Adaptation.
A “Gonzo” view on race issue in the US. -
“In 1988, I remember I was in High school here in New York, a really good one, I mean if you go to this one you often go to Harvard or Yale especially if you are black. The universities greets these black kids with open arms because they then can prove that they have black students at their school, real token boys ” This is Tom, he is 37 and teach drama at New York University. I was sitting in a bar on Manhattan, lower east side with another Danish fellow. We were debating several things and still, even several days past my blog deadline, and several days after we all debated race issues in the US, I was unable to understand what it all boiled down to.
Both the American and the European countries and people have had to overcome the cultural and racial darkness that for the US have prevailed for centuries and for the European case just recently were defeated by the end of Nazi, Fascist and the end of totalitarian communist regime. However the two parts of the west have dealt with this past in two very different way. Europe underwent an inner psychological journey to try and understand how six million civilians could be murdered with consent from various and broad parts of Europe. Meanwhile US fought a fight for not only civil rights but also a fight for civil justice and equality. This European journey and American fight still proceeds. Although it seems as if Europe finally have taken a step forward, however it sounds to me that the US is getting more and more segregated more and more divided in race and racial issues.
In America one shall recognize ones race when you are applying for college, get a doctors appointment, when you every 10 years fill out the Census etc. This is the system and how it stigmatize people. Now some of my American fellows have told me that they feel that they are recognized by the society when they fill out the african-american, asian-american, latino...... box. But how come you need recognition? I do not believe it to be rooted in and caused by slavery it is simply to easy an explanation. The US government has installed a racist system, one could say that they used to discriminate one minority whereas they discriminate all nowadays.
The system imposes discrimination, imposes segregation, the system itself reminds people every day that they are different from others, that their race makes a difference.
Everybody knows that race as a word is highly hierarchic. One of the arguments that I have learned; “this is just how the system is, and how can it work otherwise?” Imagine you would give Abraham Lincoln that same argument just before he were to give his emancipation proclamation in 1863.
Anyway I was sitting in the bar, asking Tom what he thought of race problems in the US.
“So this friend of mine was playing ball with his friends who also attended good schools and were ready to move up. After playing a while, they were told that their white friends were going to the cinema and they wanted to go as well, however they had no money so they figured that the easiest way to get money, was to mug somebody. They sought one out and approached him. But the Guy was a undercover cop and pulled a gun on them and one of them were shot dead. Afterwards everybody asked themselves how could this happen? These guys were supposed to succeed. Now in my opinion it is all down to adaptation. We all need to adapt to each other”
American social psychologist have proved by measuring brain waves that white Americans from every class connects black Americans with crime etc. Tom is right. Humans are no different than most animals, we use our intuition, experience and many other devices inside our brain to read situations and people. Now because blacks have been portrayed as criminals and dangerous people, whites are “on their guards” when meeting black people.
Scientist from all over the world have described the evolution and dominion of human beings are because we are highly adaptable and so forth. It is extremely ironic and hypercritical that we as the most sophisticated creatures cannot adapt to one another and to this idea that we are all equal.
I do not believe America will ever fully heal their wounds and scars from slavery and from ethnic (not racial) inequality as long as the society itself separate people in race.
1 comment:
Oy. As an American, I feel quite differently.
While it is true that racial categories can create stigmas, I feel that America's emphasis on race addresses a long history of institutionalized racism.
Slavery and Jim Crow left America deeply divided on racial lines, with the constructed races being binary; black and white. Integration would not come about naturally when these institutions were abandoned. It had to be willed. Racial divide had taken on a life of its own, separately and unequally. Today's mark of separation, that ubiquitous box we must check, recognizes historical and present inequality and attempts to rectify it.
Individual prejudices do exist, but rather than being created by racial awareness, racial awareness attempts to combat these prejudices. There's still a long way to go and to ignore race would be detrimental to this process.
But then Americans believe equality in pluralism and not in assimilation, and pluralism celebrates diversity whereas assimilation seems to me to compromise identity.
Post a Comment