A (white) woman interviewed on NPR this morning explained that she had gone to school with black people and hadn't ever thought about being "racist or whatever you want to call it" --but still, she wouldn't vote for Obama because he would be "for the blacks."
What do we call that but racist? First, Obama is running for office of the President of the whole entire United States (including President of his white relatives). Second, what would be good for African-Americans that would be detrimental necessarily to whites?
I can only assume the interviewee has stereotypes (racist stereotypes) about black people that has led her to this conclusion. Racist.
It is a strange time we live in now--one is allowed to be as outraged by being called a racist as one is if one is a victim of racism. So change the word--put lipstick on the pig of a word, but let's make sure we address the truth of the matter!
Read New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's Race with Racism from Sunday's edition. Kristof writes: "[A] careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white. That’s significant but surmountable . . . [M]ost of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president — yet who discriminate unconsciously."
It's "whatever you call it" at play. Psychologists call it aversive racism.
Kristof concludes: "One lesson from this research is that racial biases are deeply embedded within us, more so than many whites believe. But another lesson, a historical one, is that we can overcome unconscious bias. That’s what happened with the decline in prejudice against Catholics after the candidacy of John F. Kennedy in 1960.
It just might happen again, this time with race."
I hope his hopeful sentiment is right.
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