I was raised in the 70's, where racism was still rampant. I learned the word “niggar”, and tossed it around as a child. When I joined the military, I saw minorities staying to themselves in their own groups, which still happens today. After having seen other cultures where your skin doesn't factor into your worth (Arab culture), and after having seen and heard most of MLK's speeches, I decided never to judge by skin color.
I have taught these things to my children, never pointing out that difference. If I was pointing out something toward someone, I never said “that black guy over there”; I would say “that guy over there with the green hat”.

For the generation trying to erase racism, it takes that kind of conscious effort. If that goes well, my children's generation may very well see it disappear. But we all have to do it.

And I'm sorry that you ever had to endure an abusive relationship. Very glad that you were glad to get out of it. God bless you. And may God bless your ex, by helping him find forgiveness and wisdom to break out of that tendancy. It is afterall, a coward's path.

You and I disagree A LOT. But I liked your response above conserning domestic violence vs racism.

I will say one thing (you knew it was coming)….. If people were to chose their mates with a little more caution, much of the abuse would cease to be (not all). There used to be a courting ritual that eliminated the bad apples. Now, it's based upon all sorts of superficial crap (the car someone drives, the size of breasts or penis, the amount of money in the wallet or purse). In short, our choices (not mine and yours I hope) of mates are based upon materialistic sex and money. That's just a statement about our society at present. I personally, attribute it to the elimination of God from society. You may attribute it to something else.

Let's start with this gem: “Rape is a criminal act that has little to do with spousal abuse.”

Domestic Violence is all about physical domination, control, and ultimately power of one individual over another, where the two individuals involved are necessarily in some sort of domestic relationship. Rape is all about physical domination, control, and ultimately power of one individual over another, where there is necessarily a penis involved. You still want to tell me one has little to do with another? Whether I'm drunk in a dark alley or sitting quietly in my home, the deciding factor of whether or not I get raped is *the presence of a rapist willing to rape me* and the deciding factor in whether I get the snot beat out of me is *the presence of someone willing to beat the snot out of me*.

“It's been documented that abused women … tend to blame themselves and defend their abuser.”

You mean, much like you are doing now? Blaming the woman (“half the problem”) and defending her abuser (“blaming the partner will not solve the problem”)?

“The victim-blaming mentality you ascribe to me comes from your head, not mine. “

No, “victim-blaming” is pretty self explanatory a term. “Victim” in this case refers to the abused. “Blame” means ascribing someone responsibility for something bad that happened. Therefore saying “the women [sic] is equally responsible for themselves [sic]” gives blame to the victim. That would mean “victim-blaming”. This is not some sort of code-word I'm using here; it comes directly and explicitly from your words.

“but she has a part of herself that must also be changed if she is to be ever free of the syndrome. “

You know what's a great way to do this? Blaming her for the violence. Oh wait, no, that's exactly NOT how to help this situation. You do this by first getting them woman out of the immediately violent situation, then helping her through her own self-esteem problems, digging in to why she felt she deserved the abuse, digging into how to become healthy in her view of men and intimacy. NOT BY TELLING HER IT WAS HER FAULT IT HAPPENED OR IS HER FAULT IF IT HAPPENS AGAIN.

“If you wish to lump racism and rape into the same bucket”

*I* did nothing of the sort, HemmD. YOU brought up the “black people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps just like battered wives should just leave” bullsh*t.

Do you have any idea whatsoever how triggering this sort of language is? Those of us women who have been lucky enough to get out of a cycle of abuse relatively unscathed thank our lucky stars that our situations were different than the other women we know cannot. Like the woman who is financially dependent on her abusive partner because he wouldn't let her get a higher education (yes, I know this woman), the woman whose kid has luekemia and no means of providing insurance for her treatment if she leaves her abusive spouse (yes, I know this woman), maybe the woman who, upon leaving, lives in more fear than before she left because her abusive husband has threatened to hunt her down and kill her and just might be crazy enough to do so (yes, I know this woman too), and of course, let's not forget the woman whose circle of friends and church think that divorce is a sin, whose own damn family doesn't believe that the abuse is really going on, and are taking her abusive yet quite charismatic husband's side so that if she were to leave, she would effectively have no support system on which to rely during her healing process (yep, I know her too).

If you were looking for some way to talk about how people of color just need to get it together and rise above and blah-dee-blah-blah about bootstraps, maybe, just maybe, you should have picked an example that wasn't such an obvious and heartbreaking example of *why that's so much more complicated than it sounds*. In fact, the more that I think about it, it's perhaps more apt an example than you thought — just to make the opposite point.

” Sorry, HemmD, but the victim-blaming mentality is a little more than I really have the strength to unpack here.”

