racism 2008

The Frank Rich op-ed in today's NY Times.

For years I was with Bell Laboratories and then AT&T Research. A great group of smart people and, in the Summer, the opportunity to mentor excellent college students. Ten years ago one of my students happened to be black. She became close to our family and we were about her quite a bit in non-work situations.

The first big shock I had was walking with her down the main street in tony Madison, NJ. In a short 10 minute walk we heard several really awful racist slurs. When she drove out to visit, our local police were expert at pulling her over for what was essentially harassment. When I complained to the police department I heard that "the officers were only doing their job ... most of the crime around here was from those people coming out from Jersey City and Newark".

In the Fall a colleague was at a computer science conference in Seattle and saw someone spit at our friend as she crossed a street. She rushed up to the young woman who said - "oh, I don't really think about things like that - they happen all the time."

Racism is still very alive in America. It fills tiny, incurious minds - the minds of those who are both certain and fearful.

McCain an Palin are falling behind. They have not articulated a viable economic program and the ecomonic fallout from mostly Republican policies is overwhelming voters. This next week is the period when 401ks will arrive and the election may be over - unless they can play other cards. Racism is one of the cards they have. My guess is the wink and nod to it - and the weimar-like cheerleading of it by Palin - was an attempt to incite rage in Obama. Some voters are fearful of rage-filled black men and perhaps they felt this would light that fuse. Obama didn't take the bait.

Palin is the mindless birthday girl with her pony. She has the spotlight and is doing what comes naturally. The fact that she encourages the surfacing of this evil among her supporters shows her complete lack of character. McCain probably knows this is wrong. There was a time when he appeared to have honor, but that was an illusion as he failed to denounce it at its first flare and he did nothing to stop his running mate. A complete lack of character.

Hate won't solve the healthcare problem, it won't bring your 401k back, it won't build jobs and it won't halt global warming.

The Republicans are far from shore in rough seas. Those who have not soundly denounced this ugly tactic deserve to have the voters throw them an anchor.

Comments

[sara]

i wonder why the nation's evangelical churches haven't been quick to denounce this veiled racism?

oh - dumb question

[Marta Ruth]

It was this post that prompted me to send you my appreciation of your blog a while back. It was because it reawakened my memories of racist Westfield, N.J. back in the mid to late sixties. Probably boring, but here's my story:
I attended Woodrow Wilson Elementary School, I think it was 5th grade. The year would have been about 1967. We were an all white class, but there was a short period of time where children from other schools were bussed to ours. All of them were black. The black kids all stood in the back of the classroom. All week. I'm recounting this from memory, so I suspect inaccuracies in the details, but not the emotions. I don't remember whether there were introductions, but it was irrelevant: we hated them. Being somewhat shy, my own method of interacting with them was to give them the cold and watchful silent treatment. They were intrusive, uninvited, unwanted, alien. We wasted no time in making them feel unwelcome. They weren't our friends, we weren't theirs. Fortuneately they stopped coming to our school and we were able to continue on as if nothing had happened.
Or were we? It would be decades before I confronted the shame and disappointment in myself for my participation in humiliating "the blacks". But it was only then that I also realized we had been used as pawns in a much larger game: it was the intention all along that we were to treat the newcomers despicably. By making sure they were left standing in the back of the classroom without a welcome ensured our compliance as recognizing them as inferior beings.
So what has changed since then? Could it be that some of my old classmates now go around spitting at strangers because of their skin color? Even worse, had I remained in New Jersey, would that have been me?
A provocative thought indeed.