I’m pretty late posting on this particular poll , but the issues it raises for me are still relevant. I was struck reading the statement that 3 in 10 people admit to “feelings of racial prejudice.” I read reactions in the blogosphere ranging from people who were appalled that 30% of people admitted this, to those who saw hope in the fact that a solid majority were in the “non-racist” camp. I have to wonder, who are those 30%?
Most of the people I have known to make blatantly racist statements would never acknowledge having “feelings of racial prejudice.” I once fired a person who had a pattern of saying racist things and never developed any self-analysis about it, always responding with something like, “ but I LOVE diversity.”
As a person who is striving to be a white anti-racist ally and spends a lot of time thinking about these issues, I feel like one has to be able to recognize that if you grow up in a white supremacist society (or insert patriarchal, heterosexist, etc.), you are going to absorb some of those “feelings of prejudice.” Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away and impedes real progress and analysis.
How would I have answered that poll? I suppose I would have to say yes. It’s not that I truly believe these thoughts, and I am trying to train myself to recognize subtle things and call myself out the same way I would call out someone else’s statement.
This country obviously hasn’t learned to deal with talking about racism, sexism, homophobia and all the other isms we struggle against, so I don’t expect a Washington Post poll to truly reveal people’s thoughts on race. But if we are hoping to make significant progress in recognizing the impacts of isms on our society, should we be upset that more people aren’t admitting to this?
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See, I don't reckon I'm prejudiced as a person, but that isn't the point. The point is, as you say, we all grow up in a society that has those racist, sexist, homophobic attitudes, and unknown to us our ideas are shaped by it. And not speaking up about it is pretty much condoning it, and there's plenty of times we could speak up and don't.
(This country obviously hasn’t learned to deal with talking about racism, sexism, homophobia and all the other isms we struggle against,)
That is so true and annoys me to no end, everyone would rather just ignore the subject completely. I am white person who was raised the same as the rest of us, my mother is one of those people who does not identify herself as being racist but makes racist comments all the time. The other day this teenager, who was black, knocked on our door, I was about to answer it when she says, ''be careful, you never know.'' I ignore her ignorance and open the door, and guess what (big surprise), he did not rob me at gun point, but simply asked if I wanted to buy a chocolate bar to support his football team. Then he leaves and my mom's friend says, ''he probably doesn't even play football, I bet he just wanted some money for crack.'' (Even though there is a football field down the street from my house and we always see teams playing there, and he looks like a well fed non-crack head.) At this point I can't take it anymore and I go on a rant, which ends up in a fight and I leave because they were both insisting to me that they are not racist, and what was said was probably true.
These situations happen so often, it is so frustrating, I personally always call people on it, and I've ended up in many fights because of it, the most common thing said to me is, ''You're not even black why do you care so much.'' What alos happens a lot I've noticed is that white people justify things they say either as a joke, or as being ok because there were no black people around when they said whatever it is that they said. This logic baffles me, but obviously people can justify anything to themselves if they really believe it.
So I think you have a great point in saying that the first step is admitting it, and then we can work together to truly becoming a non-racist world. But as long as everyone just pretends it doesn't exist and that they are completely not discriminatory, nothing will change.
I guess it depends on someone's definition of "prejudice."
Assuming a tall black man is good at basketball or that an Asian student is good at math is prejudice. But it's not quite on the level of excluding or harming someone over their race. For the sake of humanity, I hope that most people who said 'yes' are guilty of the first over the second. Obviously I'm not saying the first option is good, but an internalized (usually passing) thought without action is less harmful than the second option.
I fall into the thirty percent. I freely admit that I have feelings of racial prejudice. I grew up with these attitudes ingrained into me. I work very very hard at identifying these feelings as irrational. I work even harder at never acting on these feelings in a negative way. I'm not going to deny the problem and hope it goes away. I'm going to work to improve myself.
I can only hope that some of the rest of the thirty percent are doing what I'm doing.
My experience is pretty similar to Luna's. When I see a black man on the street, I react differently than if I see a white man. It sucks, and I really wish I didn't have such fear of people who were different than me.
I like to say that I'm "the least racist person you'll ever meet" but some experiences in college have made that a lie. Yes, I admit to thinking/feeling racist thoughts towards black folk (I don't call them that out of disrespect, I honestly don't know what to call them because "African American" is not what they are, unless they came here directly from Africa, not their ancestors came here from Africa. Cause in that case, I'm British-German-Czech American), partly because I grew up in a white predominant community and didn't know any black kids growing up, except one and only for two years before we moved (dad was Army).
But during my first semester of college, I had a very frightening encounter with a black man. I was getting in my car, in broad day light, and just as I'm about to turn the ignition, this man appears seemingly out of no where (but really from the large truck beside my car) yelling at me for hitting his brand new truck and that if it was damaged I was paying for it and just going on and on. A stranger was yelling at me, looking extremely pissed, for reasons I had no clue about (I still say to this day that my car door did NOT hit his truck), what was I gonna do? I sure as hell wasn't leaving my car to confront him. I waited until he was finished and went away then I drove the car to the parking lot of the local Walmart (a remote section, it was as far from the school as I could manage at the time) and cried my eyes out for ten minutes. I was so scared and freaked and generally traumatized by that incident.
Ever since, I've avoided and been wary of white trucks and black men. I don't know if he remembers me, but I've talked with the man since and he's really nice, just has a VERY short temper. But the incident has left me with an instinctive wariness of black men. And, as embarrassed as I am to admit, I don't know if I would go near a black man in any public setting, if there were other options present first. Or at all, even if there wasn't any.
So, yeah, I've had racist feelings/thoughts. Not proud of them.
Tonia Barone, the solution, as I believe your experiences tacitly imply, is simply to get to know more Black folk (or Arab folk, Native folk, etc.) By your account, you have not known that many Black people (and those you may have known may have become close friends, to the point that you may no longer identify them as part of this monolith the media tells you is called The Black Community).
IF you were surrounded constantly with a variety of Black folk--differing phenotypes, differing life experiences, differing social and income status, differing education, differing country of origin--you would quickly come to realize that there are no rules you can ascribe to differing people simply by virtue of their origin, distant or recent, in the same large continent.
By the way, I'm pretty sure you're aware that Black, like White, is a social construct that has done no one any favors in its lumping together of disparate people. Your comparison to your Czech-German-British ancestry is not the most parallel. Rather, African-American's counterpart is European-American. In the absence of specific country or ethnic origin (e.g. Obama's father was a Luo from Kenya), using region and continent to describe someone will have to have suffice. You are Euro-American, and a tenth-generation American with West African (and, most likely, European and Native as well) ancestry who identifies more with their African origins can be African-American.
In my work, I have found that members of majority cultures in many countries around the world resent minority gruops' use of minority-specific identity. Hence, an Algerian of Arab (majority) ancestry protests, "Why must the Berbers make a to-do about their Berberness? We're all Algerian, after all!" This is an example of majority-privilege, which in itself is not a bad thing, but which becomes harmful when majority members base their policies and arguments on a privilege they refuse to acknowledge. Minorities are rarely offered the luxury of assimilation. Recognizing this can sometimes be a real struggle for majority members, who reap the benefits of belonging to a society that is tacitly coded according to their own ethnic or religious background. When "American" has for so long (both legally and socially) implicity meant "European-derived," and you are European, complaining that non-Europeans should be happy to, like you, leave it at "American" is an unhelpful expression of majority-privilege.
Recognizing invisible privileges is, of course, an excellent start to work toward racial awareness, so good luck to you, and to all of us, irrespective of our ethnicities!