I don't think Racism is a black and white issue, so to speak. What I mean is, it is an evil energy, and it infects people and families to varying degrees. It is much like the classic view of Satan as something that tricks people with stereotypes, but, like the ancient view of evil, it is something that cannot enter unless it is invited in. And then it becomes a terrible guest that is difficult to get rid of.
I think the mildest form of it begins with prejudice that is brought on by the illusion of stereotypes. It is a powerful illusion, because after all, many people make themselves into stereotypes. Stereotypes don't just spring into being out of fiction. I know I have, particularly when I drove a little van, wearing a rainbow tye-dyed bandana, round blue sunglasses, Christ! Strangely enough there were several Officers who wanted to pull me over and see if I had any drugs. (I never did) But stereotypes are just externals. It can be hard not to prejudge when you keep seeing the same stereotypes day in/day out, they are insidious, unavoidable, and I think it is this 'soft' form of racism that is most common, the tendency to assume, it cuts both ways, and harms understanding.
One recent example I could mention is when someone at work remarked how terrible it is that white people don't take care of their elderly, and that black people, being more honorable, would never do their elders like that. She had worked in a nursing home, and most of the patients there were white. Seemed she had a point. But wait ~ could not the fact that the whites were vastly more numerous in population have something to do with it? But why was there so little visitation? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that a conclusion based on race is an unfortunate distortion.
I am grateful for this co-worker though, she has a keen perception and has pointed things out to me that not many black folk have. When talking about racism, the conservatives always seem to want to push it into the past, as something that happened hundreds of years ago. But reality is that her own mother couldn't buy a house from racist Italians barely a generation ago. I don't mean to speak ill of the 'greatest generation', but man, them old cats can be seriously racist. It's what they grew up with. It's only been barely a generation since civil rights, since Sesame Street, since positve un-racist thought could even have a chance to bloom and reach young minds when these things form. If the religious nuts don't do us all in, I really think things will get better over the next 50 years or so, if the good continues to be passed on, if we continue towards independent energy, better food, and not to be underestimated ~ the legalization of a certain herb that could play no small part in saving the world.
.
