From: ncostello@vms.eurokom.ie
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: is power needed for racism?
Date: 5 Oct 92 17:29:58 CET
Distribution: soc
Organization: EuroKom Conferencing Service

I agree with Charles Isbell's distinction between original and reactive racism,
I wonder though whether it's a good idea to call "reactive racism" racism at
all, I mean racism conjures up all sorts of images and reactions which I don't
think should apply to "reactive racism". Because if you have a term like
"reactive racism" it's going to be applied to all kinds of stuff. You can find
an example in this thread: In his original comment, Michael Lanham put the
question ("Can only whites be racist?") in the  context of an article he'd
read:

>The article was promoting the aims of a
> group of students who want to exclude whites from entering a black cultural
>center.  It was also complaining because the cultural center was not a sole
>-purpose building--she failed to note the old single purpose building was far
>too small, in need of various repairs, and that the new building is the newest
>one on the entire campus.

So if I read that right, the implication was that it was racist (presumably
reactive racism), for the black students to want to exclude whites from that
black cultural center. I thought Gabrielle Daniels made a good comment on this
last month, talking about San Jose in the 1970s:

>Anything somebody of color decided to create in the Department was
>either co-opted and failing control, eventually destroyed.  I
>remember hearing of some minority grad students who put together an
>English study hall for those people of color needing help from other
>people of color, basically on their own time and using a Department
>room, but without the imprimatur of the Department office.  When
>certain faculty folk caught wind of this, especially when the study
>hall became worthwhile, they wrangled it away from the grad students
>and made it accessible to everybody.  Sometimes, you must
>understand, its important for people of color to get encouragement
>and help from each other.  This is not being separatist for its own
>sake, this is trying to save someones life.  Some people dont
>understand this and say that its discrimination in reverse.
>Bulltacos.

It is discrimination, but the phrase "discrimination in reverse" implies that
it's just like Jim Crow backwards, which is nonsense because it's trying to
correct an imbalance, not to reinforce a system of power.

Charles Isbell refers to "historical inequity", "guilt", "inertia of the
system" ... I think these are the key concepts. A lot of meritocrats say "Yes I
agree that historically African Americans were oppressed etc, but that's
history, it's nothing to do with our generation, as long as we make sure that
discrimination in employment, housing, etc isn't allowed today, then everything
should work out." Well who wiped the slate clean? As he points out "white folx
can't help but to benefit from the system," so how convenient to have a
moratorium on historical debts. Financial debts last quite a long time, I
believe people who owned shares in Tsarist Russian firms that were confiscated
after 1917 are getting something back now. How about historical debts? Sounds
to me like the term "black racism" could be used to condemn any attempt to
right historical wrongs, since any such attempt would necessarily involve
distinguishing on the basis of the very same oppressive categories in which the
wrongs were committed in the first place.



Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA