Tag: white supremacy

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Whites Won’t Give Up on Racism

Mychal Denzel Smith recently posted an article on The Nation that’s a worthy read. In it, he argues,

…White people have to let go of racism. From the avowed racist, to the anti-racist activists, to the “I’m not a racist, I have two black friends” folks, to the “I don’t see color” people and everyone else between or on the margins…

I loved the article. It raised points we rarely see in print, even in places like The Nation. But, as I’m sure Smith would agree, white people aren’t really going to just give up racism. Why? Here goes.… Read more “Whites Won’t Give Up on Racism”

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Why I Write What I Write

I’m often asked why I write a race blog. I get why folks ask the question. I would get more looks by writing about food justice or climate change, and I know a little something about those subjects, too. Yet I write about race. Why?

I grew up in rural Hawai’i. My childhood and young adult years were spent in a community that was almost entirely made up of people of color. White people owned most of the land and dominated the economy, but in little towns like mine, they were extreme minorities and treated mainly as outsiders.

When I … Read more “Why I Write What I Write”

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Thankgiving and the Conundrum of Cultural Racism

Every time I try to write about culture, I end up stuck with a lot of big words. For instance, the word conundrum. A conundrum is a problem for which the solution is a matter of conjecture. In other words, we can only guess at how to resolve a conundrum.

Our white supremacist culture is a conundrum. I’m not talking here about the culture of cross-burning and white sheet-wearing. I mean culture as in the collective racist beliefs of our society  reduced over generations to common sense.

Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines culture:

a : the integrated pattern of human … Read more “Thankgiving and the Conundrum of Cultural Racism”

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Afraid of the Dark

Reports of rapid demographic change in favor of people of color in the U.S. seem to have caused a reaction among many whites bordering on panic. Explosive increases in participation in white nationalist groups, the proliferation of vigilante border patrols, and the return of overt racism in mainstream politics all smell like fear to me. This reaction got me to thinking, why? Why are they so afraid of the possibility of becoming a minority?

Here’s my take. But first, a reality check. White fears are of becoming a minority are over-blown. As I’ve written elsewhere in this blog, whiteness has … Read more “Afraid of the Dark”

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The Durability of Race

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the death of racism. Many believe that as the global demographics change and Generation Y rises, racism will fade in significance. Some even suggest that what we are witnessing in the Obama backlash is just death throes.

That argument ignores history.

Here’s what I mean.

Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor the abolitionist movement were enough to end slavery. Slavery was defeated in a Civil War that was fought not over race equality nor just for the cuase of freeing slaves, but over federal authority. The cynicism at the root of the “war … Read more “The Durability of Race”

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Harkening Back to a Whiter Time

On MSNBC’s Up this weekend, host Chris Hayes went after the Republican strategy of using nostalgia to rev up their base. He claimed that a reason conservatives long for the past is that, back then, (white) social mobility, the basis of the American dream, was more possible. He went on to feature a robust discussion of the role of race in this messaging strategy, but all tempered by the sense of some panelists that one ought not go too far in crying racism.

I could not disagree with that sentiment more. Republicans are, in fact, manipulating racism, and when leaders … Read more “Harkening Back to a Whiter Time”

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The Party Of Lincoln

The Republican Convention played like conventions past, perhaps enriched by an unusual number of outright lies, but otherwise, pretty much par for the course. Planks of the platform controversial among undecided voters were avoided, attacks were launched, and the rest was pablum for the base.

So why watch? It’s a habit. I’ve been watching since the early 1990s when my work involved studying the political right wing. Keeping an eye on the GOP was critical to that work because it was then becoming and has since very much become the instrument of power of a right wing movement bent on … Read more “The Party Of Lincoln”

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Blinkered By Race

No, I don’t mean car blinkers. I’m referring to the kind of blinkers that are used to keep race horses looking straight ahead at the jockey’s goal while blinding them to the distractions on either side.

Racism blinkers us. It imposes a kind of tunnel vision, causing social problems to appear to be related to differences in race and culture (and not racism), while blinding us to the common roots of many of our problems.

The study conducted by the Pew Research Center on Asian Americans that I wrote about in my last post is a good example. In it, … Read more “Blinkered By Race”

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Racism is a House …or Something

When discussions of racism come up, folks are quick to remind me that race is not a real thing – it’s just a social construct. I agree. Race isn’t “real” in the sense that it’s not based in biology and it sure isn’t based on geographic difference. I mean, just check out Asia. What do Japan and Iran have in common other than some idea about the “Orient” invented by Europeans, right?

But this idea of race as a social construct is pretty academic. And folks often preface “social construct” with the word “just,” as if the fact … Read more “Racism is a House …or Something”

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Where I Stand on the Color Line

Throughout my adult life, I have struggled over the color line. I’ve never doubted it exists. Rather, my struggle has been over which side of that line I’m on.

This struggle has been on my mind since my 20s, when a Japanese American woman many years my senior told me this story:

She recalled being a young college student in the South in the 1950s. She was 12 years from being released from an internment camp where she and her family were detained during WWII.

She went to school determined to make something of herself. She wanted nothing more … Read more “Where I Stand on the Color Line”