Mixed...Media, Races, Messages Part IV

You've been warned...this post is long, especially if you follow all the links...

I arrived at this branch of the thoughtstream through a visitor from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. For any Canucks out there, is Kitchener a hotbed of Harper supporters? Oh, and you have my sympathies, though you apparently have more recourse in no-confidence votes and impeachment proceedings. Canada's sounding better all the time, eh?

(Aside: Can you tell how much I love this site meter thingie? It's kind of fun, if a tad creepy, to find out all this stuff about people who visit your site. Should I be worried that I get hits at least once a week from some otherwise unidentified place in Kansas, home of Fred Phelps?)

On this particular early morning, I was directed to a Technorati search for John McWhorter, to whom I referred in Part III of this "series," a term I use loosely. Mr McWhorter is a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute, which seems to be a right-leaning think tank in, well, NYC. Prior to the commentary I caught on NPR, I had never heard of McWhorter. I was surprised when I found, on that search, a link to a post about his book, Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America, on The National Review Online. Ouch...those people are scary! It's also scary and disappointing that Microsoft advertises prominently on NRO.

Knowing none of this as I listened to his commentary, I had no frame of reference and never considered it from a liberal or conservative perspective. Although McWhorter isn't nearly as frightening as some of the others at NRO, he does, in my view, seem to have a fairly conservative tilt. Yet his arguments held a ring of truth for me, as they did for my pal, Tamara, when we later discussed it.

Richard Clegg posted a review of a review of McWhorter's book. (Here it gets a little convoluted, in that charming, internet sort of way.) Don't dismiss Mr. Clegg off-hand. Please read his Musings on Condoms before passing judgment. If nothing else, he does have a sense of humor! This is what Mr. Clegg had to say about a review of McWhorter's book written by Amy L. Alexander for the Washington Post. Here is Mr. Clegg's review of the same book.

In the introductory paragraph of his review, Mr. Clegg expresses his views on racism as it exists in America today:

"Call me Pollyanna if you like, but I a’m convinced that race relations in the United States have never been better. There is no longer any government-backed or institutionalized racial discrimination (with the important but dying exception of affirmative action against whites and, frequently, Asians), and racism is about as legally and socially unacceptable as anything can be in an open society. A mere 50 years ago, none of this was true."

Well, I will call Mr. Clegg a Pollyanna if he truly believes that America in the early 21st century is virtually or even nearly devoid of racism. In my opinion, racism is nearly as pervasive as it was during what I can recall of the late Sixties and early Seventies (I was born in 1957), it's just moved underground. It may be even more pervasive but in a far more subtle, yet equally harmful, way. It's just as denegrating to treat someone or a group as if they are invisible as it is to hurl racial epithets.

If nothing else, the residual effect of centuries of the conditioning of all of us that white is right and color is bad takes a toll and has made an impression that can't be erased by a few decades of social penitence. This has become deeply ingrained in many African Americans, particularly those of lower socioeconomic levels. How can one ingest all that hatred and not internalize it? How is it possible to avoid hating yourself when the dominant force in the culture appears to so deeply.

Or perhaps it's that hatred has mutated into ignorance, fear and racial isolation through self-segregation. Not seeking to learn anything about an ethnic or racial group other than our own does both those groups and ourselves a gross disservice. Walking a mile in a man's shoes and all that. Spend a couple of evenings in the waiting room of an Emergency Department in any major city in America. You might be surprised at how people other than your friends and those of your own race and social class live. It's pretty clearly spelled out in the nations ERs. I see it three times a week.

It's also pretty apparent to me that we are not devoid of institutional, government-sanctioned racism and discrimination. The attacks of September 11, 2001 have become the stuff of American legend. Most of the people who were injured and died on September 11th were from the American middle or upper middle class. I'd be fairly confident in guessing the majority were white Americans, though a significant number were also immigrant workers like the ones we are (sarcasm alert) so afraid of these days.

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, we got to see institutionalized governemtal discrimination in action. I was ashamed to be an American in the days following the storm. The people on the rooftops, the bodies floating in the floodwaters, the souls stranded in the Convention Center were primarily the city's poor, many of them people of color.

The difference between these two incidents is that the attacks of September could probably not have been stopped. If it had been thwarted that day, it would only have taken place on Sept. 12th or March 31, 2002. It would have happened eventually. But the government had ample warning of the storm's possible impact and did nothing right to prepare its response. This includes local, state and federal governments, but I feel the heaviest responsibility lies with the federal government, don't you, for a natural event with such disastrous potential. Poorly coordinated, poorly executed, poorly communicated...for poor people. I wonder how different the response might have lookeed if it had been Bush's millionaire GOP pals on those rooftops and not poor, black folks. Don't we all?

Amy L. Alexander likewise offered some good points and bad. Here is a brief excerpt:

"McWhorter's views make sense only if one is willing to play fast and loose with the history of blacks in America and its genuine psychological impact. Black mental-health professionals who have studied black behavior and self-image, including Alvin Poussaint of Harvard, with whom I collaborated on a book, provide cold-eyed, non-ideological analyses of the numerous ways that the cold drag of history continues to play a serious mind game on many black Americans. Is there a wealth of self-defeating behavior out there? Sure. But without excusing such behavior, one must also admit that black Americans for centuries have existed outside the remedies supposedly found within the medical and mental-health-care establishment and, in many cases, have been victimized by it."

But one just can't dismiss either argument without further investigation. The issue of racism is not a matter so black and white, if you'll pardon the pun. Racism in America today exists in a million shades of grey and all those issues are overshadowed by the real divider, social class and economic power. Why can't both reviewers have valid points? Why can't it be true that racism does still exist in America, though now heavily veiled and yet also be true that even veiled racism has an impact sufficient to perpetuate a sense of victimization. And that feeling victimized contributes to self-defeating, self-sabotaging attitudes and behaviors? Sheesh, I sound like Rodney King..."Why can't we all just get along?"

I guess I've tortured or bored you enough for one evening/early morning. I'm surprised I haven't gotten commentary on this series of posts. Am I making any sense? Haven't I pissed anyone off yet? Should I try harder? ; ) Tune in next time for a focus on health care disparities in America. Oh, joy!