Letters to the Editor

Racism: a social disorder

Dear Editor,

Matthew Chambers ended his editorial “Today’s skin tone problems” with a challenge to “the media, society and everyone to talk about race and the racial conflicts and feelings plaguing our country.” Mr. Chambers makes several valuable and relevant points. I take issue, however, with both Mr. Chambers’ underlying assumptions about racism and his approach.

It is very true that we have – historically and contemporarily – avoided real and meaningful discussions of race like the plague. Mr. Chambers also asserts that we must, in fact, confront racism in this country to avoid a “racial stalemate.” I wholeheartedly agree that the dominant attitude toward race relations today is false and that somehow by avoiding the subject, it will simply go away. On this point again I agree with Mr. Chambers. He is also correct in asserting that race is essentially a social construct. We all have different skin tones and the level of melanin in your skin is no indication of inherent worth, intelligence, attitudes, physical ability, etc.

In order to truly engage in conversation on racism in this country, though, we must recognize that while race is a social construct, it is a social construct that is very real in its consequences. Someone’s skin tone does not mean that they are inherently biologically or culturally inferior, but in our society, race is a factor that effects each of our lives and our life chances.

Like gender and class, race structures our society in a way that harms some and benefits others. If one truly believes that all are equal despite skin color, what, then, explains the fact that the poverty levels for black (25.3 percent), Latino (21.9 percent), and American Indian (26.6 percent) citizens is at least twice the poverty rate of their white counterparts (9.3 percent), according to U.S. Census Data? Or that, according to the U.S. Department of Labor in 2003, the white unemployment rate (5.2 percent) was half that of blacks (10.8 percent) for adults over 16 years old searching for a job? Or that, according to FBI data, blacks and Latinos account for 90 percent of those incarcerated nationally for drug-related crimes, yet represent only 23 percent of drug users, while whites account for 70 percent of all drug users whileonly 10 percent of those incarcerated for drug-related crimes? If we are all equal and race is simply a meaningless social construct, then what can account for such systemic inequalities?

That leads me to Mr. Chambers’ second false assumption: that racism is some strange phenomenon only enacted by crazy old Southern men and South Park viewers with a mental disorder. While I believe that racial bigotry is a disorder that affects many in our society, I believe that in order to have a real, meaningful conversation on race we must address the larger issue: institutional racism. If everyone stopped using the n-word or making bigoted remarks or we elected a black president, racism would still persist. It would persist because racism is more than a few crude remarks or acts. It is a force rooted in the historical, social, political, legal, and economic structure of the U.S. that stacks the cards against people of color (and, as we so often forget to mention, in favor of us white folks).

By making statements such as “I’m not a racist, nor am I a minority activist,” or that “My mind does not differentiate between black and white,” we frame racism as something an individual does, not something that shapes our society. And by ignoring the larger, institutional nature of racism, we set ourselves up for a disingenuous discussion on the role that race actually plays in our society.

Bobby Jones
Senior
Liberal Studies

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Dear Editor,

For the past three decades our national statistics have proven that less than 1 percent of the criminals’ intent upon committing a crime have been found to use a legally registered weapon.

Gun control laws to date have been unable to stop or aid in the apprehension and conviction of a single armed homicide or robbery. These facts have been the cause of much consternation among gun control advocates, resulting in a need to shift their posture on gun control from that of “protection from criminals”, through the reduction of constitutional rights, to that of enforcing a more humane means of civil protection through the “elevation of human rights”.

The result is a newly re-defined definition of gun control. GUN CONTROL: The politically acceptable and government imposed posture, which espouses “The Doctrine” that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is a morally superior constitutional right, qualified by it’s humane means of reducing the affliction of mental anguish upon the self-same woman who would otherwise be forced into explaining to the police her escape from death and how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.

Michael Kelley

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 26 2008. Filed under Letters to the Editor, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry