Drop the conversation?
In case you missed it, 60 minutes had a very interesting interview with Morgan Freeman in December. He's by far one of my favorite actors and I wish more of those Hollywood-types were like him. Being that today was Martin Luther King Day, I felt it might be fitting to refer to Freeman's interesting comment on race relations in America. See the video here.
In case you're still stuck on 56k connection and can't see the interview online for yourself, Freeman pretty much said that that the best way for Americans to deal with race relations and end racism is to simply stop talking about it. There's no more need to designate people as white, black, blue, whatever.
Now as the white, middle-class Midwestern suburban boy that I am, you should realize that at no time that I can remember have I ever felt disrespected because of my race. I have witnessed racism only a bit, most evidently through one of my best childhood friends who happened to be black. In the spring of my 7th grade year, he was virtually chased out of town after self-proclaiming "n*gg*r" haters instigated him into a fight after school in front of hundreds of students. Police initially broke up the melee, but for each night of the next month, the harassers continued to shout racial slurs at his family and his home. I believe they even threatened his life. From there, there was little reason to make that community his home anymore and he soon moved away. I haven't heard much from him since.
While I can imagine Freeman has seen and heard many more horrible indecencies like this, his remarks trouble me. I worry that closing the door to conversation about race in America will ultimately force the issue back into the closet where people feel even more uncomfortable discussing the issue than they do now. Equality in the United States has so much further to go before King's dream comes to fruition and I see no reason to believe it will happen any sooner if we encourage people to drop the subject and simply let it fester in individuals' minds.
I'd like to hear what other people think about this. So if you see the clip or simply want to say something, please feel free to chime in.
posted by The Divoteer at 4:31 PM
1 Comments:
When I was in ninth grade my English class got into this big debate about affirmative action. I believe I was in the "Let's just treat everybody equally" camp because I was still naive enough to believe that if we didn't classify one person as one thing we'd all be OK.
I don't believe that anymore. I've come to believe that even if we don't label one person as white, another as black and another as Asian we'd still have racial issues. There's simply too many innate prejudices in society. Even if it isn't inborn there are plenty of stereotypes and problems permeating pop culture, the television airwaves, the radio, the news, literary works, etc. You can't turn somewhere and not see something that doesn't suggest derogatory things about another race. As much as we -- those who aren't racist -- try not to do that, it happens. Children are going to learn racial prejudices somewhere. If it's not from their parents, it's from their friends. If not their friends, it's television, etc.
As children grow older they're also going to realize what makes them different from others on the outside (skin color). They may not automatically assume that one is better than the other, but given the way the world operates (and especially in the United States in the South) they're going to figure out that one has been determined the "classier" race, that one is more deserving and should be in power.
To leave things at that would be wrong. If we don't talk about those issues in the open children are never going to learn or understand how and why that's an incorrect way of thinking. It's not always better to keep these things locked up -- the issue is going to explode in a much more powerful way. Witness the Civil Rights Movement. That was hundreds of years of pent-up frustration that finally found momentum. If we aren't able to discuss why racism is wrong or why the Civil Rights Movement (which, in essence, was basically about blacks and whites, which requires those racial labels when talking about it) was so important, future generations are never going to learn. The cycle of racism will only continue, perhaps worsening because racism won't necessarily be public anymore. It's just going to be private and that can be just as terrible as "No Colored Allowed" signs. The little Hispanic girl isn't going to be invited to the birthday party, the little black boy won't find someone to ride bikes with and the little Asian kid will always be considered a sneaky yellow peril.
But no one is going to say anything about it. Everyone's going to think all of that is OK. And it's not. And that's why we still need to talk about it.
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