In James Coley’s, Taking on the Sins of Our Fathers, a response to my earlier blog I am a Racist, he dismisses my assertion that I am a racist as unfounded, defying common sense and a feckless exercise in a white guilt discourse of self-flagellation. James says that because I did not create slavery, racism or Jim Crow, I have no culpability. He sees the move from white privilege to racism as disconnected – a non sequitur.
I am not guilty of causing racism.
I did not create racism or white privilege or contemporary America’s racist construct.
I clearly benefit from my privileged position, even as I am an unwilling participant in this racist system.
I ask myself, ‘what level of participation and benefit do I need to receive from America’s racist construct before stepping up and taking responsibility for the perpetuation of the system?’
I recognize that I am an inheritor of racism. With it, I have inherited a moral debt and, for me, this creates a moral obligation.
I choose to claim the term ‘racist’ to recognize my position of privilege and to take responsibility for the resulting moral obligation.
When I saw America’s racist construct as an amorphous historical legacy that I neither caused nor had responsibility for, I lived comfortably with my privilege, secure in the knowledge that I had earned my way through life, and I felt powerless to take on dismantling the system.
Owning the term ‘racist’ empowers me to study the issues and propels me to action.
My claim of racism is both personal and motivational. It recognizes the reality of racism and compels me to act.
How do I go about changing a racist system that is woven into the very fabric of our society?
Recognition is the first step. Claiming my privilege is the second step. Engaging in dialog is the next step.
In claiming responsibility for my part in perpetuating racism, I recognize the necessity for change – change in me and change in our society.
Yours in Continuing Ethical Struggle,
Randy Best
Leader, Ethical Humanist Society of the Triangle
Chris Kaman says
While I am not responsible for the actions of other white people in the past who enslaved and oppressed blacks, I am responsible for taking actions now to address problems such as those listed by Kwame, and by Michelle Alexander in “The New Jim Crow”. If I take no such responsibility to fix the current problems, then I contribute to racism, even though I don’t verbally support racism. Silence is not a remedy, nor is white guilt (except where it is appropriate). I can not bow out of white privilege, but I can use it to further the cause of ending racism. I can write letters to the editor, lobby my legislators, encourage dialog in ending racism, and use “bibliotherapy” to educate myself where I am ignorant of the past and present problems. I can also spend some of my money to help fight racism and prejudice by supporting groups such as the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. There are others of course. I can also encourage humanists to engage in this struggle. Simply “not contributing to racism” is not sufficient to end it; it allows the status quo to perpetuate itself. What are we doing to end racism?
Kwame Teague says
White privilege is a fact. Racism is a fact. Racism exists precisely for White Privilege to thrive. But the connection is not about who is or isn’t a racist, or even visceral versus practical response, It is about concrete solutions.
Mr. James Coley had a very good point when he said:”…we see the failure to help fashion a new approach in Ethical Culture and Humanism that represents an advance beyond main stream religion.”
As humanists, the question of racism is existential, because if we can’t come up with logical, ethical solutions, what is the point in espousing an Ethical Society? We should be in the vanguard of change because we aren’t held back by the dogma or doctrines that has divided man for millennia. We must confront racism collectively, starting with addressing the roots of White Privilege.
If we are being honest, we know America is stolen property built on stolen labor. The bottom line is, do Blacks have a right morally, politically and ethically to any of these proceeds? If you say no then the discussion ends right here. But if you say yes, how do we get our just due?
Reparations.
Black people deserve reparations. The only question is, what would constitute just reparations? I do not advocate direct payment, nor do I advocate confiscating land. No. Reparations isn’t about revenge or retaliations. It isn’t even about righting wrongs. It’s about justice, understanding, compassion and closure.
Reparation should reflect the healing of the nation, and be more about the future than the past. Here are a few suggestions:
1) Restore the vote for felons in all federal elections
2) Universal daycare for all parents (black and white)
3) Nature resource tax; Any company that utilizes any resource regulated by the government
4) Slice of the digital spectrum: Our forty acre and the mule moment. These are only suggestions. But hopefully they can spark the conversation.
