Writing the Next Chapter on Race

Guest Columnist

Writing the Next Chapter on Race

By Judith Browne-Dianis, Co-Director Advancement Project

For several months, the media has been pushing the fairy tale that the United States moved beyond racism with the election of President Obama. As untrue as that is, there are people who started acting on their post-racial fantasies years ago, eight years in fact, as the Bush Administration used that excuse to essentially stop enforcing the civil rights laws we already have. President Obama and his administration have the opportunity to take dramatic steps towards dismantling institutional racism and inequality by simply enforcing the laws that are already on the books. Rather than blindness or silence, taking this action requires us to live in reality so that we can change that reality.

On November 5th, 2008, we woke up in a nation where people of color are nearly twice as likely as Whites to live near toxic waste dumps. We woke up in a nation where healthcare inequities mean that a Black child is more than twice as likely as a White child to die before age one. We woke up in a nation where Black and Latino students are more than 20 percent less likely to graduate from school than their White classmates and more than twice as likely to be arrested when they are at school. All of these disparities exist with government support or permission.

Despite these glaring inequalities, for the past eight years the federal government did nothing, living in the comfort of the post-racial fairytale. Thus, our government largely pursued a “hear no evil, see no evil” approach to structural racism and injustice. The Supreme Court has refused to “hear” the evil of discrimination through decades of narrowing discrimination protections and taking away citizens’ rights to bring their complaints to the ears of the courts. In complicity with the Court, the Bush Administration willfully refused to “see” the discrimination around the country. Although the executive branch has broad power to intervene against structural racism and injustice, it turned a blind eye and stood idly as though nothing were wrong.

There is hope, however. As the Obama Administration opens its eyes and ears, we have a chance to reverse some of these terrible trends by enforcing laws we already have on the books. Let’s start with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which authorizes federal agencies to prevent discrimination by recipients of federal funding. That discrimination can be proven either by pointing to bad intentions or by revealing disparate outcomes.
This potent statute laid dormant for eight long years during which the Environmental Protection Agency could have stopped the disproportionate placement of toxic waste dumps in communities of color or construction of major highways through these communities. The Department of Education could have ended the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects children of color through racially discriminatory school discipline policies or discredited the academic tracking that puts youth of color on the road to dropping out rather than to college. The Department of Health and Human Services could have done its part to end health disparities by halting the closure of hospitals that serve communities of color. The list could go on for pages.

We didn’t achieve this new direction in the last decade for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court stripped citizens of the right to enforce this law, leaving it to the federal government to do the job. In turn, the Bush Administration shirked the federal government’s obligation to weed out such discrimination. Thus, significant structural racism did not stand a chance of being eradicated. President Obama has a chance to restore public faith in the government, and he can take no stronger step in that direction than by eliminating racial inequities and barriers to opportunity through enforcement of existing civil rights laws and regulations.

Simply enforcing the law will no more end racism than the election did. However, it can put us on a path toward eliminating structures that perpetuate mass inequities that contradict America’s promise. Just as Title VI would have prohibited funding of racially segregated schools and public swimming pools with our tax dollars decades ago, it should be used to weed out today’s federally-funded injustices. In 1970, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote that the enforcement of “Title VI had failed to match the law’s promise.” The time has come to write a new script. President Obama can initiate another chapter of history by vigorously enforcing Title VI and ensuring that government is no longer part of the disease but rather part of the cure. We have come too far to stop our progress toward equality for all.

Posted at 1:50 PM, Mar 31, 2009 in Civil Rights | Permalink | View Comments

Comments

I can tell you are passionate about this and the statistics are dismal. While I do believe racism still exists, I think a lot of these issues are more class related than race related. We can become economically empowered and not have to depend on the government to save us from toxic waste and poor health care.

My worry about the race/class debate is that it will stall a fruitful conversation about social inequalities and what can be done about them. Instead, the author makes a pretty uncontested, solid point: race is certainly a part of the problem and there are many legal remedies already available through existing laws that could make a substantial difference in people's lives. These laws aren't being adequately enforced and they must be, and now.

The history of race in our country, a history we're still relatively close to, requires that anti-discrimination laws remain a priority even as we figure out how to shrink class divides as well. Great article.

