We are the People

[Raijen]

I'm in English Composition II this semester, and the professor has assigned a book, "We are the People: Voices from the other side of American History". I've been slowly reading through it, but I have to admit, it's very difficult for me emotionally. I always "knew" that minorities have been treated badly, but to be face to face with how other people went through the difficulties inflicted them by the American "settlers"... It's very unsettling, to say the least.

 

The subject of racism has also been coming up a lot in my day to day, and it's another thing weighing on my mind and emotions. I don't understand it, at all, and a friend of mine says that until I've been racially discriminated against, I'll never "get it".

 

Both of the above issues really strike me raw. For my friend to say I'll "never get it" because people perceive me to be white just seems to be a cop out, a cheap way of being an angst-ridden person who doesn't really want to change anything. And besides... isn't it a little conceited to split oneself off from others, saying that others "will never get it"? And as for the way that Native Americans were treated by settlers... That's something that just literally makes me sick. Ripping families apart, yanking land, herding the Cherokee across the country...

 

These are things that we as a society do not openly discuss, and now that I'm presented with another view, I have to admit I'm rather pissed off that we are not discussing them. Why are these things just swept under the rug rather than dragged out and dissected on the coffee table?

 

Also... What are you guys' views on racism in your respective countries? Is it still happening? Is it politely ignored? What's going on nowadays? I ask because it's kinda rocking my world violently that there is still discrimination based on ethnicity (I stay wrapped up in science, so we tend to be waaaaay out of the loop).

 

Any opinions/insights would be really helpful. I don't know why this issue is so important to me at the moment, but it really strikes close for some reason.

[JamesSavik]

Racism is closely associated to racial superiority or the belief that one race is superior or closer to God than any other.

 

This has historically been exploited by practically everybody on the planet.

 

In classical Greece, Greeks were "the people" and Barbarians were everybody else.

 

In Roman times you were either a citizen or a slave.

 

In America it was about our manifest destiny.

 

In Great Britain it was the white man's burden.

 

In Japan it is the belief that gaijin (non-Japanese) are inferior.

 

This is nothing new or even particular to the American experience.

 

Cast your eye at history and you will see that racism goes hand in glove with nationalism and has been a powerful, and often unacknowledged, force behind history.

[Y_B]

Your friend's right in a way.

 

I'm gonna take you out of the equation and just use the word in a general sense...

 

It's not that 'you' don't have the capacity or aptitude to understand something, but this is one of those things that reading about just doesn't cover shit. Not that I've been treated poorly in my life in overt ways or have felt mortally threatened, but some things some people will just never have to worry or think about, and in modern day US, Caucasians are them.

[Raijen]

Not that I've been treated poorly in my life in overt ways or have felt mortally threatened, but some things some people will just never have to worry or think about, and in modern day US, Caucasians are them.

 

Can you give some specific examples of such things that Caucasians don't have to worry about? And please understand, I'm coming from a place of trying to grasp this ... thing... concept... whatever it is. It took talking to my friend to realize just how little consideration I have given this topic, and now I'm wanting to understand it, to see things from different perspectives.

 

Any and all views and insights are welcome and actively sought. Thank you in advance for your time. This is quickly becoming a rather deep subject in my day to day life.

[rustle]

From a Texas point of view:

 

The exploiter divides the world into 2 kinds of people - us and them - then takes whatever the other has that the exploiter wants, justifying it because the other is "less than" the exploiter. A whole framework of myths gets built up to justify this. Stuff, land, resources - they're all fair game if the other is less human, and the ends justify the means. Once the exploiter gets what he is after, he can afford to appear and feel magnanimous and noble by doling out trinkets.

 

Is this a deliberate process? For some. Others are impressionable, or wanting to feel superior by right of birth, because deep down, they know they're not.They invest in the mythos. And the lies and attitudes get passed down through the generations.