– Kwame Teague
Randy Best says
I welcome the comments resulting from my post and responses to my posts.
My understanding of what racism is differs from some of the commentators.
I favor this definition of racism:
“Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. Racism
involves having the power to carry out systematic discriminatory practices
through the major institutions of our society.” — from WHAT CURRICULUM LEADERS CAN DO ABOUT RACISM by Dr.Delmo Della-Dora, New Detroit, Inc. 1970
For a thorough discussion of definitions of racism go here:
http://www.timwise.org/f-a-q-s/
Racial prejudice manifests in individual actions; racism manifests in America’s systemic construct of racial discrimination.
James’ example of Joe beating up Sam provides a good example of individual actions.
I would like to discuss systemic racial discrimination.
Consider if Joe’s great grandparents, grandparents, and parents all received benefits from society that were denied to the generations that preceded Sam – placing Sam at a significant disadvantage in economic and social benefits and that these advantages are still part of American society. Joe enjoyed top notch, well-funded schools and a wealth of career opportunities. Sam suffered through underserved schools that limited his career options and earning power and is now incarcerated for failing to pay traffic fines.
Does Joe have moral responsibility to correct this situation?
Does Sam?
Do I?
Does Joe have the power to correct this situation?
Does Sam?
Do I?
Through individual action I address racial prejudice. I believe most of you do too. Collective action is needed to address America’s systemic construct of racial discrimination.
I am interested in discussing what the EHST can do together to help eradicate systemic racism.
I will share comments from Kwame Teague in my next post.
James Coley says
The example of Joe and Sam was not meant to apply only to individual action. Even if Joe represents large-scale, historical and present-day institutionalized racism, the analogy still applies.
James Coley says
I am also interested in discussing what the EHST can do together to help eliminate systemic racism. My point is that it does not help to engage in White guilt or to engage, as Jack does, in hate speech lumping together all Americans. We should be motivated, not by shame, guilt or hatred, but by compassion for African Americans and an intellectual sense of justice, in working to eliminate racism.
Jim Wyman says
This is the third thing I can add: prescriptions.
Trigger Warning! If microaggressions jump out at you from behind bushes, don’t walk forward. Shrink back into your Safe Zone instead. If your delicate eyes bruise easily, shut them.
When I detect myself making a mistake, my response is to take immediate corrective action. When I detect someone near me in sharp need, I take immediate action, if such action is possible, if that action does little if any harm, and if that action is likely to lead to constructive improvement.
If a white person came to me saying they had just realized they were racist and the unwitting recipient of privileges at the expense of non-white people, my recommendation would be to immediately act to rectify the situation: find a nonwhite person or persons and give them your privilege. Keep on giving until the situation is balanced, or until you run out of the stuff to give. Why wait?
As a naive fool stumbling through most of my life, I have been fooled and nearly fallen completely into numerous traps: institutionalized religion, 3 Card Monte, Transcendental Meditation, New Age Spirituality, spirulina, and time-shares. After these and other lessons, I had enough bruises to alert me to recognize the same thing in Amway, Lyoness in Europe, and LifeVantage’s Protandim. These are all something-for-nothing schemes, but the latest version is guilt-for-nothing. But by now when another of these deals comes my way, I take the skeptical approach. I look for arguments on both sides of the assertion, and 3rd and 4th and Nth sides if they exist.
So if someone came to me and said ‘Between the World and Me’ by Ta-Nehisi says we are guilty of White Privilege, I might recommend, at the very least, that they read ‘Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder For Blacks to Succeed’ by Jason L. Riley.
All such recommendations pale in comparison to: pull your cable, preventing the mainstream media from playing your sentiments like a violin, save your money, pack a bag, push yourself away from the computer and use the savings to buy a ticket to the farthest place on the globe you can afford. Perhaps you will see enough on the trip back to learn that it is a privilege to be alive and healthy with so many wonderful challenges to work on and such a wonderful, privileged land to do it in. Then you’ll be able to write your own book…perhaps about Alive Privilege.
