Wednesday, April 8, 2009

"Racism" - the ugly word

Funny how the word "racist" gets people so excited.  Its one thing people have real trouble with.  Especially people who are not of color (i.e. white people, anglos, WASPS, ethnic whites, etc).  Sometimes you don't even have to say the word itself, and people get crazy- if they think you mean that they are racists - they get angry and want you to take it back.

Why is that?  Is the anger about fear?  Many times people who are accused of being racist say their accuser is "enraged" or "made them fearful."  A number of people who have been "accused" tell me they didn't even raise their voice.  But people react anyway.

Its a very old story... going back over 200 years...  the Haitian Revolution (in the Caribbean on a French colony) happened when thousands of slaves revolted and killed thousands of white plantation owners.  The story traveled all over the western world and terrified people.  Diaries, novels, newspapers and other printed text are testaments to how people were so afraid.  Even Stephen F. Austin said it could happen in Texas if our slave population got too big.*  

The fear continues.  People believe that groups who have been oppressed for a long time can turn around and fight back  and bad things can happen.  Its in the deep recess of our memory - and hasn't gone away.  

The fear does something else.  It also makes us think that what we do is OK.  All in making sure things stay "safe" - like the officer in Bellaire, TX  who shot the young man in front of his own home (not the officer's home).   You can be so concerned with "safety" that you do things that can surely be called "racist," but think you are really a reasonable person who doesn't hate anybody.  Maybe someday Officer Jeffrey Cotton will figure out what he did.  It could take him a really long time.

see "Bellaire Officer not a Racist, Spokesman Says," Houston Chronicle/AP, April 8, 2009


*I wrote about this in my book Cemeteries of Ambivalent Desire:  Unearthing Deep South Narratives from a Texas Graveyard.

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