Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear. Racism: it’s ridiculous, it’s silly, it’s tremendously awkward, even — and yet, it’s still extremely serious. How does an idea like this attain so much oblivious following and power? How is everyone still in denial about this epidemic that’s not an epidemic? How did it ever even come to be? Well, I’ll tell you what it is. It’s insecurity. A pathetic insecurity — a disgusting elitism, along with a twisted sense of traditionalism.
Racism is a sick stupidity that hides behind a cracking mask of pride and patriotism. We’ll get to the patriotism in a second, but let me expand on something else first. We define insecurity as “uncertainty or anxiety about oneself; lack of confidence,” and elitism as “the advocacy or existence of an elite as a dominating element in a system or society. ” I think this applies very well to racism, when you think about it — the question is why? The thing is, as kids we grow up in a society that’s already very ingrained in its own beliefs.
Our parents telling us to believe in God and saying that gay people were gross without explaining why and scoffing at differently colored people on the street and it doesn’t make any sense at all, not then. (It doesn’t now either, but things have changed. ) And at the same time, we don’t have a lot to go off of — we’re desperate for the truth, so we take their word as gospel. And everyone wants something to make them better, to make them special in some way, even as (I’d even say especially as) children. We haven’t quite developed any skill, any talent, any attribute to catch attention from everyone around us yet, and it’s upsetting.
As humans, we want attention, and we want to be special. We want to be better. So when it comes to something like racism, being part of an “elite race,” de facto becoming better than another group without any effort is appealing. Now this is where patriotism, pride, and traditionalism comes in. When we’re simply growing, we want to belong to something. We want to stand for something. And growing up in an echo chamber of intolerance, ignorance, and hate brings people to standing for it — even in the face of reason, it’s almost a reflex.
A default. And this cesspool of a cycle just keeps going and going. Racism is a tradition. And I don’t want to upset anyone with this, but none of these are excuses. Sure, they’re all causes, but none of this excuses the racism that’s taken place for years and years. Understanding it’s wrong now, or having been ignorant earlier doesn’t mean it suddenly wasn’t racist. Instead of trying to act superiorly to others, what we should be doing is spreading awareness and standing up for the rights of others for others, not to feel good about ourselves.
Currently, there is a huge database proving the ungodly amounts of racism plaguing our society. One that personally caught my attention was an article by Demos, a public policy organization that commonly speaks out against social inequality, about the racial wealth gap. The numbers show that the gap not only exists, but it’s overwhelmingly large. The last graph in the article shows that white people’s share of the nation’s wealth is 31% greater than their share of the population, while black people’s share is 80% less than their share of the population. 1]
Wealth and income disparities have existed for years, and the fact that some people think that white people aren’t better off than people of color is ridiculous. These numbers absolutely slam overreaching popular policies that first world citizens have nothing to complain about, that the US is an equal nation. It’s disgusting how blatant the racial bias is in our country and the world. And we all know that the only way societal situations get to this point is over time. Traditionalism: noun, the upholding or maintenance of tradition, especially so as to resist change.
Another interesting thing is a little less conceptual and a little more horrifying — the ominously growing authority of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Trump administration. The very recent case of the deportation of Juan Manuel Montes is terrifying for any immigrant, “illegal” or not. [2] This article (by freelance journalist David Agren and immigration reporter Alan Gomez) tells his story, showing that he’s the first protected immigrant to be deported back to Mexico — a part of the DREAM and the DACA program, Montes arrived in the US at nine years old.
He’d suffered a brain injury that gave him several learning disabilities. The immigration officers who randomly questioned him made him sign papers he didn’t understand, and deported him to Mexico. This is a despicable act — the Trump Administration stated previously that DACA members wouldn’t be affected by new immigration policies (reneging on several promises to repeal “illegal executive orders” like DACA made during Trump’s campaign), and now this. [3] Something that’s telling is the numerous articles on his “criminal history,” when the charges were as follows: shoplifting a year ago and driving without a license.
How abhorrent, extremely common petty charges — and charges that wouldn’t disqualify him from DACA protections. This is the beginning of something very terrible, and it’s only going downhill. The mentality behind the movement against “illegal aliens” is clearly motivated by one thing: patriotism. But what I’m saying is is that’s obviously nonsense, and a flagrant front for an insipid sickness — the racism that plagues the citizens of whatever country it may be. We all know it isn’t really pride or jobs or any of that. It’s bigotry. The penultimate awful piece of evidence behind this is more inhumane and ridiculous than the rest.
A federal report by the US Department of Education shows that the rate of suspension/ expulsion for students of color is disproportionately high. [4] A direct quote from the source — “Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than white students. On average, 5% of white students are suspended, compared to 16% of black students. American Indian and Native-Alaskan students are also disproportionately suspended and expelled, representing less than 1% of the student population but 2% of out-of-school suspensions and 3% of expulsions. ” This is blatant racism.
Of course there’s already the statistic of people of color getting arrested and incarcerated at much higher rates than what correlates to their population, but what I’ve seen is that a lot of people like to say that people of color are “more violent” — well, take a look at this and tell me: is it the preschoolers, or is it the teacher? I for one don’t think that for some reason, race makes people more violent, and in fact think that it’s much more likely that some people are just racist. It’s disgusting that these harmful biases would be imposed on small children.
And then there’s just one more thing, something I don’t need to cite sources for. It’s every racially charged interaction around you. It’s every time you see someone cheated or wronged for their race, and it’s every second that racist crimes go unpunished and racist people are lauded as our leaders. People are being deported for their race in this current year, with clearly no other reason but their race. Wealth distribution and even punishment in schools lined up against a race census show a blatant, age-old trend — racism.
And I think every individual on this earth who is reasonable is sick and tired of this nonsense. The couple of examples I listed here are a drop in the ocean compared to the worldwide, preposterous (anecdotal and statistical) collection of proof. No, just because the world is “less racist” than it was in the sixties we aren’t going to stop fighting. I’m exhausted, and I think everyone else is as well. But I don’t care if I have to shove it down throats, I’ll say it — racism is surviving and thriving in every single country and every single town, every single day. We can all make a difference.