Jim Wyman says
This is the second of three things I can add: checking the calendar.
Which direction have we gone since 1976, when this was broadcast:
(Saturday Night Live’s SNL Players’ Skit, Word Association in Employment Interview, starring Chevy Chase and Richord Pryor)
If you laughed at this, either then or now, you must be a “racist.”
It is a sad state of affairs when we must banish all humor for helping us all get along.
Jack van Dijk says
Well I find your comment humorous, not funny, after all going back to archaic ideas is not funny, giving gays freedom to live addresses the freedom of only 10% of the population. Addressing the needs if the poor and the sick is not en vogue (an Icelandic term term for screen them).
Jim Wyman says
This is the first of three things I can add: an assessment of the day:
This topic is proof that no matter the writing and speaking skills of the Four Horsemen, no matter the perennial presentations that people will show each other for the lack of logical foundation for religions such as Christianity, humans will continue to resurrect its corpse.
If Christendom were to disband, if Christianity were to dissolve and disappear today, it would reappear tomorrow with just a different name, as people invent new or suddenly notice more Original Sin to rack themselves with guilt over, for which they must publicly confess and beg forgiveness and for which they will seek absolution.
Jim Wyman says
As an addendum to my first post, although he did not state it, Randy Best implies (in his ‘Taking Responsibility’, and his claim ‘I am a Racist’) that he is talking about America only, and he is talking about white* racism against blacks, as that seems to be the topic of the day.
He does not mention black racism against white Americans, or yellow or brown, as if no other racism exists in this country.
And it apparently only exists in America, although mistreatment based on skin color, one component of “racism” (as the concept of race is fluid), is rampant around the globe. Indians of the middle and North of the subcontinent look down on darker-skinned Indians, Cubans and South Americans discriminate against darker-skinned people, my hundreds of Filipino construction workers all insisted on wearing long sleeves and balaclavas rigged from tee-shirts in 120-degree-F heat…all to avoid tanning their skin.
So after we cure America, there is plenty of work to be done!
Jack van Dijk says
Time to start a fresh war, let’s kill the burgers, all those people with an accent.
Jack van Dijk says
I meant to say buggers.
Gretchen Niver says
Yes, Jim, I take your point, but as Jack pointed out to me, casting aspersions on others in no way diminishes our own responsibilities. Racism may be rampant all over the world, and in many different versions, but we need to take responsibility for that which we own. Everyone needs to do that, black or white, or yellow, etc. Saying that ‘everyone does it’ is no help at all.
James Coley says
Thanks, Jan.
You mention the example of being silent about a racist joke. I have described in our meetings the time I overheard in a restaurant someone laughing about his White friend at a party wearing blackface as a joke.
I made a scene in the restaurant, and I am glad I did. I wanted it to be clear to this man that this sort of thing is outrageous and completely unacceptable.
It is obvious, or ought to be, that objecting to blackface is not the same as wearing it.
James Coley says
It is obvious, or ought to be obvious, that taking responsibility for the moral evil of racism, and taking responsibility for helping in the fight to do something about the moral evil of racism, are two very different things. I have had none of my concerns answered about why Randy seems to confuse the two.
If I see Joe beating up on Sam and I intervene to stop Joe, I am taking responsibility for doing something about Joe’s wrong actions, but I am not taking responsibility for beating up on Sam, even if somehow I benefit from Joe beating up on Sam. That is because I was not beating up on Sam. Again, that is, or ought to be, obvious.
Randy says he chooses to claim the term “racist” to acknowledge his White privilege. But my question to Randy is still this: Why?
Why would you choose the word “racist” for yourself? The meaning of the term is one who accepts racism. But you are against racism. So the word that describes you correctly is “anti-racist” and not “racist.”
You can use whatever term you want for yourself, but that does not mean that it makes sense to describe yourself as something you are not. I can choose the word “ballerina” for myself but that does not make me one.
Randy seems to want to redefine “racism” to mean White privilege. But there is already a good term for that. It is the term “White privilege.”
