X

Opinion: We must recognize our privileged place in USA, says Potsdam man

Posted 6/6/17

To the Editor: In the May 24-30 issue of North Country This Week there appeared a letter titled “BLM Letter Ironically Tinted with Racism” in which the writer professes a belief that thanks to …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Opinion: We must recognize our privileged place in USA, says Potsdam man

Posted

To the Editor:

In the May 24-30 issue of North Country This Week there appeared a letter titled “BLM Letter Ironically Tinted with Racism” in which the writer professes a belief that thanks to various Constitutional Amendments, laws, court decisions and the Civil War we can live with clear consciences in a nation free of structural and institutional racism. Everyone is free and we are pure, guiltless.

If only this was so.

The writer's call for citing laws that support outright racism will of course come up with nothing. But instead of this being a clear sign that we live in a society without institutional and structural racism, it's merely a sign that those terms are not correctly understood.

A form of racism expressed in the practice of social and political institutions, institutional racism is also racism by individuals or informal social groups and governed by behavioral norms that support racist thinking and foment active racism.

Explicit racist expression is not required. Structural racism is an aggregate: the normalized and legitimized range of policies, practices, and attitudes that routinely produce cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color, especially black people.

The Center for the Study of Race & Ethnicity in America at Brown University calls it “the main driver of racial inequality in America today.” without exaggeration.

The writer has trouble seeing this. Understandable. We're both members of the privileged class after all. We're white, heterosexual men. Presumably "Christian", we're both middle class adults who self identify with our genetic sex of birth. We can't be expected to see this sort of thing unless we really start looking. Please start looking.

The fact that we don't instinctively understand these things at first sight is forgivable but we must take the concerns of other segments of our society seriously.

Until we can recognize our privileged place in today’s America, we have no hope of understanding others' positions and the rule of oppression we unintentionally support.

Tim Connolly

Potsdam