Difficult Conversations and Why Racism Isn't One of Them.
Goodbye to the Era of White Fragility.
When discussing issues of “-isms” as they relate to the oppression of certain groups of people in various ways and capacities, it is very important to understand the social constructs that are responsible for the “-isms.” Many have commented on the issue by asking why we separate folks based on the color of their skin rather than something as their shoe size. The blue vs. brown eyes experiment many educators refer to offers a similar attitude. Commonly, when discussing the construction of race as a social idea, we do this in a way that we ought to view it as silly that we even put such emphasis on recognition of differences such as race or ethnicity because why are we dehumanizing people for their skin color or hair texture or facial features?
This attitude can be commendable, and I do believe that relying on this attitude was helpful for a long time to teach people about socially constructed informed bias, especially when folks grow up in a monoethnic (specifically white) community who may not have exposure to other folks of other backgrounds. I also believe that this can perpetuate a sort of infantilization of people on a societal level to assume that they don’t understand how asinine it is that we are grouping human beings by the color of their skin and allowing that to inform our treatment of them. The thought process of how we broach the topic of race on an educational level desperately needs to evolve. “We need to treat everyone the same regardless of race.” No. We can’t. The truth is that we cannot treat everyone the same regardless of race because we have a network of systemic power structures that were built on colonial, white supremacist, and capitalist greed. These systems are traumatizing anyone who is non-white every single day here at home and globally.
Symbolic violence, from another point of view, can be seen in modern healthcare. In the field of obstetrics and gynecology, it’s becoming more widely known that Black women are severely neglected and gaslit, which contributes to our astronomical rates of maternal mortality in this country. Why does this happen? When investigating the sociological perspective of the intersection of race and sex, you will find text that lends visibility to why Black women are viewed as and treated the way that they are. It spoke of the deliberate emasculation of enslaved men (which is a very common tactic for violent oppression; we saw this happen just a few weeks ago when IOF soldiers stripped Palestinian men naked, lining them up while blinded folded), which therefore created the masculinization of Black women. This dynamic still exists and is perpetuated through the removal of Black men from their households to be exploited by the Prison Industrial Complex, which inadvertently exploits the women who are left behind. Black women are given masculine expectations- expectations that harm men the exact same way they harm Black women in healthcare situations, which is the stoic expectation of moving through the pain and being expected to be stronger than the need for help or care. Black women aren’t taken seriously when they’re in pain and suffer in ways I could never understand, and it is as simple as the difference in our skin color. I never want to lose my awareness of that and my ability to act based on that awareness.
Having worked in acute mental health care, systemic racism shows up there quite a bit. When a black man gets dropped off at the Baker Act entrance by JSO, I conduct myself differently than I do a white man. It’s not that I don’t treat the white man with respect, kindness, and dignity. Still, he does not require the same level or context of care after having been in the custody of JSO as a black man does, and therefore, I am going to treat him differently to ensure that he feels safe and comfortable. I’m going to be mindful of my societal status and position in life as a white woman that I may be viewed just as dangerous as a JSO officer. So not only am I thinking of his race as I am conducting his care, but I’m being mindful of mine as well, and it is simply a restructuring of thought patterns and awareness. But these are excellent examples of symbolic violence where something as simple as our mannerisms can be oppressive and traumatic for who we are interacting with, and for this reason, we need to be acutely aware of race as a concept.
The system is too corrosive and intrusive, the trauma is too complex to be telling people “See how crazy it is to be looking at race and treating people differently based on it?” Personally, I believe that these systems need to be completely deconstructed and destroyed so that something new can be built, and only then can we afford not to treat people differently based on their race. We currently have a system that was built on the blood of abducted and enslaved Africans, their children, their children’s children, and so on. This didn’t end when chattel slavery was made illegal. We have a system now that requires the exploitation and brutalization of black and brown bodies. It is violent, and it is deeply sad and uncomfortable to think about and discuss for many people, but I believe this is the only way to broach the topic of race now. This is the consequence of benefitting from a system of inequality that thrives on the oppression and marginalization of POC.
Centuries ago, Europeans left their own lands to settle others that didn’t belong to them and unilaterally decided that whiteness was superior, and that informed dynamics across the globe, still today. Up until now, this benefitted Eurocentric people by granting them an immense amount of privilege, whether this was through a helping hand to bigger and better opportunities or an escape route from mistakes that could mean life or death for a nonwhite person. Our country is founded on white supremacy, so I’m not going to say that white people don’t still have privilege, but white supremacy and patriarchy are like wild animals who have no qualms with eating their young if it’s what they need to do to survive. Mobilizing as people to help those less privileged than us is essential. We have too much access to information, too easily, to have any naivete or ignorance about race and the consequences of its social construction.