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On Wednesday [September 7] the President decides he should investigate what went wrong in his administration's response to the devastation in New Orleans and surrounding rural areas.[1] On Monday [September 12] he declares that the slow response not caused by racism.[2] What is going on here? This is a pattern that plays itself out repeatedly in the thought patterns of European-Americans. We can't imagine that any of our responses to the world around us could in any way be influenced by skin color. biases, at least on a subconscious level? Every person of color I have spoken to biases, at least on a subconscious level? Every person of color I haveon the subject admits to having gained a partially negative self-image from their teachers, their TVs, and their bosses. Yes they constantly fight these internal message tapes, but the tapes are manifestly a part of their lives. message tapes, but the tapes are manifestly a part of their lives. Are Whites now going to claim that we are superior to people of color in our abilities to screen out all racial biases, even on a subconscious level? That would be an awkward claim to try to defend. Perhaps we should be willing instead to hear the wisdom of our friends and colleagues of color as human experiences. I'm sure that Mr. Brown is unfailingly polite to the African Americans he meets in public affairs and private parties. Surely Mr. Chertoff even has a few such he would call "friend." Mr. Bush himself has demonstrated loyalty to his current Secretary of State. No doubt each of these men and their staffers would certainly have said about them, "He hasn't a racist bone in his body." The trouble is that for most Whites -- that is to say, not White hooligans who like to make statements with their fists -- our racism is not stored in our bones. It is stored in our viscera, the soft tissues of our bellies that knot up when we find ourselves in overwhelmingly "other" territory. For most of us it is not that our cerebral cortex tells our fists to fly. It is as if our gut tells our hind-brain to flee and our mid-brain to feel fear, disgust, and contempt for the "other." If our cortex picks up on this undercurrent and subsequently tells our fingers to dial the phone or not, our tongues to plead or not, and our bodies to recoil or not, that is only to be expected. So given this high probability that normal White folks have at least a racist intestinal-polyp in our bodies, why are White folks so quick to proclaim that "it wasn't racism" for every "it," large and small? The easy answer is that most of us have never thought through the probabilistic reasoning above. If we have been woefully ignorant of some portion of the interracial landscape, can we not imagine that there might be a few other holes in our education? We need a deeper education if we wish to proclaim what is and isn't true about race. Might we not, in particular, investigate the history of the institutions we rely upon today -- almost to a one founded during the Jim Crow era -- to see if there might be a procedural legacy that perpetuates unequal service? No matter how committed to anti-racist processes the leaders within those institutions might be, we all have experienced institutional molasses making change difficult. And the probabilistic reasoning above would indicate that even the most consciously anti- racist white administrators in those institutions nevertheless have subconscious racial prejudices. It is one of the ironies of this disaster that one of the victims of the New Orleans flooding was The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, whose analysis is founded on the assertion that the very definition of "racism" should be taken as "racial prejudice combined with institutional power." So was response of our institutions of government to the devastation wrought by this hurricane influenced by racism? A more realistic question given the above analysis is, "How could it not have been?" Jack C. Straton University Studies Portland State University Portland, OR, 97207-0751 503-725-5844 [1] "Bush takes reins of inquiry," by Jonathan Weisman and Michael A. Fletcher, September 07, 2005. [2] "Bush denies racial component to response," by Jennifer Loven , The Associated Press, 7: 55 p.m. PT, 9/12/2005. Jack C. Straton, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in PSU's University Studies Program and author of a number of journal articles on racism and sexism, including: Activism through music, Cherry Muhanji and Jack C. Straton, InventioCreative Thinking about Learning and Teaching 7(1) (Spring 2005) http://www.doiiit.gmu.edu/inventio/main.asp? pID=spring05 |