Over at Ethnically Incorrect Daughter, a post about childhood racism got me thinking. In this post, the writer talks about an incident where her daughter was the subject of racist bullying by a classmate, who, as it turns out was biracial. Not the typical white on brown racism – this time the perpetrator was brown too.
Maybe it’s because I live in Minnesota, where subtlty is a perverse pleasure and racism is hidden behind small talk and fake smiles, but the racism I’ve dealt with by white folks has usually been much more covert. I’ve always called it “The Eyebrow” kind of racism – where the face stays blank but you can tell by the person’s eyebrow which is raised (slightly or obviously). Whatever the thoughts behind the raised eyebrow, it is an insidious form of racism because it’s harder to deal with it when it is so hidden. Also, it’s hard to confront when the person can make it seem as if I’m the one who is misunderstanding.
I got a lot of the “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these” eye pulls as a kid by white classmates, but almost all of the most blatant racist names or actions I’ve been on the receiving end have been by African American or Native American adults and kids. When I was younger (early adulthood) I used to just seethe with anger at how racist they were and couldn’t fathom how they could sterotype me when they and their communities had been so horribly discriminated against.
It took me until recently to look at it differently and to think that while, yes, racism is part of it and so is plain old ignorance – that a chunk of it is also the ways in which the dominant group in our country (Anglos) have formally and informally placed diverse populations against each other purposely, and we’ve internalized it. We never talk about this really – and the movie Crash was just yet another example of it – but isn’t it easier for “whitey” to get us brown people hatin’ on each other so they can take the money and run while we’re at each other’s throats?
There are a bunch of edjumacated terms for these race relation theories. “Human ecological theories” in which using the forces of competition and selection of different ethnic groups to compete for scarce resources exacerbate conflicts between those groups.
A split-labor market theory is a similar use going on right now with the tensions between undocumented Mexican immigrants and African Americans. The power group partitions off some labor markets which are then used to encourage ethnic antagonism.
Another thing I’ve been sensitive to as an Asian American is the whole “middleman” theory in which Asian Americans have been used by the dominant power group to be the “middle group” (i.e. “model minority”), given some token benefits but by no means the full membership. Then, other ethnic groups are hostile towards the “middleman” group instead of the dominant group.
Situating ethnic groups to get rid of each other rather than collectively rallying against the dominant majority benefits the dominant group, because if we effectively collaborated, they’d be losin’ their domination.
And just so you know, I have nothing against white people. Some of my “best friends” are white. I know that *many* of you do not want to dominate us brown folks, or are attempting to get us to hate each other so we never get to a point of being a political or economic threat to white people.
Sigh. It’s just that *most* days, it sure feels like it.
sorry for the soap box rant.
(steppin’ off, now)
Harlow's Monkey 