“A National Conversation on Racism: Beyond the
Intentional Individual”
Tragic events such as the Trayvon Martin murder occasionally
garner wider public attention and open up opportunities to have what people
call a “national conversation” on race.
These conversations are typically grounded in a certain understanding of
racism, one that sees racism as the result of individual attitude and intent.
Yet, decades of research reveal that racism is much more. What should a more thorough “national
conversation” on race look like? What understandings of race and racism should
be recognized and incorporated?
An informed national conversation
on race would recognize several factors.
First and foremost, it would recognize that race is a social
construction. There is no biological or cultural validity to the term. Second, it would move beyond the common focus
on individuals and intentions to recognize the variety of ways that racism is
manifest in US society.
Any “national conversation” on race
needs to begin with one very important and fundamental understanding, race is a
social construction. There is no biological reality to race that fits some
natural “types” of humans. Rather, people have taken subtle physical changes to
the body that arose due to how we’ve adapted to our physical environments and
placed them into categories and called them races. Yet, this didn’t “just happen.” Rather, races
were created in the context of European colonialism, as European countries
sought to expand their control over distant lands. Now, since race is a social
construction it cannot possibly be used as a causal factor in explaining trends
in human behavior. Something must come
before it. That is, any trends that appear to fall along racial lines must
ultimately be explained by something beside race. The different impacts of these other forces
are the real factors that explain trends in behavior, beliefs and attitudes
that seem to relate to race. People
sometimes refer to these outcomes as the result of culture (e.g., a black
culture) as culture has come to replace biology in popular thinking about race
and difference. However, this is also flawed. Culture is the result of shared historical
experiences that foster certain adaptations related to those experiences. Any culture that appears to be racialized is
really an outgrowth of shared experiences that are themselves racialized first
and foremost. Further, culture cannot
abide by racial lines because the categories and definitions of race are
socially constructed. That is, there’s nothing real to which we might consistently
define race and anchor culture. It’s like saying there is a culture of
green-eyed people, or of tall people. Like biological viewpoints of old, cultural
understandings ignore the socially constructed nature of race, and treat
cultural adaptations (to the extent that these correlate with race) as inherent
qualities determined by race. These
understandings are simple, misguided, and harmful.
Since
race is a social construction we cannot treat it as a causal factor or
independent variable (i.e., people do things because they’re black or white). Instead we must link any trends to more
concrete forces that are themselves racialized. These forces are important and necessary
elements in any national conversation. They include racism’s cultural,
psychological and institutional manifestations. Importantly, none of them focus
on the individual nor require an intentional actor.
Cultural Aspects of
Racism:
Cultural racism refers to the subtle, but persistent ways
race is framed and discussed in broader popular culture (e.g., media and music). Here, researchers have noted how stigmatizing
and devalued social qualities are commonly inscribed into racialized cultural
representations. Absent consistent and
meaningful face-to-face interactions these subtle but consistent discourses come
to constitute much of what we know about racialized others. They cultivate a “reality” that fosters
assumptions, stereotypes and other superficial and ignorant understandings of
racialized “others.” Unless you live on the moon, it’s hard to resist these
cultural forces, even among the most bleeding of heart liberals. Evidence from the psychological research reveals
this.
Psychological Aspects
of Racism:
On the psychological level, researchers have discovered a
subconscious [and in many ways unintentional] level of racism. This aspect of racism grows out of our
cultural environment. It’s commonly
shared by all of us and needs to be recognized in any national conversation on
race. This is based on the simple fact that our cultural environment trains us
to think in terms of races and informs these thoughts with value judgments. This affects our automatic cognition, or the
brain’s ability to quickly and rapidly categorize the things we sense in our
environment, so that certain cues (such as one’s race) register other “related”
assumptions and associations (such as criminal, lazy, dependent, and other
negative traits). This affects us all,
though we’re usually too afraid to admit. Even the most ardent advocate for
racial equality likely harbors negative thoughts and feelings towards
racialized others. This is only to be
expected given racism’s cultural aspects, and any serious “national
conversation” on race needs to recognize it.
Yet,
this does not mean there are not patterns in behavior, thinking and attitudes
that relate to race. However, our
dominant view of race as cultural leads us to misrecognize the real forces at
work. Because race is a social
construction, any patters can only be explained by larger forces. This introduces our third level of racism. Its
institutionalization.
Institutionalized
Racism:
Society is composed of a number of institutions. Typically these refer to education, family,
religion, media, economy, polity, criminal justice, etc. Racism is institutionalized
when these social institutions produce consistent neglect, isolation and harm
for racially constructed others. People’s
reactions and adaptations to these institutionalized actions produce patterns
in behavior and attitude that are often misrecognized and misinterpreted as
“culture”.
Racism is found in every social
institution and since these institutions are related and work together in a larger
social system, racism is also systemic (think about how jobs, education, crime,
and housing are all related).
Institutionalized racism essentially cements racist outcomes with
implications not for an individual at a particular point in time, but for an
entire group of people and over extended periods of time. It is a powerful and
lasting form of racism that must be center stage in any serious national
conversation about race.
This is what decades of research and
scholarship on race has discovered. Race
was socially constructed in the context of European colonialism and for the
purpose of justifying manifest destiny, the plundering of foreign lands and
peoples, forced labor and a permanent social hierarchy. There is no biological or cultural reality to
race, and any trends in race must ultimately be explained by larger social
forces that are themselves racist.
Racism’s institutionalization helps us explain these patterns by linking
them to concrete social organizations and policies. Racism’s cultural aspects reflect how these
patters inform a broad cultural discourse typically packaged in degrading,
stigmatizing meaning systems. Racism’s
psychological elements reflect how this discourse cultivates subtle but real
cognition systems, assumptions and stereotypes, even among the most racially
sensitive of us. None of this requires
intent, and all of it extends beyond the overly simply one-on-one, direct form
of racism that typically informs our national conversations on race. Any national conversation that wants to be
taken seriously and wants to provide a real public service must acknowledge and
incorporate these ideas. Complicity, inaction and neglect perpetuate these styles
of racism.
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