 

This communal belief system is partly sustained by shame and denial. (How can we possibly be descended from such barbarians? It isn't true! We're good people! Maybe they weren't so bad.) Can you bear the burden of the sins of your fathers? Imagine growing up believing slavery was evil, tracing your lineage back, and coming face to face to face with an ancestor who owned slaves. Theory becomes an uncomfortable reality. Like New Yorkers discovering a slave cemetery in their midst. (It happened.)

 

On the other side, being a victim or descended from victims can become part of a person's identity. It also sets the person apart. It's perverse, but it happens.

 

Can a white person ever understand what it is to be of another race? Tell me, can a straight person ever understand how it feels to be called a fag?

 

 

[Rilbur]

These are things that we as a society do not openly discuss, and now that I'm presented with another view, I have to admit I'm rather pissed off that we are not discussing them. Why are these things just swept under the rug rather than dragged out and dissected on the coffee table?

 

What school did you go to? We may not have covered every single crime of the past, but we discussed plenty of them. Slavery, and it's horrors. The shameful way the Native Americans were treated. 'Manifest Stupidity'. The Civil Rights movement.

 

I'm not ashamed of what our nation is, however ashamed I am by it's past. We've grown so far beyond our roots, and have hope for growing further.

[JamesSavik]

I'm not ashamed of the United States past. Compared to other countries and what they were doing at the time, Americans were acting like choir boys.

 

Germany, Japan, Great Britain, France, Russia, Spain and others were all building Empires. They weren't shy about busting heads to do it either.

 

Consider England's colonization of India. Russia's building of the trans-Siberian rail road. Japan's occupation of Korea and parts of China. Spain's brutal repression in Cuba and the Philippines. France's actions in North Africa and Indo-China.

 

All of that was before Germany's two world wars. The chaos that occurred before and after both of them.

 

Don't get me started on Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot.

 

Are we perfect? No. Are we a cut above the competition? Hell yeah.

[drakeenus]

Raijen I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. You are trying to pin down something that has existed since the first humans noticed that "Bob" over there has red hair. I have split my life fairly evenly between Alabama and California, so i have seen things from both sides of the racial coin. To answer your question about what "benefits" are afforded by being Caucasian look at the South in general, as i am sure James Savik can attest, the main squabble there is STILL "Black vs. White" where an employer has to weigh the options of race as a major factor when offering a job to someone, he has to look at the black man and consider "if this guy gets pissed off because he doesn't like the brand of coffee in the break room (I have seen this happen personally) is he going to start running around hollering 'RACISM' then try to sue me when i refuse to buy the special blend that he likes?" So that employer is more likely to hire the white guy just to avoid the possibility of that kind of problem happening.

 

On the flip side, if that same white guy were to go to California to try to get a job the issue is "Mexican or Other." The employer here looks at thing from the point of view that "If I hire one of the Mexicans then I can pay them the bare minimum wage, whereas this Other guy that is applying for the same job does not speak the common language of the other workers, and if I hire him then he will want to be paid a higher rate." So the decision for this employer is easy, hire the Mexican, that way everyone speaks the same language and none of them expect to be paid a decent wage so when the books are done at the end of the year his employee payments are low so that means that he has come out ahead of the Other company that did hire the Other applicant.

 

The reason I bring up the employment in California is, even though the national average may show the Whites as the majority here in California the Hispanic is the majority. Even when there is a clear case of racism towards the Whites in California it is called "Reverse Discrimination" and thrown out the proverbial window with yesterdays trash. So the short answer to what "benefits" there are that is a matter of perspective based on which side of the majority line you stand on at that moment in time.

 

As far as the Why of its existence I think Eon explained that best.

[Raijen]

Alright, I'm following the angles you guys have provided, and I agree that they are most definitely factors. Ethnicity discriminates against ethnicity, and the cycle is repeated needlessly.

