RACISM: AN INSIDE, NOT AN OUTSIDE, PROBLEM?

There are people who think that racism exists as one of the external problems in our society. They assert that it is “out there” somewhere, usually in the social institutions, the economics of our society, in our politics, in our schools, and in white people. But ... what if they are wrong? What if racism is not “out there” at all? What if, instead, it is an internal problem? What if what we are really talking about is actually an inner state of thinking-and-feeling? What if it is something that occurs inside a person?

After all, the word racism is a nominalization. So, while it sounds like a noun and therefore sounds like it refers to a “thing” out there (Noun: “A person, place, or thing”), it is not. Nominalizations present a particular linguistic distinction that creates lots of confusion. As a linguistic distortion they arise when someone takes a verb and turns it into a noun. In doing so, they convert an active and dynamic process into a static, but false, “thing” which then deceives the mind and generates tremendous confusion. Here are some examples.

Relationship: This is not a thing, it is a process. So we ask: Who is relating to who, about what, when, where, to what end, etc.? Motivation: Again, this is not a thing. Who is motivating who to what or about what? What is the motive that is being described or activated? Rude: Who is acting in a way evaluated as “rude” and by whom? What is the standard or criteria used to evaluate something as “rude?”

Similarly, racism is a nominalization. So what is the verb that’s hiding within it? It is “treating, relating, thinking, talking, acting, etc. to someone in terms of what one thinks or evaluates about his or her race.” This gives us a lot more to unpack. Who is the someone doing the “race treating or relating?” What is his or her views or evaluations about the other person’s “race?” What does the person mean about “race” anyway?

Racism is generally viewed as treating one’s race as superior and the racial background, ethnicity of others as inferior. Of course, all of this means that racism is an inside job. It is not a thing at all. It is not outside but is a person’s view of thinking that another is inferior due solely to no other criteria than one’s family of origin, one’s ethnicity.

Our next step in unpacking this is to look at how a person’s inner world of understandings, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, etc. influences his or her actions. After all, it does. What you and I think influences how we act. So how does racism come out in a person’s life?

It comes out when one person calls another person names based on a “racial” stereotype.

It comes out when one person refuses to treat another person with respect for the mere fact of his or her origin— or skin color, genetic family heritage, etc. It comes out when a person refuses to do for one person who he or she normally and typically does for others, especially those of his or her race.

All of this is relational. It speaks to how one person treats and relates to another person or persons. It arises from an over-generalization. By treating one person in a stereotypical way based on what those of the same family heritage, we over-generalize. We no longer treat the person as an unique person in his own right. We treat her as a symbol of a family or ethnic characteristic.

If we then build a business based on that un-equal approach, if we hire based on that, if we sell a house based on that, or do anything based on that—rather than on the person’s talents, knowledge, schooling, skills, abilities, contributions, etc., then we are using a racial stereotype to determine how we relate and get along with each other. That’s what we mean by racism.

Where is racism then? It is inside. It is not out there. So we cannot over-generalize— “We live in a racist society” unless we can valid that over-generalization. If the 2008 election in the United States demonstrated anything, it demonstrated that the US is not a racist society. How could the majority elect (two times) an African American as President if it was across the board, racist? Yet we still have most of the media talking as if the whole country was racist.

Racism used to be incorporated in the laws of the country, but all of those have been changed and discarded since the Civil Rights Movement. That was the great contribution of that movement and of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. This is another reason that racism is today, at most, an inside attitude. And except for a minority who still suffer from such prejudices is absent from the American spirit.

Today’s Problems Do we still have problems between the ethnic groups? Sure. We have lots of them and big problems. But to frame them as racist problems mis-defines them which then causes us to mis- understands how to solve them. The over-simplistic explanation that “racism is the problem” fails completely to understand the current situation.

We have economic problems. Since 2008 we have been in a recession and it has not only not gotten better in the US, it has gotten worse. And those most impacted by it are the poor and the young, and worst of all, young black men. So without jobs and without hope for better jobs in the future— they are in a dire situation of what to do, legitimately, to make a living, and take pride in their career potentials. This has to change.

We have education problems. We have pumped millions of dollars into urban schools and yet the quality of the education keeps falling. Teachers try but there is no much violence that schools are often more like prisons than places for learning. And in the black inner cities, the culture mocks and laughs at any young black boy who wants to be educated, who wants to go to college, who wants to use his brain.

We have family problems. More than 70% of all babies born of black mothers are born out of wedlock and are raised without a father present. Without the presence of a strong, assertive, hard-working, disciplined man in the home, the young men and women usually live at the lowest end of the economic scale. They don’t have a role model for learning, developing, and being a respected member of society. No wonder they are easily seduced into problems with drugs, gangs, and violence. This too has to change.

We have political problems. With so many barely getting by financially, the focus is on the survival needs. This takes away interest and understanding of the political process and sets people up for being seduced by give away programs. Yet in not understanding that the middle- class will mostly pay for that through increased taxes which will reduce their ability to hire, jobs are less available and again, the poorest of people suffer the most.

We have violence problems. With the lack of jobs, with economic stresses, with increase in drugs and gangs, there’s increasingly more and more violent crimes. This makes the job of the police harder and explains why there is a big disproportion of black men accused of crimes, jailed for crimes, convicted for crimes. The prisons are over-crowded with young black men.

We have linguistic problems. We have linguistic problems make it difficult to even talk about these problems. The “black lives matter” movement and other movements have rejected or at least given up the non-violence that Martin Luther King Jr. inspired in the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement. And that has led people to flame the passions into an angry outrage that is so quick to result in violence. This has not made things better. It has led to violent riots, looting and shootings, and burning down the very communities in which those most affected by these problems live. This is a cruelty upon a cruelty.

We have linguistic problems of groups over-generalizing and exaggerating things with language that’s results in creating even more anger, outrage, depression, etc.

“Racism is woven into the fabric of society,” they assert. “The inner cities are wall-less prisons.” “Police brutality is everywhere.” “Whites despise young black men.” “They have racism in their hearts; but they don’t see it, their racism is invisible to them.” “We are still slaves.” “We are victims of their racism.”

It is this kind of exaggerated and distorted rhetoric that inflames the passions and makes the problems that we have worse. It’s this kind of language that frames things so that the solutions are even more impossible. In the current edition of Psychotherapy Networker, the editor and key writers used that kind of language. They said defined the problem as “unconscious attitude— that’s largely invisible to most white people.” They defined the problems as entirely external: drugs, crime, lack of employment, “massive” injustice, humiliations, “extreme” poverty, etc. When they talked about the internal problems they defined them as created by the oppressors.

“Black kids know perfectly well how they are perceived by white society.” If a dad gives his boy “the talk” about how to deal with the police that confirms the built-in injustice.

The writers seem to think that only African Americans deal with these issues and that the sole or primary cause is their ethnicity. Their unspoken assumption is that what happened 150 years ago is still the present day reality and needs to be fixed. One writer wrote about some things his “grand-grandmother, the grand-daughter of a slave...” said. Well that takes things back a long, long way. The problem is hanging on to that history and keep refreshing it.

But, of course, the facts say different.