I'll start from early on in my evolution I am a biracial man whose father is African-American and mother is Caucasian. My parents met in 1959 when my un-wed mother was in a nursing school where my father was employed as a nurse’s aide. My mother was engaged to a white man who was attending engineering school. My father had an African-American wife and five children at the time of his extra-marital relationship with my mother. At some early point of my mother’s pregnancy with me, she made the decision to marry her fiancé, and to lie to everyone about who the father of her un-born child was. She achieved this by claiming that I had been afflicted with a skin-disease called “melanism.”

My mother and step-father had four more children together in the space of nine years after I was born, and we grew up together in a middle-class household in white America where the subject of “race” was never discussed. My earliest recollections of having to be aware of race were when I was asked questions about the color of my skin by other classmates in first grade. “Why was my skin dark?”, “Was I adopted?” race was certainly a hot-button issue in 1965-66 when I began school, but any awareness that my mother and step-father had achieved from growing up in their white neighborhoods in the 40's and 50's was insufficient to prepare them for raising a biracial child, and to complicate things, they were both in complete denial of their complicity in my mis-education.

When I came home from school, after having been asked questions by fellow students from my all-white school district, my mother then explained “the skin-disease story” to me... “other kids with this disease usually have dark blotches all over their bodies, so you should feel fortunate”. When I would tell my mother about other boys and girls who would call me names or act aggressively for no apparent reason, I began to understand that I would get no further assistance from her to explain this rationale. My step-father was even more removed from the conversation and would only add, “You know what your mother said”.

By the time that my step-father transferred jobs and our family of seven had moved from the all-white Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Stow to the all-white school district of Portville in Western up-state N.Y., it was the spring of 1970 and I was in fourth grade, already the veteran of many racial incidents and altercations with classmates and even some adults. My four younger siblings had also been told the same story, and had to explain the same things to their friends when asked why they had a brother who was black... “Hey, did your mother fool around a little bit??” I remember how much that hurt me when I heard it, and I'm sure they felt just as badly when they did... nonetheless, this was a “subject” that we never discussed as a family, not once, at least not in my presence.

I was taught through my observations of my mother and step-father to keep quiet about things that I wasn't sure about, and I was also taught to ignore the obvious.

As I matured into my teen years and began to experience society’s issues and insecurities in coming to terms with this country’s racial in-equalities during the 70's, I felt an increasing need to rationalize and then codify the information that my mother had given me, regardless of what I was beginning to realize inside... I felt a growing discomfort / conflict, yet there was no one in my life to offer any other perspective. I had learned that black people were a part of society that we didn't talk about. (There was a black family in our small town, and they were poor and lived in a run-down house near the river. I never had any opportunity or reason to associate with them.)

I was a “B” student and also began taking an interest in sports where I was above average. Meeting other schools and student athletes were opportunities to then be exposed to populations that had not been told my story yet. I was just another black kid to them.

Communicating my experiences to my mother and step-father was difficult because they had no experience with racial prejudice, therefore when I had problems with other children, it would be looked at as an issue that “I” had in getting along with others (as well as intra-family sibling issues).

Because “race” was being ruled-out entirely, by my mother’s denial of my father, she could not logically use that rationale to explain any conflicts that I would have. My step-father's complicity in this was to blindly support my mother's viewpoint.

The “white” viewpoint has always been that blacks (black society) were pretty well cared for, and what contact they did have would be polite and careful. What, with the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts being passed, the playing field had been leveled (as I was informed by my mother and step-father's generation).

The feelings and comfort of my mother were apparently what was important, and her inculcation had to have been partly comprised of the idea that white society acted as the gate-keepers and care-takers of an infantilized black population.

Questions:

How has black society formed its identity?
What role models have been used, and how does white society react to positive black role models today? (Are they held to a more critical prism??)
Is there enough information readily available for black people to easily form a positive racial identity?
Is it important that black society is able to connect accurately the dots of its social evolution in America? and is it also important that white society can connect those same dots??
What is White Privilege?
What is White awareness?
What is Whiteness?
What about Affirmative Action?
Is” Race” a social construct?
How do we improve our society in America?
Is there any other way(besides the attrition of the old guard) to achieve this??

These questions are not rhetorical. I'd like to hear from those of you that have courage and the wherewithal to provide feedback.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Dave Myers, has a website, DiscussRace.com, a site focused on “race relations analysis & solutions.”