Day #18 - Racism

Ok, Day #18 promises to be a mountain a lot of us really don't want to climb.  But, since I just rented all of this mountain-climbing gear, the least you can do is politely grin and bear it, right?

Onward then!!  Annnnnd the lucky subject of the day IS:  RACISM!!

Now, whenever one chooses to cover something as controversial as this, it's always good to start out with some facts, as well as some stats.

America is currently 67.3%, Non-Hispanic, Non-African American White.  We have 12.4% non-white, non-hispanic blacks. We also house 16.2% Non-white, Non-Afro-American Hispanics.  Confused?  I am too, but neither here nor there...

A lot of things happened to me, along the course of my life, that should have defined me as a racist as early as seven.  At the time, I was living in Englewood, a suburb of the great city of Los Angeles.  Back in the day, even Los Angeles still had their bathrooms in the schools playgrounds open, even when the school was closed.  A black kid, around 14, came up to me and said, "hey!  I got a raven trapped in the bathroom...wanna see it?"  Like the very naive kid I was, I flopped behind him to the bathroom, where, once we got inside, he grabbed me by the scruff of my collar, held me up against the wall with a switchblade up to my throat and said "Say black is beautiful 3 times, or I'll slice your throat open..."  Man, you never saw a kid babble so fast.  "Blackisbeautifulblackisbeautifulblackisbeautiful!!"...and thank God he let me go, or I may not have lived to be writing this wonderful blog, eh?

There were other times too, later in life.  But one of my best friends from high school was black, and later I discovered the bonuses of dating black women...so it really never took a toll on me.

Add to that, you know, it wasn't til I was almost 30, that I learned that racism did not define simply white against black, like I thought it had up to that point.  No, racism, as defined in Merriam-Webster is 1.) Poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race, and 2.) the belief that some races of people are better than others.  So racism, then, can be practiced by any race against any other race, in essence.  Whites can have a thing against Indians, and the Japanese can have a thing against the Chinese.  However, it's not only limited to race, it could be a class within a given race...the rich Japanese may come up with a name for a subset that is decidedly poorer, then be racist against that faction.

And so I learned that racism is everywhere, and practiced by everybody.  And you can't limit racism to any time, no, racism seems to run rampant, somebody against somebody, almost all the time.  There seems to be very little you can do to fix it either.

Throughout our short history as a country, the primary racism was white against Afro-American, because, most definitely, of the slave laws.  They were looked down on and discriminated against very nearly since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  It was all about social status then, Lords over surfs, and had been that way for some time; so when Lincoln abolished slavery, it was only natural that that same discrimination would continue on; only now it had to be about color rather than status, since their status had been abolished by law.  It wasn't until nearly a century later that the law would again be examined to help further equalize the status of Afro-American to White...and even then it would never quite be right where the racism had originated, in the deep southern United States.

Today, racism of white against black isn't nearly so cut and dried, like it used to be...no, like it HAD to be during the slavery era.  During the slavery era, Afro-Americans were not taught to read and write...it was yet another way they could keep the slaves in their places.  If they learned to read and write, then they may just read some book about freedom, or about the equality of all human beings, or maybe refer to law, or some other material that might put ideas in their heads.  So the slave owners kept their workers in the darkness of ignorance, to keep them from escaping.

No, racism of that type, thanks to amendments following the Emancipation Proclamation that slowly gave Afro-Americans the same rights that we had enjoyed for the better part of our time as a nation, was brought to general extinction.  Racism of different origins then became the norm.

For instance, during the Vietnam war, soldiers were trained to hate "Charlie", a common name given to the people of North Vietnam, to make them verbally identifiable to anyone not in communication's range.  It then became a generic name for anyone who wasn't fighting for our side...then, when the veterans of this war came back to America, "Charlie" came to stand for just about anyone of Asian decent, and was introduced to us on this side of the ocean.  Although "Charlie" didn't stick as a group name (since no one coming to our land was an enemy), they did manage to pit us against the countless refugees that would follow the wars end, with a more general racist stigma.  This is, of course, only one of many immigration periods America would endure over the decades...there were refugees of many wars in the 40's through the 90's in that century whose refugees would find solace here in America.

