Comment by eezurr
8 years ago
I think it's important to start talking about, and acknowledging, that nearly every second of the average person's life is thinking about something that is within their own universe of their life's experiences.
So plausibly, this really was an innocent and understandable mistake. Maybe they grew up in a town full of white people, and maybe all of their friends and coworkers are white. I understand what they did is technically racist, but that's because of that particular combination of people. Let's use _this_ 'experience' of "racist", but not it's exact definition. For example:
- It was racist you forgot your mother in law's birthday (who you see once a year.)
- It was racists you didn't lift the toilet seat. (Edit: I grew up in a culture where it was offensive to not raise the seat)
Definition: Any unintentional side effect from not thinking about someone* outside of everything you've experienced, and presumably causing harm to that outsider.
* Usually this person is disadvantaged in some way. But almost everyone is disadvantaged in some way, thus neutralizing this particular point IMO.
Does that sound rational? I don't think it does.
The world is full of suffering, and I'm advocating people help and love the people they are surrounded by. If many people did that, it would be easier to recognize each other, where ever you come from. Why? Because hate will push away everything it is unfamiliar with, but love will accept everything it is unfamiliar with.
(Now meta argument, do I expect people to change? No. So I try accepting them instead.)
Again, something can be racism and something else.
> Maybe they grew up in a town full of white people, and maybe all of their friends and coworkers are white.
This is not an accident. All-white contexts in America are the result of personal and systemic racism. People who grow up in those contexts are, unsurprisingly, more likely to be personally biased and will regardless do things that further systemic racism.
People in that condition have a choice: they can either overcome their upbringing or they can continue to support white supremacy. If they do the latter, well, then they've made a choice. You can accept that if you want. I don't.
I don't think it's likely that all the folks in Vermont are racist or that the system of governance there is supremely racist - yet Vermont has an absolutely tiny percentage of non-white folks (3.1%)
Less than 15% of the U.S. is African American so it's not at all surprising that there are areas where there are very few black folks as a result. That's nobody's fault and shouldn't be described as racist because, well, it isn't.
3.1% is about 1 in 30 people. That's not that small. And this isn't 100 years ago, I'm pretty sure people in Vermont have seen a black face on TV/film.
This is historically ignorant. I don't blame you personally, because the American education system is very bad at covering America's racist history. But you're still basing your estimation of "likely" not on real data, but on what you'd like to be true.
If you'd like to learn more, start with Loewen's "Sundown Towns", which describes how hundreds and possibly thousands of towns across the US were turned and kept white:
https://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-Americ...
These were known as "sundown towns" because non-white people had to leave by sundown or face violence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town
These came about not because there were never any black people, but because white people indulged in violent ethnic cleansing. This happened most prominently during the Nadir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relatio...
He proves this quite clearly through census data, where places that used to be racially mixed suddenly got white and then stayed that way for decades.
He doesn't give any specific Vermont examples, but Vermont had a prominent Klan presence in the 1920s: http://vermonthistory.org/research/research-resources-online...
Later, as suburbanization happened, white supremacy was maintained more subtly, through means such as racial covenants: https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/discrimination-in-deed/C...
It's also not necessary for a lot of white people to be actively racist to preserve white supremacy. As is clear from Loewen's book, all it takes is a small number of people willing to be active (e.g., making threats, burning crosses) to drive off new black arrivals. The majority can be passively accepting of a racist system without lifting a finger.
But that doesn't mean they won't end up biased. White people who don't know many black people are more likely to be biased, and all-white towns produce people that are more likely to have racist views. (For more, see Loewen's Ch 11, "The effects of sundown towns on whites".)