Show’n Them What’s Really Wrong with America

Wow, I feel as though I’ve been drawing an entire series on racism in America lately. Didn’t quite expect that, but I guess it’s good to suck it up and address what needs addressing.

I’m going to confess - actually the Irish in spacemonk probably gives it away - but I’ll confess anyway. I’m pretty white. With a typical mutt heritage of various European immigrants (Irish, Swedish, German, and whatever else there is out there). And I was also educated in a largely white school in Alaska. But I’m also of Gen X, a liberal democrat, and so I like to think of myself as pretty open minded.

Then I took a Black Studies class on the history of African Americans in film, I was surprised to learn how ignorant I’d been of the ingrained racism in movies, even to this day (If you wish to read a great book on this subject, check out, Donald Bogle’s “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks” .) And if this is rampant in the movie industry - a pretty progressive bunch - then I feel safe to guess it’s gonna be even worse in society in general. If you don’t believe me, do a search for blacks as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Then do a search for females as CEOs for Fortune 500 companies. You might be surprised to learn it’s four blacks, twelve women.

So this gets me to thinking that as long as we avoid teaching our children the real nature of racism, that it isn’t just what makes the news, but it’s an inherent pattern of stereotyping, of fears, passed on by parents to their children, then we’ll never get beyond this issue. It will continue to be pushed aside, left for later generations, hoping that it goes away. Just last year, while in the grocery store parking lot near where I live, a pickup truck with teens was cutting across, with two huge Confederate flags flying off the back end. I was surprised. Who’d be that insensitive? This wasn’t the South, this was Oregon.

America, we haven’t made it as far as we like to tell ourselves.

Someday a black man or a black woman will again try to run for president, and will get quite far, and then it (the issue we refuse to talk about) will rear it’s ugliness into the lives of another generation, and because they’ve never been taught where the anger and resentment originates, we’ll deal with it in a similar fashion as we are today. Scared. Hateful. And with suspicion.

It will seem like we’ve gone nowhere.