RACE RELATIONS IN AMERICA - REVISITED

        Hello world, I’ve been away for long time. No I was not behind bars doing time thank goodness although I must admit things could’ve gone seriously wrong for me a couple of years ago. For those of you who have read my blog or know me personally, the last time I wrote something I was still fighting for a promotion with the company I worked for before and I wrote an extensive blog about affirmative action. I can tell you that today I still feel as passionate about affirmative action, race relations in America, and my own personal pursuit of self as I ever did. Many things have changed since I last wrote. I eventually did get promoted to a management position, I ventured into private investments which went terribly wrong for me, I married again, began attending graduate school, then I ended up losing my employment of 7 years and looking for comparable employment for 6 months. I now hold a management position in a smaller corporation, but one that is more diverse. In fact, I’m now managing an incredibly resourceful, talented, and supportive group of bilingual employees. I took a significant pay cut in accepting this position, and things are rather challenging for me financially, but I feel no pain getting up in the morning and going to work. I honestly don’t know how much longer I can stay there because of the financial pressures, but I’ve been able to give more of myself there.

I tend to work my ass off because it keeps my mind busy and away from all the problems surrounding me. This is probably one of the reasons my urge to write is coming back to me. Here I am on a Friday night, with nothing else on my mind but to put into words the racing thoughts going in my head. I really do enjoy chronicling my progress and sharing whatever it is that’s keeping me up, whatever it is that reminds me that I’m still alive. Unfortunately writing this time around comes with a heavy dose of pain. I’ve had to go through so much to come to this point, it almost like I have to be in such a dark place in my life to begin picking up the pieces again. I often think that this is just part of my own dysfunction, but in reading my previous work I can see how much writing helps me heal, and how much sense every word still makes to me at least. So my own revolution is still going on, with new things that puzzle me, new chapters to be written such as thoughts about searching for blood relatives, and revisiting life long passions such race relation, Katrina four years later, our first Black president, and who know what else I’ll dare to share. I’ll start by sharing some stuff had already shared in a class I took. So how much have things changed since I last wrote? Are race relations any better today? Not sure about all that. Here’s most of what I wrote with some editing to make it more current.

Some time ago I caught an ABC Primetime special report called “What Would You Do If You Witness a Break-In?” (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). Click here. This report took place in suburban New Jersey. The setting of the investigation was to setup hidden cameras in a neighborhood park to observe how people would react to an act of robbery and vandalism in broad daylight. For this experiment the control group was made up of 3 white teenage actors and the experimental group was made up of 3 black teenage actors. During the time the white actors were vandalizing the car, most people just simply walked by, some would say something to the boys from a distance, and only one man actually confronted them at a close range (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). According to Taylor & Jaquez, there was only one 911 call generated to report the actions of the young white actors (2008). Surprisingly, during the time the control group was conducting their part of the experiment, two more 911 calls were generated to report suspicion of some illegal activity from the same park; as it turns out, one person called twice to report he suspected that 3 black kids were lying in a car and looked like they were getting ready to rob somebody (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). These 3 black kids were actually sleeping, and they were family members of Justin, one of the 3 black teenage actors that were hired to conduct the second part of the experiment (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). The reaction from people was significantly higher when the actors committing the crime were black (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). Although the news article didn’t provide me with an exact number of 911 calls for the black actors, while watching the show, the figure was about eleven 911 calls. Apparently race plays a role on how often we report a crime as well. Shouldn’t we report of crime regardless of what the perpetrator looks like?

