[disclaimer: my tone can sometimes come off as too critical or condescending. This is by no means meant to be so. It is one of my flaws as a person. I'm working on it. Until I get over it I won't make any attempts to run for office because god knows I wouldn't want to be called an "elitist" (okay, sorry...that was sarcastic)]
I am posting again today in response to a comment left by Bryman. His comment made me aggravated, excited, and then grateful. Aggravated, because no matter how much I try to not care about these things, I always get pulled back in somehow. Excited, because I can’t help but not be when talking about these issues. And grateful, because he is giving me the opportunity to clarify some points for you. This is not a personal attack on him or the things he wrote in response to my original post. Without him in my life I wouldn’t even have this silly blog. So in advance Bryman, thank you for challenging me!!
I was not trying to make the point that poverty is not racist. I was making the point that minorities are stuck in the state they are (right along with some white people) due to a lack of money. This leads to a lack of access to education and stable, safe living environments. This lack can then in turn lead to crime. Both of these things can lead to stereotypes of minorities being both stupid and prone to crime and violence which makes people not want to hire, live near, or even speak to them. Their current state is not due to the color of their skin anymore. When I said that racism was not an issue, I meant in the legal sense of the word. The instances you bring up are in fact punishable according to the law, although I agree that this does not not always happen. That is not to say that they do not still occur, but now there is the full force of the law behind these types of offenses. While racist may still exist, we don’t really like to tolerate it as a nation as a whole and it is most certainly frowned upon.
There is never a true discussion about race in this country which is the point I was hoping to get across. The only ones truly allowed to discuss it freely are the minorities themselves. “White” people tend to walk a fine line in discussing race issues. Racism is feared by public society and is not publicly accepted and any comments seen as “racist” tend to label the speaker as one as well. If we are to have a true discussion about race, the white folks need to be able to speak up too. No true effective change can ever really be accomplished unless both sides are able to speak to each other, and honestly. We shouldn’t have to watch our mouths simply because someone might get offended. People have offensive thoughts and we need to put them out there sometimes so that we can actually deal with them instead of pretending like they don’t exist.
This is what I meant when I said that it is time to move beyond race as such a critical issue. I feel that the fact that a black man has been nominated for the presidency will help contribute to this. Not that it isn’t an issue, but today it is not the direct cause of many of the problems that the very group is experiencing. This is true because people on the same income level encounter the same difficulties.
Another point I’m sick of hearing, and I know that by saying it it will put me close to that line I spoke about, is the demand for greater representation of minorities in politics. And please, before anyone gets all up in arms let me explain. Sure, more minorities should be involved in politics than at the current moment. But it needs to be accepted at a certain point that the minorities in this country are called such because they are in fact a minority in the population in the nation as a whole. Furthermore, where are all the hispanics? They beat out the blacks and the asians in terms of numbers and I’m sure if you counted the illegal ones along with the legal ones they would probably even get close to beating out the number of white people. Lets take a moment to step back and look at some of the other countries in this world in which there is a minority ruling over the majority. Several African nations have this problem where the white people are the minority and control the government. Should those black folks be pissed? God damn right they should be. The true majority interests are not being heard which can create a sad state of affairs for most of the people living in those respective countries. There are other nations that have this problem and I encourage anyone to take a look at them (A great book for that is World on Fire by Amy Chua). My ultimate point is that we are only going to see so much diversity in politics. There should absolutely be more of it, but we should always be wary of a minority ruling over a majority (like rich over poor perhaps?) and the reason why I tie it in with Hillary is the fact that women represent a little over half of the population and we are a fraction of the representation in politics. At some points in history there was even more minority members in congress than females of any race. This I find absolutely absurd. I’ll take a minute here to insert some statistics from the current members of congress (taken from wikipedia so probably not the most academic source but it will have to do):
In the Senate, there are 16 women, the highest number in history. There are 13 Jews, three Hispanics (Mel Martinez, R-FL; Bob Menendez, D-NJ; Ken Salazar, D-CO) two Asian Americans (Daniel Akaka, D-HI; Daniel Inouye, D-HI), one Arab American (John Sununu, R-NH), and one African American (Barack Obama, D-IL). The 110th Congress includes the most religiously-diverse House in history, including the first Muslims (Keith Ellison and André Carson), the first Buddhists (Mazie Hirono and Hank Johnson), and 30 Jews. There are 42 African Americans (including two non-voting delegates) and 74 female representatives. There are also 27 Hispanics, three Asian Americans, and one Native American (Tom Cole, R-OK).
