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Towards A Perspective
On Eliminating Racism: 12 Working Assumptions
— By Ricky Sherover-Marcuse
Because racism is
both institutional and attitudinal, effective strategies against
it must recognize this dual character. The elimination of institutionalized
racism requires a conscious project of attitudinal transformation.
The deliberate attempt to transform racist patterns of thought
and action must be accompanied by political and social change.
The following assumptions offer a perspective for beginning
the work.
- The systematic
mistreatment of any group of people isolates and divides human
beings from each other. This practice is a hurt to all people.
The division and isolation produced by racism is a hurt to
people from all ethnic groups.
- Racism is not
a genetic disease. No human being is born with racist attitudes
and beliefs. Physical and cultural differences between people
are not the cause of racism; these differences are used as
the excuse to justify racism. (Analogy with sexism: anatomical
differences between human males and females are not the cause
of sexism; these differences are used to justify the mistreatment
of females of all ages.)
- No young person
acquires misinformation by their own free choice. Racist attitudes
and beliefs are a mixture of misinformation and ignorance
which is imposed upon young people through a painful process
of social conditioning. "You have to be taught to hate and
fear."
- Misinformation
is harmful to all human beings. Misinformation about peoples
of color is harmful to all people. Having racist attitudes
and beliefs is like having a clamp on one's mind. It distorts
one's perceptions of reality. Two examples: the notion that
"flesh color" is several shades of pinkish beige; the use
of the term 'minorities' to describe the majority of the world's
people.
- No one holds
onto misinformation voluntarily. People hold onto racist beliefs
and attitudes because this misinformation represents the best
thinking they have been able to do at this time, and because
no one has been able to assist them to change their perspective.
- People will change
their minds and let go of ingrained attitudes under the following
conditions:
1) the new position is presented in a way that makes sense
to them;
2) they trust the person who is presenting the new position;
3) they are not blamed for having had misinformation.
- People hurt others
because they themselves have been hurt. In this society we
have all experienced systematic mistreatment as young people-
of ten through physical violence, but also through the invalidation
of our intelligence, the disregard of our feelings, the discounting
of our abilities. As a result of these experiences, we tend
both to internalize this mistreatment by accepting it as 'the
way things are', and to externalize it by mistreating others.
Part of the process of undoing racism involves becoming aware
of and interrupting this cycle of mistreatment in day to day
encounters and interactions.
- As young people
we have often witnessed despair and cynicism in the adults
around us, and we have often been made to feel powerless in
the face of injustice. Racism continues in part because we
feel powerless to do anything about it.
- There are times
when we have failed to act, times when we did not achieve
as much as we wanted to in the struggle against racism. Eliminating
racism also involves understanding the difficulties we have
had and learning to overcome them, without blaming ourselves
for having had those difficulties.
- The situation
is not hopeless; people can grow and change; we are not condemned
to repeat the past. Racist conditioning need not be a permanent
state of affairs. It can be -examined, analyzed and dismantled.
Because this misinformation is glued together and held in
place with painful emotion, the process of dismantling it
must take place on the experiential as well as on the theoretical
level.
- We live in a
multicultural, multi-ethnic world; everyone is "ethnic." Misinformation
about other people's ethnicity is often the flip side of misinformation
about one's own ethnicity. For example the notion that some
ethnic groups are 'exotic' and 'different' is the flip side
of the notion that one's own group is just 'regular' or 'plain'.
Thus a crucial part of eliminating racism is the acquiring
of accurate information about one's own ethnicity and cultural
heritage. Reclaiming this information will show us that we
all come from traditions in which we can take justified pride.
- All people come
from traditions which have a history of resistance to injustice,
and every person has their own individual history of resistance
to oppressive social conditioning. This history deserves to
be recalled and celebrated. Reclaiming one's own history of
resistance is central to the project of acquiring an accurate
account of one's own heritage. When people act from a sense
of informed pride in themselves and their traditions, they
will be more effective in all struggles for justice.
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