Racism is a topic of great concern to me, and it is complicated by the different layers of social institutions contributing to stereotypes and discrimination. To be fair, I will say that our nation has made some improvement since the civil rights movement from the 50s and 60s. Today, we even have Black president in the White House. There seems to be notion out there that if we do elected a black president, than we can no longer be seen as a nation with serious racial problems. That notion couldn’t be farthest from the truth. I sometimes wish a magic wand existed to fix this problem, but there is none. Now we seem to have all these so called grass root organizations such as the Tea Party or Tea Baggers, whatever you want to call them (don’t know if they knew about the double meaning in that, but that’s a completely different topic) that claim to be the voice of “the people”, raising there voices because they don’t want our country to turn to socialism. We have Glenn Beck screaming off the top of his lungs, even calling President Obama a racist, yet no one dares to publicly call these so called grass root organizers who by the way feel the need to show up with guns to their rallies and town hall meetings, no one dares to call them racists. Former President Carter did and he is still catching an enormous amount of heat for it. What we have here is a significant amount of people who are extremely uncomfortable with the fact that a Black man is running the country, and there is an intense deliberate agenda to criticize and refute every single policy created by this administration, even if that means not supporting something as beneficial as universal healthcare. There is a constant demonization of words such as socialism, without even a remote understanding of what socialism really is. I’m so disgusted at people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limgaugh who are constantly talking about how our liberties are being stripped away from us, comparing this administration with the Nazis, such ridiculous claims they themselves couldn’t believe the bullshit coming out their mouths. They never uttered a word when many our rights to privacy were stripped by the PATRIOT ACT all in the name of security, to defend our freedom, what kind of an oxymoron is that? People on this same agenda always tend to define certain values as the sanctity of marriage, belief in God, and heterosexuality to name a few as “American”, which simply marginalizes anyone not fitting into what they define as American. This is exactly how they tend to portray many of the objectives the new president is attempting to accomplish. They criticized him for taking over GM, never mind the billions of tax dollars we forked over to keep the company afloat, they criticized him for the entire bail out fiasco, never mind that this was a mess left behind by the previous administration. Now he is acting “un-American” because he hasn’t approved the additional troops needed in Afghanistan, never mind that he doesn’t want to fall into the same mistakes the previous administration did, mistakes we are still having to deal with since he have not been able to leave Iraq. Do we even want to give the president credit for how well the stock market is doing right now? Don’t get me wrong, I will not sit here and defend everything President Obama has done, he is after all a politician, there are some loyalties he’s had to work through that I don’t necessarily approve of. I do believe he needs to just do what he’s gotta do and not worry about what people are going to say. Why? Because they’re going to come down hard on him anyways, so might as well get whatever bill you feel is best passed now. Bush did not give a flying fuck about how anybody felt about going to war, he simply did what he felt was best for his administration, why couldn’t Obama do the same. Pass the damn healthcare reform bill, public option included as the people want it and be done with it, end of story. I’m digressing from my point here, but what getting at here is perhaps our country is more racially divided now than it’s ever been in years. We are just choosing to mask these feeling behind politics and refusing to see things in an objective manner. We are no longer even considering what is best for the country. This problem can be addressed by honest self-examination, and as humans, we more often than not fail to be honest with ourselves about our own insecurities and fears.

Since the issue of race can be examined in so many different settings such as education, legislation, government assistance, religion, etc, I will narrow my conversation down to the workplace. Joe Feagin argues in his book “Racist America”, that racial barriers in hiring affect blacks at all class levels (2001, p.161). In a study of a thousand black workers conducted in Los Angeles, it was found that 80% of those with a college degree and almost all of those with a graduate-level education reported workplace discrimination, compared to less than half of those with less than a high school education (Feagin, 2001, p. 162). Feagin attributes this higher percentage of discrimination for educated black workers to having to compete with a greater number of white applicants who are also educated (2001, p. 162). You can see how even this narrowed workplace scenario will directly link the problem to access to resources such as significant, high level education.

In my own experience at the workplace, I have seen how opportunities are given disproportionately depending on your color and background. Although I do hold a management position in my current workplace, I did see in my previous job a significant color line as you went higher up in the organizational chart. My job was not given to me, none of them have; I earned my position by demonstrating I was competent, and that I had to do repeatedly to demonstrate my seriousness. By maintaining my position, and often crossing over to debunk pre conceived notions, I am constantly acting as an agent of change in my own work environment. As a scholar-practitioner and a black man, I serve as a role model to the young diverse staff I manage. I share with them my life experiences; I have high expectations for all of them regardless of their race or ethnicity. Many of my employees are also students, and so I am constantly interacting with them, challenging their thoughts, expanding their world view so that they can view situations from more than one dimension. I will not claim to be the one source of social change within my workplace, and I certainly know that the problem is one that spills into all social institutions, but as scholar-practitioner, my duty is to always show competence, fairness, openness to all points of view, and inspire change in others.

References

Taylor, C. & Jaquez, N. D. (2008, February 20). What Would You Do If You Witnessed
a Break-In? Black, White Teen Vandals Break Into a Car, Generating Different
Responses From Public. ABC News. Retrieved March 7, 2008, from
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/WhatWouldYouDo/Story?id=4310491&page=1

Feagin, J. R. (2001). Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, & Future Reparations.
New York, NY: Routledge.