rates, and were more likely to drop out and not graduate than other groups.  In fact, the Consent Decree that outlined the desegregation policy for the district contained language that focused on black and Latino students, and the focus of the reconstitution echoed this concern.  However, this focus was never directly communicated to faculty before or after the reconstitution.  And although certain faculty and administrators were aware of the language in the Consent Decree, the discussion of how to meet the reconstitution goals never took place in a public forum.

Pollock concludes with some observations about the difficulties in talking about “race” and racial inequality:

• We don’t belong to simple race groups, but we do. (i.e. Individual identity is complex; however, students still identified with racial groups at different times, and faculty regularly categorized students into simplistic racial groups.)  
• Race doesn’t matter, but it does.  (i.e. “Race” is a social construction, not a biological reality; however, social interactions in schools create racial difference and inequality.)
• The “de-raced” words we use when discussing plans for racial equality can actually keep ups from discussing ways to make opportunities more racially equal.
• The more complex inequality seems to get, the more simplistic inequality analysis seems to become. (i.e. Even though Columbus was racially and economically diverse, the students seemed to get lumped in to one category, that of “low-income minority.”)
• The questions we ask most about race are the very questions we most suppress.
• Although talking racial terms can make race matter, not talking in racial terms can make race matter, too. 

Buehler (in press), in a similar study, found similar discourse patterns in a high school in Michigan.  She, like Pollock, suggests that talking about “race” in strategic ways can actually help to remedy racial inequality in schools.  Buehler begins with the premise that faculty and students are already engaged in “race wrestling,” that is, an internal struggle about how “race” should matter faced with how it does matter.  She recommends thoughtful discussion about “race talk” within individual schools.  These initial discussions should shed light on the ways racial difference and inequalities are being socially reproduced in that particular institution, and hopefully inform antiracist strategies.  Talking honestly and judiciously about “race” is, perhaps ironically, the first step towards moving beyond “just talk” and into anti-racist action.   

References

Buehler, J. (in press). “There’s a problem, and we’ve got to face it”: How staff members wrestled with race in an urban high school. Race, Ethnicity & Education.

Pollock, M. (2004). Colormute: Race talk dilemmas in an American school. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Theorizing racial structures and racial stratification

I just finished Feagin’s (2006) Systemic Racism.   I feel that his work can shed some light on the misunderstandings I have had in some recent conversations with friends and family.  As I stated before, I don’t believe my friends and family, or most white folks for that matter, are “racist people.”  I know my friends and family well enough to see that they have very good intentions and want to love people as well as they can.  However, the recurrent theme in these conversations is the minimization of race and racism.  It is as if talking about race itself is seen as “racist."  Conversely, the subject of “white privilege” seems to elicit protestations of “reverse discrimination” or the equivalent.  I realized that in most cases, we were not coming at the subject from the same understanding of racial inequality.  Feagin’s work is key for theorizing about racial structure and stratification/hierarchy in the U.S. 

First, Feagin does not see a dichotomy between past and present.  In other words, our society is not fundamentally different from the period in history when we became a nation.  Feagin documents the overarching trend of systemic racism in the U.S. from the “founding fathers,” through slavery, the “Jim Crow” era, the Civil Rights movement, until the present. Feagin extensively shows how, over the history of the U.S., systemic racism has been foundational and continuous, not just something tacked on to an otherwise healthy society or something that has cropped up in different points in history.  In general, the narratives of elite white people that Feagin documents reveal denial, amnesia and alexithymia regarding the oppression of black people and other people of color.  As white people have remained mostly segregated, they have socially reproducing racial hierarchies.  This elitist narrative has been transmitted from one generation to the next relatively unaltered and unchallenged by white people.  There is a cumulative effect in terms of oppression and privilege that has created and sustained racial inequality to this day. 

The power of Feagin’s work, however, primarily lies in the voice of African Americans throughout the work.  In line with standpoint theory, he documents how oppressed participants in history have a singular view of not only their own experience, but the experience of their oppressors.  They have grappled with these concepts, struggled for their freedom, resisted and subverted the status quo.  They have displayed greater moral integrity than the men who are traditionally considered to be the heroes and “founding fathers” of this nation. 

This book has strong implications for education, given that this full view of history has been omitted or suppressed in textbooks and curriculum.  This would explain why most white folks, along with some people of color, today have a hard time talking about racial inequality.  Without a view of systemic racism, racism that has “spread throughout, system-wide, affecting… society as a whole,” we are left with weak cultural arguments, or even resort to biological explanations to try to explain inequality that is blatantly racialized.  In the post-Civil Rights era, white people instinctively feel that talking about race might get you labeled a “racist,” so there is an effort to make it “anything but race,” further exacerbating attempts to address societal inequity. 

I just recently revisited Tim Wise’s website (“Michelle Alexander & Tim Wise on Racism and the New Jim Crow,” 2012) and listened to "On the Other Side of the Myth: A Conversation with Michelle Alexander and Tim Wise."  There were a few points that stood out to me, and which I felt related to Feagin’s (2006) work.  Tim Wise commented that indifference, not overt hatred, is actually the core of oppression, Feagin calls this indifference “social alexithymia,” a general inability to empathize with the experience of others, especially those we have made to be very “other” from ourselves.   This “otherizing” or dehumanization, the rationalization of racial difference, is then accompanied by a general amnesia about past oppression.  This has been foundational to racial stratification over the history of the U.S., and is the essence of the “new racism.” 

