The Race Card
So now that the Massachusetts gubernatorial race is over and Deval Patrick has been deemed the Governor Elect, I have a few things I need to yap about. I’m not happy Deval Patrick won. This man is the consummate politician in that he’s too-smooth, a great orator and willing to agree (or at least seem to agree) with anyone and everyone in order to get a vote. Sure, he may have come from common roots, but he’s been living an anything-but-common lifestyle (which he worked hard to earn, no argument there) for many years so the whole, “I’m a man of the people” schtick is just that. He’s the definition of tax-and-spend Democrat and I think that the MA economy is in trouble. Plus the fact that his election returns us to single-party rule bodes ill for true representative government (just witness the Federal government over the last 6 years). But you know what never bothered me about Deval Patrick? The fact that he’s black.
So if it didn’t bother me, why do I bring it up now? Well, both before and after the election I heard a lot of idiocy on both sides of the party line. The problem was, both sides were referencing his race in the negative. The far-right, very conservative guys I know tended to say things like, “we can’t have a black in office” though when pressed, had nothing but ingrained racism as an explanation. But the far-left, very liberal people I knew tended to say things like, “we need a Democratic Governor, even if he is black.” I overheard a comment from a working-class, Union-Democrat the other night that went along the lines of, “I’m glad we finally got a Democrat in there, but I can’t believe it’s some nigger.” This bartender I know who is probably just at or above the poverty line and who has cancer but no health care is a passionate Democrat, but she just can’t stand blacks. She’s making an exception for Patrick.
Talk about a disconnect. For all those people out there pushing a reformed, race-friendly Massachusetts vision, you might want to spend some time in the trenches with the working class folks and see just how tolerant we’ve really become.
Now I’m not trying to pretend that I’ve got some sort of holier-than-thou vision on race, because I’m certainly not free of ingrained racism. I didn’t grow up in a small city like where I’m living right now, with extremely defined neighborhoods and well-documented past. For the people I’ve been listening too lately, my guess is that exposure to different races was too-often negative. The whole city seems to operate on stereotypes, as many places do these days. Hispanics are generally seen as illegals who refuse to integrate. There are a lot of gang problems in the predominantly black neighborhoods. The whites who actually move in the city are either meathead college kids or white trash. Grow up with these ideas and it’s no wonder that people are so hostile to one another based solely on race.
Unfortunately, I think everyone’s missing the point. Race means shit-all. Yeah, I know I’ll get a lot of dissenting opinions about that comment. The fact is, race itself determines next-to-nothing in the way that people can interact. Certainly, visible differences are oftentimes the basis for stigma, but beyond outward appearances the differences between races are negligible. We are all made up of the same stuff, and 99%+ of that stuff is organized in the same way. We’re significantly, overwhelmingly more alike than we are different. But you know what IS different?
Culture.
That’s where the differences really come into play. Culture is what makes people who they are. Nature vs. Nurture? Nurture wins out every time in this particular playing field. For this post, I’m defining culture as the beliefs that are ingrained in us by our family and our closest friends combined with the rituals we perform and the neighborhood around us (our village) that give us a sense of identity. Race is a much less a determining factor in behavior compared to the culture in which we’re raised. Overcoming that culture, should one feel the need to, is one of the hardest battles a person will fight with themselves.
How we’re raised, what we believe and how we interact with others based on that and learned experience are what determine our beliefs later in life. Seems obvious, yes? Ok, so then explain why it should matter that a black man is Governor? Why would working-class white people be so averse to a black Governor, even though he’s of their party and came from working-class roots? Because they are culturally ingrained in the belief that blacks are untrustworthy, lazy and criminal. They were raised in this belief, it was learned. They may have witnessed examples in their life that both enforced and refuted this belief, but because they were raised to believe one way, the enforcing examples take significantly more precedence over the refuting examples in their mind. They may never have had a chance to challenge their ingrained beliefs and attitudes. And this kind of attitude cuts across all races and all people in this country. It’s visible in popular entertainment, in politics and in daily life.
Anyway, it just struck me as odd that people were so conflicted about who they voted for (because they did vote for Patrick even though they don’t like blacks), and I started thinking about where this stuff comes from. How many of us have been raised to hate whites, or to hate blacks or to hate immigrants? How many of us fear others purely because of what we’ve learned at home or because we simply haven’t been exposed to people who are different than we are? How many of us discriminate regularly while thinking that we’re somehow high-minded liberals with nary a racist bone in their body? How many of us blame all our problems not on our own decisions, but on some nebulous racist conspiracy? On the other hand, how many people are held back due to institutional racism? Tough questions, indeed. But how many of those questions would never need to be asked if each of us was raised believing that we’re all more alike than different; that our racial culture is important, but no more or less important than anyone else’s; that working hard, being a good person and striving to better the world is more important than skin color or religious belief? I know this is pie-in-the-sky dreaming, but if we never dream we’ll never have anything to achieve. Besides, why wouldn’t we want to teach our children these things? Why would we choose to perpetuate stereotypes and negative beliefs? Why would we force this onto our children?
I know I’m not saying anything that has been stated a billion times before, but it’s been on my mind so now its on my blog. Simple as that. BTW: The culture I’m referring to above, as defined by how we were brought up by immediate family, is not the only culture available to us. There is the culture of our people, of our ancestral roots. This is something I’ll yap about some other time, as I consider this ancestral culture to be very important.