So ultimately out of 635 members of the Congress (435 for the House and 100 for the Senate) 90 (14%) are women, 43 (6 %) are Black, 30 (4%) are Hispanic, and 5 (0.07%) are Asian. The US Census reports that in the population as a whole 12.2% is black, 14.8% is Hispanic, 4.4% are Asian, and lets just put women at 50% to make it easy (although in truth it is a little more than that). So half the black population is represented in congress as of now. By far the best representation of any minority group in the country (and I’m throwing women in the mix as they are always thrown in as a minority even though in truth they are the majority). And just look at those poor Asians, or even the lone Native American, man do I feel bad for those guys, they must truly feel out of place. Again, women have the worst representation overall, making up only 14% of Congress even though they are roughly 50% of the population. And of course that is only on a national level but I feel its serves as a decent example for my purposes.
Some other random statements to throw at you too (mostly from things I have randomly read or experienced the last two years so if anyone needs citations I’ll be happy to get over to the library and look them up for you, I swear I’m not talking out of my ass). Did you know that there are more minority students enrolled in Ivy League schools then there are poor people from any background? That when I was applying to college I found an abundance of scholarships for women entering the sciences but that I couldn’t apply for any of them because they were directed at minority students, usually regardless of economic status? Not to mention the fact that especially in Boston, there is a racially diverse black population comprised of people who have immigrated from Haiti or Cape Verde. So essentially what those scholarships are saying to me is that a person who has immigrated to this country, or whose parents have immigrated to this country, just like my grandparents did, has had such a hard time that they need extra help going to school? So a female Haitian immigrant has access to funds that her female Russian immigrant peer might not simply based on the color of their skin? Don’t they both encounter the same barriers? Its total Bullshit. My family on both sides NEVER OWNED SLAVES. I shouldn’t have to pay for the fact that a bunch of assholes feeling guilty because a 150 years ago their families did. My grandfather moved here when he was 6, got plunked into a first grade classroom not knowing a word of English. He busted his ass, learned a trade, bought a house and raised a family and you couldn’t even tell that the man is able to speak fluent Italian. Many people struggle and work hard just to secure the basic American dream of owning a home and raising a family in safety. Do they need help? Sure, but it ain’t just about the black folks anymore, so yes, its time they get over it. We’re all having a hard time right now, regardless of our skin color.
So no, with all due respect, I would say that I am not ignorant at all. I have been reading, writing, and discussing issues like these throughout high school and into college. I allow my eyes to stay open to the world around me and the various experiences that ALL people experience. I will not bow down or shut my mouth because of the color of MY skin. I am entitled to speak about whatever I want, just like anyone else. Not to sound like an ‘elitist’ but I could throw a few books at you, and ones written by some very smart black people, that totally support my point. I think that it is great that Obama has not let race become a major issue in his campaign. I think that if he keeps that up he will have a better chance of winning. People are tired of hearing the race card. We all need to get over it. Older people like your grandmother or whomever else that feels they wouldn’t vote for someone based on color needs to examine why exactly they are saying that and perhaps because they are aware of their trivial bias, they should elect to stay home on voting day come November. Sure tons of older people still have issue with race. They have seen a lot in their day, and for them I am not sure much can be done to fix it, so really, why try to talk them out of it? Why can’t our generation drop the bullshit of the generation before and start new? The fact that people of color in my age group are still trying to pull the race card is just fucking silly. We were both sitting in the same fucking room, on the same college campus, being taught in the same way, by the same professor. So is it really that much of an issue still for our generation? Still throwing that discrimination card around? You’re right, when you’re different you feel it. When you’re black in a room full of whites you feel different. When you’re white in a room full of blacks you feel different. If you’re a girl in a room full of boys you feel different. When you’re fat and in a room full of skinny people you feel different. Hell, just today I was given a judgmental look on the train by an elderly black woman. Did it bug me a little bit? Sure it did, but GET OVER IT!!!! It doesn’t solve anything to continue to whine about these things. Lets sit down and really take a look at why these populations aren’t succeeding. Lets have a real dialogue where we can both talk about what’s affecting us. I am positive we will find that today, it has nothing to do with the color of our skin.