Many scholars are pointing out that while overt racism still exist, there is a new "color-blind racism" that seems much milder, and yet is much more persistent for the very fact that it is harder to address and dismantle than blatant racist speech or acts.  Tim Wise mentioned that many black people are leaving the West Coast, for example, and moving to the South.  He speculated that in some ways, it might be because the blatant racism of the South is easier to identify and resist than the slippery, “now you see it, now you don’t,” colorblind ideology.  The bottom line, of course, is that neither style of racism is just; both need to end. 

Some of Tim Wise and Michelle Alexander’s conversation centered around how much progress is to be hoped for in the anti-racist movement when many times anti-racist activists are trying to convince white people of something white folks don’t believe is there.  Tim Wise mentioned “interest convergence,” which is based on the premise that most progress in anti-slavery and civil rights movements took place when there was a convergence of white elites' interests with the goals of civil rights activists.  For example, at the time of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, the U.S. had a strong need to appear democratic in the face of worldwide Communism.  This was actually documented in a brief prepared for the legal counsel during the hearing of Brown vs. the Board of Education.  Wise suggests that one tactic is to convince white folks that racism and oppression actually hurt them economically and psychologically. While Michelle Alexander agreed that this approach could be useful at times to get in the door, she maintained that there is a need to build a moral consensus to sustain momentum.  She recommended a call to the “beloved community” in terms of spiritual consequences as a way to build a lasting anti-racist movement.   

On a more positive note, I had a pleasant conversation recently with the man who owns the building next door.  He is an African American minister who lives in another neighborhood but comes by to work on his building occasionally.  I think we honestly didn’t know what to make of each other for the first year or so that we knew each other.  Slowly, we have been getting to know each other, and the other day we had a quite enjoyable conversation about what I have been reading.  As I listened to the pastor, I found myself amazed as he talked about history, white privilege, race relations, racial inequality, etc.  He used none of the terms that I just mentioned, but he was talking about these concepts as I have been reading about them in books.  It was a moment of self-reflection for me, because I realized that I should not be amazed.  He, as an active participant in his own struggle, has thought deeply about racial structures and racial stratification. 

I am only just now reading and thinking about these issues because of my privileged position closer to the top.  In my whitewashed world, I never looked down to see the structure or those who have experienced the systematic, interrelated barriers of the structure.  Only later in life were there white people who pointed out the racial stratification to me, and only now I am finally listening to people of color talk about their perspectives.  As I think about my own developing understanding of systemic racism, this progression should inform my interactions with other white folks.  I hope that I am better able to communicate information in way that can be well received, with an understanding of the deficiencies in my own knowledge. 

References

Feagin, J. R. (2006). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. New York: Routledge.

Michelle Alexander & Tim Wise on Racism and the New Jim Crow. (2012, June 25). Tim Wise. Retrieved July 12, 2012, from http://www.timwise.org/

Discourse and colorblind racism

I have been getting into a lot of conversations lately.  Friends ask, “How’s your summer going?”  “Great,” I say with a wry smile, “I’ve been spending the summer reading about systemic racism.”  

I really need to learn the art of chit-chat. 

Of course, these conversations inevitably end up being more difficult than I intended.  I am in a certain frame of mind right now and I forget that all my friends haven’t been reading along with me.  I liken it to a study abroad experience: I have been changing slowly in my way of thinking, and I expect that everything will be the same with the people I have known for so long.  My point is not to say my friends are not also changing and growing, it’s just that we are having different experiences. 

The latest book I read was called Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003).  Again, not a conversation starter in most circles, and if a conversation did get started, I have a feeling it would get ugly rather quickly.  But since you are reading this blog, I assume you would like me to explain why this is an important, insightful work.  

Bonilla-Silva conducted two large studies, one with hundreds of white university students, and the other in the city of Detroit with black and white adult participants from diverse backgrounds.  He and his fellow researchers conducted hours and hours of interviews with these participants.  The interviews centered on issues of race, racism and racial inequality.  For example, most of the participants were asked, “What is your opinion about affirmative action?” or “Interracial marriage is a controversial subject.  What do you think about this topic?”  The interviews were recorded, transcribed and then analyzed.  The goal was to look at the ways in which people, black and white, talked about race.  This included body language, silence, tone, volume and rate of speech, and other speech patterns, like stuttering or false starts. 

I should make clear at this point that the goal was NOT to analyze the speech of well-meaning individuals and reveal, “Hah!  We knew it! You’re a racist!”  In fact, Bonilla-Silva makes it very clear he doesn’t believe that people are either “good, non-racist” people or “bad racist” people.  Bonilla-Silva also noted that participants, regardless of age, mostly did NOT use racial slurs or other explicitly racist language more typical of the “Jim Crow” era.  Instead, with the understanding that racism is both systemic and institutionalized in the U.S., Bonilla-Silva wanted to see how people are influenced by this dominant ideology, even if their language is not overtly racist.   Therefore, the interviewers were very careful to ask questions in a way that would show the racial beliefs of the participants.  I might even describe it in terms of “innocent until proven guilty”—the interviewers attempted to help the participants clarify their views in ways that would show that they did not hold racist beliefs if that was the case.  

