[socjust, p/a/s, curr ev] Fwd: The Significance of Overt Racism

[siderea]

I commend to you this brilliant essay from the Hannah Arendt Center: The Significance of Overt Racism. It discusses how the Nazis used antisemitism to undermine the rule of law, and how Trump's expressed antipathy towards Muslims and Latinxs fits right into that pattern: [...] Arendt discloses for us how we might go about apprehending the

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[clevermanka]

Racism understood as consciously held and expressed racist beliefs and sentiments, many scholars suggested, was largely a thing of the past. The story went, today, the majority of whites are really committed to racial equality.

Academia drives me up a wall (I'm a secretary at a Midwestern state university so I get to see this stuff all day, every day). If the people who wrote that story (of most white people being committed to racial equality) had stepped into the worlds of most of the students they're teaching and actually observed what was happening (instead of assuming they already knew), they'd have learned otherwise pretty quickly. Unfortunately, they're learning it now, dragging the rest of us along to read a basic reader book we've already memorized.

I had a conversation with a (white, male, 40-something) professor about this a couple days after the election when he mentioned to me the horror of experiencing someone screaming at him and flipping him off because of his Hillary bumper sticker. "My kids were in the car! What is wrong with people these days?" he asked, clearly expecting some sympathy from me. When I pointed out to him that people had always been like that--just he was only now experiencing it for himself, he pushed back and said "But it's getting worse!" I pointed out to him that things have always been worse for everyone but white men and it was like some sort of revelation to him (and one I'm still not sure he entirely comprehended). Ugh. We've got a long road ahead.