As
we discussed last time, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there was a
shift in American culture powered by movements against sexism and
racism. Today there remains much prejudice but it is covert, not overt.
This means that the majority of prejudice is invisible to the
privileged while a constant uphill battle to the marginalized. If you
are marginalized and you point out covert racism, you are often accused
of overt racism by privileged people. If you are privileged, you are
accused
The
best evidence against both sexism and racism is the French psychologist
Piaget’s studies of Child developmental stages. Children of both
genders and all ethnicities go through the same four stages of
development at the same ages (1, 3, 7 and 11). Another great piece of
evidence against racism in particular is an experiment where they gave
urban American and rural African kids laptops and found that there was
no difference in the learning times for basic games.
One
of my favorite subjects is teaching against eurocentrism in academics.
While the laptop experiment suggests that we all learn and think
similarly regardless of culture, one of the central messages in
education in America and Europe is that we belong to a special culture
called “the West” which is superior to other civilizations, particularly
in regards to reason and freedom. Often examples from ancient Greece
are used to illustrate this superiority, and then the focus becomes
modern Europe (ignoring all other cultures and the thousands of years in
between the cultures of ancient Greece and modern Europe). This
situation, which many like myself call eurocentric (and thus ignorant),
is very recent. It came about in the last three hundred years in the
wake of European success and dominance of the world. Before that time,
Greeks, Romans and Europeans did not describe themselves as “the West”,
nor did they claim to be superior in terms of reason or freedom relative
to all other civilizations.
Greek
civilization is indebted to Egyptian, Persian, Mesopotamian and Indian
thought. Rome has been the ‘father’ of Christian Europe since the Roman
Empire conquered much of Western Europe and converted them to Roman
Catholic Christianity. How did the Greeks come to be the Grandfathers
of civilization? How did the myth of “the West” happen?
The
Italians, though lighter than the Romans from constant invasions from
the north (the Fall of Rome and afterward), were convinced in each city
state that they were the Romans, and so they depicted the Romans like
themselves. They also read Greek to read the Christian bible (written
in Latin and Greek) and so they depicted the Greeks as looking like the
Romans. However, it was not until the late 1700s early 1800s that the
Greeks were conceived as the origin of European civilization and the
birthplace of rationality and modern politics. This coincides with what
Hannaford tells us about the formation of racism.
This
is the theory that we can disprove but we still believe, and enshrine
in museums, textbooks and most importantly, fictional and nonfictional
TV and movies. The last has the greatest effect. What you see your
culture present is much more important than an academic argument. The
eyes are much harder to doubt than the ears or the structure of an
argument. (Consider: Mel Gibson having an all white cast speak Aramaic
for “historical accuracy” in The Passion).
It
surprises many to learn that the term “the West” came largely into use
in the years following WWII, after the Holocaust showed terrible
anti-Semitism. Before WWII, academics freely used the term ‘European
Race’ to describe the ancient Greeks, ancient Romans, and modern
Europeans equally. After the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement,
the term became an eyesore. Academics began increasingly referring to
this “race” as “The West.
All
sorts of ridiculous statements in the first paragraphs of philosophy
and history books show us this, where the Greeks are ‘the birthplace of
reason’ without context. One of my favorite examples is the British
historian who stated in the 50s that the most important event in British
history was the battle at Marathon (holding out the Persian
‘Orientals’, who as Wolf points out were paying Greeks to fight the
Athenians and Spartans, as they had done with the Athenians and Spartans
in the past). Marathon is often cast as the birth of “the West”, even
though no one, including the ancient Greeks, used the term until after
WWII.
Hannaford’s Race: The History of an Idea in the West
Race
seems obvious today, a fact of biology. There seem to be distinct
ethnic groups that are easily divisible into recognizable races.
Hannaford argues that in fact racism rose with science and modernity in
the rise of Europe since the 1600s. There was, of course, always
ethnocentrism (my tribe is familiar, your tribe over the hill is scary)
that correspond to self-centered thinking on an individual level, but
‘black’ and ‘white’ people did not always exist. In English, ‘ras’
meant a course or current (show branching tree form, trace one branching
as a ‘race’). The word did not mean a fully separate category of
people until after 1700, as Europeans got wealthy beyond everyone and
very successful with sciences. Today research on genetics shows that
there is no definable or divisible races that can be fully separated.
Rather, there is a tangle of genetic material that is mostly common to a
people.
The
Greeks hated Barbarians (like the Slavs, Germans and even the Romans at
first) but considered the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians to be
civilized and were trying to imitate them and consider themselves thus
civilized. Plato and Herodotus loved Egypt and considered it the root
of all civilization (Timaeus) and Aristotle thought Mesopotamia was the
first civilization and the birthplace of science and philosophy.
Greece, like ancient Israel, was caught between these two great
empires. Plato argued against ethnocentrism to give the Greeks credit
as a civilized people. Aristotle argued that the Germans could never be
civilized because they were an inferior race.
There
is evidence that the Chinese may have been the first to consider
certain women ‘white people’ (think Geishas of Japan). Soon after this
the Persians were the first to consider themselves ‘white people’ in
these words (‘Whites vs. the Blacks’ play by Persian playwright). Just
as European civilization got most everything from Islamic civilization,
including most of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, Europe could have
easily gotten it’s ‘white race’ from Islam (many of whom, like top-caste
Indians, still call themselves ‘white’).