Bonilla-Silva found that many white participants, who were mostly complete strangers from across the state of Michigan, shared ways of talking about race, racism and racial inequality.  He calls these “frames.”  For example, one of the main frames is that of “cultural racism,” which has been traditionally described in terms of a “culture of poverty” (e.g. “Blacks don’t place much emphasis on education.”)  Ostensibly, it replaces essentialist racism, but since it presents culture as monolithic and stable it has been called the “biologization of culture.”   This was offered by many participants as a primary explanation for racial inequality in society.  While it seems like a compassionate response, it ignores systemic racism and places the responsibility on the victims.  Bonilla-Silva found that white participants used this frame, but that this frame also seemed to indirectly affect the discourse of some black participants, as well. 

An extension of the cultural racism frame is the narrative of the “exceptional black,” that is, the belief that most black people are culturally deficient, but there are a few exceptions (e.g. “I know a black guy who makes more money than I do.  He didn’t let discrimination get him down.”)  This is also similar to a rhetorical move that many participants used: “If the Jews/Italians/Irish/Asians can make it, why can’t the blacks?”  This is in line with the belief that if a person just works hard, they can succeed.  Ultimately, this view minimizes institutionalized racism against blacks specifically, but also against other people of color.  It also can be yet another way to “talk around” a belief that black people are culturally deficient. 

Bonilla-Silva found with the participants in his study that the use of color-blind discourse combined several frames and rhetorical moves.  Other frames were “minimization of racism” (e.g. I don’t think discrimination really happens these days.”) and “naturalization” (e.g. “People like to stay with their kind of people. It’s just the way it is.”)   Rhetorical moves included projection (e.g. “They are the racists ones.”) and claiming interracial friendships (e.g. “Some of my best friends are black.”). 

Again, the use of these frames and rhetorical devices do not reveal that the participants are inherently racist people; however, it does indicate problematic and faulty beliefs about racial inequality, discrimination, and privilege.  Secondly, the evidence of the “racial grammar” of color-blind racism in the discourse of many unrelated white people, and even some black people, is further proof of a hegemonic racial ideology in the U.S. (Frankenberg’s power- and color-evasive discourse, or Feagin’s white racial frame).   It is possible for the participants to have been influenced by this color-blind ideology and have incorporated it into their discourse without active awareness, especially if they had been socialized in predominantly white environments.  My advisor suggested that one way to think about discourses is that they speak “through us” in imperceptible ways.  It is this color-blind discourse, however, that allows people to navigate around issues of race so that a few pernicious racist perceptions remain unrecognized and unchallenged.

It is important to point out here that most black participants, and a handful of white participants, did show a “race cognizance” (Frankenberg, 1993).  In other words, while they may have displayed some influence from color-blind discourse, they recognized that racism still exists and that while race is merely a social construct, it still matters in terms of life outcomes in the U.S.  This shows, in line with other researchers, that it is possible to break out of the cycle of socialization, recognize the dominant discourse, and reject it. 

Most of the conversations I have had recently with white folks have ended poorly and left me feeling rather confused.  It’s like we are speaking different languages.  And it turns out, we almost are.  As I shift into “race cognizance,” I am finding more and more examples of color-blind discourse in the conversations with friends, family, and even strangers.  I also recognize that in the past I have been guilty of buying into and using several of these frames and rhetorical moves.  As I moved from my white segregated context to work with urban mercy ministries, I attempted to explain the inequality that I encountered.  Even though I had excellent mentors who told me about institutionalized racism, I still functioned from the whitewashed version of history that I had learned from my family, friends, church and school.  It has been a huge shift for me to realize that systemic racism currently, and over the course of the history of our nation, accounts for the majority of racial inequality that exists within our society.  Cultural explanations for racial inequality are deceptively gentler versions of racism because at the heart is a view of “black culture” as monolithic and essentially inferior. 

My understanding of solidarity has also been refined as I have realized the fallacy of cultural racism.  While it purports to be compassionate, I realize that I cannot be truly empathetic if I don’t recognize the systematic and institutionalized barriers that have been set up to oppress different groups.  Joining with an oppressed group in solidarity had a shallow meaning for me; I assumed I was mostly commiserating with “those people” and helping them to better their situation.  In reality, solidarity means that I recognize our common humanity and abandon the idea of “us and them.”  I must recognize the struggle of oppressed people against a system, acknowledge my role in that system, and as much as I am able, attempt to disassociate myself from this system, which has ultimately damaged white folks, as well.  Then, as I fight against the system alongside the oppressed, I must realize that they have been fighting long before I came on the scene, and that ultimately the struggle will cost the oppressed more.  

References

Bonilla-Silva, E. (2003). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.

Feagin, J. R. (2006). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. New York: Routledge.

Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Christianity and Whiteness

In doing some reading this summer, I came across the works of antiracist activist Tim Wise.  I haven’t actually read his books yet, but I have listened to a few of his lectures on YouTube.   My first impression was pure awe.  I totally agree with his antiracist message, which he delivers with humor and selective profanity.  I found him helpful in clarifying otherwise muddied arguments regarding race and racism.  He inspired me to have the courage to speak out against racism. However, two things coincided for me.  

First, many of the people in my sphere of influence seem to dislike liberals, feminists, socialists, etc, a detail that has caused conflict between me and these same people at times. These friends cannot reconcile their worldview with these ideologies so as to even sympathize with the aforementioned groups.  This is supremely frustrating to me most of the time, and I have been known to express said frustration.  On the other hand, as Tim Wise pointed out, it's kind of like talking about "my momma."  I can do it, but don't you dare.  So when Wise starts "conservative bashing" on Twitter, it's not like I haven't done it before, but it hits me the wrong way coming from him.  And then he went there—he started insulting Jesus and Christians. 
 
