Posted on 07/03/2002 8:55:47 AM PDT by Tomalak
Comment
Only by acknowledging the influence of subliminal stereotypes can we eradicate their pernicious effects
Joseph Harker
Wednesday July 3, 2002
The Guardian
When the head of the crown prosecution service said he believed almost all British people were racist, he was roundly condemned. It was a moment of political correctness gone mad, commentators said. But one thing no one seems to have paused to consider was the possibility that he was right. In fact, what about: all white people are racist.
I don't mean they are all wilful bigots, of course. But racism is a combination of prejudice and power. And sadly prejudice is a deeply ingrained human trait.
Globally, white people are the dominant group, and in politics, economics, the media and all aspects of society, this power is used every day. It starts from the top and filters down to white people everywhere, regardless of their individual economic situation.
At the highest level, when President Bush tells Palestinians a different leader must take the place of the man they elected, he's treating them as second-class human beings. When the leaders of western economic powers deny fair trading terms to African countries, they are doing exactly the same. And the images of these pathetic victims help fuel more stereotypes about their "inferior" status.
Every day the white power structure - be it global, national or local - makes decisions which impinge on the lives of black people. Take the Metropolitan police, who last year decided to allow people to go unpunished if caught smoking dope in Brixton, south London. This scheme was brought in without the backing of the local black population, who fear the effect on their children of scenes of overt drug taking. If the police want to experiment with drugs, why choose black people as guinea pigs?
The actions of those in power create a constant drip of negative images which seep into the national consciousness. Why is it that every time a TV news report mentions unemployment, or school exclusions, or crime statistics you are virtually guaranteed to see a black face? Black and Asian people are seen far less often on reports on the health service, for example, where they make up a high proportion of nurses and doctors. Do you question it each time? Has this negative imagery become normalised in your own mind?
Only last week, a train crash in Tanzania which killed 200 people received the tiniest of mentions in the media. The Times ran a paragraph in its "In Brief" column. What impression does this give about the value of black life?
But the media is not entirely to blame. It is a chicken-and-egg situation in which editors know that their readers care less for non-white lives - they see the evidence in their sales - and hence devote less time and effort to covering them. Which makes the hypocrisy of their response to the crown prosecutor all the more stark.
And despite changes since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry - with black faces now regularly seen on TV in adverts and as presenters - the negative imagery still persists. Take the World Cup, where Egyptian and Ecuadorian referees were treated as second-rate, yet the Scottish official who missed a blatant goal-line handball was still somehow up to the job.
Some "non-racists" like to pretend that racial differences don't exist - they even proudly claim not to notice skin colour. This is manifest nonsense. Purporting to be "colour blind" is as ludicrous as suggesting you wouldn't notice a person's gender. What's important is what you do, not what you see.
It is naive to believe that the long history of racial distortion - which goes back to the days of slavery and colonialism - has not had a lasting effect on the individual subconscious. We receive these messages virtually from birth, and as children's thought processes develop, they build up into a bank of subliminal stereotypes. A black man and white man walking down the street: Which one is the doctor? Which one is good at sport? Which one does drugs?
Reaching adulthood, how can people realistically cast off all they've come to believe as a child? Even black people themselves are not immune, and these images have had an impact on their own self-esteem.
White people need to accept that, no matter how many anti-racist demos they've marched on, they inevitably make assumptions, however subconscious, which are influenced by a racist society and which help to form their views and opinions. To refute this is to be in complete denial. But this is not a blame game. Institutional racism is now an accepted term, but it's not the inanimate "institutions" which are racist; it's their staff who perpetuate the overall inequalities by their actions. The acknowledgement of personal racism is simply a prerequisite before anyone can begin to eradicate its pernicious effects.
As a black man, I admit I am bound to suffer from prejudices of my own. I cannot be racist, however, because in the global order I do not belong to the dominant group. If I were to mistreat a white person, no matter how low in social status, the weight of this country's white power structure would come down against me. As Stephen Lawrence's parents found, this force does not come to the aid of black people.
And how could I be racist anyway? I assure you, some of my best friends are white.
This man obviously has never consulted a dictionary. He suffers from prejudices yet he cannot be a racist. This notion that in order to be racist one must also have power or be a dominant group is just plain old nonsense. It is repeated only to rationalize and excuse their own racism.
This article is so stupid on so many levels it's hard to believe he has any credibility.
Oops, that criticism must be my whitey racist nature coming out.
I have Orcs that are smarter than any Klingon, pitiful mortal.
Right. Racism isn't belonging to a power structure. It isn't being against a government that funds mass-murdering terrorists. It isn't thinking some cultures are more valuable than others.
Racism is the belief that an individual from one race is inherently inferior or superior to an individual from another race solely because of their race.
That's a racist statement if ever there was one!
I respectfully disagree - it is rather pedestrian in its worthlessness, IMO...
P1: All white people are racist
P2:To be racist is to be evil
C: All white people are evil
P1: The author is black
P2: Blacks cannot be racist
C: The author is not racist
P1:The author is not racist
P2: The author says all white people are evil
C: It is not racist to say all white people are evil.
I reject conclusion 1 and conclusion 3. The logic, it appears to me, is flawless. I must therefore reject one of the premises in each case. Since the author insists all white people are racist, his point must be that racism is not evil.
And no, none of my friends are writers for the Guardian, nor would I want my sister to marry one.
Congressman Billybob
Click for: "Stupid is as Stupid Does, Even Among Federal Judges."
Hahaha!
And they have. See reply # 17.
I was about 1/3 the way throught before I realized it wasn't satire. Articles like this have become far too common in the last year or so. At some point in the near future there may be a need at FR to post a "Non-satire Alert" in the title to keep the confusion down.
I love it! Let's see, when cops do crack down on blacks, they are accused of unfairly harassing a community due to racsism. When the cops finally give up and let the community do what it will, why then, they are STILL racist for using blacks as "guinea pigs"!
It is time that we stop responding to the word "racist," which has lost all meaning. The next time one of these hustlers calls a white person racist the proper rejoinder should be, "So?"
So if Americans or Britons attack someone who isn't white, like Arafat, it is racism. If they attack someone who is white, like Hitler, that white guy just shows how bad we whites really are. It's win-win.
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