“The everyday response to racism”
“GAZETTE: Your work examines the experience of blacks in New York and Rio, and of several minority groups in Tel Aviv. How does the experience of African-Americans compare with the other groups?
LAMONT: The big difference is that African-Americans have at their disposal extensive cultural tools that tell them that, in the American context, racism is wrong and that they are entitled to fair treatment. The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement has had a huge impact in empowering African-Americans to confront [instances of racism]. In Brazil, there’s far more hesitation about confronting. Also, African-Americans have a very strong identity as a group. They put their racial identity above their national identity, which is not the case in Brazil.
We’re able to show that African-Americans confront [racism] much more readily, and they feel legitimate in confronting. Ethiopian Jews, another group that we studied, are recent immigrants to Israel. They want to be assimilated, so they don’t have as confrontational a stance. Arab Palestinians are extremely excluded — they know that they are perceived as “the enemy within,” as allies to the Palestinians — and therefore they’re much more likely to confront. Their expectations about having full citizenship, about being included in Israel, are very, very low. So they’re also less likely to say they feel ignored or misunderstood because they don’t expect to be understood…
MORAES SILVA: There were very few systematic comparisons of how racism and discrimination were actually experienced in those societies. I think we are making a really big contribution by linking the macro-historical perspective and the role of institutions, cultural repertoires, and legal aspects with experiences, and showing how the comparison is much more complex than what’s usually assumed. The experience is very different, and they have different ways to deal with it.
The second big contribution is to think about victims of racism and discrimination as not passive, but active and dealing with the thing, interpreting it, and finding very creative ways to handle it.”
Related: “Friendship and Race and Knowing Your Place” (← one of my all time favorite essays); “I’M LOSING TONS OF FRIENDS FIGHTING RACISM. AND I’M TOTALLY OK WITH THAT.”; “The Air I Breathe: Growing up tolerated and underestimated in Portland”; “Finding my Way Black”