I found myself slightly defensive, to say the least.  I argued, “I mean,  I understand there is hypocrisy in the Christian church, I get that there have been abuses, but for me, these have not been a correct representation or interpretation of my faith."  I find it supremely intolerant and hypocritical for Tim Wise to defend Islam and denounce stereotyping of Muslims for the acts of just a few, and then proceed to lambast Christianity and stereotype Christians.  Both religions have been potentially misinterpreted by groups of extremists.  Further, both religions have historically and currently do maintain hegemony in various parts of the world.  According to his own moral code, if it's not okay for him to stereotype Muslims or insult Islam, it should not be okay for him to do the same towards Christians and Christianity.

However, as I reflected on my reaction I suddenly had an "aha" moment regarding Christianity and its role in the U.S.  I suddenly saw the parallel between White privilege and "Christian privilege," between White supremacy and role of Christianity (or a distorted interpretation of it) since the before colonies were established by White settlers.   I'm not trying to gloss over the entire history of Christianity, and it's important to note that I’m locating my discussion in the U.S. 

All this to say, I realize there are reasons why Tim Wise and others would be angry at Christians, and specifically White Christians.  I also realized that I had used the same type of logic that I have heard other White people use when talking about "race," but this time applied it to religion.  The argument goes something like, "Well, there is racism in other countries.  Look at what [insert oppressive people group] did to [insert oppressed people group]."  At which point, I want to say, "Right, but we're in this country, and we have to deal with our mess, not theirs."  So in saying, "Islam maintains hegemony in other countries, oppresses people, etc." I should follow my own logic, "Right, but it doesn't here, whereas Christianity has and does."  

In this country, Christianity has a complex and problematic relationship with "Whiteness."  (This first and foremost evidenced by the fact that when I or other White Christians talk about Christianity, we are thinking about White people.) This dual identity, often seen as one and the same, maintained institutionalized slavery based on a hierarchical racial order.  This ideology continues to dictate life in the U.S. and has real psychological and material consequences.  White Christians cannot separate themselves from this history, nor from the present reality of segregation and racial inequality.  It must be acknowledged first before continuing in any public or community relations.  

My new stance is that Christianity may have earned a good number of the insults dealt out by Tim Wise, although I can't fully stand behind his type of activism.  We [White Christians] have marginalized and oppressed people of color, and we continue to maintain a segregated order (see Emerson's study, "Divided by Faith").  Secondly, as a Christian I am supposed to follow Christ, who "while being reviled, did not revile in return," and he was blameless—I am not.  Finally, I started to wonder how much of White Christian’s outrage at being "persecuted" in the U.S. is really just masked rage at losing privilege?  Rage at being perceived as anything but the norm?  Fear at losing power?  And anyway, how do Christians justify fear and rage?  Do we recognize it as such, or do we call it “righteous indignation”?  This is one of the reasons why we need truly diverse churches.  As Christians, we need the perspective of people from other racial groups to reveal our pride, indignation, fear, privilege and oppression for the purpose of repentance and reconciliation.

Critical interrogations of whiteness

I have been trekking through a book for the past two weeks, "White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness" by Ruth Frankenberg (1993).  Part of the trek was due to my lack of familiarity with feminist theory.   After I did some background reading, I was able to better contextualize this work.  I also learned that feminist theory is quite useful for framing and discussing oppression, privilege, inequality and racism.  Standpoint theory, concepts of oppression (Frye, 1983) and privilege (Bailey, 2004; McIntosh, 1990) are particularly helpful in understanding and placing Frankenberg's work.

Standpoint theory is basically that a person’s standpoint (i.e. gender, race, class, etc.) determines how s/he views the world.   The dominant people, those at the top of society, do not clearly view those below them, while those in subordinate positions are able to see both their own position, as well as those in the dominant position.  While standpoint theory would suggest that those who are oppressed or subordinate in some way  could understand the oppression of other people more easily, there are some limitations.  For example, while it would seem that White women should be able to empathize with the perspective of people of color, women of color were historically excluded from the feminist movement.  While the White feminists had an understanding of oppression (i.e. "systematically related barriers and forces not of one's own making"), the understanding of the opposite side of the coin, that of White privilege (i.e. "unearned assets conferred systematically"), was not at the forefront of the feminist dialogue at that time.  Frankenberg documents how White identity prevented White women from seeing outside the hegemonic White Discourse.  In other words, it was not obvious that racism did and does also shape the experience of White women. 

In her book, Frankenberg discusses how many White women moved from anti-racist movements to the feminist movement.  However, the second wave feminist movement was dominated by White women's perspective, which marginalized and ignored the experience of women of color.  This is the intervention Frankenberg makes with her study, a series of interviews with 30 White women in the 1980s in California.   The women came from a wide range of backgrounds (i.e. ages, class, sexual orientation, place of origin, etc.); however, her sample did provide a disproportionate number of women who had been involved in the feminist movement and/or interracial relationships (i.e. partners and/or children).  Specifically, she uses interracial relationships as a focal point for examining the dominant discourse (or discursive repertoires) regarding race. 

Frankenberg defines racial difference as social constructed and historically located, which I see as related to the cycle of socialization (Harro, 2010).  We are socialized into ideologies by our families and institutions so we don’t even recognize them; the ideologies are considered to be the norm.  Whereas White people have often assumed that people of color have a racial identity and that they are affected by racism, they have largely been unaware of also being “racialized.”  Frankenberg holds that “Whiteness” is also socially constructed and has changed over time.  The very language that racializes the “other” (i.e. Native Americans, Hispanic, blacks and Asians) also defines Whiteness. 

