Monthly Archives: April 2010

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Tim Wise: Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure – the ones who are driving the action – we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white.

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Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

(via Ann)

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Children who form no racial stereotypes found: Brain disorder eradicates ethnic but not gender bias

The obvious conclusion… is that social fear is not required for gender stereotyping, but it is important in forming racial stereotypes.

“Until this study, I think people never imagined that these two stereotypes would be biologically separable,” Gabrieli says. “Whether it turns out to be due to genes, the environment or a complicated interaction, it shifts the discussion.”

I see what they’re saying, and I feel like it can only backfire.

Showing a biological basis gives folks the opportunity to spin the real issue in a different way. And this is a really small population of people we’re talking about.

But it does make a good point about how fear plays into racial stereotyping. Maybe it does shift the discussion, but I suspect it will not be far enough or in quite the right direction. The fear part is what we should pick up and run with (in case, for some reason, we didn’t already know that fear plays into racial stereotypes).

(via)