 

You guys sound right. I still feel like there is a piece missing though. I follow the "logic" part of the racial thinking, it's the "emotional" part that puzzles me. The outright hatred I've seen and read about. Perhaps it's because I'm more of a thinker than a feeler, but it just seems... well... Immature is the first word that pops to mind. I don't mean to be offensive with that, it just seems that if one can reason out the "Which ethnicity should I hire?" or something similar, one should be able to reason further to the point where "Um... this person is a person. They are qualified."

 

But then... with the "reverse discrimination", it seems that the system has been reversed, and that the Civil Rights movement has been perverted. "Justice, equality for ALL" still has yet to be realized, it seems. (Much for me to think on with that point).

 

eon, I think you are right with your psychological/sociological mythos theory. I think that explains the cultural context of racism. The question still goes back to the "logicking" part of thinking... If one can realize the underlying structure, does the onus not become to repair wherever, whatever is possible? Or am I beginning to make a judgment at that point? And while most people might have difficulty understanding what it would be like to be discriminated against, I do believe that a good portion of us are capable of empathy, of putting ourselves in another person's shoes. Will we completely understand? Possibly not, but I think that empathy is a fact of human existence. The question simply is, are we aware of ourselves enough to exercise our empathy and extend it to others?

 

Rilbur, I've attended public schools in AR and I homeschooled for two years with a racist family. I don't really ever recall any "racial tensions" at my schools, but then, the majority were white. I think in my graduating class of almost 600, we may have had 15 African-Americans. As a class we never addressed racism, but I remember being in elementary schools and being taught that a person is a person, regardless of color. That lesson stuck with me, so I've naively thought that everyone thought like me. I've been talking to my friends recently, though, and I've been finding that they all have at least some racist prejudices (very disturbing for me... Raises the question about what type of friends I have, but that's a different topic). I always just assumed that racists were in the generation before mine, and that my gen is soo progressive... Lol... Reality is a six-armed goddess with a wicked backhand, I suppose.

 

Jamessavik, I have read before that you are in the South, MS I believe, so I feel that you know how bad it is there. Last year I spent time down there, and the tension was so great that it seemed like an unwritten rule that you didn't look anyone in the eyes. I felt so sad because I'm normally a very pleasant person and enjoy making people smile. At times I almost felt like people wouldn't really open up to me because a) I lack a mississippi accent now and b: I look white. Do you have any thoughts/observations on similar phenomena?

 

drakeenus, what you say makes sense, and I have heard similar stories from other people. The logic seems so distasteful to me, and while the "business" aspect seems reasonable, I have to question how much of the problem would be solved if employers would simply take a chance. I recognize that there will always be troublemakers, it's part of human nature to cause drama at times. The question for me though is "how much do people use 'business sense' to justify sweeping difficult decisions under the rug?'" Seems to me that one would want to hire someone who could do the job. Meritocracy. However... I know that the real world doesn't always conform to ideals. (Sadness)

 

You guys have given me some helpful views. drakeenus, I may be approaching this from the wrong angle, or perhaps I didn't clarify (mostly cause I'm still figuring out what I really want to ask).

 

At this point, the question for me has morphed to "If we all agree that racism is bad, why does it persist?".

[drakeenus]

Raijen I will give you an example that happened when I worked at W^ll-M^rt in Southern California. We had a black man on our crew who would disappear constantly from the unloading area where we worked, what he would do is since his girlfriend came into work later than we did he would clock back in after our lunch then stay in the breakroom for another hour during his girlfriends lunch. This guy was constantly accusing others of being racist when he couldn't get his way on something. After he had been caught and written up several times for the break issue one of the Asst managers finally had enough and fired him. The reason he was written up so many times instead of being fired sooner is that every time he would get caught and written up he would make some kind of statement to the effect of: your just writing me up because I am black aren't you. The day the Asst manager fired him I happened to be in the area working and heard him yell at the Asst manager (who was also black btw) "you are firing me because I am black and you are a Wannabe Cracker N*@#$r Hating Faggot Ass Son of a Bitch" he then tried to sue the store for racial discrimination and wrongful termination on racial grounds.