Through critical discourse analysis, Frankenberg found that the White women in her study adopted one predominant discourse, a power- and color-evasive language (similar to Bonilla-Silva’s “color-blind racism”).  In other words, the women avoided or talked around issues of race, privilege, power and inequality. However, Frankenberg notes that for most of the history of the U.S. the concept of race has been defined in terms of biological difference or genetics.  This “essentialist racism” maintained that different phenotypical "races" were essentially different and hierarchical.  Therefore, the power- and color evasive discourse was marked by undercurrents of this essentialist racism.  Some of the women had escaped the cycle of socialization; they realized that racism did affect their loved ones and themselves and decided to move in an antiracist direction.  Frankenberg marked this as a “race cognizant” discourse.  Again, the power- and color-evasive discourse sometimes still subverted race cognizance in these women’s narratives, displaying the power of this hegemonic discourse.

Haviland's (2008) study also involves discourse analysis in an all-White setting.  Her results parallels and corroborates with the works of Frankenberg (1993) and Bonilla-Silva (2002, 2003).  Her particular niche is examining interactional White discourse in a setting that was intended to actually combat racism.  She found that "White educational discourse" prevented pre-service teachers in a multicuturalism seminar from moving beyond their racist perceptions.  Even the instructors of the seminar seemed unable to escape this discourse.  Semantic moves such as avoiding certain words, false starts, claiming uncertainty, and silence enabled participants to never confront each other about racially biased attitudes.  This discourse carried over into the classroom where a seminar participant was a student teacher.  She was unsuccessful in combating racism in the elementary school classroom because of her lack of awareness of the White educational discourse. 

The implications of this study are important for teacher educators, university supervisors, and cooperating educators, but also for other activists who wish to help White people overcome racist ideologies.  Haviland suggests actually using the "White educational discourse" against itself.  By staying within the norms of the students' culture, but still confronting racist perceptions, she hopes that they might be more open to changing racist perceptions.  Haviland's (2008) study, along with Frankenberg's (1993) and Bonilla-Silva's (2003) studies, are indispensable for researchers who wish to conduct qualitative research with regard to racism in all-White settings. 

References 

1. Bailey, A. (2004). Privilege: Expanding on Marilyn Frye’s “Oppression.” In L. M. Heldke & P. O’Connor (Eds.), Oppression, privilege, and resistance: Theoretical perspectives on racism, sexism, and heterosexism (pp. 301–316). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
2. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2002). The linguistics of color blind racism: How to talk nasty about blacks without sounding “racist.” Critical Sociology (Brill Academic Publishers), 28(1/2), 41.
3. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2003). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.
4. Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
5. Frye, M. (1983). The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Crossing Press feminist series. Trumansburg, N.Y: Crossing Press.
6. Harro, B. (2010). The cycle of socialization. In M. Adams, W. J. Blumenfeld, & H. W. Hackman (Eds.), Readings for diversity and social justice (2nd ed., pp. 45–51). New York: Routledge.
7. Haviland, V. (2008). “Things get glossed over”: Rearticulating the silencing power of whiteness in education. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(1), 40–54. doi:10.1177/0022487107310751
8. McIntosh, P. (1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, 49, 31.

Interracial Marriage

My husband and I finally made to Shakespeare in the Park to see Othello last week.  This was a tradition for us before we were dating, but since child #1 and #2 came, we hadn’t been in a few years.   For those of you, like me, who haven’t thought about Othello since high school (and I think we didn’t read the whole thing then, but watched the movie instead)…

Othello is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, with possibly the worst villain in English literature—Iago.   Unfortunately, Iago is Othello's best friend.  Othello is one of Shakespeare’s few Black or “dark” principal characters.  There seems to be some debate as to whether Othello was truly Black in the modern sense of the term; nonetheless, it is clear that Othello is perceived as racially “other” in the play.  Othello marries Desdemona, who is described as White, which enrages Desdemona’s father.  Prior to this, Othello had been in good favor with Desdemona’s father as a Moorish prince and military officer.  Through a series of machinations, Iago manages to incense Othello by inventing a story of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness.  He plays on the idea that she will ultimately wish to be with someone who looks like her.  Othello ultimately kills his wife, and then kills himself when he finds out Iago has deceived him. 

This plot is supremely depressing, however, I don’t remember being as disturbed by the story as a high school student as I was this past week.   As I watched, I was horrified by the racial slurs, sexual innuendo, sexism and misogyny.   I looked around at the crowd and wondered what they were thinking about these atrocities taking place on stage.  As in previous years, I was aware that the majority of the crowd was White.  I think I noticed more Black people this time, but I’m not sure if that was because I was looking for them or if there were in fact more Black people present.  I wondered if it was also hard to watch for the Black folks.  I wondered if the White people were thinking, “Gee, I’m glad we don’t live in that time period.  See how far we have come?”  All I kept thinking was, “Nothing has changed.” 

Let me repeat that.  Nothing has changed.  There are still White parents who refuse to attend their daughter’s wedding because she married a Black man.  There are still White families who treat interracial couples poorly.  And conversely, there are Black men who won’t date a White woman because of the Black family’s negative feelings about this type of union, although admittedly this bias might be more defensible in light of our history.  However, it all ends up adding up to the same thing--attitudes against interracial marriage.  And these are only examples from people I know.  If you don’t want to take my word for it, there are also studies that have been done that document white people’s attitudes towards interracial marriages (Bonilla-Silva, 2002, 2003; Frankenberg, 1993). 

