I felt that an introductory post would be a good way to kick off this saga of seven posts that all address contemporary racism in its own way. And no, I am not talking about the past. I am not talking about the great feats of Martin Luther King Jr. Instead, I am writing about the racism that goes on every day in the United States. The system of inequality that exists in this country. One that many people believe is a thing of the past, or is something that they can do nothing about.
I should probably explain where this all started. My name is Jacob West and I am from Upstate New York, and as you may have guessed by my name alone… society identifies me as white. As the previous sentence shows, I grew up in what Elijah Anderson would easily classify as a white space. For most of my life I was completely alienated from the issue of racism.
Now let me attempt to quickly clarify the common white space view. As George Lipsitz has put it, “whiteness doesn’t have to speak its name.” Therefore, I knew racism was an issue, but I did not understand it because I have never felt it. At the time, I saw the discussion on racism as a misconception. I saw the oppression people of color face as an after effect of the years of slavery. This made sense to me because I looked at the matter solely from an economic perspective. I looked at the objective facts but misunderstood the causality of those facts.
For example, the average African-American appears less qualified in the job market when compared to their white counterparts. Due to the greater opportunities and quality of education whites are on average provided, black Americans are consistently disadvantaged. These are all objective facts, but what I misunderstood at the time was why this difference in education came to be. At first, I thought that’s just how things were because better education is directly connected with wealth, which the average black American has less of when compared to their white peers. Yet, after reading on the subject, I have discovered deliberate segregation between the quality of education young American’s receive, which I will go into detail in the following posts. In other words, rather than believing racism is actively happening throughout society, I believed that racism was a thing of the past and that people of color simply needed to economically catch up.
** This “post-racial” thinking of solely focusing on economics has been the root of, in my opinion, all of these disconnects in truth and disillusion. I simply wanted to add this paragraph as I have to emphasize the significance of this statement. Seeing racism through nothing more but the lens of economics misses direct legal components playing into institutional inequality and how economic position also does not erase stereotypes (Lipsitz, 2007). **
Sadly, I was not alone with this belief. This common white space misconception exists because it makes sense for the environment these people are within. Being withdrawn from social and racial issues, the people within these spaces simply do not see or experience issues outside of economic ones and therefore believe racism must pertain to the only issue they relate to.
The problem with this lies in the fact that just because someone is not present to hear something, does not mean a noise is not made. What I mean by this is that people within white spaces can still have a racist mindset, even if there is nobody for them to be actively racist towards. Therefore, subconscious racism forms in the culture and eventually normalizes ever so passively.
Through these seven posts, I hope to open the minds of these white space individuals, while also empowering the minds of these already present activists. Looking at implicit bias, a redefining of racism, and questioning racial norms, I hope anyone can pull some sort of useful information from these posts.
I was born in a white space, and therefore rationalized my understanding of the white space. My understanding of this other perspective, this true perspective, has only started to develop as I have begun to learn and hunt for knowledge that goes against my own beliefs and experiences at the time. Only when I developed this questioning philosophy, did I begin to see this very pressing issue that is in fact separate from economic struggle.
If you are reading this as an outsider, someone who has made their views outside of the mindset of racism, just as I did, I encourage you to continue reading every Wednesday and Sunday. I know it can be hard, trust me, I’ve been there, but sometimes the best thing to do is just read and listen to a view contrary to your own. To open one’s reasoning is to allow growth. And personally, I find growth to be one of the most important parts of being human. We need to allow each other to speak and listen to one another no matter the topic, and who knows, you may find that the systems we live by are a bit more controlling than you first thought.
The Whole Series is Now Available:
Bridging Our Understanding of Racism (Part 1)
How Unnatural Racism Is (Part 3)
Implicit Racism, the Racism you Never Knew About (Part 4)
Just How Present is Racism? (Part 6)
It’s Time to Take Action Against Racism (Part 7)
Work Cited:
Lipsitz, G. (2007). The Racialization of Space and the Spatialization of Race: Theorizing the Hidden Architecture of Landscape. Landscape Journal,26(1), 10-23. Retrieved March 28, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/43323751
Keywords: LiveLifeLiberated, My Rage against Racism, Systematic Racism, My views on Racism, What is systematic racism? United States, Black Lives Matter, BLM, All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Protests, Current Events, Police Brutality, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Breonna TaylorJamar Clark, Philando Castile, Police Protests, Black people, white people