 

I have ran into this same idealism in Alabama where I have encountered numerous times Black people declaring that because "I am white that my family obviously owned slaves" that I should be beholden to and payout of my pocket to the descendants of those slaves. These people that make this type of speech don't care that "my" family never owned slaves but they instead care about forcing me to fix the slights caused to their ancestors and make restitution to them now by way of their descendant. Now the question must be asked "Why should I, personally, have to pay for something that happened 100 years before i was even born and never involved my family either, at that time most of my family was either still in Europe or walking the Trail of Tears.

 

The ultimate answer to your question: "If we all agree that racism is bad, why does it persist?" is Greed.

[JamesSavik]

Jamessavik, I have read before that you are in the South, MS I believe, so I feel that you know how bad it is there. Last year I spent time down there, and the tension was so great that it seemed like an unwritten rule that you didn't look anyone in the eyes. I felt so sad because I'm normally a very pleasant person and enjoy making people smile. At times I almost felt like people wouldn't really open up to me because a) I lack a mississippi accent now and b: I look white. Do you have any thoughts/observations on similar phenomena?

 

I would be interested to know where you were. Mississippi is very much integrated- in fact I live in the hood.

 

I don't see the tension. What I do see is when some black people get in arrested or fired from their job, racism comes up. Usually doesn't mean much as the police and supervisors are likely to be black.

 

Mississippi has been focused on race like no other state. Over the years we've even had Amnesty International investigate or jails!

 

All I can say is that race isn't what everyone goes around thinking about every day. That issue would be jobs/economics.

[rustle]

Raijen, this is a good subject to bring up and discuss. Political correctness in the U.S. demands that we be color blind. PC's made it tougher to address prejudice, and driven racism underground. I wanna see every color and love it, without letting it influence my judgment.

 

Please keep thinking about this. I suspect that when you really clarify your question, bring it into perfect focus, the answer will present itself.

[Zolia Lily]

Ok- so my response- from an Australian perspective...

 

I have studied a small amount of politics at Uni and the last subject i came did was "Democracy, Terrorism and Violence". I think parts of it were really relevant to your questions- especially to the question of the emotional reasons for racism when it's easy to condemn it as morally wrong.

For me, the reason i still beleive racism exists is a lack of understanding, which, when exploited or not addressed, can turn or be turned into fear. If you fear someone, you hate them. I see the two as really closely linked. I think it's been the same in a lot of societies with larger underclasses of a different ethnicity. The fear of revolution, of being turned on, i think leads to racism, hostility and violence.

 

A lot of racism in Australia to me seems to me to be a reaction to fear. We are located waaaay away from other English speaking nations, far away from our English Monarch, and our usual allies in wartimes. During World War Two, there was huge fear of being invaded from the north by the Japanese, and in the current day, the situation is a fear of large waves of immigration. We have growing numbers of immigrants (especially Asian and Indian immigrants) and i think a lot of racism here comes from a fear of the so-called "asian invasion". A fear of being outnumbered by other ethnicities, of losing jobs to them, of Australia becoming essentially an Asian nation. I think this is a huge reason why Australia hasn't yet become a republic and removed itself from the Britsh Monarchy. And to me it parallels the way the Nazis stirred up anti-semitism against the Jews during and before the wars - by using the rhetoric that the Jews were richer than Germans, stealing German jobs, etc etc etc.

 

Of course, the native Australian minority is nowhere near large enough to form a supposed "threat" to Australian society, but there is still a large amount of racism towards them too (although a lot of people would deny it). Living in the city, we think everyone is well adjusted to a cosmopolitan, open society, but only recently i realised one of my friends from the country was really racist against the Aborigines. He said it was because they bashed his friend once, but the sort of violence often endemic in minorities is a consequence of the marginalisation of these groups, their lack of representation, and their lack of opportunities to change their circumstances. Violence, for them, ends up being the only way they can react to the impossibility of their circumstances - but in the end it doesn't help, given the way they are regarded. Violence and helplessness and marginalisation are really closely linked.