I focus on White people’s attitudes because the social construct of “Whiteness” has historically shaped the dominant discourse about "race' and racial difference in the U.S.  In other words, “Whiteness” is the concept by which all racial difference is measured and defined.   Laws made by White people and based on “Whiteness,” and backed by Christianity, forbid interracial marriages (i.e. White marriage with black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American) until 1967 in the U.S.  The issue was and is also not limited to Black/White, however, there is evidence that White people’s attitudes towards people of color exist on a spectrum (i.e. Asian people are considered to be closest to White, while Black people are considered to be the most different, with everyone else falling somewhere in the middle). White people had the power to enforce these norms on everyone else.

One argument against interracial marriages has been that the interracial couple will struggle because of cultural differences.  The second argument, and perhaps more prevalent, has typically been the kingpin: “The children will suffer.”  These arguments are based on an understanding of White people as essentially different (either culturally and/or biologically) from Black people.  Second, the argument about the children acknowledges that racism still exists in society (i.e. the children will be treated differently because of their racial identity), but puts the onus on the interracial couple, not the society at large. 

Even when White people spoke in favor of interracial marriage in the studies I mentioned, it was mostly in ambivalent tones.  In other words, while there are strong arguments against interracial marriage, there has been a dearth of arguments for interracial marriages.   I recently had an e-mail conversation with a friend who pointed out the number of interracial marriages or unions in the Bible.  (While I realize that the modern concept of race based on phenotype is unique, I maintain that the concept of the “other” based on ethnic origin resulted in systemic and institutional hierarchy and discrimination from which we can draw many parallels.)    I quote my friend’s list below:

1.       Judah and Tamar: scholars believe that Tamar is probably Canaanite (Judah had already married a Canaanite wife Gen. 38:2); Tamar is “more righteous” than Judah (his own words in Gen. 38:26).

2.       Joseph and Asenath (daughter of Potiphera-priest of On) Gen. 41:45. Joseph and Asenath have two children—Manasseh and Ephraim (Gen. 41:51-52) who are adopted by Joseph’s father Jacob (Gen. 48:5) to become part of the 12 tribes!

3.       Moses (Jewish/adopted by Egyptians) and Zipporah (daughter of Reuel/Jethro/priest of Midian) Ex. 2:15-22; Ex. 18 “Guess who’s coming to Dinner?”; Family “dynamics” of inter-racial marriage Num 12:1-3,9-13.

4.       Salmon and Rahab (Canaanite in Jericho) Josh. 2; “she lives among the Israelites to this day” Josh. 6:25; Heb. 11:31; James 2:25 “considered righteous”

5.       Boaz and Ruth (Moabite) Ruth 1:4

6.       David and Bathsheba (debated if Bathsheba was Israelite or not)

7.       Timothy’s parents (Acts 16:1,3) “a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was a Jewess and a believer, but whose father was a Greek”

Christianity clearly has no basis for an argument against interracial marriages.  If anything, this would be a strong argument for interracial marriages, if nothing else because many of the couples listed above are included in the lineage of Jesus.  I believe that it is time we not only recognize that interracial marriages are not a problem, but that they are an advantage and a blessing.  The problem has always been the racist ideology that still prevails in society. 

References

1. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2002). The linguistics of color blind racism: How to talk nasty about blacks without sounding “racist.” Critical Sociology (Brill Academic Publishers), 28(1/2), 41.
2. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2003). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.
3. Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Social interaction and the construction of racial stereotypes

Racial stereotypes constitute more than just racial epithets and individual prejudice.  Prior assumptions about people based on their appearance, accents, possessions, or other racial markers are incorporated and institutionalized into every arena of society.  Again, life outcomes can be determined not by an individual peoples’ performance, but by how their actions are perceived by society and the response that this perception precipitates.

Perhaps there is no group that is as affected by this in the U.S. as African American males.  With higher rates of high school dropouts, incarceration, and lower life expectancy, black males have been stereotyped as criminals, dangerous, hypersexual, and even an endangered species (Ferguson, 2000).  My friends who teach in schools with black children tell me that teachers often can predict at a very early age which students will end up in jail.  I have had well-intentioned friends explain to me that the problem is the black culture, explained in terms of the matriarchy, deadbeat/absent fathers, teen pregnancy, low value placed on education, no support in the home, together with problematic family situations involving violence, drugs, alcohol, and an overwhelming poverty/welfare mentality.  With obstacles like these, my friends reason, it’s no wonder these boys are running the streets by 4^th grade. How could they ever learn how to make choices like a man when they don’t have any good role models?  This explanation is deceptively appealing in that it is overly simplistic and belies the crippling effect of systemic, institutional racism on the victims of racial stereotypes.

As Ferguson (2000) explains, her critical incident occurred when she walked in as a volunteer to after-school tutoring and recreation program for “at-risk” students and realized that the students in the program were predominantly African American males (in a school with approximately 50% black students).  This realization was accompanied by the growing awareness that the teachers and staff seemed to take for granted the demographics of the “at-risk” students.  This launched her into a three-year, in-depth qualitative study that encompassed not only the elementary school environment, but the homes of several boys whom she came to know.  She spent most of her time in the school observing the comings and goings of a room she came to call the “Punishing Room.”  Through vignettes, powerful narrative, interwoven with critical analysis, Ferguson shows that the black boys she tracked were pegged as “troublemakers” before they walked in the door.  Whether the boys ended up in the “troublemaker” or “schoolboy” group involved a complicated series of choices that were not so clearly right or wrong. 

