(Name-mce) ListServ ListServ We're all racists, unconsciously

[Ssbernabei at aol.com]

      It is amazing that a race constructed country   can still maintain 
confusion and thereby white supremacy after hundreds of years and hundreds and 
hundreds of textbooks written by hundreds of experts on the subject.   It is sad 
that the debate continues the confusion and pain we share around the issue of 
race and racism. 

     Until we share a common definition...a common understanding of our 
collective history grounded in facts and not left to individual opinion, we will 
continue to hurt and confuse.  Historian John Hope Franklin was named winner of 
2006 John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity the equivalent of the Nobel 
prize in History. This great announcement received little attention in the 
news.

      He is 91 years old and ends his career as a United States Historian 
saddened by the reality that Americans still do not understand their history and 
are still not taught the truth.   He refuses to be referred to as a Black 
historian insisting that he wrote and taught American history not Black history.   


     Racism is structural yet we continue to focus on the individual. Our 
discussions will do nothing to change the structural arrangements that keep us 
divided and at the same time maintain the status quo that is killing people of 
color everyday as we debate the acts of individuals.   "Racism cannot be taught 
away.. nor talked away.   Undoing is a verb and requires organized action." 
(www.pisab.org)

      I recommend that all Name members take advantage of the Undoing Racism 
Workshop offered by The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (led by 
people of color) and join the movement to undo structural racism.  The People's 
Institute have been offering workshops on Undoing Racism for over 25 years and 
maintain a focus on racism, not diversity, tolerance or multiculturalism...of 
course the workshop includes history and culture and it all makes more sense 
once we have clarity on racism. 

     Perhaps The People's Institute could present at the next annual 
conference.   It may be time to   consider the contribution NAME members could make to 
the movement to undo structural racism if we work together with a common 
framework and common strategy.

     peace,

Sandy Bernabei
www.antiracistalliance.com 
a movement to undo structural racism
-------------

November 24,  2006

AFTER A PAROXYSM of racial viciousness at the Laugh Factory last  week,
Michael Richards, the 57-year-old comedian who played Kramer on  "Seinfeld,"
explained to David Letterman and his "Late Night" audience  Monday: "I'm not
a racist. That's what's so insane about  this."

Richards' shattered demeanor and heartfelt repentance leaves us  with what I
shall call Kramer's Conundrum: How can someone who spews racial  epithets
genuinely believe he is not a racist? The answer is to be found in  the
difference between our conscious and unconscious attitudes and our  public
and private thoughts.

Consciously and publicly, Richards is  probably not a racist. But
unconsciously and privately, he is. So am I. So  are you.

Consciously and publicly, most of us are colorblind. And most of  us, most
of the time, believe and act on that cultural requisite. You'd have  to be
insane to publicly utter racist remarks in today's society ? or  temporarily
insane, which both science and the law recognize as sometimes  being
triggered by anger.

And alcohol ? recall Mel Gibson's drunken  eruption about Jews, or the
college frat boys slurring alcohol-induced  insanities about blacks and
slavery in Sacha Baron Cohen's film  "Borat."

The insidiousness of racism is because of the fact that it  arises out of
the deep recesses of our unconscious. We may be unaware of it,  yet it lurks
there.

How do we know this? One indication is the  Implicit Association Test,
developed by Harvard scientists, which asks  subjects to pair words and
concepts. The more closely associated the words  and concepts are, the
quicker the response to them will be in the  key-pressing sorting task (try
it yourself at _https://implicit.https://implhttps://i_
(https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/)   ).

The race test firsts asks you to sort black and white faces into one  of two
categories: European American or African American. Easy. Next you are  asked
to sort a list of words (joy, terrible, love, agony, peace,  horrible,
wonderful, nasty, pleasure) into one of two categories: Good or  Bad. No
problem.

The next task is a little more complicated. The words  and black and white
faces appear on the screen one at a time, and you sort  them into one of
these categories: African American/Good or European  American/Bad. Again you
match the words with the concepts of good or bad, and  faces with national
origin. So the word "joy" would go into the first  category and a white face
would go into the second category. This sorting  goes noticeably slower, but
you might expect that because the combined  categories are more cognitively
complex.

Unfortunately, the final  sorting task puts the lie to that rationalization.
This time you sort the  words and faces into the categories European
American/Good or African  American/Bad. Tellingly (and distressingly)Americ
sorting process goes  much faster than the previous one. I was much quicker
to associate words like  "joy," "love" and "pleasure" with European
American/Good than I did with  African American/Good.

I consider myself about as socially liberal as you  can get, and yet on a
scale that includes "slight," "moderate" and "strong,"  the program
concluded: "Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for  European
American compared to African American." What? "The interpretation  is
described as 'automatic preference for European American' if you  responded
faster when European American faces and Good words were classified  with the
same key than when African American faces and Good words were  classified
with the same key."

But I'm not a racist. How can this be?  It turns out that this subconscious
association of good with European  Americans is true for everyone, even
African Americans, no matter how  colorblind we all claim to be.

We are by nature sorters. Evolutionists  theorize that we evolved in small
bands of hunter-gatherers when there was a  selection for within-group amity
and between-group enmity. With our fellow  in-group members, we are
cooperative and altruistic. Unfortunately, the  downside to this pro-social
bonding is that we are also quite tribal and  xenophobic to out-group
members.

This natural tendency to sort people  into Within-Group/This nat
Between-Group/Between-Group/<WBR>Bad is shaped by culture,  so that all A
even those whose ancestry is African)  implicitly inculcate the cultural
association, which includes additional  prejudices.

The Harvard test, in fact, also demonstrates that we prefer  young to old,
thin to fat, straight to gay and such associations as  family-females and
career-males, liberal arts-females and science-males. Such  associations
bubble just below the surface, inhibited by cultural restraints  but
susceptible to eruption under extreme inebriation or  duress.

Richards' sin was his deed; his thoughts are the sin of all  humanity. Only
when all people are considered to be members of one global  in-group (in
principle if not in practice) can we begin to attenuate these  out-group
associations. But it won't be easy. Vigilance is the watchword of  both
freedom and dignity.

We should accept Richards' apology for  losing his temper and acting out
those hateful thoughts. Perhaps we also  ought to thank him for having the
courage to confess in public what far too  many of us still harbor in
private, often in our unconscious minds. As the  Russian novelist Fyodor
Dostoyevsky wrote: "Every man has reminiscences which  he would not tell to
everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in  his mind which he
would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself,  and that in
secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell  even to
himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away  in
his mind."


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