I stand by my point, its time to move beyond race. Not that it is not still a factor but its not the whole pie. There is a lot more at work than simple discrimination based on skin color. Again, I am not a racist. If you perceive me to be so then you are allowing yourself to remain ignorant of the fact that race issues affect everyone and everyone needs to speak about them. Its not just white and black, its also red and yellow. We are a nation of African-Asian-Hispanic-Native-Irish-Italian-Russian-German-Muslim-(etc) American’s and we all got shit to say, so can’t we sit back and try to listen and maybe without all that horrible judgement?
[I had some more points to bring up about why I feel Hillary's campaign failed. I have done a ton of research on woman in politics, as well as woman in music and the similar barriers they face as I was supposed to do a senior thesis on the subject but ended up losing my advisor so I never actually wrote it. If I started to bring up all that this thing would literally turn into a book so I will have to leave that for another day.]
I tend to agree with you regarding people using the ‘race card’ to explain all the hardship that has happened to them. Personally, I always fell extremely uncomfortable talking about my ethnic background, specially during my graduate school application. One of my professors told me that I should talk about it (universities love to hear about it) but in reality my ethnic background has little to do with my wish to study international relations. I have no plan to study Latin America, for example, and it has been perplexing for people to hear that I actually want to focus on the Middle East. I am a firm believer that if one works hard with a goal in mind, one can do anything. If one is labeling people by race and socio-economic background, I should have by now 6 kids, all with different fathers, on welfare, and without a high school diploma. However, I choose not to do that because early on, thanks for my mother, I understood the great importance of an education. Specially in this country were education is free and there are so many venues for help, I find race and socio-economic background not an excuse to fail. Yet, it is important to note that those are, indeed, grave challenges that hinders greatly.
When I did my honor thesis, a huge part of it was the study of gender-quota laws in Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. I find it extremely difficult for gender-quota laws to be implemented in this country. In order for those laws to work and be implemented, the general public must be aware of the problem, and I don’t see that urgency in this country.
I will leave you this helpful website regarding women in political power: http://www.iwdc.org/resources/fact_sheet.htm I used this website a lot while doing my thesis.
the stats of representation reminded me about something that irks me. There are almost 2 billion (1/3 of the world) Asians and Indian people in China and India alone. Why is it still weird to some people that there is an ever growing population of Asian and Indian people in Boston/mass/the US? We seem to forget that outside our borders, not everyone is a WASP. Muslims make up more of the world than Christians. Spanish is spoken way more than English around the world. It shouldn’t be a shock to see people who make up a significant chunk of the worlds population are immigrating to America just like every other ethnic group in the world.
As far as your blog goes, I agree with the most of it except I don’t think we will be able to fully phase out things like affirmative action and race based scholarships just yet. The civil rights act isn’t even 50 years old yet. There are still people in elected office that voted against it/opposed it. I think its something that that needs to slowly but surely removed as we progress as a society but until our generation (the first generation after its induction) takes control of the country I don’t think we can leave it up to the people who lived through the struggle on both sides to think in colorblind terms. When our generation is older and we have kids of our own (if we choose to do so :p ), the idea of people of color and women not having the same rights as everyone else will be nothing more than a black mark in our history books but until then we need to ween ourselves off of gender and race based aid to keep the power that be from relapsing.
