Racism 07

Racism
Tools to Identify
and
Tools to Work to Undo Racism

Brothers and Sisters to Us
U.S. Catholic Bishops
Pastoral Letter on Racism

Distinguish Between
Personal Prejudice
and Personal Acts

versus

Systemic and Institutional
Preferences for Whites

If the KKK keeps people out of
school, we understand that as
racism

But if Fewer People of Color
Can Afford to Attend Private
Schools, College and Graduate
Schools Is that Racism?

Racism is
“systematized oppression of one race of another.
In other words, the various forms of oppression
within every sphere of social relations—economic
exploitation, military subjugation, political
subordination, cultural devaluation, psychological
violation, sexual degradation, verbal abuse, etc.—
together make up a whole of interacting and
developing processes which operate so normally and
naturally and are so much a part of the existing
institutions of society that the individuals involved are
barely conscious of their operation”
James Boggs, Racism and the Class Struggle 147-148.

Racism
is
Prejudice
Plus
Power

Racial Justice
Economic Justice
Gender Justice
Are Intertwined

Racism is a sin:

a sin that divides the
human family,
blots out the image of God
among specific members of
that family,
and violates the
fundamental human dignity
of those called to be
children of the same
Father.

Because the Courts have eliminated
statutory racial discrimination and
Congress has enacted civil rights
legislation, and because some minority
people have achieved some measure
of success,
many people believe that
racism is no longer a problem
in American life.

Movement toward authentic justice

demands a simultaneous attack on

both racism and economic
oppression.

The continuing existence of
racism becomes apparent

when we look beneath the
surface of our national life.

Bishops point to 5 areas that
illustrate continuing racism:

Employment
Education
Housing
Criminal Justice
Opposition to Affirmative Action

Education?
• African-Americans receive more and tougher
disciplinary action than their white counterparts,
even for the same infraction.
• Drop-out rate is far higher than their white
counterparts' rate.

Blacks comprise 13 percent of the national
population,
but 30 percent of people arrested,
41 percent of people in jail.

Human Rights Watch:
Incarceration and Race

Opposition to Affirmative Action:

HISTORY

Racism has been part of the social fabric of
America since its European colonization.

Whether it be the tragic past of the Native
Americans, the Mexicans, the Puerto Ricans, or
the blacks, the story is one of slavery, peonage,
economic exploration, brutal repression, and
cultural neglect.

None have escaped one or another form of
collective degradation by a powerful majority.

The educational, legal, and
financial systems, along with other
structures and sectors of our
society, impede people's progress
and narrow their access because
they are black, Hispanic, Native
American or Asian.

The structures of our society are
subtly racist,
for these structures reflect the
values which society upholds.

They are geared to the success of
the majority and the failure of the
minority. Members of both groups
give unwitting approval by
accepting things as they are.

Can You Restrict With One Wire?

Depends on
How You
Arrange the
Wires

Structural Racism Directs Us to
Examine the Way the Wires
(Institutions) Are Interconnected

Perhaps no single individual is to
blame.

The sinfulness is often anonymous
but nonetheless real.

The sin is social in nature in that
each of us, in varying degrees, is
responsible.

Under the guise of other motives,
racism is manifest in the tendency
to stereotype and marginalize
whole segments of the population
whose presence perceived as a
threat.
Racism is manifest also in the
indifference that replaces open
hatred.

The minority poor
are seen as the
byproduct of a post-
industrial society --
without skills,
without motivation,
without incentive.
They are
expendable people.

We have long since grown
accustomed to thinking of Blacks
as being “racially disadvantaged.”

Rarely, however, do we refer to
Whites as “racially advantaged,”
even though that is an equally apt
characterization of the existing
inequality.
Harlon Dalton

In my class and place, I did not
recognize myself as a racist
because I was taught to see racism
only in individual acts of meanness
by members of my group, never in
invisible systems conferring
unsought racial dominance on my
group from birth.

Peggy McIntosh, 1988

Today's racism flourishes in the
triumph of
private concern over public
responsibility,

individual success over social
commitment,

and personal fulfillment over
authentic compassion

Start with the understanding that
racism is “hard-wired” into our society
and institutions.

It is like the electric wires in the walls,
or the plumbing,
or the air and heat ductwork.

Invisible. Important. Always There.

It is a life-long struggle for justice.

Be willing to move beyond your
comfort zone

Transformative Education

Educate Self and Community
about history and reality
of the barriers
of structural racism

How it affects us,
How it affects others.

CREATE a safe environment for open and honest
discussion

Study Bishops Pastorals
“Brothers and
Sisters All”

There are
resources for
training &
expert help

Questions for Reflection
• Personal observations of examples of Prejudice
Plus Power?
• Structural or Institutional Racism in
community – Housing patterns? Criminal
justice? Education – public & private?
Employment? Response to Affirmative Action?
Economic Justice, Gender Justice
• Not about guilt, but identifying and challenging
unearned privilege and replace it with Justice.

Dr. Shawn Copeland and Bill Quigley
http://www.loyno.edu/~quigley/

Racism 07

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