From: | Marc Renouf renouf@********.com |
---|---|
Subject: | Institutional Racism and Cultural Bias |
Date: | Fri, 14 May 1999 12:19:05 -0400 (EDT) |
[a bunch of stuff about institutional racosm]
Waaaa. Cry me a river. I don't mean to sound condescending, but
your points are in no way unique or informative. You do not have a
monopoly on being harassed, nor is the fact that cultural tension exists a
surprise to anyone. It happens everywhere, and the US is not exception
(and it's better than some places that pop to mind). Does that make it
right? No. But saying it exists is like saying, "yup, the sky's blue."
> Ahem. The hypocrisy in the U.S. is that the dominant culture pretends to be
> accepting, pretends to be open minded, and pretends not to hold down
> minorities. If they would just come out and say, "Blacks/Latinos/Mexicans
> whatever, we don't like you, go away!" at least there's more honesty there.
> Stay on your side, I'll stay on mine. I don't have to *like* everyone I
> meet. Don't like me? I'm cool with that. Stay out of my business.
I don't pretend to like anybody. Whether or not I happen to like
you depends pretty much exclusively on your personality. Until you have
shown yourself to be a decent human being, you're an unknown quantity
regardless of what color you happen to be. As such, I will treat you with
as much politeness as I would treat anybody I didn't know.
If you show yourself to be cool, you and I will have no problems.
If you show yourself to be an asshole, the color of your skin will be the
least of your worries.
Unfortunately, I am but a single individual. Am I unique in my
views? No. Am I in a minority for (gods forbid) actually believing in
acceptace and tolerance? Probably. The world is full of assholes of all
colors. Unfortunately, since there are more white folks here in the US,
that means that there are more white assholes. Since majority politics
tend to be the way of things in a more or less democratic society, this
gives those white assholes more political clout than anybody else's
assholes.
Welcome to the wonderful world of asshole demographics.
But this is where you and I are in perfect agreement (though for
different reasons). Institutions are made up of individuals. It is
surprising how much a single individual's bias or bigotry can influence
an institution's policies. Even more surprising is how much "bigotry" is
actually driven by well-meaning people who are just plain ignorant.
Saying, "let's make up a test so that we can rank students on their merits
rather than social or familial status and thus equalize opportunity"
sounds like a great idea. Until you realize that the person suggesting
the test never really thought about how someone who wasn't a
native-speaker would score. It never crossed their mind, because this is
America, and our native language is English, right? Everybody speaks
English, right? Even foreigners learn English, right? Wrong, but you see
the problem.
But does this mean that if you're a minority that "the system" is
"out to get you?" Is it just another example of "The Man" keeping you
down? No. It's not. It's that any law, policy, or social custom is
based on a certain set of assumptions. When those assumptions are no
longer valid, the system discriminates not because it wants to but because
it wasn't designed not to.
> Live in the inner city, my friend, see the violence, the liquor stores
> every few blocks, look at how the police treat minorities.
Big news here, but minorities aren't the only people harassed by
the police. I am an educated white male with a Masters' Degree in
Naval Engineering. I have long hair. I wear a goatee (my wife likes it,
what can I say). I like trenchcoats. If I had a dime for every time a
cop asked me to open my coat when I walked into a convenience store or
donut shop, I would be a rich man, my friend.
I drive a sports car (a black '96 Cobra). I consistently do about
10 mph over the speed limit (just like everybody else in the greater
metropolitan Detroit area). Why the hell do I have 11 points on my
license (1 shy of getting it revoked)? Because cops take one look at me,
one look at my car, and think "drug dealer." Yes, I have had the police
search my car. They are inclined to cut me zero slack when I get pulled
over. I don't get pulled over any more frequently than anyone else, but I
get tickets more frequently. Thems the breaks. I deal, try to drive
slower so as to attract less attention to myself, and hope for the best.
I live in a liberal town of freaks and weirdos and I still get
harassed. You are not alone, and to imply that others do not understand
or sympathize with your plight is both ignorant and insulting. To say,
"yes, but that's different" is to espouse the same racism that you feel
every day.
> Does *your* neighborhood have a liquor store every block, complete with
> alcoholics hanging out front all hours of the night to set an example for
> your kids?
No, but then again my last apartment complex was busted for
containing temporary crack-houses. There was a gang-related double
homicide the week after I moved out. Yellow Cab would not pick people up
from those addresses. You know it's bad when even the cabbies won't come
to your neighborhood, especially when you're only 4 blocks away from their
garage.
And I live in a predominantly white university town. Inner cities
don't have a monopoly on crime, violence, and bad living conditions. I
know a few "white-trash" trailer parks that I could take you to that would
be extremely reminiscent of your worst ghetto experiences.
> Shootings at Columbine? A massacre by white teenagers? All over the news.
> Now, when there's a gang war on Mission and 24th, or a black female getting
> shot by police officers in Riverside, why, is the media coverage more
> sparse. No one cares what happened to the young single Latina's little
> girl. No pictures on milk cartons for her little nina.
The reason that media attention is so severe on things like this
is because they are shocking. You can only hear about so many gang
shootings before it loses its shock value. The media getis its ratings
and makes its money by shocking people. Sad but true. Otherwise, it's
just the "same old thing."
Further, clear evidence shows that inner city kids, who
supposedly have all this violence in their lives and have such easy access
to guns, don't snap the way kids in the 'burbs do. If you look at all the
cases of large-scale child violence (Columbine, Jonesboro, etc) you will
find that by far the vast majority of them happen in suburban or rural
areas where the class body is predominantly white. Inner-city kids may
kill each other in ones and twos because of gang rivalries, but they don't
try to annihilate their entire school with guns or bombs for no apparent
reason.
Maybe inner-city kids are actually ahead of the game here. Maybe
being exposed to violence every day shows them that it's an ugly thing
that's not to be emulated. Maybe they'll be less prone to sociopathy
because of it.
> Cruise around Mission and 24th in San Francisco late at night, grow up in
> an inner city school where everyone packs and pushers hang around on street
> corners...
At my school, the drug dealers hung out at 7-11 and sold dope out
the back of the Little Caesar's Pizza joint. Make no mistake - there is a
lot of disposable income among teens in the suburbs. This disposable
income brings drugs, because bored suburbanite kids are just as likely to
partake as anybody else. With drugs come gangs. With gangs come
violence. You want to talk racial tension? Did some asshole erect a
burning cross at your prom as the result of a race/gang-related fight the
week before? I had a friend get seven stitches on the inside of his nose
from that fight (blindsided with an aluminum baseball bat), and they
hospitalized his girlfriend. I was amazed that nobody got killed,
because more than one person present was packing. And I lived in the
'burbs.
> Then come and talk to me about cultural bias.
Like I said, you're not alone. Assuming that just because I'm
white that my life was this rosy glow of opportunity and delight is just
as racist as my assuming that eveyone who lives in your neighborhood is a
lazy, welfare-drawing crackhead.
Marc