While the boys did have experience with poverty and hard knocks, Ferguson found that the families did not fit into the stereotype of the drug-infested and violent home life.  Instead, the patterns of inequitable punishment and injustice enacted in school were echoed in the families’ interactions in society with far-reaching consequences.  In this context, the choices of the boys actually seemed rather limited: maintain a sense of self-worth through resistance or conform to systematic injustice, bullying from teachers, and racial discrimination.  In contrast to the “troublemakers,” the “schoolboys” often made the choice to do what was expected of them at the cost of an internalized self-loathing.  In order to succeed in school, there is external pressure to “act white” and suppress the black part of self, which is seen as problematic and deficient. For understanding these dynamics, Bourdieu’s theories of a superior “cultural capital” and “symbolic violence,” as well as Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power are useful.  

Two other studies emphasize the harmful effects of racial stereotypes as they are constructed and reinforced through social interactions in school.  Negative stereotypes like those described by Rolón-Dow (2004) in her study of Puerto Rican adolescent girls result in frustration and apathy on the part of teachers.  Because the teachers perceived the girls as having competing interests (i.e. boys) that precluding being good students, they were more likely to shift blame onto the girls for academic failure.  On the other hand, it is important to recognize that even a seemingly positive stereotype is not benign.  Lee (1994) studied the impact of the “model-minority” stereotype on different groups of Asian students.   While stereotypes are sometimes minimized (i.e. humans need to make generalizations in order to understand the world), they carry power to perpetuate prejudice and discrimination.  The “model-minority” is not only harmful to other racial groups, but also to Asian people who are treated differently because of a perceived racial difference. 

Ferguson  (2000), Rolón-Dow (2004), and Lee (1994) would argue against a predisposition of certain groups to succeed or fail based on their culture.  Instead, the research indicates that institutions serve as sites for social reproduction of hierarchy and stratification that continue to benefit people with white skin. 

At one point in our conversations, my husband argued, “You can’t just blame the institutions.”  I asked him, “Why is it important for you to not blame the institutions?”  As he thought about the question, I realized the implications of these studies. If the institution is to blame, and not the individual student, then hard work and “merit” don’t come into play.  Conversely, my success or my husband’s positive experiences in school and society are not a result of a “Puritan work ethic,” pulling up the proverbial boot straps, exceeding talent or intellect, but instead the possession of the correct cultural capital and the right skin color to receive preferential treatment in our social interactions.  This is huge disturbance to the personal narrative that we tell ourselves about our own experiences. 

References

Ferguson, A. A. (2000). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of black masculinity. Law, meaning, and violence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Lee, S. J. (1994). Behind the model-minority stereotype: Voices of high- and low-achieving Asian American students. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 25, 413–429. 

Rolón-Dow, R. (2004). Seduced by images: Identity and schooling in the lives of Puerto Rican girls. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 35(1), 8–29.

The construction of racial difference through social interaction

In the U.S., there is a widespread belief that those who work hard will be rewarded with success.  This faith in “meritocracy” will also lead us to the conclusion that those who do not succeed did not try hard enough.  Many have made the claim that education can be the “great equalizer” where all children are given an equal chance to be anything they want to be.  However, the reality is that certain groups of children (i.e. poor, Black, Hispanic, American Indian, etc.) are not succeeding at the same rate as other groups (i.e. middle to upper-class, Whites, some groups of Asians) in school.

In an effort to explain this phenomenon, some have proposed the idea certain cultures place more emphasis on hard work, education, or economic status than others.  However, this conclusion has been consistently refuted in recent research.  A more convincing argument, and one that bears out in numerous qualitative studies, is that of “social capital,” a concept that Pierre Bourdieu has used to describe the resources (i.e. finances, social networks, cultural knowledge, and status) that children bring with them to school.  From this framework, children enter school with varying amounts of the social capital necessary to succeed in school, and therefore end up with very different experiences and outcomes unless there is significant effort to mitigate these inequities.  Lewis (2001, 2003) examines how schools reproduce existing social hierarchies and reinforce the construct of racial difference. 

Amanda Lewis spent a year in three different elementary schools in California: Foresthills, West City and Metro2.  Foresthills is a mostly white, middle-class suburban school, while West City and Metro2 are both located in the city.  West City is described a neighborhood school with mostly black and Hispanic students, but with predominantly white teachers and administrators.  Metro2 is a language immersion school that mostly “non-white” in terms of the student population, as well as teachers and administrators.  The through-line of the narrative is the understanding of racial differences that is implicit in interactions in each school.  Although the schools are seemingly different, they each serve a foil to the others by revealing commonalities in the way people give meaning to the concept of race.  For the students at West City and Metro2, this has implications for their success or failure in school.  At Foresthills, constructions of racial differences serve to perpetuate a segregated white community that is left with unexamined and unchallenged assumptions and biases. 

I found myself most riveted by the description of Foresthills.  I could see so many parallels to my own experience in a predominantly white school.  Current statistics from my elementary school indicate that it is much the same as it was over 20 years ago: 89% white, 17% free/reduced lunch (“Glen Carbon Elem School,” 2010).   My high school shows similar demographics, with the exception that there are over 2,000 students instead of only 400 (“Edwardsville High School,” 2010).  I never realized that I went to a “white” school.  The concept of race was muted in my world, except for racial lines that clearly delineated what neighborhoods in which we would not live and the kinds of people with whom we did not associate.  Sometime after college, I discovered the book “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” I actually wondered how Dr. Tatum (2003) knew about my high school.  It was the question that was always somewhere in my mind, but I had never asked.  I was amazed to find that other people had asked similar questions and was intrigued to find out the answer.  I found that there was no simple answer, but that the topic was so much more complex than I had ever imagined. 