Rape is an entirely different subject than racism. Rape is a criminal act that has little to do with spousal abuse. A women raped on the street is entirely different than one who stays in an abusive relationship due to low self-esteem. It's been documented that abused women hold esteem issues where they tend to blame themselves and defend their abuser. This is not my opinion, it's clinical fact.

If you wish to lump racism and rape into the same bucket, that's your choice, but remember, I don't see them as the same and you can show no objective proof to your generalization that they are. Blaming me for this association merely makes you a victim of your own beliefs. The victim-blaming mentality you ascribe to me comes from your head, not mine.

Therapy has shown that abused women who don't address their own part in an abusive relationship many times pick a new partner where the abusive cycle continues. The abused women is indeed a victim and the men in her life are pond scum, but she has a part of herself that must also be changed if she is to be ever free of the syndrome. This is merely what I was pointing out about the nature of racism. How you interpret my meaning as anything else is beyond me.

Because those problems tend to be joined in interconnecting circles. Kids do badly in school because their parents don't demand they do better. And the parents don't because their parents didn't. People are poor because they didn't pick up better-paying skills in school, because the schools were lousy because the district was poor. Layer in the effects of drugs and violence, and the result is a thicket of self-perpetuating problems that may have nothing to do with bigotry but are still extremely hard to break free from.

Kudos to you for your volunteer work. You're obviously free to think of it in terms of fighting racism, but I'd associate these problems with class more directly than race.

To be clear, I'm not blaming the issue of undereducated people of color on racist actions of teachers in particular, although I've seen that many times, and it certainly doesn't help. Everything you listed (bad teachers, mismanagement, underfunding, broken homes, etc) does contribute, of course, but why do these things affect people of color more often than white people, and how does that affect schooling in particular? How do these factors affect other areas of success separate from the schooling issue? It's more complicated than just “racist teachers”. Why does the subculture undervalue education? Do they?

“Any of these is solvable, and and racism in the form of specific acts of bigotry is solvable. Whereas “racism” in the broad, ambient sense is not.”

Yes, I agree, absolutely! I'm not trying to solve racism in the broad, ambient sense. I perform the small tasks that I can. Specifically, I work on my own behavior by listening to the voices of those I may have hurt through my own actions, I volunteer to educate young women of color in science and math through a few different programs, I tutor in these areas, I do Spanish-English translations between patients/doctors a free clinic, and I support legislation that I think will make a dent in solving specific manifestations of racism through letter writing to my congress critters and through donations to candidates/organizations that advocate on behalf this legislation. And, evidently, I spend my days tilting at the windmills that are those that think that race (or gender, or sexual orientation, etc) isn't as large a narrative as it is within our culture. My activism is informed by larger understanding of the structure and history of race as a driving factor in a lot of these issues. If you don't find it “useful”, well, fine, but I find it incredibly useful as a scaffolding for what I do to try to help and for how I behave. I can't for the life of me figure out why it wouldn't be “fair”.

Sorry, HemmD, but the victim-blaming mentality is a little more than I really have the strength to unpack here.

Before we convict teachers or the educational system in general of racism, I'd want to see more than circumstantial evidence. If racism is “a thought process which manifests as actions,” what are the actions the teachers (or someone) are taking that hold the kids back? Where are the analogs to the anti-gay slurs you bring up?

There's no shortage of other suspects. Bad teachers. Mismanagement. Underfunding. Broken homes. Unsupportive parents. A subculture that undervalues education.

Any of these is solvable, and and racism in the form of specific acts of bigotry is solvable. Whereas “racism” in the broad, ambient sense is not. School performance is indeed a serious issue; unspecific accusations of racism are not a serious solution.

We seem to disagree upon the nature of racism. You seem to make two points:

” As white people immediately became more powerful and gradually also became more numerous, blue eyes became a rare and highly prized “beatiful” trait among the native peoples themselves”

Those indigenous people are guilty of racism every bit as much as their “masters.” Racism is a neurosis that works in both directions. You may wish to blame the Spanish for the preference in native people, but they are the group who held that value.

You don't exterminate racism by addressing it in only one group, both sides must come to see the same situations through a new paradigm. Without a new paradigm, nothing exists to take the place of the old ways to seeing things.

Also:
” In addition, isn't it pretty easy to see in this particular case who has the most power to change attitudes among white people? By nature of a problem where one group is privileged and one isn't, the group with the most power to change that system of bias is also the one gaining the most benefit from it, and therefore less likely to fight for it.”

This concept is itself based in the same neurosis as racism. If people change their own attitudes, people must make allowance for that change. Insisting that the change must take place in the powerful group merely gives that same group more power. We can't change racist attitudes unless the white man changes his attitudes first is self-defeating.