Then, as the wars slowed to a trickle, a new issue was recognized.  Mexico, our neighbor to the south, was significantly poorer than America; they were paid ridiculously low wages, and their economy was less than ideal.  So, whenever possible, citizens of Mexico would find a way to sneak over the border in hopes of being treated more like people, than they had experienced before, and find a way to not only get a piece of the American Dream we liked to talk about so much, but then, after getting established, find another way to get the rest of their family over the border illegally as well.  And since our identification system at the time was pretty easy to get by (licenses didn't have pictures on them back in the early 70's, and social security cards weren't required to get employment).  If you were ever asked to show an I.D., you most likely were only asked to show one, and most places that offered employment seldom even asked you to fill out an application; I-9's and the like hadn't even been introduced.  There wasn't enough of a problem back then.

Then, as more and more people were caught coming over the border from Mexico to America, Laws changed and penalties stiffened, and the INS became bigger and tougher on the flow.  Later, additional forms to fill out (as well as asking for a 2nd, and sometimes even a third I.D.) became more common, to slow the march of phony identification.  Pictures were added to I.D.'s and the design on them became more complex, not unlike the design complication of our currency, in order to foil counterfeiters.  The fight to keep the border secure was a battle that never stopped.

Then, when 9/11 hit the nation, our borders (in favor of borders parallel to where we thought terrorists might enter) and the people trying to secure them were relaxed.  Although we still have our major U.S./Mexico checkpoints along our major thoroughfares, the "Border Patrol", in charge of securing the spots that were weak along the border, was reduced.  It appears to have made an impact.

Our Hispanic population is now higher than any other minority.  There are major problems with these additions to our population.  For one, because laborers were paid so miserably when working in Mexico, anything they received for their work done in America was easily more substantial, whether or not it was less than our minimum wage.  When employers began to notice this, they took to hiring more Mexican workers in the hopes of saving on payroll expenses.  This began to significantly lower the amount of jobs available to our citizens in certain demographic areas.

Also, there was the fact that 90% or better of these immigrants did not speak a lick of English.  Interpreters were needed to communicate orders between bosses and workers, and, for example, also became needed in state agencies, in relation to welfare, law enforcement, immigration, our courts...and the list just increased from there.  Not a lot of resources were spent increasing an immigrants understanding of our native language, at the time, let alone the fact that most immigrants then were here illegally.  Then, as time went on, and the problem became worse, the Hispanic population, which used to be limited mostly to the border areas, warmer climates and certain states, now was over-crowding and spread out over the nation over time.  I can accurately describe the situation here in my home state...I've never been in any other state enough to know what their situations were prior to this decade and the last.  I have however lived here long enough to physically notice the changes made here in our capital city.

For one, phone menus, which, since their invention, never used to give any other option to a caller but English.  Now, it's rare to hear one that doesn't offer the option of Spanish.  The south side of our city, which was strictly Italian back in the first decade I lived here, the 70's, has since turned primarily Spanish, and the neighborhood that used to be all Spanish to begin with has almost doubled in size.  Spanish stores and now, even major marketplaces are cropping up daily all over the city, and bi-lingual jobs here are at an all time high.  We only used to have one Spanish Channel.  Now I think there's 5 or better, almost enough to warrant starting their own cable company.  The problems that used to be a lot smaller, such as cheap laborers, are becoming a lot more noticeable, and are more likely to be cracked down on, because of the increase in complaints on this matter.

The ultimate outcome of all of this new unfamiliarity in relation to immigrants has bred a new type of racism:  Statistics easily show that white America will indeed become the minority population by 2045.  America was always known as a country that took in your poor, your huddled masses...this has never been in dispute.  Almost everyone here is descended from different European, as well as Afro-American lineages.  The problem becomes mutated however, when one country by itself seemingly pours right into another, whether that reason is because either of their oppressive government, or their poor economic condition, for example, it really doesn't matter  There has to be limits.  Of course, if we're able to, we should always help our neighbors in need, especially if we were somehow involved in causing their plight.  But the transplanting of nearly an entire nation over into our own is ripe for trouble and needs more control.  If given the choice of the two highest buildings in America to be blown to bits causing the deaths of 3000 Americans, and 100,000 economy-crushing immigrants coming into America illegally, I'm afraid I'd have to choose the buildings folks.  Sorry.  Just saying, logically, it makes more sense.