Well I agree with you and I don’t remember if I made it too clear that yes, our generation experiences hardships for reasons other than the color of our skin. At least for the most part.
I think our generation definitely has the ability and more importantly should be looking beyond race. But as I said and as John also said, there are people of the civil rights generation still alive and we can not change all of their minds. What is important for our generation to do is accept this. Accept that there are people like my grandma around who just can’t see all people equally. And because of that, and the fact that there are almost all races and religions present in America, all with their own hardships to be faced, we need to treat all of our problems the same. I think we agree here that on a peer to peer level, our hardships are brought about by reasons all of a similar caliber. That being white and poor in our generation and having to struggle to get into a good school, is just as hard if not harder than being black and growing up upper middle class but being shut out of a few jobs because the 70 year old CEO still doesn’t think black people should be working with white people. But for the most part, there are good people out there, and good older people out there, all willing to make this world a better place. And it takes treating our generations hardships on the same levels, like you say.
I apologize for using the word ignorant. I know you of all people are not ignorant, especially with issues like this. I think the way you originally talked about these things in the first blog “sounded” a “tad” ignorant… but I take that back now after you further explained yourself. I also would never, ever, call you a racist, and I don’t think I did, and if there was any part of my response that implied that I thought you were being racist, well I sincerely apologize.
One more thing though. I think sexism is going to be a little harder to overcome than racism has been. As you point out, women population is large enough that there should be much more woman in politics and all professions really. But I think sexism and racismm, although they don’t differ in law, they differ in some pretty powerful ways.
There are still a number of woman who are either raised, or genuinely believe that men are the breadwinners and woman stay at home. Put it this way, its a lot easier for a woman to say “I think I will be a stay at home mom and worry about cleaning and cooking for my husband, and taking care of the children” then it is for a black person to say “I think I will become a slave to this white guy” or “I think I will go to all black schools and special bathrooms for blacks only, etc etc.”
Obviously all three of these things can be considered extremes. But see how the one about the woman stands out as a little bit more reasonable if a woman (and many still do) were to make that choice?
Also, there are still men out there who feel women should have to do all those things. Obviously that is wrong.
But the fact that, and unfortunately, among men and woman, a man and woman’s role over the years as become more of a “tradition” then that of an oppression.
But like race, sexism should be just another hardship added to a list of many that challenge our generation. We should not be playing gender cards or race cards. You’re right when you say that its time to move forward, and its time to have an open conversation about all kinds of discrimination, and we cannot be afraid of being offensive when we do talk about it.
Let me also say, that I have great admiration for you. You’re very inteligent and are confident in your words and beliefs. It shows that reading is important. Its taken a long time for me to realize that. I appreciate the facts and examples you cited, and at times I wish I was able to do the same.
can we forget about all this adult, intelligent conversation crap tonight and just get toasted?
Well my dear friend,,,,,I too love South Park in fact I may just watch the movie tonight. Racism is a tough question to answer. You and your generation are suffering from the results of affirmative action. Affirmative action initially was meant to level the playing field which it did but at the expense of a whole generation of citizens. Believe me affirmative action is flawed from the beginning for it is legal discrimination. I understand your bitterness towards slavery restitution for money doesn’t end the pain of slavery but a college education does. Ask a person who supports slavery restitution if they would perfer an all paid education or the money undoubtedly everyone of these people say the money. But you can’t let what is happening around you bring you down. You must change it. To end poverty in this country would be the best thing possible. Poverty brings about hopelessness and misery. Our American society is not perfect for it does have racism and poverty but it has something that most other societies sont have and that is hope and possiblities.