Ethnic
conflict was originally between Religions, not races. Thus, Europeans
were not white, but ‘Christians’, and they were prejudiced and afraid of
Jews and Muslims (1492, the re-conquest of Spain, the Inquisition, and
Columbus, and BLUE BLOOD). As Europe developed, race came to be a
solidified concept, backed by Science & History (as Barthes calls
them, the two great myths). This is when historians made the Greeks and
Romans part of ‘the European Race’, as opposed to the Jewish race, the
Mohamedian race, the African race, and others. Often, these were paired
with colors in common speak but not always. Eventually, German
historians and anthropologists centered their study on Nordic and Aryan
race as origin of Greek civilization, ancient Israel, and thus the
civilizing force of mankind. Kant’s On the Different Races of Men
(1775, one year before the Declaration of Independence), says that there
are fully separable races and mixing is bad as it degrades the quality
of a race.
This
thinking has dominated European thought until only recently, and it
remains covert within academic understandings today. After the
Holocaust, white Christians and Ashkenaz Jews could no longer speak of
‘European Race’ comfortably, so Europe became ‘The West’ over a period
of time. We still speak this way today, thought we all know ‘West’
means ‘white’.
Famous joke about European nations’ strengths and faults:
In
Heaven, the police are British, the chefs are Italian, the mechanics
are German, the lovers are French and everything is organized by the
Swiss.
In
Hell, the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are
French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the
Italians.
This
old joke shows us that Europeans did not consider themselves to be a
single race with a single character until very recently. In America,
where European peoples blended together to make “white” people, these
differences disappeared while color based racism remains today.
Great Moments in American Racism:
The Jews and Muslims are best shown in the 1492 example (killing Jews upside-down, lending).
The Treatment of the Native Americans (reservations today).
The African Slave trade, jim crow and black marginalized communities today.
The taking of Latin America by America, Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, and domination today.
The Chinese exclusion act and post WWII ‘Asian Problem’ (dragon lady syndrome).
Bill
O’Reilly went to a restraint with Al Sharpton, and said on the radio
that black people have gotten very civilized in the last year or so.
Roland Marin, correspondent for CNN says: obviously (bill O’Reilly)
doesn’t hang out with many black people.
Racism in America Today:
Black
and Latino people are 3 times likelier to be poor, on average earn 40%
less that the average white person and have ONE TENTH the net worth.
Racial profiling by police criminalizes the marginalized, keeping them marginal (DWB).
Redlining
is the practice of not lending to particular people or selling new
homes to let people get out of certain areas based on the area from
which they apply.
In
the 1940s most white people supported segregation. In 1970, one fourth
did. Now, it is estimated that 20-50% of white people agree with
racist stereotypes openly, and often do not think of this as racist but
rather simple observation of culture and reality (like O’Reilly).
Racism
has real costs: study in the American Journal of Health estimated that
“over 886,00 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if
African Americans had the same health care as white Americans”, stemming
from lack of sufficient insurance, poor services, and reluctance to
seek care (that is almost a million man march in itself).
In
the last article in your reader, called White Privilege, there is a
great list that spells out what privileged vs. marginalized means in
terms of racism in America today. White people can be in the company of
other white people in most environments, can move and travel without
fear, can shop without being harassed, can hear about their people’s
achievements and how it makes the world a better place while being
educated and entertained, can swear and dress in old clothes without
people thinking white people are stupid or evil, do not have to speak
for their race in particular (remember the Myth of the Model Minority
article), can criticize the government and our way of life without fear
of becoming an alien, can get pulled over or audited without fear of
discrimination, and can get medical and legal help without fear of
discrimination.
The
media does not cover racism or talk about it as a problem at all, just
like the Democratic party (including Obama if you listen to his campaign
speeches). Just days ago, there was a study published by Brandeis
University in Boston that got coverage by the British newspaper the
Guardian and many left leaning websites (many who quoted the Guardian
article) but got NO COVERAGE by CNN, the Chronicle, The LA Times, or the
Chicago Tribune. The NY Times mentioned the study in the economics
blog, which is in the opinion section and not considered an official
article. The study shows that even as class differences have widened,
white people have made five times the economic gains that black people
have made across all economic groups. The study shows that not only
have the economic policies of the last 25 years favored the rich and
privileged, but that racism is a real economic barrier to black and
latino people.
On
a final note, we must consider the legislation in Arizona right now.
Many are now aware of the “breathing while latino” law that would
require police to question latino people they suspect of being illegal
immigrants. There is another law, however, that was signed by the
Arizona governor making it illegal for any course in a public school to
“advocate ethnic solidarity”. The law is aimed at teachers who teach
their students about latino cultural heritage and the brutality that
latinos endure in America. The governor says that these teachers are
racist and are telling their latino students, falsely, that latinos are
an oppressed minority. The bill starts off saying it is illegal for
teachers to “promote the overthrow of the United States government”, and
then shifts to saying that it is equally illegal to teach classes that
“promote resentment toward a race or class of people”.
Here is the Daily Show’s coverage of the Arizona ban on Ethnic Studies:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-2-2012/tucson-s-mexican-american-studies-ban