Lewis’ (2001) radical assertion is that White middle- to upper-class schools need a critical multicultural curriculum, not only for the small percentage of students of color in these schools.  This multicultural education must go beyond a cursory treatment of “ethnic” history and culture, such as confining black history to one month and hosting Cinco de Mayo celebrations.  White students need to understand and unpack “white privilege,” as well as the segregated nature of their schools, neighborhoods, churches, and social groups.  Without this type of education, white schools only serve to perpetuate a “color-blind” ideology that fails to challenge institutional racism and social stratification.  In turn, these students go one to be the teachers of the next generation.  In the case of West City, it became evident that white, black or Latino teachers with unexamined and unchallenged constructs of racial can actually act in ways that harm the students they desire to help.  Differential treatment of black and Hispanic students played out in daily interactions, enacting chain reactions with damaging results.  Metro2 served as a school where teachers and staff attempted to directly address race, but even this school was not immune to the insidious assumptions about racial differences.  It became evident that on-going, critical multicultural professional development is also needed for teachers if the cycle is to be broken. 

References

Edwardsville High School. (2010).National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/

Glen Carbon Elem School. (2010).National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/

Lewis, A. E. (2001). There is no “race” in the schoolyard: Color-blind ideology in an (almost) all-white school. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 781–811. 

Lewis, A. E. (2003). Race in the schoolyard: Negotiating the color line in classrooms and communities. Rutgers series in childhood studies. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press.

Tatum, B. D. (2003). “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?”: And other conversations about race. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Introduction to Race

It should not come as a surprise to me that race is not a biological reality.  It makes sense from what I know about biology that humans are all part of the same species.  There are no humanoid sub-species—those only exist in science fiction.  Having said that, I found myself amazed at the idea that race has no genetic basis as I watched a PBS series called “Race: The Power of an Illusion” (Herbes-Sommers, Strain, & Smith, 2003).  Geneticists compared human DNA and found just as many variations between two people from the same race as between two people with different skin color and facial features.  In other words, race is only skin deep.  All human DNA examined up until now contains all the same components with only variations on the same theme: blue or brown eyes, straight or curly hair, long or short legs, a tongue that does or does not curl, etc. 

So what is race?  How have we arrived at the concept of different group of people who are divided by the way that they look instead of language and/or a shared culture?  Why is it that a person of Chinese descent, who speaks English and eats pizza on a regular basis, should select “Asian” on the U.S. census survey?  Or that someone living the U.S. who has dark skin and is not Hispanic or Asian will be referred to as “black” whether they have “white” ancestry or not?  Why is “whiteness” viewed as a monolithic racial category when the concept has changed over time (e.g. Irish immigrants in the 1900s were not considered white)? 

If race is not “real,” then why are there a multitude of euphemisms we to talk about other groups of people?  For example, in St. Louis the mention of geographic locations calls to mind specific racialized contexts.  If someone mentions “South County” it is usually in reference to a specific group of people, namely middle-class white people.  Conversely, the mention “Jefferson County” is often the punch line to some comment about impoverished white people.  A reference to “the city” or “North County” generally translates to “the area where black people live,” and more often than not signals recognition of some level of poverty.  Similarly, the words “urban,” “inner city,” “diverse” and “multicultural” indicate the presence of people of color.  On the other hand, why is it that obviously racialized comments (e.g. white church, black neighborhood) elicit such perplexing responses accompanied with intense feelings? 

“It’s not so much race as it is culture.”  “Why can’t we just be ‘race neutral’?”  “I prefer to be ‘color-blind.’”  “I’m not racist—I have black/Asian/Hispanic friends.”  “The U.S. isn’t the only country that has race problems, you know.”  “Hey, black people can be racist, too.”  “White people just don’t get it.”

Are we living in a “post-racial” society?  Does race matter?  And if so, how does it matter?  One does not have to look very hard to find reports of disparity with regards to race.  For example, the Washington Post recently reported that white people earned more than three-fourths of the total income in the U.S. (Morello, 2012).  The article cites higher levels of education for non-Hispanic whites and Asians as one of the primary reason for this inequity.  Another example, and the topic of my friend’s dissertation, is that black women are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women in the U.S. (Pittman, 2012).  It seems that while race does not exist as a biological reality, it can make a difference in terms of life outcomes, academic and economic achievement, as well as health and well-being.  Why is this so? Does culture contribute to these inequalities?  What about the role of education?  The following series of blogs will examine the social construction of race, racial inequality in urban education, white privilege, and racism. 

References

Herbes-Sommers, C., Strain, T. H., & Smith, L. (2003). Race: The power of an illusion [Television Series]. San Francisco, CA: California Newsreel & Independent Television Service.

Morello, C. (2012, May 31). Whites earn more than three-fourths of the nation’s income. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/whites-earn-more-than-34-of-the-nations-income/2012/05/31/gJQA1rrk4U_story.html

Pittman, G. (2012, March 21). Black women more likely to die of breast cancer. Reuters. New York. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/21/us-black-women-breast-cancer-idUSBRE82K1CZ20120321