The Art of Listening

[Dill]

(07-31-2019, 07:26 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: The quote sort of stuck with me. I thought back on my school days growing up. As I mentioned, my community was very multi-ethnic and multi-racial. I didn't know it at that time, but back in the late 60's early 70's, that was sort of a new thing for most of America. We were also all at pretty much at the same socio-economic ladder (i.e. there weren't any truly rich or truly poor kids around). We would engage in this type of 'casual racism' for fun among ourselves. And people didn't take it seriously. When my friend would tease me, "Hey, man! You can't dance. Everybody knows white boys can't move their hips!", I'd laugh and say, "We all know you ain't no James Brown, bro!". They would laught too. Because we knew each other for years, we knew there was no bad intent with such comments. We also knew through experience where to draw a line. And engaging in such diatribe actually tended to make us feel a bit closer. Someone one not in our group hearing such comments might not take those comments the same way. So, were our comments racist? Is it in the eye of the beholder?

And at the same time, other types of racism do exist. Slavery in the U.S. was certainly based upon formal or institutionalized racism. And, as in the example of the reservation you noted before, racism based upon stereotypes or prejudices certainly exists. But what is the relationship between the different manifestations of racism? Where are the cutoffs between them?

I don't think racism is in the eye of the beholder. But it may seem that way because people hold to different definitions, which may create the illusion everyone has his own definition. Also, social circumstances are changing. You were among the first to experience inter-racial fraternization as "normal." People who weren't mixing weren't experiencing the definitional challenges mentioned earlier. I remember in the 60s African-and native-Americans were more willing to express solidarity with liberal whites. In the 70s I noticed that went to pot. And yet, people are more socially integrated than at any previous time in Us history.

Anyway, a couple more thoughts on "racisms." It is not possible to create and demarcate useful definitions without thinking of how they might be applied, how they might be tested, made consistent and accountable.  Some definitions seem suited to moral leveraging on message boards, but not much more ("B-zona said "white"!  HE'S the REAL racist!").

I look to people who are doing historical and social research on race issues (historians, sociologists, critical race theorists), whose goal is to understand these issues first. Their definitions develop and change as new information emerges and they are tested by logical consistency and application to events past and present.

In the US, right now, definitions seem to be moving in primarily two directions: 1) racism is individualized, tied individual performance and responsibility, and 2) racism is tied to dominance, to history of institutional and personal control. These definitions fit different purposes, solve different problems. The former is frequently deployed to dispute claims that institutional racism continues. The latter to affirm them.

So when one is "listening" to others, one may be listening through, and listening to, racial tensions and shaped and experienced primarily through one of these definitions.