We find here that the only Aboriginals who ever really are seen as "successful" are those who end up being sports stars. The native population is basically unrepresented in any part of society- apart from the occasional sports person, and maybe an actor or two.

 

At school, we learn only a little about what the Colonisers did here. Australia day (where we celebrate the colonisation and founding of Australia) still is contentious- there are more than a few people out there who think it should be called "invasion day", since that's technically the day white settlers invaded. White european settlers claimed the land and gave the native populations no rights at all. Since they didn't build fences or buildings (being nomadic) the Europeans felt the land was there for the taking. They massacred, hanged, and poisoned whole native tribes, and even recently in the newspaper, the largest massacre in Australia was credited in an article with being a group of Australians within the last century- when much larger massacres of native Australians occured during colonisation. There are no more Aboriginals frmo Tasmania- a whole island of them was wiped out. And it's really not talked about. More talked about is what is called the "stolen generation". Children of Aboriginal blood were forcibly removed fromt their families between the 1860s and the 1960s, sent to live with white foster families or live in boarding houses, to be integrated into white society and "socialised". Many of them never saw their families again, and the impact was huge- they lost their families, but also their histories and their cultures. The most recent "step" to address the past was the Rudd Government issuing an apology to Aboriginal Australians in the name of all australians for the actions of australians in the past (very contentious), but land rights are often still in the news and it's generally seen as 'not enough'. The life expectancy of aboriginal australians is far lower than that of non-aboriginals, the income, the standard of living, the alcohol abuse, the kids that don't finish school, that don't go to school at all... and it's the sort of situation where no one knows what to do about any of it. The government sent in the army the other year. I mean- the army! What the hell are men with guns going to do about the problems out there?

 

IN regards to what your friend said, about not being able to understand... I think on one level he / she is right. Reading text books and conceptualizing and intellectualising the situation is one thing, but living it is another entirely.

 

wow. A long winded answer.

Hope that makes sense....

 

 

 

[Raijen]

Wow, you guys are really stepping up to the plate on this one.

 

Jamessavik, I was born and half-raised in Natchez, MS. Being from a racist family, I'm wondering now if the "tension" I thought I felt might have been carried over from being around them so much. The longer that I'm away from them the more that I find myself just not like anyone I know. A verified weirdo, if you will.

 

drakeenus, the example you gave struck home because I just finished reading an article on racism. I'll extrapolate in a moment.

 

Zolia Lily, I was not aware of the racism in Australia. Your words helped illuminate a few aspects of racism over here.

 

Everyone: I've done a bit more research and thinking over the topic, and once again, things shifted. Came across the angle of "race" being a foundation for identity, and after reading a bit by Glenn C. Loury, I wonder if "racism" is really more an extension of "cultural bias" or "elitism". "Us v. Them", "insider v. outsider". The difference (minor) being that instead of forming a common identity around something like geography or religion, "racism" uses skin color as a basis for identity.

 

Also, (and this may be going too far, but I feel it is a valid area to consider), I think that using skin color as an identifier misses the point. I'm a writer. I'm a cook. I have a personal spirituality. I play video games. These are all identifiers that cross the superficiality of skin color, yet for some reason some people of all colors continue to build an identity around their skin color.

 

Now, I understand using culture as an identifier (i.e. culture of writers, of athletes, of craftspeople and artisans), and that seems to be a constructive way to build an identity. I really don't understand why we as humans (not all, but some) continue to build identities that we know only end up being used to justify discrimination and hatred.

 

Identity is an important thing, and from personal experience being able to be aware of one's identity is crucial to mental well-being. As people of variant sexualities, I'm pretty sure we have all had instances where we had to deny a part of who we are. Is it possible then that racism and discrimination are symptomatic of the repression of various identities/aspects of identities? In effect, is racism a symptom of an unhealthy social psyche that has its roots in the fact that in our individualistic Western societies we as a social unit are unsure of how to include everyone?

