"The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed
that collection of myths to which white Americans cling." -- James Baldwin
To say that race makes a difference
means more than simply identifying material disadvantages facing people
of color in contemporary America. It also recognizes that race may have
an influence on how members of society understand their worlds and each
other, and how such understandings may serve to perpetuate racial
inequalities in our society.Race matters. Race is among the first
things that one notices about another individual. To be born black is
to know an unchangeable fact about oneself that matters every day. To be born white is
to be free from confronting one's race on a daily, personal,
interaction-by-interaction basis. Being white, it has been said,
means not having to think about it. Understandably, white people have a
hard time recognizing this difference. Most blacks have to
overcome, when meeting whites, a set of assumptions older than this
nation about one's abilities, one's marriageability, one's sexual
desires, and one's morality. Most whites, when they are being honest
with themselves, know that these racial understandings are part of
their consciousness. Race matters with respect to the people we choose
to spend time with or marry, the neighborhoods in which we choose to
live, the houses of worship we join, our choice of schools for our
children, the people for whom we vote, and the people we allow the
state to execute. We make guesses about the race of telephone callers
we do not know and about persons accused of crimes. While not every
decision we make necessarily has a racial component, when race is
present it almost invariably influences our judgments. We are intensely
-- even if subconsciously -- race-conscious. [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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