Читать книгу More Than an Ally - Michael L. Boucher Jr. - Страница 16

Before going further, it is important to back up a bit and explain what race is and what it is not in order to move beyond the surface level of understanding the structures keeping students from succeeding. First and foremost, race is a socially constructed experience in American life that has no biological basis (Kolbert & Hammond, 2018; Painter, 2010). In reality, all color designations are based on perceptions of color, and yet they matter because Americans imbue skin color with power, fear, intelligence, and ability.

More or less skin melanin does not make a person more or less safe, dangerous, smart, or talented, but it does change the way a person is perceived in the world. Race is not a neutral designation but a tool of anti-blackness. Despite this brute fact, or because of it, the deep historical roots of race in America have shaped who we are as Americans and the structures of our society. Our relationships with each other and the structures of our society, employment, justice system, real estate, health care, schooling, and all other aspects of our communal life are influenced or defined to a greater or lesser degree by race. Whether we want it to or not, race defines how we interact with each other.

As Allen & Liou (2018) explained, “Whites are what people of color are not, or so the logic of Whiteness goes. If Whites depict people as culturally backwards and deprived, then that means Whites are by default depicting themselves as culturally progressive and enlightened. If the controlling image depicts people of color as lazy and unintelligent, then Whites are by default constructing themselves as smart and hardworking” (p. 686).

According to Solorzano (1997), racism is defined using three touchstones, “(1) one group believes itself to be superior; (2) the group which believes itself to be superior has the power to carry out the racist behavior; and (3) racism effects multiple racial/ethnic groups” (p. 8). The use of this definition allows the comprehension that racism is the exercise of power in structures and institutions that exclude people of color, not just individual hatred or acts of violence, which can also be racist. The feeling or belief that White people, culture, or ways of being are superior and the ability to enact policies that reflect this belief is racism.

Most people imagine that racism is under the strict purview of backward, unsophisticated degenerates who burn crosses, sympathize with Nazi Germany, and march with tiki torches. While that is all true, the small acts of segregating oneself from racially different people, racial jokes, financial barriers to school and college admission, the whiteness of the curriculum, and teachers’ deficit thinking about students are also racism. All institutions are structured by individuals, and individual decisions support and maintain them. There is no way to point to any one subgroup or socioeconomic level and say that they alone are racist and the rest of society is not.

Despite its status as a myth, race, in fact and in practice, is real. It is real because people make it real through ideology and actions. It is often hard for White people to fathom how many of their own mental models are based on race. Race has been central to the American story from the exploration by Europeans, to the creation of the republic, to the Civil War, to today.

In popular discourse, some use the fact that race is not biologically based to demand a moratorium on talking about it. The thinking goes that talking about race is the reason for racism. These people hope that by keeping quiet, racism will evaporate. Avoidance seems like a simple answer to a vexing problem, but the hidden meaning of this sentiment is that everyone should stop demanding equality with the people in power, since much of that power is based on race.

That power is economic, political, and personal. Most White Americans do not consider themselves racists, yet there is large support for policies that hoard power and privilege in the White populace. In America, the people in power are, by and large, White. So, the thinking goes, if people of color would just be satisfied with White people holding the majority of wealth, power, and privilege in society, then we can all get along. Thus, when African Americans march, kneel, walk, or demand to be heard at all as Americans, they are accused of causing division because they are seeking to divide White people from their privilege.

Race denial is a violent stance in that it refuses to see the facts and the brutality that is happening in plain view. To take the perspective that race is unreal because it does not affect the speaker disregards both evidence and reason. The same goes for those who accept that race exists but refuse to accept that it matters. Both are constructed from a standpoint of privilege, in that they are asking people who experience racism to get over it or to stop playing the victim (Coates, 2008). Race has been used to justify slavery and segregation, but the lines of definition between the different races are always changing. Even with those changes, one constant remains: the mistaken notion that whiteness is normal and the most desirable (Painter, 2010).

Race has been used to justify slavery and segregation, but the lines of definition between the different races are always changing. Even with those changes, one constant remains: the mistaken notion that whiteness is normal and the most desirable (Painter, 2010). Candidates and teachers also conflate race and culture. In contrast to race, culture refers to institutions, norms, and all aspects of life that humans do together. “The word culture derives from the Latin colere and refers to terms we use today like inhabit, settle, defend and cultivate. Culture comprises many pieces like language, rituals, institutions, foods, art and technologies. It encompasses all the things we do and say that make us human and part of the group” (Kohl, 1992, p. 135). While culture is positive and expansive, race is selective and narrowing. Whereas culture enriches life and helps define who we are as part of a larger family, race is a way to define who is in and who is out. Unfortunately, people who want to avoid race will often substitute culture as a way to construct a caricature of people who they view as different. This conflation allows racism and the denigration of cultures to go on without condemnation, but ultimately it is just as damaging to both the speaker and the receiver. Whiteness, then, as a function of White normality and white supremacy, is passed to the next generation because of the unwillingness of adults to deconstruct the concepts.