I choose to take responsibility for helping in the fight against racism, but not on the basis of guilt and confused thinking. Instead, I make this choice out of an ethical concern about racial injustice based on reason and the love of Humanity.
African-Americans are my fellow human beings, and I feel compassion for them when they are victims of the moral evil of racism. This concern for others, rather than a self-centered sense of guilt, is my motivation for taking responsibility.
Jack van Dijk says
Hear, hear, an honest answer on a burning question. A second step in the right direction.
Jan Broughton says
I feel that ‘racist’ is too harsh a word to describe Randy’s position because for me it requires overt actions before being applied to someone. That said, once one is aware of the benefits one has by being white in a society that is stacked against those that aren’t, what are the obligations to change that society?
If you are silent when a racist joke is told or a person is denigrated for the color of their skin aren’t you complicit? Do you write a letter to the editor or join a march for justice when others raise their voices in the face of police misconduct or do you shrug your shoulders thinking you can’t change anything? I could go to an absurd length and suggest one could give up their worldly goods to fight poverty and racism but what I’m really asking is what is ‘enough’ to do to combat a situation that is so destructive to all of us.
We can become educated on racism all we want but if we don’t act to make things better then we are guilty of allowing a system that harms us all to continue.
Jack van Dijk says
Jan,
You are missing thoroughly the point. All your wealth, all you possessions, you car, your elevated status, are all based on the genocide/stealing the land from the Indians and using slavery to build up all that wealth, you started in 1651. Your English masters forbade you to mistreat the Indians, until you got “free” (read about Governor Winthrop of Virginia in Howard Zinn’s book). No other societies have used slavery and land stealing so abjectly as the americans. It is time to recognize that, it is seen that way outside your country.
James Coley says
In this post we read, in reference to Jan, that “you started in 1651” the process of racism, genocide and land stealing. i was not aware than Jan was capable of time travel.
To hold Jan responsible for what other people did centuries ago, because her skin color is the same as theirs, is racism.
It is an example of the lumping people together as groups instead of seeing us as individuals. This is the confusion in ethical thinking that underlies racism, sexism and nationalism.
Gretchen Niver says
Thank you for that, James. We white descendants may benefit from the atrocious actions of our progenitors, but we can’t be held accountable for them. Jack, what about all the atrocities of the Dutch East India Company in Southeast Asia that Dutch society, and perhaps your family, benefitted from? Do you hold yourself accountable for that? Americans aren’t the only bad actors on history’s stage. Most powerful states took advanage of the less powerful to suit themselves, and we see the results in today’s misguided policies based on abstract state boundaries created in colonial times.
The best we can do is move forward with more advanced moral understandings, informed by Humanity’s many past mistakes.
Jack van Dijk says
Yes Gretchen we are very well aware of our past, but we do not keep shooting blacks in the back or throwing them in jail, or worse, have segregated schools. Not to speak about general healthcare and broad programs intended to elevate social inequality.
Gretchen Niver says
Yes, Jack, we are certainly responsible for the wrongs we do now, just not those from the past.
James Coley says
But White Americans today are still not collectively responsible for a White cop shooting a Black man in the back.
Jim Wyman says
“No other societies have used slavery and land stealing so abjectly as the americans”
is incomplete.
Let us assume that when the writer types “americans”, he means “citizens of the United States”. Perhaps his readers can help him with footnotes, and perhaps a spare mirror. The mirror is not just for the writer to straighten his hair, mussed as it must be from the vigor of flailing away with his guilt whip.
“americans” did not become citizens of the United States of America until 1776. Before that, the inhabitants here were colonists from European countries: a few prominent being Spanish, French, English, Swedish, and …Dutch. More than a hundred years before there even was an America, the Dutch claimed land from Chesapeake Bay and the Susquehanna River in the South and West, to Narragansett Bay and the Providence-Blackstone Rivers in the East, to the St. Lawrence River [now in Canada] in the North as belonging to _them_, the Dutch.