 

In other words, could racism be a reaction to globalization?

 

Sorry if this is starting to get complicated. I think I'm getting to a certain level of understanding though, so now I'm just narrowing down the possibilities.

[Zolia Lily]

Hmm, i don't know about racism being a reaction to Globalization. Perhaps things that accompany globalization- not just multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism, but corporatization and capitalism (linked to the huge gap between rich and poor nations (the North-South divide), the actions of the WB and the IMF in developing nations, probably linked to wars etc as well)... but the truth of the matter is that the societies we live in are fairly unprecedented. Mass immigration and the movement of people across borders is a fairly recent occurance. And i think we've already heard examples of what happens- immigrants working illegally for lesser wages, but also companies move overseas, people lose jobs... But i do like to blame neo-liberal capitalism for nearly everything...

I imagine that there wasn't a whole lot of racism even a few of hundred years ago; since ordinary people would rarely have seen a foreigner, or even someone of a different race. And even if you did, you probably wouldn't have looked at them with hostility or seen them as a threat. Then again, religion as a basis for descrimination has been around for a long time, and the Roma (gypsies) and the Jews in Europe have been discriminated against for basically ever too (the Jews were forced to live in Ghettoes in Italy as early as the 1500s. Probably elsewhere too.).

So therefore, racism as a reaction to the instability and fear in a certain era.

 

As for the construction of identity... that's hard. But often it's not us who make the choice to be identified as different. Often that's an identity that is imposed by the majority, or by society as a whole.

Take the Rwandan example for instance. (Ok, forgive me if i get this totally wrong, but this is what i understand to have happened...)... As far as i understand, when the Belgians invaded Rwanda, the Rwandans didn't classifiy themselves as Tutsis and Hutus. They were all one big happy society (you know... whatever.), but the Belgians separated them into two groups- those who were taller and paler, and those who were smaller and darker, told the taller paler people they were superior to the larger numbers of smaller darker people. This distinction became the basis for discrimination that led to civil war and genocide- and it's a distinction that didn't even exist until an outsider came in and labelled people differently. You can also look up an experiment they did in the 80s (??). Blue eyes brown eyes or something. They intentionally discriminated against some children to see what would happen and see how discrimination could work. Veeeery scary!

 

But i am with you on the links between identity and race. The problem is that race is immutable and often obvious, and often becomes the most important marker of a person's identity- especially if they are discriminated against. If, for example, you are a writer, and writers are suddenly under threat of arrest or execution for writing material that a person/ group doesn't like... the fact you are a writer suddenly becomes really really important. But in a normal situation, it might be less important to your identity than being, say, a mother and a wife. So then, being a part of minority immediately makes that a really strong factor in your identity. I'm sure i'm talking to people who relate here. For me, being straight is not all that close to the top of the list of things that are important for who i am. But for a lot of people who gay or bi etc etc, i imagine that 'not being straight' immediately defines them as different.

 

I thnk the question of whether we simple don't know how to include everyone is interesting. I think that there is an issue though, with whether or not people want to be included. Family, tradition, culture are all really important, especially if you are part of a minority. You don't want to give that up just because someone else might feel discriminated against. They have their own, no?

And if you are one race, you are automatically not of another (unless you're of mixed heritage etc etc), so if you are included in one group, you are automatically excluded from another.

Europe and the EU is sort of an example of this at the moment. All these countries joined together- and the EU is desperate to foster some common ground between them and make them all feel "european". But some people feel more Italian than European, while some might feel Catalan and European, but not Spanish (despite being "officially" or "technically" Spanish by birth...)

Fostering that sort of commonality is difficult i think... nationalism plays a role. Creating a common enemy would work i think... but that would probably lead back to racism of some sort.

Ooooh rats.

 

Hope i didn't talk myself in a circle there. I know what you mean about this getting complicated.

But seriously- Kudos. Most of the time my politics classes sat there and mildly discussed stuff. You're really getting in to some deep stuff!

