I know you've all been drooling in anticipation to hear me bitch about Sony, and I promise that post will materialize. But right now I need to talk about something else:
Race.
Intellectually, we all know that race is just a construct, but that doesn't make it any less of a bitch, does it? Right now I'm in this Constitutional Law class on race and gender discrimination (althought "in" is sort of a stretch, since I have trouble not skipping it). It's a fantastic class and I love my professor, but every time I go I end up wanting to kick someone. I was talking to Erin earlier this week about how this class is really demonstrating that there are people - lots of people - who've never really had a close friend that's different from them. There are all these people walking around who've never really tried to get out of their comfort zones, to experience hardship, or to try and understand other people. And if I'm saying this then you know it must be bad, because we all know that I'm extremely lazy and that my idea of going out of my comfort zone is studying in a new coffeeshop.
I was lucky because I was raised in a very diverse relgious community, made up of people from vere different racial, social and economic backgrounds. But what do you do if you aren't in that situation? What do you do if you live in a suburb that was originally developed to accommodate white-flight?
Part of the reason this class is so troubling is because, legally, it's hard to find good answers. For starters, it's hard to walk the line between letting courts have total control in one area without opening the door for some potentially crazy court to have control in another area.
Beyond that, how much can we (legally) take away choice? If young couples want to live in the suburbs for completely race-neutral reasons, like good school systems, how to do you justify forcing them to do something different without possibly creating racial animosity that wasn't there before?
And, most troubling, how the heck do you get anybody to care about this when most people think that everything is great?
Earlier today I saw an episode of Malcolm and the Middle that got me thinking about all of this again. In the episode, Lois (the mom) has finally been hired back at the grocery store where she worked, and Malcolm has gotten a job there too. Lois is on probation and she can't get fired because the family needs the money. The store sets up a new display for some brand of malt liquor, and the display is a cardboard cutout of an African-American guy in what looks like a janitor's outfit, holding a mop in one hand and a case of malt liquor in the other. The cutout is smiling and his nametag says "Slappy".
Lois freaks out as soon as it goes up because of how offensive and racist it is. So she steals it. But the store gets another cut-out and asks Malcolm to set it up, which he does just to piss off his mom. After the conflict between the two of them goes on for a little while, Lois decides that she has to do what's right. She grabs the cutout and starts to march out of the store.
As Lois is leaving, the sweet and soft-spoken lady who works in the checkout line next to her says "Oh, thank goodness you're getting rid of that thing!". "Yes", Lois replies, "I just couldn't take it anymore." "I know!", said the lady, "Ever since that thing went up, there have been so many black people coming to the store." Lois sort of stares at her with this shocked look on her face, and then the lady continues with something like, "We just aren't that kind of store, and I'm so glad that thing is leaving so that they stop coming around here."
Of course, after that, Lois then decides to leave the cutout. But I thought the storylinne was interesting. And telling: it seems like there aren't a lot of good options when it comes to current state of race relations in America. Whether you take or leave the cutout, it's still racist. There's no way to fix the problem without changing people's minds, and forcing people to act is almost impossible.
*Sigh. I didn't mean for this to be depressing. I guess I'm just a little frustrated. I should've just ranted about Sony.
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5 comments:
potential copyright infringement suit against malcolm in the middle show:
once, while sojourning in that cosmopolitan mecca for progressive thinking, diversity & tolerance aka bryan/college station, i was going through the checkout line with a girl of mixed persian/hispanic ethnicity and i commented on the cover of the tabloids - michael jackson & lisa marie presley's marriage photos... i said something to her like "man, that's gross"... doodoo fact that jacko, even then, was perceived as a freak by yours truly, and they were wrestling or something, looked perverted 'cause of him... and it just seemed so contrived... anyhow, the middle-aged white woman checking us out offered the following unsolicited comment:
"oh i know, i don't care how much money he has, i would never marry a black man"... full stop...
without missing a beat i gave her my most indignant stare and stated through clenched teeth:
"my dad is black"... full stop...
she checked out the rest of our groceries without another word, and i did nothing to break the silence, just continued to scowl... on our way out of the store the girl i was with grabbed my arm compassionately and said:
"i didn't know your dad was black"... full stop, once more...
the moral(s) of this story:
1) there are still overt bigots in the vicinity of texas a&m
2) you can't assume the people you're rolling with are really keeping up
just wanted to share my anecdotal what-what...
gig 'em all, let god sort 'em out... ;)
Raych - had I known in advance I would have alerted you to an awesome episode of Oprah I had the pleasure of catching yesterday. There is a new documentary series coming out on FX called "Trading Races." Basically, through the magic of modern make-up technology, a black family was "turned" white and a white family black. It sounds awful, but it's not like they did black face or anything - the process the families went through was extensive and the results are nothing short of phenomenal. Then, they had the families take part in different kinds of social experiments, if you will. For instance, they had the black man in his white costume work at a "white" bar, where he interacted with some racist customers who thought he was white. They also had the white couple, in their black costumes, go to a country/western club, where they were the only black people there and felt very uncomfortable. They also had the white man, in his black costume, and the black man, as himself, walk down the street together. The show goes a lot deeper than just superficial race matters. There is a big issue about the "n" word, and the use of it as a black person versus a white person, and I think the message the show tries to get across is about perspective and cross-cultural understanding. Anyway, it was a great Oprah, and I think the show will be great, so be on the look out for it on FX.
Here's a link to the FX webpage for the show.
http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/blackwhite/main.html
i feel you, rach. this is such a difficult issue. as bahais, we're told that it's the most challenging issue confronting america today. i think part of the challenge is that the extent of the problem is not adequately recognized -- not nearly.
i'm experiencing this every day at my law school as well... in class, in student organizations, in social settings. (hence, my recent post about these issues in relation to the proposed students of color space at my school). a lot of people just don't think that racism still exists. it blows my mind.
more and more, i learn that formal education can sometimes have zero correlation to a person's actual awareness of reality. and racism and racial issues are some realites that truly need to be dealt with. but, as i said in my blog post about race, i feel like this doesn't happen because of deliberate ignorance.
anonymous, that's an unfortunate episode. i realize it happened to you in college station -- but sadly, it happens in supposedly more enlightened places, too. like new york city.
and erin, i read an article in the ny times about the "black. white" show on FX. it looked really promising to me, but i was disappointed, because in interviewing the white family afterwards, they all said that after being made-up to be black, they were just confirmed in their belief that black people aren't really discriminated against. one piece of evidence they cited for this conclusion was that they weren't called the "n" word.
*sigh*
Nas, that's really sad.
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