Yet another side effect of the Ferguson unrest was the inevitable calls for how we really need to have a national conversation on race. (You can read some of my previous thoughts on the value of what the media considers a national conversation here.) As I watch the attempts at such debates taking place not only on the small screen, but on blogs and comment sections around the web, I detect a growing sense of frustration on both sides. There are sizable groups of progressives who seem sincerely interested in convincing everyone that pretty much all of these problems – as well as much of what’s wrong with the rest of the nation – boil down to latent racism and endemic white supremacy. This is frustrating to some people who feel that the rules should apply evenly to everyone and that life in a free society comes with an inherent expectation of personal responsibility. For their part, the progressives appear to be frustrated when some of their debate opponents opine that robbing stores and attempting to beat up police officers can lead to bad results even if your skin is bright pink with chartreuse spots.
But the conversation really screams to a halt when the more conservative crowd runs into somebody like CNN author and religion blogger John Blake. Rather than yelling about it on one side or the other, or even trying to grasp what the other party might be trying to say, Blake jumps on the shiny new bandwagon of forgiving everyone who doesn’t think they are a racist because, well… you probably just don’t realize you are and you don’t know any better.
[I]t doesn’t wear a hood, but it causes unsuspecting people to see the world through a racially biased lens.
It’s what one Duke University sociologist calls “racism without racists.” Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, who’s written a book by that title, says it’s a new way of maintaining white domination in places like Ferguson.
“The main problem nowadays is not the folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits,” says Bonilla-Silva.
“The more we assume that the problem of racism is limited to the Klan, the birthers, the tea party or to the Republican Party, the less we understand that racial domination is a collective process and we are all in this game.”
1 comment:
I've been told that racism is taught. I've got to give it to Ferguson and the administration, THEY'VE TAUGHT US WELL!
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