 

 

[Red_A]

As for the construction of identity... that's hard. But often it's not us who make the choice to be identified as different. Often that's an identity that is imposed by the majority, or by society as a whole.

Take the Rwandan example for instance. (Ok, forgive me if i get this totally wrong, but this is what i understand to have happened...)... As far as i understand, when the Belgians invaded Rwanda, the Rwandans didn't classifiy themselves as Tutsis and Hutus. They were all one big happy society (you know... whatever.), but the Belgians separated them into two groups- those who were taller and paler, and those who were smaller and darker, told the taller paler people they were superior to the larger numbers of smaller darker people. This distinction became the basis for discrimination that led to civil war and genocide- and it's a distinction that didn't even exist until an outsider came in and labelled people differently. You can also look up an experiment they did in the 80s (??). Blue eyes brown eyes or something. They intentionally discriminated against some children to see what would happen and see how discrimination could work. Veeeery scary!

 

 

 

In general, I agree with you. However although a sub sect of Belgium were an extreme harsh invader of africa. But in this instance, The Kingdom was invaded by German in about 1885, and formed part of German East Africa until 1914. Belgium took over Rwanda after 1918. German, I understand, recognised the different of Tutsis and Hutu as one of caste or class, and exploited that as a means of divide and conquer, using the smaller higher caste to rule the more numerous lower caste. Belgium took over this policy and took it further. As you say, there was probably no difference originally, and today there is probably the only different is that of 6 generation of interbreeding. But now! Utter hate and fear. A classic example on man's inhumanity.

[rustle]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCjDxAwfXV0

 

This is a video about blue eyes/brown eyes Zolia Lily mentioned. Worth viewing when discussing race.

[Raijen]

eon, that is a very helpful video. I had heard of this experiment before but had forgotten; thank you for providing the link to it.

 

I think that really helped me understand the emotional side to the issue of racism. Already I had figured that some people (not all, but some) use their ethnicity as a basis for identity, even if it's unconscious. Every ethnicity has a stereotype, a generalization about the ethnicity group's culture(s) and ways of life. Perhaps, to varying degrees, we unconsciously assimilate our stereotype into our self-conception, along with other ideas that shape our self-value.

 

After watching the first ten minutes of the Elliot divided-class experiment, it hit me (my memory has to be jogged at times, you see): we base a part of our self-conception on how we look, viewed, of course, through cultural lenses. To be told that something that is so dear to you, a core pillar of identity that cannot be changed, is wrong, or bad, or somehow deficient, it rocks you to your core. It's a direct assault on your identity.

 

So now I feel like I can see more of one side of racism, perhaps more readily because of the experiences I've had with my family regarding my sexuality and orientation. To be denied an identity for most of one's life can mess you up, so I can only imagine the horror of looking through your cultural heritage and seeing a distinct pattern of identity denial combined with complete and involuntary servitude. Having families that could be busted up at any time, no warning. Never being able to have that feeling of secure bonding (you can't get close to people if you're afraid that you might not always be around).

 

Of course, not every racist view is the same. It varies across the world in how it manifests. I've spoken with a first generation American of Nigerian descent, and he told me that in his culture African-Americans born in America are looked down upon. I had heard of that view before, but it was eye-opening to encounter it first-hand. I read Glenn C. Loury's discussion on racial identity in the 50s and how some people in his community excluded an African-American young man because his family "was passing" among Caucasian-Americans.

 

So racism in multifaceted, and having discussed those variations among people of African descent and witnessed discrimination among the people of Caucasian descent, I feel the idea of identity being the core issue of racism is bolstered.

 

We can most especially see this in orientation. It is a core principle of identity and globally we are raising the awareness that GLBT people are equal with everyone of every ethnicity and individuality. Even fifty years after the Civil Rights movement in America, we as a society have yet to fully accept the fact that everyone has the right to exist.

 

What do you guys think? Any other views/angles that I may be neglecting or not seeing?