By what right or merit did the Dutch claim these lands? Did they purchase them all from the Native Americans for its true and fair value, as we keep hearing about the Dutch buying Manhattan for $24 worth of beads? Or did they conquer it by force of arms, or did they just squat or use some other tactic or claim some other authority? Well, we know that to make room for more Dutch, they paid wampum for heads, detached, from members of the Raritan band of the Lanape People who had the temerity to live on the land before they arrived.
And just who were these “Dutch”? They might be part Frisian, since the Frisians occupied much of what is now cordoned off as The Netherlands. In 70 AD they hired themselves out as mercenaries to the Romans, to murder, steal from, and enslave the Britons.
Of the gentle shore people before the Frisians, we have no record, but we know that the mercenary, murdering Frisians obliterated them and took over the waterlogged coast of the continent from 511 – 772. But we can’t call it “genocide” because nobody kept accurate records back then and the term hadn’t been invented until 1944. After 772, The Frisians were conquered by the Franks and got absorbed. “Got absorbed” is a neutral way of saying the Frisians gave up their land and the male Frisians gave up their females for male Franks to impregnate.
“Franks” is another name for Germanic peoples in this area, including those that overran what is now The Netherlands. Their name was adapted and adopted by France. The chief godlet of these Germanic people was named “Gott”, a name borrowed by other imperialists, the English, to name a particularly cruel sky deity who mentally tortures EHST members to this day, and threatens the entire race of humans with an eternity in Hell unless they obey him, and thank him for the privilege.
The Dutch descendants who survived were early worshipers of something called Capitalism and the “Free” Market, which Tea-partiers also worship, and to which most EHST members attribute many of the evils of our society and to which many believe they are enslaved. Thank you, Dutch.
The 500 Nations of Native Americans, for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived, tortured, slew, stole from, invaded, and enslaved one another in huge quantities relative to their small populations. Over time they swelled and ebbed, divided and joined, moved and migrated. They did not build fences as Europeans did, nor put up border checkpoints, and so…their borders were enforced by catching the unfortunate raider or lost traveler, slowly torturing him to death, an activity that women and children joined in, then hanging his broken, flayed and drained body on a tall pole at the edge of their territory to serve as a border marker.
When Europeans arrived, Native Americans captured, tortured, slew and enslaved them as well, but only in self-defense, correct? Except when they were joining or switching sides in European imperial wars between the Spanish, the French and the English.
In present time, 306 million citizens of the lower 48 United States, many of whom arrived _after_ 1863_, and their honored Dutch guests, can travel freely between these mini-countries without the need for a passport – the blink of an eye will do. At State border crossings, “radar prohibited” signs are sometimes on posts, never dead bodies.
“No other societies have used slavery … so abjectly as the americans.”
European colonists employed slavery in different concentrations in different areas in North America from the time they colonized it until 1863. “The history of slavery spans nearly every culture, nationality and religion, and from ancient times to the present day” [wikipedia], including many of the 500 Nations occupying North America when Europeans arrived.
“Netherlands
Although slavery was illegal inside the Netherlands it flourished in the Dutch Empire, and helped support the economy.[90] By 1650 the Dutch had the pre-eminent slave trade in Europe.[91] As of 1778, it was estimated that the Dutch were shipping approximately 6,000 Africans for enslavement in the Dutch West Indies each year.[92] The Dutch shipped about 550,000 African slaves across the Atlantic, about 75,000 of whom died on board before reaching their destinations. From 1596 to 1829, the Dutch traders sold 250,000 slaves in the Dutch Guianas, 142,000 in the Dutch Caribbean islands, and 28,000 in Dutch Brazil.[93] In addition, tens of thousands of slaves, mostly from India and some from Africa, were carried to the Dutch East Indies.[94]” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery#Netherlands]
Since the writer claims we americans benefited from slavery, perhaps we should thank the Dutch for getting it started so efficiently here in North America. Slavery was officially abolished in the main Dutch slave colony of Surinam July 1st, 1863, The U.S. issued its Emancipation Proclamation September of the same year, so let’s let the Dutch crow their superiority for their two month lead.
“No other societies have used slavery … so abjectly as the americans.”
