Racism+-+'Talking+About+Racism'

Racism: "Talking About Racism" Looking at the list Watchel provides at the beginning of the article, I see several instances in which his examples don't fit into the "racist" category. Just because "A white person crosses the street to avoid ... black teenagers walking toward him" (614) does not make them racist; there are other factors too: perhaps the person isn't interested in human contact, or the, assumed lone, white person feels as though it would be easier to keep the sidewalk open for the larger group. I know whenever I'm walking, I tend to keep away from people of any sort, sometimes blatantly turning around to go another direction if possible. It's difficult, if not nearly impossible, to know what a person's personal reasons are for any action; granted, some will do it out of racism but there are others who won't. Another thing is that particular item, and others similar to it, can be looked at as racism for safety. The general idea being that stereotypes, or even crime trends, indicate crime stemming from a particular group in which case, I say I have as much right to be afraid of getting caught in black-gang territory as any black person does of getting stranded in white-supremacist territory. But when it comes to stereotypes, they treated with a certain precaution; they're aren't board-wide universal truths, merely generalities; good for precautions, but once they become "logical" reasons or universal truths to a person, then it does get into racist territory. I've never really figured out how comments like "blacks are more naturally gifted as athletes" (614) are racist, they seem like compliments. Perhaps I'm just missing the racism because it's thick in sarcasm, but I don't it. I can understand how a person would get upset at the thought, after all being lumped into a categorized group rather than being looked at for the personality of the individual is rather rash, but a person who gets offended at a compliment is someone who is just looking for reasons to be offended. Some of the items on the list just seemed like unfortunate circumstances: "a black child attends a school with ... few books ..." and, "the kids don't seem to learn" (both 615). Neither of these could possibly have been planned, a child has little say in where they go to school and a teacher has no power over her students' attitude. This certainly isn't saying that the list is completely wrong, there are difinitely instances of racism; they couldn't be explained in any conceiveable or believable terms: skipping black literature in a world literature survey class, a black women is watched more than a white one, and fewer garbage pick-ups in black neighborhoods is blatantly considering stereotype generalities as universal truths.

I was kind of taken aback by the view black people had on racism: "several of the black participants ... contended that blacks cannot be racist "by definition" because ... racism means discrimination by the majority against an oppressed minority" (615). It isn't too hard to see where these people are coming from, a clear white-versus-black perspective, but it's that narrow viewpoint that makes the assement wrong. Blacks are the most populous minority, albeit quickly changing, they still have numbers over Native Americans, Asians, Latin Americans, Muslims, and homosexuals. This means that it is not entirely out of the scope of reason that blacks might oppress those "below" them; Stephen Cruz is a direct testament against the "blacks aren't racist" idea, blacks, and all the other minorities, worked against each other out of spite. Furthermore, blacks are capable, like anyone else, of hating a specific group to the point of racism. Granted, by the definition provided, blacks aren't technically racist, but only towards white people, which isn't the only other group out there.

I personally think Watchel makes an excellent observation about what it means to be racist; "I believe that ... the word racist has been bandied so much that for some people it has lost its impact, lost its power to shock, to evoke guilt or revulsion" (617). There's a rather radical difference between someone who comments about a black person's pants-sagging and another being a bonafide member of the Ku Klux Klan. People like to comment on others, give their own social commentary, and they're going to get around to everyone at some point or another. Over fall-break, I overheard two black women talking about another black person's style of dress and how they would never tolerate such behavior in their own homes and how bad it made the person look. For those two women, it was just another conversation, nothing of spite or cotempt, but if a white person were to begin talking about the person's style of clothes, they would be seen as racist. Except, commenting on how people dress shouldn't be classified as racist, it's a minor detail that everyone does. The problem, that I think Watchel alludes to, is that today's culture is very political correct, and extremely easy to offend, and it's fairly ridiculous. When everything that someone says or does is simply one complaint away from being the next hate-crime, actual hate-crimes lose their meaning. People take offense to so much that others think they're just being cry-babies and become apathetic to racist behavior; I'd almost go so far as to say that with all this whining about "offensive" anything, literally anything can be offensive anymore, and race-feuds can start over the truly silliest things that we've digressed in social relations, which means that words like racist and n- lose their effects, and because they're thrown around so much, and it just creates a bigger mess than what we started with.