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Reparations would change the status quo of racism
The presentation doesn't mention it but the author John Palchak is director of the local Catholic Charities entity. In 2014, there are people in America who hate their brown-, black-, red- and olive-skinned neighbors. There probably are. There aren't as many as the author assumes there are. There are more blacks participating in the "black experience" than whites. Most of us don't spend much mental effort on race until somebody comments "white girl bleed a lot." This bigotry becomes racism and permeates the status quo if it is institutionalized. "Microaggressions" are aggressions so tiny they can't be seen with the naked eye. Often the "aggressors" aren't even aware that they're doing it. The "knockout game" I suppose would be a "macroaggression" if it's not simply an aggression. I survived one once before it became all the rage, in a Washington Metro station. I was probably unconsciously microaggressing. Racism is found in public schools and the criminal justice system, for example. It creates two separate and unequal societies — one white that works and one black that suffers. Blacks make up 13.2 percent of the population and are responsible for 52 percent of violent crime. Whites (77 percent of the population) receive 72 percent of bachelors' degrees, 56 percent of them to women. Blacks have 10.3 percent, about 2/3 (65.8 percent) women. That gives black males about three percent of basic education. Nationwide, black students graduated at a rate of 69 percent; whites graduated at a rate of 86 percent, and Hispanics graduated at 73 percent many of them using English as a second language. Cause, meet effect. ...one white that works and one black that People talk about changes the events in Ferguson may bring. I was indignant when the first reports came out. Then I saw the video and the "gentle giant" story went "poof!" as we saw him roughing up the clerk. Then we saw the shot pattern. Then Al Sharpton showed up. The governor appoints a commission to study the issues. Articles appear every day from journalists, educators and politicians decrying the inequality and calling for one school system, a public review board for police, a higher minimum wage for fast-food and entry-level workers and greater access to college education without the unfair burden of enormous student loans. The "unfair burden" applies to everyone and the actual education is actually paid for at a disproportionate rate by Pell grants and similar programs. We have "one school system." It's administered by local school boards, usually at the county level, which should be most familiar with the problems, and usually paid for by property taxes. In most cases school boards are elected officials or they're appointed by elected officials. You get what you pay for. While these are valid suggestions for change, they will not affect institutionalized racism in the United States. Such changes would carry forth the racism bound to them. That statement probably makes sense in the original Gibberish. Changing racism requires a different perspective about the people who are stigmatized. Observation and empirical evidence doesn't count. A perspective change means understanding racism is part of the status quo, finding it unacceptable and creating a new worldview. The problem, Johnny, is that charges of racism have been forced down the collective throats of conservatives for six solid years, along with attacks on the one ideology which if permitted to work, could severely alter the racial dynamic in the nation... The Civil Rights Act was passed in the 1960s. That was 50 years ago. Surely something's changed since then? It has. Bigotry has in that time become unfashionable among whites. I read a rather charming western while waiting for planes a couple days ago: The Ranch at the Wolverine, by B.M. Bower, published in 1914. At one point the hero compliments his lady love by telling her that she's "working like a nigger in a cotton field." Conditioned as I've become over the years, the phrase threw me off. I've become used to seeing "n-----" or "the N word," or something similarly fastidious. It made the hero's use of the word "d---" amusing. There weren't any "people of color" in the book, except for a couple "half breeds"--Indians rather than blacks. One of them a stolidly dependable good guy and his wife working on the lady love's ranch, the other one of the rustlers. I like westerns and I like old books. They reflect the writer's world view, the culture he's living in. Read The Virginian again and look at his 1902 culture preserved in literary amber. Linger over Judge Henry's talk with Miss Wood about vigilante justice after Steve is strung up. "I want you to be just as willing to be put right by me as I am to be put right by you. And so when you use such a word as principle, you must help me to answer by saying what principle you mean. For in all sincerity I see no likeness in principle whatever between burning Southern negroes in public and hanging Wyoming horse-thieves in private. I consider the burning a proof that the South is semi-barbarous, and the hanging a proof that Wyoming is determined to become civilized. We do not torture our criminals when we lynch them. We do not invite spectators to enjoy their death agony. We put no such hideous disgrace upon the United States. We execute our criminals by the swiftest means, and in the quietest way..."It's probably a microaggression to quote the judge's sympathy with the victims in the "semi-barbarous" south. The judge probably harbored the same assumptions about race as most other people of his age and class, but they didn't cloud his mind or ruin his objectivity. Some people spend too much time picking at scabs. Doing that will make them leave scars. That makes them ugly. We've had fifty years and spent trillions on a "war on poverty" that made race relations worse than they were when there were separate white and colored drinking fountains. If no improvement is ever good enough there's no incentive for any improvement at all. Posted by: badanov 2014-12-23 |
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