RACISM AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

People have lost their sense of humor. In former times we constantly made jokes about different races. You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth otherwise you will be insulted as a racist. I find that ridiculous. In those earlier days every friendly clique had a ‘Sam the Jew’ or ‘Jose the Mexican’ — but we didn’t think anything of it or have a racist thought. It was normal that we made jokes based on our nationality or ethnicity. That was never a problem. I don’t want to be politically correct. We’re all spending too much time and energy trying to be politically correct about everything.”


Clint Eastwood



Ok, so where do you even begin with something like this? This quote sounds a lot like my father, most of the people I grew up with, and a lot of educated, and supposedly enlightened people I now know. There is a disconnect somewhere between the speech center of the brain and the part of the brain responsible for rational thought. At least Clint Eastwood was honest.


Eastwood came out with it. Folks now, who are racist to the core and publicly claim they are not, do talk in whispers behind their hands, thinking no one will know except like-minded souls, to whom they are addressing their remarks. When there are doctors, attorneys, bankers, engineers, insurance professionals and myriad others, talking behind their hands in whispers how is any progress on racism going to take place? When we still have Realtors steering whites and non-whites to different neighborhoods how is racism diminished?


Much has been publicized about our recent 'housing crisis' and the concomitant economic breakdown of the entire financial system in the United States. It has been mentioned that economically disadvantaged ( mostly non-white) payed a heavier price than did those of privilege ( mostly white ). The bankers who made the shady loans , and understood full well that they were wrong, saw poor whites and non-whites alike as oportunistic victims ripe for discriminatory picking. Racism in not only morally wrong it has proved economically disasterous. The sooner we recognize that a robust middle class of all ethnicities is needed to restore our economic well-being the sooner we can begin to fiscally, as well as racially, heal this country.



Economic injustice still hides behind the backhand of whispers, shrouded in political correctness, in the face of racism: it thrives in the the dark secretive place where economic power decides who gets ahead.





***I need to say something about 'whiteness' vs 'non-whiteness' here. I recognize that racism is usually regarded with respect to bigotry against those who are non-white by those who are white. I also recognize that to use the term white vs non-white creates a greater racial divide, but I am trying to learn a better way to put it. At the moment white vs non-white is all I know. Please check out this link and read this scholarly article by Joyce Irene Middleton because I cannot say it as effectively as she has in the article entitled, Post Civil Rights Whiteness and Diversity: When are we going to stop talking about race? May 21st 2009.



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