This page is all about love and reducing the stigma that surrounds interracial relationships. And I try to keep it as lovey-dovey as possible. But every now and then, I do post controversial topics that I think are relevant to a page that deals with race. And while my primary purpose of doing this is to get a discussion going, whenever it involves an incident where a person of colour is being subjected to injustice by a White person, I get accused (mostly by White people) of 'race baiting' or being racist. And this piece will probably do the same thing, but I don't care.
Let me just start off by saying I am not race baiting, and to say that I am racist is fundamentally inaccurate. What you may think is race baiting is just me simply pointing out social injustices.
Blatant racism, for the most part, is over. Slavery is abolished. Jim Crow laws are abolished. All american citizens over the age of 18 can vote. Segregation, 'separate but equal', and other blatantly racially discriminatory laws of the like have been all but removed from the books. We have made great strides in race relations in the past century and I, for one, am grateful for it.
But changing a law does not automatically change a mind. The abolition of slavery did not make all White people automatically treat Blacks as equals. Blacks getting the right to vote did not automatically stop certain states from trying to find ways to stop them from doing so (eg. grandfather laws, literacy tests, etc). Integration did not automatically mean that White schools welcomed minorities with opened arms (we've all seen the picture of that young woman trying to go to school while White people picketed and screamed obscenities at her). The removal of racism from our laws did not automatically remove racism from our society. They did not stop White people from teaching their children that minorities were inferior and did not deserve to be treated equally. Such feelings and dispositions do not disappear overnight. And this is where covert and institutionalized racism stems from.
These days, society has become much more tolerant and most people do not outright teach their children to discriminate against minorities. But from generation to generation, lingering prejudices do get passed down, and this is true for all races and ethnicities, not just whites. Many non white people hold racially discriminatory prejudices against Whites, I am not denying that. The difference is that the innate prejudices held by Whites have a far greater ability to affect people of colour than the other way around. It's called institutionalized racism. As of this very moment in the USA, Whites are the majority at about 63%. They are in control of almost all the major institutions.
Whites are in control of most financial institutions (banks).
Whites are in control of most educational institutions (universities).
Whites are in control of most employment opportunities.
Whites are in control of the government institutions (our president may be Black [I know he's biracial, for those of you who will come at my throat for this, I'm just speaking for the sake of the argument and general perception], but congress and the supreme court are still largely White).
Whites are in control of the law enforcement institutions (the police force in this country is about 75% White, and in most predominantly Black or Hispanic towns, the police force is about 87.5% White).
This means that Whites have the ability to affect minorities with their innate prejudices on a large scale.
Whites are in a better position to deny you a loan based on race.
Whites are in a better position to deny you entrance to a university based on race (affirmative action has offset this. But in schools that employ 'colourblind' admissions, the bias becomes more obvious)
Whites are in a better position to deny you jobs based on race (http://nyti.ms/1BHfY3O & http://cnn.it/K7N73w)
Whites are in a better position to discriminate in law enforcement based on race (http://stanford.io/1otGRyT, http://ampr.gs/1fe76bi,http://bit.ly/1scUftN).
And you know what the crazy thing about this is? Most of them don't even realize they are doing it.
I think it's safe to assume that most White people are not racist and that most of them are for racial equality on a general scale. It's very rare that you will come across a White person who is like, "You know what? I hate people of colour, and I am going to do every single thing in my power to make their lives a living hell!"
Most people have good intentions. However, innate biases conditioned into us from young can pop up at the simple mention of a name, or at the sight of someone who fits the bill of the said bias. And that's how covert and institutionalized racism prevails. We just don't always notice it. It's kind of like breathing. It's there. It's happening. But for the most part, you don't even notice it happening.
Until someone points it out. I'm pretty sure that anyone who is reading this sentence has started breathing manually because I have pointed this out. Some of you may even be a bit annoyed, because breathing manually is kind of a bother. Well that's kind of what pointing out innate prejudice is like. The people on the privileged side of this prejudice get annoyed at you for pointing it out. Because being aware of it makes them uncomfortable.
So I understand why bringing up these things have the potential to make white people feel uncomfortable. And for that, I apologize, as it honestly was not my intention. But if it makes you uncomfortable for the few minutes you are just TALKING about it, imagine what it feels like to LIVE it.
Imagine what it is like to get stopped by the police for the vague reason of 'fitting the description' or 'looking out of place' (something that has happened to me on a few occasions, and I live in NYC where stop and frisk was legal until recently. Not dressed oddly, not doing anything suspicious, sometimes even wearing my college i.d hanging very clearly from my neck. Not even identification from one of the the top five colleges in the country could keep the cops from bugging me).
Imagine having to give your kids 'the talk', and I'm not talking about sex. Imagine having to tell your child that he needs to look as un-thuggish as possible and keep his hands visible so the police won't shoot him (http://usat.ly/Vpw2Hn, http://bit.ly/1tYTpTq).
Imagine that even your children, are judged with a harsher light (http://bit.ly/Xp6Ty5, http://wapo.st/1kecHET).
Imagine living in a society where your own natural appearance can be a violation of rules at schools or in the workplace (http://huff.to/1uPGJiJ,http://bit.ly/1nHImKA, http://wapo.st/1ef83Og, http://nyti.ms/1rSGIJO,http://huff.to/1m9F8Va).
Imagine having your culture demonized, discriminated against and dismissed as 'ghetto' or 'trashy' (http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/12/perceptions-of-discrimination-a-black-and-white-story/).
Imagine having to give your child a 'normal' (read: European) name just to make sure they can get a job later in life, or having to alter your name on resumes just to make sure sure your application doesn't get thrown out (http://bit.ly/1euCp1b).
Imagine living in an infrastructure that wasn't created by you, that doesn't favour you and that you exist in through no choice of your own (http://bit.ly/1lSdYSM).
Your 'discomfort' more or less ends when you log off the internet, but minorities have to live with it 24/7.
So no, I will not stop posting these 'race baiting' articles just because they make some of you uncomfortable. Because if we don't recognize a problem for what it is, then we cannot work towards fixing it. I don't hate White people and I do not blame present day Whites for the atrocities of their ancestors, nor do I hold a grudge against them for simply being born into a system that favours them. They didn't choose the life that they were born into and neither did I. However, I will not remain complacent towards the status-quo and allow innate prejudices to go unheard of. If not talking about racism really did solve it, racism would have been gone years ago.
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