America the Crayon Box; A Rant on Racism

You can’t call America a melting pot, we don’t all mix, we don’t all work together for the common good of the soup, and we most certainly don’t taste good together. So I call the U.S. the crayon box instead, because it is true we are the most diverse nation in the world, it is just that we still don’t mix. We are like the crayons in the box, individually wrapped and labeled our respective colors, and are “damn proud of it.” So we never get as much of an opportunity to get to know the colors next to us, or try to imagine ourselves in the wrapping of another color. Even the times when colors do mix, it generally just makes a whole new color, which then gets their very own wrapping, and a brand new label. Most of the times we lose site of the fact that we are all still, just crayons.

I recently learned about a debate within the young black community over the website niggaspace.com and whether this use of the n word is appropriate, whether it is racist, or whether it is an expression of free speech. This debate has inspired me to write about some things in relation to race that I've been thinking about for a long while now. The first and maybe most controversial thing I believe is that everyone is racist, but I don't mean just a little racist. I think we all start out learning complete racism. How else can you explain teaching little children their "racial" classification as if it made any more difference on who they are than telling them their eye color. When it comes down to it, race just becomes a means of separation for power. It just so happens that here and around the world white becomes the ruling race and black and everything in between become the subservient races. There can never be any equality as long as this paradigm stands because you will only have the capacity to view everything thru the lenses of race, and us vs them rationale. By calling me Black and someone else White, forever differentiates us psychologically, and will impede on both of our abilities to ever empathize with or relate to one another, but is really only masking the simple fact that we are apart of only one human race.

Unfortunately, bickering and spending energy on things as insignificant as what to be called by others is just another thing that seems to divert us from the very essence of racial and class tension causes. By saying the word nigga, will never be a way to reject or confirm whether someone is racists or not. Just like any other word, nigga is still, just a word, as is the same for nigger. That word is only going to mean to us, what we let it mean. I’m sure most people will agree that the most dangerous racists aren't trying to hurt us anymore by calling us niggas or niggers. They wouldn't give us the luxury of being so sure of their poisonous views. Instead they're doing it by becoming the lawmakers, the activists, the elite and putting racism into law and preserving their position as the hegemon in the racial hierarchy.

All you have to look at is how embedded racism is in our legislate, our justice system, even the representation in our executive branch, it is so intertwined within the fabric of our country sometimes I wonder if we will ever be rid of it completely, but then I think about the progress. The civil war, the civil rights era, and many brave individuals have led to victory over the formal institution of slavery and the formal institution of racial discrimination in written law, but we are no where near the end of the battle of fighting the invisible, and as a result, more dangerous informal institution of racism in America. The informal institution is seen all throughout our justice system. It is the explanation why blacks made up over 42% of death row inmates in 2005, but only make up roughly 10% (and declining) of the population of the entire country. It explains why laws like the 3 strikes rule are present in California, or why the penalty for smoking crack cocaine is harsher than for smoking powder cocaine. These laws do not explicitly state any reference to race or any form of discrimination in their language, but is that really necessary if they have the same effect?

I say this rather reluctantly because I think it leads to complacency, but we have taken great strides against racism in the U.S. and I would even agree that we are still progressing. The only thing that scares me is that, the rate of progress is noticeably declining. It must be because people are not as able to see this invisible veil of racism over all of our heads that affect all of our lives, but most negatively, minorities. If you are reading this post and have no idea what I am writing about, I might say it is a good sign that it is difficult for you to see the veil, or recognize the results it has on the minority populations. Hopefully that means that you aren't one of the people consciously keeping the veil over us. But if you do not acknowledge the existence of the racism that is persistent today, and has been since this country's inception, your naivety makes you racist without you even knowing, because if you don't even know, you can't do anything to end it. That goes for anyone, white, black, or brown. If you aren't actively fighting racism, for any reason—fear, ignorance, anything—you are de facto racist, because if you aren't fighting the cycle, you're perpetuating it. Many blacks are racist against themselves, when they portray the negative stereotypes we see in media, and as far as I'm concerned, anyone who is apart of promoting the stereotypes commercially are the ultimate racists. I'm sure many of you are going to think that this is too idealistic, but I've always been taught if you aim for the stars, you're at least guaranteed to hit something higher than the ground.