When they acquired their slaves from Africa, did the Dutch land their ships on the African shores, venture inland and capture them in the bush and bring them back to sell in America or ship to their Dutch colonies? They brought the ships, but they bought the slaves in wholesale lots at wholesale prices in Muslim slave markets. Arabs had been capturing and trading slaves in Africa since before Mohammed. Mohammed had black slaves (as well as slaves of every other color in the rainbow). The Creator of the Universe, Allah, told archangel Gabriel to tell Mohammed that slavery was a good thing, and He, the most merciful, the most benificent, put it in Islam. Muslims are slaves to Allah. After Mohammed, slavery became enshrined in Islamic law. Islam has enslaved 25 million Africans, and a million Europeans as well. Of those 25 million taken out of Africa, 11 million were sold in the Americas.
It was the British Navy, not the Dutch, that was commanded to intercept all slave ships.
For every slave who was whipped to get on or pulled on-board a Dutch ship, various estimates between 5 and 10 African villagers died (defending their village, forced marching, abandonment and deprivation).So for the 25 million that passed through Muslim wholesalers, over (at least) 100 million Africans died due to slavery in the 1383 years since Mohammed gave us Islam.
While Europeans and Americans abolished slavery 150 years ago, slavery continued in Islamic countries, only abolished officially in Pakistan in 1992. While the writer has no qualms about criticizing americans, certainly he does not care that America’s thirst for oil in the 20th century and its purchasing power was the only thing strong enough to force Saudi Arabia to officially abolish slavery…in _1962_.
But slavery still goes on there in reality. You can still find news reports of Arab slave raids into East Africa as late as 1986, and possibly later. In Muslim countries, especially Saudi Arabia home to the Two Shrines, and Qatar, headquarters and sponsor of Al Jazeera media company, millions of foreign workers are brought to work in low paying jobs, giving up their passports and all their rights, slaves by any other names.
The Islamic _Ummah_ is the international family of Muslims. It overflows and supersedes national boundaries, and so must be considered a “society”. This society has slavery decreed by its moon god, the same god who wrote their holy book before the world was created and put it on an emerald table next to His throne waiting for Mohammed to deliver it to mankind. This society practiced holy slavery for 1400 years, while the colonists that became Americans practiced it for only 200 years. Considering Islamic society only suspended slavery under the pressure of outside international political entities, the writer’s claim that “No other societ[y has] used slavery … so abjectly as the americans” is spurious.
The writer offers us no quantities at all. How a large nation, such as the United States, benefited from slavery compared to a smaller nations such as the Netherlands, through history, is something he does not examine or explain- we have only his rhetorical word on the matter.
Present day Americans should apologize to the Dutch for American”genocide” when the Dutch apologize to the Britons, the Frisians or the Germans take your pick, the Raritan Lenape the Dutch ethnically cleansed on this continent, the Africans they purchased from the Muslims and profited from the sale of, the Banda Island people and Indonesians killed “legally” by the Dutch East India Company, the numerous Dutch colonies from Cape Colony which grew into the apartheid regime of Afrikaaners in South Africa, and those from Southern India through the island of New Guinea, and from Jakarta through Southern Japan.
Societal morals and ethics evolve. It is a neat parlor trick to take the morals of today and selectively impose them on some societies of yesterday (but not others), then declare or imply moral superiority. But this trick impresses fewer and fewer informed people each year.
Lastly, I might point out that all this historical activity contributed to our parents’ genes and survival…our parents’ survival, and their friends. We might be careful where we splash around our bile and blame.
“No other societies have used slavery and land stealing so abjectly as the americans. _it_ is_seen_that_way_outside_your_country_.”
Since the writer finds our history so odious and discomforting, his situation might be improved if he gave the land on which he sits back to the Tuscarora, and regained his original observation point.
James Coley says
Thanks, Jan.
You mention the example of being silent about a racist joke. I have described in our meetings the time I overheard in a restaurant someone laughing about his White friend at a party wearing blackface as a joke.
I made a scene in the restaurant, and I am glad I did. I wanted it to be clear to this man that this sort of thing is outrageous and completely unacceptable.