Modern Racism

No one today admits to being a racist. When we imagine living in the 50's, we're sure we'd be on the side of the marchers and freedom riders. "Of course children of different races should go to school together!" we say, but the reality is that secondary education is less integrated today than it was in 1968. White kids may request hip-hop songs when they're out on Frday nights, but most would be nervous walking home afterwards if they they were the only white kids on the street.

Racism today is subtler, and it is more mixed up in classism. A few wealthy Black kids in a suburban school doesn't bother anyone; it probably makes the district feel proud of its diversity. I bet there are a lot of voters out there who privately agree with Senator Joe Biden's offhand comment that Barack Obama is "the first mainstream African-American candidate who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Naturally, they'd never phrase it like that (after all, as Barack wisely noted, this is historically inaccurate), but Obama does have broad appeal through his assimilation in mainstream white culture that reassures Americans. They could vote for a Black candidate, so they're not racist.

When Black people are poorer, or less articulate, or simply are the majority in the area, people are less comfortable. "That bar is sooo ghetto," I've heard many times. "I walked in there and was like, I'm the only white person in here... I was a little scared." When people are nervous, the PC rhetoric fades away, leaving "Black=ghetto=more prone to violence" equation out in the open. Statistically, Black men are overrepresented in our prison system. Median incomes among Black families are lower than among white families. I believe that the fear of large groups of Black people, and especially of Black men, contrbute to segregated neighborhoods, which of course exacerbate the problem of segregated socializing.

Modern racism is a complex issues, and I don't have a simple solution. I'd like to see the same education system in the inner-cities as in the suburbs, so that all kids have the same opportunities - and so that parents might be less afraid of sending their kids to a school where everyone didn't look like them. I'd like to see housing anti-discrimination laws more strictly enforced because it's only fair - and because it's high time that more children grew up playing with neighbors of different races. I'd like to increase the number of public defenders and examine our drug policy, because the system we have is clearly not working.

The other day, I was talking about how badly I needed a haircut as I ate lunch at work. "Really?" my friend Maisha asked. "White people's hair gets split ends too?"

I held up a handful of my stringy blonde hair for her to see, and disspelled that myth in a matter of seconds.

We laughed, but thinking about that conversation now makes me sad. Girls talk a lot about their hair, or at least my friends do. We discuss it with each other before we get it cut, attempt highlights, or even go out with it parted on the other side. How could Maisha not have known this basic fact about white hair? Maybe she just has better things to talk about. My guess, though, is she didn't have many close white friends growing up. (To be honest, I don't know too much about the whole extension thing, either.)

It's tempting to end this with a paragraph of "I want my kids..." sentiments. I want my kids to grow up in schools that really are diverse. I want my kids to be comfortable in situations where their race is the minority, or the majority, or, better yet, not to care. But I don't plan on having kids in the next couple years, and I think there are a lot of steps we can take now. There's no better way to overcome prejudice than through interaction. We can start by consciously interacting more with people of all races, listening to their ideas, and working together towards a society where racism really is just a part of the past. I want my kids to know I did something to change modern racism, rather than just wait for the perfect, prejudice-free world of the future.