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We have Sarah Palin using racist terms like "shucking and jiving" and John Sununu making allusions to the denigrating racist description of African Americans when he referred to our President as "lazy." The complete description so popular among racists is "lazy, shiftless n.....r." Then there are the Photoshopped posters with the President's face super-imposed on an ape or with a Hitler mustache. I am embarrassed when I hear or see these things.
When I was growing up in the eastern suburbs of Cincinnati in the 60s and 70s there were no African Americans living in my neighborhood nor attending my school. It wasn't until I started working at Swallen's in Fairfax at the age of 16 that I met and worked alongside African Americans. I became friends with many. I was fortunate to be raised by a mother who never allowed the n word to be said in our house and taught us to respect people who were different than us. Over the years I have had the privilege to know many African Americans and have the honor to call them friend.
The fact is, many people don't think they are racist.
Some years ago I was in a restaurant having lunch with a African American female friend. When the waitress left our checks on the table, I laid down cash and my friend laid down her credit card. When the waitress returned with the card and change she gave me, the white woman, the credit card and my friend the change. It was a teachable moment for me and my first exposure to what is called subconscious racism.
An innocent mistake by the waitress? Sure. But it illustrated the underlying perception of some white people that people of color are "less than" and could not possibly own a credit card or a house or a car. For many white folk it is an automatic subconscious reaction. Like women who hold their purses a little tighter when they pass a black man on the street.
Usually white folk who behave this way have never had any kind of relationship with a human of different skin color or ethnic background. So they believe the stereotypes and the misconceptions they see or hear from sources like Fox "News" or the ravings of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. My challenge to them is to make an effort to really KNOW someone of a different skin color, a different religion, a different culture. You will be surprised how much your own life will be enriched.
To many in our country Martin Luther King's birthday just means an extra day added to the weekend. To me it is a reminder that we still have a long way to go in America to eliminate racism.
Post Script: In the January 19, 2013 issue of the Enquirer journalist Mark Curnutte shares some startling statistics on racism nationally and locally. The following are some excerpts from that article:
"A majority of Americans now express prejudice toward African-Americans, even if they don’t recognize those attitudes, according to an Associated Press survey released in October 2012. Conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and University of Chicago, the survey showed that the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments increased to 56 percent in 2012, up from 49 percent in 2008, when measured by an implicit racial attitudes test."
"The U.S. prison population comprises 40 percent African-American males, though they make up just 14 percent of the overall population. In Hamilton County, 70 percent of the jail population is black men, even though the overall black population – male and female – is 26 percent."
"The number of hate groups – which includes neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads, black separatists and others – has increased 69 percent since 2000 and now has reached 1,018 nationally, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization based in Montgomery, Ala. Since the end of 2008, the number of anti-government groups, including armed militias, grew 755 percent, from 149 to 1,274 in 2011."
"Despite advances in workforce integration, Cincinnati remains one of the nation’s most racially segregated cities. Cincinnati ranked eighth in residential segregation of the nation’s 22 most racially divided cities, according to an analysis of 2010 census results by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. It reports that 66.9 percent of one racial group would have to move to other census tracts to integrate Cincinnati."
Here's the full article On MLK Day, 2nd Obama inaugural sign of progress
