The Practice – Part 2
Take note of every example you see of possible racism–personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural.
Before beginning our practice for today, let’s explore a bit more deeply the level of cultural racism. Please read this except from the article White Supremacy by Sharon Martinas.
White Culture is a Dominant Culture
White culture is the dominant culture in the current territory of the United States. What
are some of the characteristics of this dominant culture? In thinking about these characteristics, please recall Dr. Wade Nobles’ definition of power: “Power is the ability to define reality and to convince other people that it is their definition.”
1. It defines who you are, and who “others” are in relation to you. For example, a white culture term for ‘people of color’ is ‘non-white,’ ie. non-people.
2. It shapes your attitudes, thinking, behavior and values. For example, a white woman shrinks in fear when passing an African American man on the street; yet the great danger to white often comes from white men in the home.
3. It consciously and unconsciously suppresses and oppresses other cultures. For example, slave owners consciously suppressed African spirituality and taught Africans Christianity to make them ‘docile.’ Or, employers fire workers for speaking Spanish in a restaurant, but promote workers who speak French.
4. It consciously and unconsciously appropriates aspects of oppressed cultures. For
example: every form of African American music: gospel, blues, Jazz, rhythm and blues, and rap, has been copied by white musicians with no credit given to the creative sources of the music. Or, white New Agers become instant healers, charging hefty fees, by appropriating ancient indigenous healing practices.
5. It is normative: the standard for judging values and behavior.
6. It is assumed, unquestioned, not on the agenda: the ways things are.
7. It is hidden — not at all obvious to the dominating or oppressing practitioners, but often painfully, obvious to peoples whose cultures have been suppressed, oppressed or appropriated.
The Culture of Racial Oppression: Cultural Racism
1. White culture perpetuates the ideology that people of color are morally and mentally inferior to white people. Throughout the history of the United States, white culture has characterized people of color as “savage, “ignorant,” “depraved,” “bestial,” “lazy,” “dirty,” “illegal” and “criminal.” This ideology continues unabated today. For example, white students and white workers assume that the only reason a person of color gets into college or into a good job is because of affirmative action: that is, the people of color could not have competed with the white person were the playing field level. In these examples, the white people cannot imagine that the people of color cannot be equally or more qualified than the whites for the positions they achieved.
2. White culture stereotypes figures and behaviors of peoples of color. A common method is to take some cultural attribute forced on people of color by conquest and continuing racial oppression, and making that attribute into a symbol of the whole people. For example, the film Ethnic Notions by Marvin Riggs delineates a history of white stereotypes of African Americans in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Stereotypes such as the “minstrel,” the “mammy,” “coon’ illustrate forms of assumed behavior that is carried into contemporary stereotypes of African Americans embodied in terms like “criminal,” “gang member” and “welfare mother.” Forms change; meanings stay on.
3. By defining reality as white, and convincing peoples of color that white reality is their reality, white culture actively promotes internalized racism and inter-racial tensions among peoples of color. Internalized racism dis-empowers a person and a people. Inter-racial hostility prevents different peoples of color from uniting for their common purposes and against their common oppressors. In this way, white culture expresses a successful white ruling class strategy of “divide and conquer.” Imprisoning a person’s mind is more thorough and long-lasting than imprisoning her body.
4. White culture labels the cultures of the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Arab world as inferior to cultures that have evolved in Europe. Furthermore, white culture actively promotes the historical lie that the culture that evolved in ancient Greece was the ”fountainhead of western civilization.” In fact, most of the great Greek scholars and poets went to Kemet (the name for ancient Egypt), which was an African culture and civilization, to study for years before they returned to create their own forms of wisdom. And the “renaissance” of Europe did not begin in Italy, as our textbooks say, but in Spain and Portugal which, under the African and Arabic Moorish Empire of the 8th through the 15th centuries- preserved and recreated the wisdom of the ancient world, and developed the technology which allowed the Spanish and Portuguese to embark on their voyages of exploration and conquest of lands outside Europe. Today, there is a white cultural war against African-centered research and scholarship. White academics call this scholarship ’self serving.’ Yet few white culturalists would call traditional historical and anthropological research, “White Studies.”
5. White culture suppresses and oppresses the cultures of peoples of color as part of an ongoing system of conquest, colonialism and racial/national oppression. For example, the movement, now a law in many states, of “English Only” is a specific form of cultural conquest of peoples from Mexico, Central and South America and Puerto Rico, which has its historical origin in the U.S.’s 1848 war against Mexico; and the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico. “English Only” is cultural colonialism: the peoples of colonized nations are forced to speak the language of the conqueror.
6. White culture appropriates elements of the cultures of people of color in order to mask the underlying power relationships of dominant to dominated cultures. For example: Rhythm and Blues is an African American musical creation, but one of its most famous exponents was Elvis Presley, a white working class man from the south. Many rhythm and blues artists die impoverished. Elvis is worshipped like a god.
We have one more day to Part 2
One more day of observing racism in all its manifestations.
Pay special attention today to tracking any forms of cultural racism.
While still being alert to personal, interpersonal and institutional.
What are you seeing in this practice?
What are you learning?
Any surprises?
Is your picture or sense of what constitutes racism changing or expanding?
Are you finding the 4 levels of racism to be useful distinctions?
Stay alert to the practice throughout your busy day.
“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way.” Harry A. Blackmun, former Supreme Court justice, author of Roe vs. Wade
The Practice – Part 2
Take note of every example you see of possible racism–personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural.
Adapted from the practices of Robert Gass and Akaya Winwood.
