We tell ourselves that only people with racist attitudes or
intentions can contribute to racial injustice. We insist that if we focus on
people’s character and not their color, then we cannot be racists.
Intentional oppression is, sadly, not a prerequisite for injustice. Racial
oppression has long thrived in this country, despite claimed good intentions and justiªed attitudes, policies, and practices.
Believing that most promoters of racial injustice in America have not
judged others by the “content of their character” is a fundamental mistake.
Character judgments, in fact, have long served as a principal justiªcation
for oppression. Our mistake is, not in neglecting character, but in attributing to “character” what should be attributed to the victim’s situation and,
in turn, to our system and ourselves. In other words, we have allowed ourselves to be deceived by blame frames—that is our greatest confusion.
Katrina helped many Americans glimpse what social science has made
painfully clear. Blackness, badness, violence, and criminality are closely
linked in the minds of most Americans.
the lesson of history is not that “we” are
immune to “the confusions of our forebears,” but exactly the opposite: we
are ourselves likely subject to “equally great confusions.” We don’t admit
our mistakes unless and until, perhaps a century later, we come to see
that they were clearly wrong. Where “they” felt fear, loathing, and legitimacy, “we” see hate and injustice. We criticize them for turning their eyes
from themselves, but, by turning our eyes only on them, we are no different.
Just because the frame has changed does not mean that “liberty and
justice for all” is any less of an illusion.
Indeed, a key source of our problem may be that the repackaging has
fooled us. We believe that injustice today must resemble the injustices of
our forebears.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Sunday, December 9th 2012 at 6:37PM
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