My last post was a rant against the tendency of some on the right to use a sort of “reverse political correctness” against throwing down the “race card.”
In this post I want to make the case that not only should playing the race card be legitimate because it’s still in the deck…
but also because it’s a necessary move towards making it (race) obsolete as a factor in our society.
And I am talking about endemic versus reactionary racism. I will explain shortly.
When events transpire that are tinged with even the faintest scent of racism, the card should appear…every time.
Why?
It is one of the ultimate evils in our (and any) society.
But let’s get straight on what I am referring to by racism.
Every time there is a race eruption, you hear the specious argument that attempts to delegitimize use of the race card since it (racism) exists on both sides of the equation.
But there’s a big difference between black racial attitudes against whites, which I’ll call reactionary racism, and the endemic racism that is the prevalent evil in our society.
Do some blacks (well more than some perhaps) harbor negative attitudes towards whites?
Certainly.
But it’s not because of immutable traits like color, physical characteristics or culture…it’s a reaction to suffering the first 100 years of their involuntary presence in this country as chattel…
and the next 100 being socially, politically and economically oppressed.
That would tend to make one a bit suspicious, perhaps even pissed off.
they hate them because those assholes tried to exterminate the Jewish race!
You see, it’s reactionary.
I grew up in the South during desegregation and was intimately exposed to racism. I knew very clearly (then, as well as now) that whites didn’t harbor negative racial attitudes against blacks as a reaction to the incendiary political views of the Black Panther party. They hated them because of immutable traits that they (the black people) were born with and could not change.
And that’s where the real evil lies.
So, it appals me when Bill (the bloviator) O’Reilly delivers a spitting venomous diatribe blaming the totality of problems blacks face in our society on their taste in music, or because they tend to be hornier than he would prefer them to be…while completely dismissing the fact that there has been systematic societal oppression against the black race for over 200 years!
If an event in our society occurs as a possible result of race, it should be thoroughly investigated, prosecuted (if truly present) and bold steps taken to insure against racism’s future presence in a similar situation, so that real endemic racism has a chance of being eliminated as a pernicious societal sin.
That’s what I would term legitimate use of “the race card.”
I could envision that when that happens consistently, the reactionary “racism” that whites often lament will rapidly evaporate.
image credit: Brittany Anwender via Compfight cc
You compare a Jew hating a Nazi, to a black person feeling they were discriminated against due to skin color? Hold up, we’re comparing genocide to what MIGHT be a race issue? If you have this mindset, then anything could be a race issue. What is simply just someone having a bad day, someone being a dick, someone not caring about another person’s feelings, has to be a racial issue? And this is the issue with your argument. It’s the boy who cried wolf. You’re crying racism. And sure, I bet some of the times you called racism you were right. But how many times were you wrong and being overly sensitive? Those are the times that WE look at. I dont mean WE as whites. I mean WE as a society of sentient creatures seeing you pulling this race card over and over again. WE DONT CARE ANYMORE. The most intelligent black people I know understand that racism is endemic to humans. You see as humans, we gravitate around other humans that look like us. You have a tendency to like people who look like you and share genetic similarities. That’s a genetic and biological imperative. Now as we grow further and further from being wild animals, we can start to chizzle away at these biological needs, as they are no longer needed. Chipping away at endemic racism does not entail using race whenever you get the chance. It’s the opposite. Not using race, but rather culture. Judge someone by their culture, not their skin color. And unfortunately, black culture in America doesnt look too hot. Like when biggie says “when I die, fuck it I wanna go to hell”. I think that sums up a lot of black youth in America. They know they’re doing evil. But instead of getting good grades and getting out the hood, they just sell drugs and run criminal enterprises.
Thanks for the comment. Some of it I agree with, but you’re missing the essential point of the post, which is not to identify what IS racism, but to identify what IS NOT…and yes I would certainly compare the racism of Nazis against Jews to that of white supremacists against blacks. The point of the post is that when blacks “react” to endemic racism, that their reaction should not also be labeled racist. One of the problems we have in the U.S. in combatting racism is that many claim that attempts to do so are also a form of reverse-racism. It’s circular and gets us nowhere. For example, to say that the black community’s reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown was also “racist” is simply not true…it was a reaction to racism.
Please . . . use a dictionary. I know it’s an “in” word, but there is no such thing as “endemic racism.”
With all due respect, a quick look at the Cambridge dictionary reveals that you are wrong…
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/endemic
Anyway it’s a phrase I chose to use in describing a concept. I believe I was grammatically correct in my usage.
Thanks anyway for trying to be helpful!
P.S. I could’ve chosen the more oft-used “systemic” racism, but chose “endemic” because it connotes more of a pervasive societal problem than it does a conspiracy theory.