Race and Racism
Race is a bizarre and profoundly touchy subject these days, when common sense tells me there’s no reason it should be, particularly. Granted, I grew up in northern California, and in terms of who I consider friends the requisite geekiness is much more important than race could ever hope to be.
Debates on race issues remind me a bit of debates on gun control in that each sides paints a profoundly different picture and, you know, it kind of depends on where you are since America isn’t as homogenous as some would like to believe. Liberals seem to be convinced that minorities are being oppressed, while conservatives are quick to dismiss that idea, yet have no problem crying foul at percieved discrimination against whites. If I assume that this works like everything else I’ve ever encountered, I’ll have to conclude that both sides are a little bit right and a little bit wrong, but mostly making a big fuss motivated by self-interest.
In terms of the things that form my identity, being “white” (which in my case means being a mutt formed from half a dozen Eurpean nationalities, some of which were enemies for many centuries) only really makes the list when it’s sharply in contrast with something else. If I go to Chinatown I’ll sometimes feel out of place, but I think not any more than I would if I was in a part of town that was predominantly Russian or German or something. That makes it hard for me to even think in terms of race boundaries; in my daily life race is more often than not utterly meaningless. Now, if I was actively looking for work, sunstantially involved in public discourse, or trying to get into big prestigious universities with affirmative action programs (California passed Prop 209, so that kind of thing isn’t supposed to be legal here anymore) I might be more inclined to have a strong opinion about such things.
I do think it’s a little odd that in terms of organizations and Ethnic Studies classes it’s okay to have stuff for minorities but not for white people per se, but then I think that’s partly out of a tendency to view white people as “geneic Americans” as it were rather than prejudice in a conventional sense. But then, considering I largely ignore any and all extracurriciular activities (I always either find them either wholly uninteresting or find that they have meeting times that are horribly shitty for my schedule) I can guarantee that if there were a “Caucasian Student Association” or whatever I wouldn’t bother. Of course, I’m also the type to roll my eyes at the College Republicans and College Democrats alike, to say nothing of the Socialists (who regularly commit the sin of passing out flyers on campus) for drawing so much of their identities from political affiliations. Still, I suspect if there were some people who wanted to start up a “CSA” it would probably be denied or otherwise screwed with. Granted there do seem to be an awful lot of groups based around promoting the interests of white people that are blatantly racist and often violent, stupid, or insane, but if we’re going to allow racially-oriented groups on campuses and whatnot, it seems dumb to keep white people out of the club.
But at the same time, completely dismissing any accusations of racism against minorities is just ignoring reality. It’s probably not a horrific and awful kind of problem, but, you know, when black guys are consistently pulled over by the police far, far more often than white guys, something is going on. We probably are overreacting as a nation, but then we overreact to just about everything the media calls attention to. I won’t claim to know much about where things are on this front, and I suspect that when I’m hanging out with my friends other people also see us as a bunch of geeks rather than noting our individual races. In this respect I feel fortunate to live in a quiet city in northern California.
“Political Correctness” inevitably enters into the discussion somewhere. Just like many of the things that have emerged from race issues, PC started with a well-intentioned good idea (Stop saying mean, fucked up stuff. It’s really easy to talk in a way that doesn’t make you sound like a jerk) that got misused and transformed into something stupid (In order to promote more gender equality “Manhattan” should be renamed “Personhattan”). “PC” is one of those terms (like “elite” or even “liberal”) that conservatives seem to have worked very hard to turn into a dirty word. When conservative pundits use the word “PC” they typically mean “stuff about being nice/civil to people that I disagree with.” Of course, I suspect they’d be quick to object to facing the term “Religiously Correct,” which a few have been using to be equally dismissive of (usually conservative) efforts to ensure that policy is appropriately Christian. As usual, I fall somewhere in the middle when it comes to political correctness. We may well have gotten too paranoid about such things, and too vengeful (Don Imus was fucked up, but I’m not sure he should’ve been fired over it), but at the same time I wouldn’t want to throw away the ability to call people out for saying things that are offensive.
Race should not be particularly pertinent to how we live our lives, and doubly so if we’re talking about people who are fully assimilated into American culture. Sometimes it is though, usually as a result of people being stupid or ignorant, or taking a meaningless “us vs. them” mentality towards other groups of human beings. We also have a crappy tendency to look at white people as being in a special category somehow, whether in a good way or a bad one. Awareness of race beyond something that make people more interesting through diversity is, in my opinion, an expression of human stupidity.
