Why Racism Still Exists

I recently received back comments on a portfolio I wrote for the Davidson Fellows award, and while I found most of the comments constructive, a few were particularly irksome. For those of you who don't know, my portfolio was entitled "The Digital Identity of Contradiction" and was about my generation's relationship with the internet and its impact on our identities. My second commenter, who I will refer to as "SHE" said two things that really bothered me.

1)" J-- consistently writes as "we," but she can't claim to speak for all American teens. That pronoun elides the huge differences between her and others her age who can't afford computers or iPods; not everyone in her generation is wired. More awareness of class issues would have strengthened "Generation?" considerably."

and 2) "Keep writing: you have a gift! But I think you need to make a conscious effort to extend your sympathy beyond your own social group. No generation is monolithic, especially not in a country as divided by income and educational inequalities as ours."

Ok, so, issues with comment #1:

At least 90% of my generation has access to the internet. The urban poor to whom SHE is referring has access to the internet via public libraries and many of them also have iPods and cellphones. This is a fact. If you've ever been to a library in the big city, you know what I'm talking about. In fact, if you've ever walked down a street in a big city, you know what I'm talking about. The 10% of my generation that doesn't have the internet would be either the rural poor- people who live in isolated areas without consistent wireless capability (and even they have the internet via public libraries and such) or urban/suburban poor who have strict parents who won't let them use the internet. Oh, and excuse me, I forgot the Amish.

So to sum up what I've said in the past paragraph, SHE is ignorant. SHE has made false generalizations about the group she thinks of as poor (aka black and hispanic urban youth) and has not bothered to actually learn about their lifestyle. In her mind, SHE has "otherized" them and assumes that they do not have the same access to information, internet, and general culture that SHE does. SHE assumes that they are different.

The other reason her comment upset me (yes, I'm a bit ticked) is that when I wrote my portfolio, I spent a lot of time thinking about class issues, and tried to pick things to talk about that weren't class-specific, such as iTunes and High School Musical. However, because SHE assumes that I am from a background similar to hers, she believes that my culture could not possibly be relevant to the culture of the "poor."

Issues with comment #2:

SHE says that I "need to make a conscious effort to extend my sympathy beyond my social group."

My social group? SHE's never met me. SHE knows nothing about me except my name, age, and where I'm from. How can SHE know my social group?

I'll tell you how. SHE has assumed that since I write well, am applying for a prestigious national award, and have a fairly generic last name, I must be white, upper-middle class, and live in a fairly isolated bubble of other white, upper-middle class teenagers.

Basically, SHE, meaning to help a naive rich white girl expand her horizons, exposed her own bias by assuming that I'm a naive rich white girl. The only thing SHE had to judge off of as far as who I am was my writing, and because I wrote well (and to a certain extent because I wrote about technology) SHE assumed that I must be white and well-off because in her mind, a black kid from the inner city wouldn't be able to write a 75 page portfolio about her generation. A Hispanic kid from the middle of nowhere wouldn't be able to compete for a prestigious scholarship. She's smart? Oh, she must be white and loaded.

Side note: I bet you ten bucks that if I'd had a really obvious ethnic name she wouldn't have written about my "social group" or called me "a talented writer, who hasn't yet risen above her own small pond." What does she know about the size of my pond??

So, back to relating this to the title. Racism still exists because of ignorance, which leads to blind assumptions, and ultimately otherization. Ignorance causes people to otherize groups, usually based on class, but often based on race. Examples: "Black people only listen to hip-hop, what could they have in common with me?", "Asians like math and rice, how can I relate", or, most damaging of all "The poor people in the ghetto live on welfare, with food stamps, and in the projects. I feel so sorry for them and their lives are so awful. I should help them by giving them clothes and toys and computers or whatever else they need."

The problem with the third statement is that it sets up the poor as the receivers and you as the giver. You always give. They always recieve. Nowhere in there is there an exchange of ideas or a willingness on your part to recognize the equality and humanity of the group you qualify as the receivers. You turn your charity into us vs. them. And they know it, even when you don't.

And because you have otherized a certain group, you are then incapable of seeing commonalities when they're staring you in the face. You assume that since a person belongs to that group, they can't have anything in common with you, and that the only people who have things in common with you are....you. That's why Joe Biden called Barack Obama "articulate" during primary season- he was (subconciously) surprised that someone like Obama could be reasonably well-spoken, and thus pointed out a quality of Obama's that should have been a tacit commonality. Within the group of people known as politicians, it is assumed that everyone is able to speak in coherent, reasonably persuasive sentences, but since Biden had otherized Obama, he was unable to recognize the commonality of articulateness, and thus decided to point it out as a positive abnormality.

I guess what I'm trying to get across in my inarticulate sort of way is that racism/classism/sexism still exists, despite the liberal agenda of helping the oppressed, and because of the liberal agenda of helping the oppressed. The liberal bias (exhibited so blantantly by SHE) otherizes the group they feel is oppressed because by defining a group as "oppressed" they inevitably define themselves as "not-oppressed", and thus in some intangible way (or often tangible) different from the "oppressed."

The alternative? Getting rid of us versus them. Don't help "them". Help your neighbors. Help people. Help America. Help the world. Help "us".