Why racism isn’t the problem
It’s a frightening time for us as we see the clash of white nationalist protesters and their counter protesters erupting into violence, to the point of (is it still considered alleged?) murder. The nature of the protests brings race into the center of the conversation, but I couldn’t help but think that race is not the problem here.
Racism is not the driving force at the core of what’s happening, but racism is the bandwagon that people are hitching onto.
Then what is the driving force?
The driving force is economic opportunity, or the lack thereof. With the reduction and/or disappearance of well paid middle class jobs, Caucasians who have been affected by this shift are looking for someone or something to blame.
The easiest thing to blame is what you do not know well or have a negative preconceived notion of. Therefore, for Caucasians, it’s easiest for them to blame the other, or those who are not like themselves.
Race, like any other categorization we identify with, is an easy way to simplify decision making. Sharing values with those in the same religion; espousing certain characteristics to genders; blindly loving your hometown sports teams.
But it’s when we can get past these categorizations that we can look to the core of a problem. Investment returns are increasing significantly more than wage growth, while the cost of living, especially healthcare, continues to grow. What does this imply? The power of capital is clearly overpowering the power of labor.
What I would love to tell these white nationalists are two things:
- Stop fighting for table scraps, but demand access to the banquet table.
- Stop thinking that hard work will get you access to the banquet table.
Stop using your political power to give more and more to those with capital in the name of “free market principles”, but use that political power to start giving yourself, the labor force, a larger share of the pie.
You shouldn’t get rid of racism
If we can reach a more equitable economic environment and our base needs are met, extreme racism will naturally subside. But you can’t, nor should you “try”, to get rid of racism.
1. Due to the fallibility of man, there’s always going to some group of people who’s done some supposed wrong to another, so there will always be some racism towards another group of people. Whether it’s Catholics, Italians, Chinese, Irish, African-Americans, or Patriots fans.
But even with a healthy level of skepticism of those we don’t know (the other/new) we can strive as a society to keep extreme racism as just that, an extreme part of the group and not the front and center driving force.
2. If we value our freedoms, particularly of speech, then we shouldn’t attempt to squash their voice, no matter how extreme. Condemn, yes, but not squash.
Forgiveness & Understanding based on regional cultural norms
There exists this endearing, but somewhat oxymoronic, descriptor: racist grandparent. We forgive them because we understand that they grew up in a different time. Just as we may do that for our elderly, we also need to understand that there are still parts of our country where the cultural norms do have some racist tendencies.
Think of how hard you personally have to fight, to break a local/regional/national cultural norm. Do you remember the catcalling video that popped up a while back? How’re you going to change that? By telling off every guy who catcalls a woman? There are other core problems that will work to reduce catcalling, like incentivizing stronger two parent families.
The fact of the matter is, the Civil Rights movement only happened in the 60's! And it’s not like things changed right away and much of the repercussions continued to reverberate, perhaps to this day. Time’s are a-changing, but as crazy as it may be to think so, our country still has grandparents around who could have been proud KKK members in their young adult years.
