Reticent Racism

So many of us Anglos don't know we are tacitly accepting of racism.  I get it.  Racist feelings (except for those that are blatant and ugly) are shyly staying in traditional mental closets.  The problem applies to me in spades; oops!  Oh, give it up, you might say - that phrase comes from the old game of bridge, not from the popular reference to blacks.  True?  Probably, since the expression "made in spades" would rather obviously apply to naming the trump suit in bridge and having an advantage because the suit of spades carries a higher power in that particular game.  But the very word spade grew to common (and derogatory) usage in reference to black skin because the ace (or suit) of spades is black.  This reference began probably around the time of the war between the states, fought mainly over slavery.  Yes, the slaves were technically emancipated, but people with black faces were hardly relieved of any of the domination exercised by whites.  And the fact remains today that the playing field of life is not yet level.

The current new book that could begin to allow us white folks to look inside the problem with more potential of actual understanding is titled Gather at the Table.  It should be widely read but I hold little confidence it will be read by more than a tiny fraction of us white folks.  Probably the vast majority of the readers of this gut-wrenching book will be from the African American side of our populace.  Why would I guess this?  Because we Anglos really don't want to face head-on any possibility that we are guilty of racist thinking.  We would rather assure ourselves that racism is practiced by skin-heads, ku klux klan types and others who are actual proud racists; that we are ourselves free of such attitudes.  We can sometimes engage subconsciously in racist thinking and wouldn't know it unless something brings it to our attention.

For most of my teens and adult life, I actively engaged in something similar, glibly repeating jokes that often exhibited rank racism but simply choosing to call them funny.  People do that all too frequently today.  After all, if you're only joking, isn't there an automatic license to say things that one may not mean?  May not even have any real acceptance in one's everyday way of thinking?  I certainly made that argument silently to myself when carrying on with others in laughing and repeating jokes aimed at Polish people during a long era of the Pollock joke popularity.  In fact I was in love with a Polish girl and eventually married her, so how could I be guilty of doing anything out of line in joining the fun with great jokes?  Finally, in my forties probably, I stopped myself from joining that crude circle of humor at the expense of a race or group of people, but I wasn't entirely successful in escaping my own weaknesses.  For years I have continued a small attachment to that joke-license theory, adapting and continuing to propound what I consider just good fun by changing any joke that could be changed to use hillbillies as the brunt of the joke.  This I felt was, in the Jeff Foxworthy mode of telling redneck jokes, acceptable because I was from that background myself.  And I am still not above laughing at some of these jokes.

So am I capable of harboring old racist attitudes without knowing it?  No doubt I am.  It's utterly amazing that a deep and ancient ethos can resist expulsion from the heart no matter how strongly the conscious mind rejects it.  And my conscious mind vehemently rejects it!

Would that this book, which has the potential of allowing Anglos to see inside their inherited proclivities, become a true best-seller.  I firmly believe that if all whites in the USA were capable of actually releasing and rejecting their reticent - but still damaging - racist attitudes that their new untarnished view on the world would utterly shock them.  For one immediate huge improvement, they might all see how plainly ridiculous it is that our intelligent and capable black president is experiencing even a minimal challenge by someone totally unfit for the job.  If subliminal racism were suddenly completely overcome, there would be no way our electorate would replace a strong and proven leader with someone who would likely only further destroy the fabric of our society.