ABC‘s Good Morning America did a special 3-part series on race this week, “Black and White Now,” to “look at race relations in America.” All three parts revisited old experiments or news stories.
The first (3/31/09) was a repeat of an experiment with children playing with black and white dolls, showing that now kids don’t tend to think that the black doll is mean and the white doll nice, like they did in the ’40s–although some black girls still say the black doll is ugly and the white doll pretty. The report cited William Julius Wilson saying “there’s still work to be done, especially with girls, even with Barack Obama as president, his family in the White House, to make sure the weight of a prejudice past doesn’t secretly make its way into the hopes of a brand-new day.”
Number two (4/1/09): another experiment repeated, black men trying to hail cabs in New York City. This time, in their very non-scientific experiment, black men do fine during the day, but have a harder time getting a cab once it’s dark out. They also talk to people of color who feel discriminated against at high-end stores.
And number three (4/2/09): GMA anchors Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts went back to their hometowns in the South and talked to groups of white and black children, respectively, about their perceptions of race. Ten years ago, when they did this in Mobile, the kids talked about a racial divide and expressed negative stereotypes of the other race. This time, “the kids don’t wanna talk a lot about skin color” and were “expressing one hope that a rainbow of kids can show grown-ups how to learn, have parties, live together.” Roberts asks them why they think (old) people still want to talk about race a lot, and one kid says, “Because they’re so happy it’s not like that anymore.”
These are, overall, encouraging stories. But it’s only possible to tell such encouraging stories by limiting your focus to one kind of racism–the overt kind that plays out through individually held prejudices. Notice that none of GMA‘s episodes looked at the racial wealth gap, or the ways that the foreclosure crisis is impacting people of color more severely than white people, or the disproportionate number of people of color locked up in our criminal justice system versus white people (just to name a few examples). Sure, overt prejudice has diminished over the years, and that’s a good thing (though there’s still plenty of it out there). But ABC only perpetuates the very serious underlying racism by pretending prejudice is the only kind of racism there is.
Now, why did this song pop into my head when I read this item?
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/devo/beautiful+world_20039668.html
I believe that the majority of the generation I grew up in (and those that will come after) have a different view on racism than the media would have you believe. Being a 28 year old white male (Italian, white enough ,right?) that attended public schools in Bayonne,NJ (located between Jersey City and Newark and Staten Island,NY), my experience has taught me that young white people are not very racist at all. In fact the popular media (TV and Radio) has glorified the supposed “black culture” so much that it has become a non issue. The kids I went to grammar school with at some point started speaking the slang and dressing to fit the ideals of the hyper-publicized “black culture”. Even when growing up, the form of racism I encountered from my elders was more stereotype jokes than actual hatred. I am sure there are many different situations in America in which my experience not only doesn’t apply, may be the opposite of the truth. I can only speak honestly of my experience.
The problem, I think, lies in the fact the black ( as well as other races ) youth have a basis for their bias. These are the sons and daughters of people who definitely did face racist issues. They are brought up many times in poverty and bad social situations,and their families ended up there because of the racial hardships that were a way of life. The fact is that the bad situation a black man faces now was 10x worse for their fathers and 100x worse for their grandparents. They are raised by their families who have hate (like I say completely with reason).
It is impossible for someone who is white to understand the prejudice another race feels. It is also hard for other races to realize the coming generations of white people are raised with the ideals of equality. We have been bombarded with it in public schools, by the media and by many of our parents.
The race issue divides our people. While we fight with each other, the rich white guys that control the political, economic, social, and religious institutions (the ones even most other white guys hate) carve the country up even more.
If anybody decides to read or comment on this, please, drop the race issue because we have to focus on getting our country back. We need to come together before our rights and our money are gone.