This is actually a wonderful teaching tool. You can see very clearly how even when people have drawn upon historic racist tropes and have therefore perpetuated racism, they are unwilling to recognize their own behavior as such. Instead, they made a mistake of not being sensitive to warnings or inadvertently stumbled into the muck, as if the muck isnt of their own making. There is almost never self-reflection because, and this is only my theory, weve so aligned this kind of behavior with personal morals and characteristics (evil, bad, racist person, etc.) that we almost certainly assure that folks will do anything other than admit they engaged the behavior and stop. But heres the thing: in my view, if we ever want to get past this stuff, or at least get our hands around it, we have to see these moments as just small manifestations of a long held and very successful system, one in which weve all been trained and therefore one in which we all engage at some point. Otherwise, all were ever going to get is some guy saying, no, nuh-unh. Not me. Its like a multifaceted marketing campaign thats been going on for hundreds of years in which whats being sold is a way for one group of folks to dominate other groups of folks. So when I see someone stand up to their own behavior, acknowledge it, and say, Im trying to get my hands and head around it so that I dont again manifest this sickness or engage in this system/campaign, thats a person I tend to admire and keep around. Because I like folks who are willing to do the hard work and who dont mindlessly succumb to marketing campaigns.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 09:32:15 +0000
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