The current belief by many inner city blacks that succeeding in school is playing the uncle tom role shows just how easy it is to keep oneself down by blaming another.

You may be familiar with the problem battered wives experience; they are quick to say he beat because of something I did is half the problem. Women need to free themselves from the mindset that allows them to be beaten. Otherwise, a battered wife will only find another guy who treats her the same way. The husbands need to change, but the women is equally responsible for themselves.

Be it battered wives or people discriminated by race, blaming the partner will not solve the problem.

The new paradigm is the only way to escape the old one.

Of course it is, but when something is as prevelent in a culture as racism, it's pretty easy to internalize. For example, when the Spaniards came to the Americas and slept with native women and then left, some white blood would get into the indiginous gene pool, and would occasionally manifest itself as, for example, blue eyes. As white people immediately became more powerful and gradually also became more numerous, blue eyes became a rare and highly prized “beatiful” trait among the native peoples themselves, even though the genes had generally been introduced by rape. This is just a very tiny (but hopefully illustrative) example of internalization of privilege even among the unprivileged.

In addition, isn't it pretty easy to see in this particular case who has the most power to change attitudes among white people? By nature of a problem where one group is privileged and one isn't, the group with the most power to change that system of bias is also the one gaining the most benefit from it, and therefore less likely to fight for it. This is why there's never been a civil rights movement of the unprivileged without allies in the privileged class; not that the privileged carry most of the weight (certainly not), but they do need to be there, especially if the privileged class is also the majority, as it is with race.

I know that you generally stick up for gay people when that subject comes about, so perhaps that's a good example. I'm sure you can think of people you know (and maybe including yourself) who either had never met a gay person or for some reason used to use gay slurs or think that gay marriage or protection of gay people from violence (pick a gay cause — whatever) weren't “serious issues”. Surely some of these people, after meeting and knowing gay people as individuals instead of as a series of stereotypes, decided to stop using the word “fag” and started to advocate for the rights of their gay brethren. This is my meaning when I talk about unlearning bias and the behavior that accompanies it. The idealistic goal is to become “free of all the various forms of blatant and latent racism”, and the realitic process is to start with the blatant, and move on the latent, and to be open to new learning on the subject. We're not talking penicillin here.

“I wouldn't call any of them racism, though”

Well, quite frankly, whoop-dee-do. That doesn't mean that racism isn't a real factor. Unless, of course, you're implying that people of color are inherently stupider than white people? I know that's not what you mean to imply, but taken the given that people of color do more poorly on average than white people in our schools systems, even when we account for confounding factors like poverty, if it's not racism, and it's not inherent dumbness of people of color, what do you propose as a possible cause? Of course, we're not just talking about schooling, we're also talking about health, wealth, violence, etc.

“
“Whites are born with it, can't cure it,”

No, they aren't! It's taught, and can be untaught, although the unteaching is much more difficult. And even those who unlearn poor behavior still make mistakes.”

Just jumping in , but based upon our earlier exchange, isn't racism a problem taught on both sides of the issue? I certainly agree with your sentiments in your comments to Dr J, but isn't it humankind itself that must embrace that tough new concept?

Oh really? Then please point me to case studies of ex-racists–people who are now certified free of all the various forms of blatant and latent racism.

Who is to decide what is a “serious problem”?

We all are, of course. And I'm certainly concerned about our schools failing kids of any color and can deliver many sermons on the reasons for their failure. I wouldn't call any of them racism, though.

“Whites are born with it, can't cure it,”

No, they aren't! It's taught, and can be untaught, although the unteaching is much more difficult. And even those who unlearn poor behavior still make mistakes. That's not the same thing as not being able to cure it. Haven't you ever believed something that you later learned was untrue? It takes a while to reincorporate the new idea, but it's not impossible, and it's usually worth the trouble.

“And they ultimately cheapen a word we ought to reserve for serious problems.”

Who is to decide what is a “serious problem”? I believe the fact that people of color tend to do much more poorly in school to be a serious problem. I believe that the fact that violent crime against gay and trans people is so much higher than that of straight and cis people is a serious problem. I believe the fact that women make 77 cents on the dollar compared to men is a serious problem. These all come from bias that is taught by our culture, taught by our experiences, taught by our parents or peers or the government or whomever else. Specifically NOT inherent. If you don't think they are “serious problems”, well, I guess that's your right, but people who are on the short ends of those sticks likely have a different opinion on whether or not they are “serious”.

“If everything is racism, nothing is.”

I'm not even sure what to say about this statement, as it really doesn't have any meaning, and I'm not saying “everything is racism” anyway…