De Facto Racism?

I almost hate to enter this debate. Obama disagreed with former President Carter on his statement that much of what has been happening is based in racism. And yet...

Back in the late 60s and early 70s I had the opportunity to learn a great deal about racism in a number of different settings from a colleague at the campus radio station who introduced me to jazz through southern students at Seminary. In that I learned several things:
1. I can be racist even when not realizing it because it at least was so ingrained in our American culture. This in spite of a very real and strong support of Civil Rights.

I learned this most clearly when I went to Germany in 1970. A black man came walking up the street talking to a colleague. As they passed me I had the very ashamed thought- "gee, I wonder where he learned to speak German so well?" I thought immediately of my DJ colleague who had often seriously challenge me on my white approach to life. "My God," I thought. "He was right." To have that first thought was not a conscious act on my part. It came from deep recesses of the mind where experience and culture- good and bad- had formed some basic "core beliefs." I was severely shaken.

2. A few years later I was in Seminary and a number of my fellow students were from the south. There I learned that there really were two kinds of segregation. Surprisingly the easier to deal with was the "official" type, de jure it was called. The other, much more subtle kind, de facto, was simply accepted as the way things are.

My southern friends would get quite upset when we northerners would begin to talk about the south and racism. All of these were liberal, civil rights supporting people. They didn't like the stereotypes that the northerners would perpetuate about the south being racist and the north not. They simply, but often vehemently, pointed out that there was far more racism in the north. It just wasn't visible because it was seen as "normal" and not involved with legal stuff.

As a result of these two events and my personal experiences over the years, I have come to believe that racism is far more common than we are willing to admit. And the reason often is that we are as blind to it as we are to other cultural baggage that is accepted as the way things are.

The recent anti-Obama rallies and attacks have been far too vehement, far too angry, even far too irrational to be based in simple politics of health care. While there are many important issues to talk about and work with, these are NOT what the arguments have been about. They have been about demonizing Obama and his plans. Too much time and heat has been expended on things that are not in the bill. They are touching a deeper issue. Deeper than even health care.

That's where I think the old idea of de facto segregation comes into play. We don't know we are doing it- and often honestly and sincerely- deny the racism. Only a southerner like Carter who has developed an amazing sensitivity to many things that cloud our culture, can begin to understand it. He was there in the old days that many of us don't know much about anymore. He saw the pain of racism, for example, as part of the Koinonia community of Clarence Jordan. He was able, like my southern friends of the 70s to see it in others before they may even be aware of it.

Am I still racist? Yes, I probably am. I'm white, grew up in the middle of the last century. This nation was built on racism. It is, as has been said many times in the past 233 years, our "original sin." We do not get rid of it in less than a generation. Instead of trying to justify or rationalize, let us rather accept it as part of who we are.

Let us then say that it has been a BIG, very BIG change in everything we have known to have an African-American in the White House. As I said on 9/11, it may be one of the gutsiest acts in recent American history. For many it is a threat to what they understand to be the core value of the United States. Not necessarily on a conscious level but at that deeper core level.

Part of dealing with that will be to be more aware of the extremes that seem to be arising in this debate. Let us seek to keep focused on what we are doing not on what our fears drag us into. Fear often leads to anger since we don't like to be afraid. There are always those who are afraid of what is happening in the government. In the 60s many were afraid of Johnson or Nixon and their fingers on The Button. Things at times got irrational. In both directions. Johnson and Nixon were called "baby-killers" and the protesters were told to go back to Russia (where none of them were from.)

The same irrationality has overtaken us in the current decade. What may make it worse is the drive for TV/Radio ratings - on both sides. Ramp up the debate and you will get more viewers. Ignore rational discussion and more people will be talking about you and then more people will watch and you can raise your ad rates. (Cynicism? Sure. And it works on both sides.)

Let's get the debate back to sensible discussions and not what tore us apart in the 60s. If racism is under it, unknown or conscious, let's at least try to set that aside and move into the freedom and liberty that we have celebrated and that many - of all colors - have died for.

Yes, I am passionate about this. That is the heart of the 50s and 60s that still beats within me. We have come a very long way in the past half-century. I celebrate that. Let's keep at it.