"Ruining"

One might suppose, that with a black/multiracial president occupying the White House, that we as a culture had moved past racism, but it seems to me that in some respects it has gotten worse. While overt racism is frowned upon in the mainstream, it still survives in the little nooks and crannies of life, buoyed by code words and innuendo. Granted, there are some people who "play the race card" when there is no racism, simply to garner sympathy, or maybe because in their minds it's always someone else's fault. However, to believe that every accusation of racism falls into this category is a mistake. Attitudes about groups of people have a certain momentum; the popular conceptions and perceptions invade our minds and shape our viewpoints whether we want them to or not - often even meeting people who do not conform to the stereotypes do not dispel those stereotypes.

But racism is alive and well in the United States and so are those that pretend it doesn't exists and mock those who experience it.

A few recent examples:

Recently there have been some headlines about a guy who is suing McDonald's because "they wouldn't give him more than one napkin". In our culture of  "Don't make me read something longer than a sentence fragment and you'd better include a picture" that has flourished recently several people re-posted the headline and commented about it, without actually reading the article that accompanied it. The man was called an idiot for filing such a frivolous lawsuit. So I read the article and discovered that the man had received only one napkin and was refused more, but that's not what he was suing about. The McDonald's employee, who turned out to be the manager, not only refused to give him a couple of extra napkins, but was rude and eventually abusive toward the customer, who accused him of making racist comments. Now, having been in the customer service business in one form or another for most of my life, I can't understand why the manager just didn't give the guy a handful of napkins and be done with it. Maybe the customer was a dick, but one of the quickest ways to deal with problem customers is to just give them what they want. After some additional research I discovered that the customer in question is a serial filer of frivolous lawsuits, so maybe he is exaggerating the whole experience. But when I pointed out to other posters that the suit wasn't really about napkins, but about horrible customer service and racist behavior, the following response was posted:

 They have napkins by the drinks if someone is to lazy to walk over and get one the wow! We need to stop making everything about discrimination!!!! We are all living on the same earth for Pete sake. Get ALONG!!!!!!!! - 

I do not know the person who posted this response, and I can only assume that further discussion with her would be futile, (as would grammar lessons) but it is typical of a person who is of the opinion that black people make "everything about discrimination". Should we "get along" with people who treat us poorly because of our race, religion, gender, sexuality? I would think that it is more incumbent upon those who are bigoted to stop being prejudiced than it is for those who are the recipients of bigotry to "just get along".

The other example arose from a discussion about changes in neighborhoods in New York City over the last 30 years. The person with whom I was conversing suggested that "black people ruin neighborhoods". He gave me several examples of neighborhoods that were prominently white a generation ago that are now run down and crime-ridden now that they black neighborhoods. He spoke approvingly of the self-appointed neighborhood patrol that kept a sharp eye out for "Negroes" when we were teenagers as men who were just trying to protect the value of their homes. Ah yes, "White Flight" from the cities and the decline of property values. Not a myth, but why did it happen? Why would the sale of a few homes in a white neighborhood to black families cause property values to decrease and for the neighborhood to eventually go to Hell? Obviously the initial black buyers would be paying full value for their new homes in the formerly all White neighborhood; why wouldn't they? Unless there was something about the neighborhood that (before black home ownership and White Flight) that was causing whites to stay away. So with the neighborhood now .002% black, what is causing property values to go down? A lot of white people all wanting sell at once, causing the laws of supply and demand to cause property values to steadily decrease. What is causing all these white people to want to sell at the same time? Some are racists and don't want to live in the same neighborhood as black people, some are afraid that all these blacks are going to cause the value of their home to plummet (because that's what blacks do, right?) so they get out quick, hastening the very thing that they fear. It's not blacks that cause property values to go down, but white fear and racism. It's the simple application of the law of supply and demand in action: the supply is increasing so the price must drop to cause a corresponding increase in demand.  So what happens next? The white neighborhood that was home to white professionals, white middle-class and working class folks and white union workers, and where home ownership was common, now has many of the homes bought up by landlords who snap up the cheap houses and rent them out. Many of these renters are good, hard working people but many of them are ne'er do wells who trash the rental homes, don't keep up the lawns, and standards go down. More and more white people leave, since now their fears have come true and the black people who are moving in are not black professionals, black middle class and working class folks and black union workers as at first, but poor blacks, among them criminals; and fewer and fewer homeowners. It becomes a death spiral. As the bad elements move in, the working class people, the homeowners, both white and black, move out, and even the poorer people, if they can afford to, get out, leaving more room for the criminal element.

So who ruined the neighborhood? Blacks? Or the white people who ran away and sold out to landlords out of fear and racism? What caused property values to go down? Not black people, but an increase in the supply caused by fear of property values going down and the racism of those who left early on - after that Economics 101 kicked in and the prophecy was self-fulfilled.

If you are going to hold the position that "blacks ruin neighborhoods", then you have to believe that there is something about black people, perhaps cultural, or maybe even genetic, that causes them to ruin neighborhoods, that makes them incapable of mowing their lawns or getting off welfare. Of course, when examples are presented of predominantly black neighborhoods that are not crime-ridden, that are not "ruined", then some excuse or rationalization is presented - these must be the "good" blacks - or the phenomena is simply ignored.

A related subject is the idea that one can be truly "color-blind", or "post-racial" or that everyone is the same. We're not all the same. We are all products of the cultures in which we were nurtured. I grew up in a virtually all-white neighborhood and could readily see differences in attitudes and behaviors among the predominant ethnic groups. You could usually tell who was Irish, or Italian, or Jewish after a few hours on a weekend afternoon that included a Sunday dinner. Similarly there are generalized cultural differences between blacks and white, but just as an Italian is not better than a Pole or a Scot, a white person is not better than a black person. And even taking into account cultural differences, we are all still individuals who decide to what degree that we will adhere to the cultural norms "good" or "bad". For example, in some areas there is an undeniable "culture of poverty" including high male incarceration rates and high percentages of dependence on welfare. There are also undeniable examples of those who break free of the cycle. (One might also note examples of people who have been given every advantage, including being "raised right" and still manage to piss it all away.)

When homeowners in the neighborhood in which I grew up began banding together to "keep the blacks out" they may have convinced themselves on some level that they were protecting the property value of their homes, but it was racism, plain and simple. And racists often have some rationale for their racism, maybe so it seems on some level rational rather than the unthinking idiocy that it is. I find racism to be reprehensible and disgusting. I include in my view sexism, homophobia, and all the other ways in which we pigeonhole people into neat categories to excuse or bad treatment of them.

When I first moved to Nebraska I belonged to a religious group that was looked down upon, feared and reviled by many people in the small town where I resided. I was fired from a job due to my religion, I was refused service in some businesses, I had things thrown at me on the street, I was harassed and just generally treated badly all because I belonged to a group that the majority didn't like. As bad as that was, I could have passed as "one of them", or could have made it all go away by reverting to my childhood religion or some other acceptable faith. What if my skin color or facial features marked me as other rather than my beliefs? That experience has stuck with me for my whole life and has shaped my opinion of prejudice in all its forms. (Ironically, this group - to which I no longer belong - eventually became as intolerant and hateful as the people who targeted me those years ago). For this reason I become particularly prickly when someone with whom I disagree, or am arguing with, "throws down the race card", accusing me of racism or any other kind of "-ism" for that matter. I find it insulting and an example of someone who is grasping at straws, unable to actually win an argument or coherently make a point without baseless accusations. It cheapens and distracts from the countless examples of actual racism and bigotry out there.

Use your mental faculties! Judge based on individual words and behavior, not perceived group traits.