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Reply to "Black and white in America"

we can discuss one another's ideas in this topic, or we can resort to cheap digs at the words we use: big words, little words, mispelled words. I prefer to stick to a discussion of ideas.

Regardless of the words any of us use, I prefer to stick to a consideration of ideas. To go after one another's grammar is a cheap shot, a waste of time, and really belongs in the bag of tricks of those who lack solid ideas.

That said, when disucssing matters as important as racism, I agree that it's imperative and essential that we share our personal experiences. This is, of course, a discussion about how the individual, each of us here on these boards, finds ourselves received in this world.

But the discussion must not be limited to our subjective experience. We are discussing broad social themes that have spanned millennia.

It is not good enough to come onto these boards, throw out a careless verbal-bomb about who is racist, and who isn't, then retreat under the protection of, "It's how I feel," without bothering to back up our claim with solid information.

If we are to overcome the insidious and ever pervasive racism all over the world, we must share our experiences, but we must also study the problem.

Where are racism's deepest roots? How does racism flourish in modern society?

When I read the slipshod statement that America is, in general terms, more racist than the rest of the world, or that Europe, somehow, has shed its brutal and long-racist traditions, I feel compelled to point out that such a statement is careless and untrue.

One person's experiences in Europe may be that it is enlightened and freer from bigotry than the rest of the world, and that America is dwelling in a murky racist sludge. But another's experience may be exactly the opposite.

(I grew up in a very enlightened town in America. Racism was all but non-existent in this town. The society of this town was, and still is, multi-cultural, cooperative, and inclusive.

When I made my first trip to Europe as a teenager, I was overwhelmed by sights of segregated slums on the outskirts of Paris, racist literature in England, Nazi skins in Germany and so on. I was tempted then to apply my intial observations to all of Europe. But, as my travels continued, I realized that though those elements existed, their opposition was bigger and stronger. Sometimes I'm tempted to reduce Europe to a cartoonish analysis of its most brutal past, but such a caricature of Europe is false.)

If we are to share our personal experiences, lets at least have the intellectual and emotional honesty to label them as such: personal experience and perception.

But if we are to slap broad and damning labels on other societies, let us at least muster a bit of respect and learn a little before we condemn.

George W. Bush barters in the logic of "I saw it, therefore it must be true." America's sham-of-a-president also uses one or two anecdotes and considers that sufficient evidence to put forth his anti-women, anti-poor, anti-children, and racist policies.

Remember when Dan Quayle, America's most stupid vice president on record, condemned the entire output of Hollywood based on a single Murphy Brown episode?

Are we to condemn American society as dripping with racism because of one ill-conceived Steve Martin/Queen Latifah movie? We could. But we'd be keeping company with the intellectual charlatan Dan Quale and his "Murphy Brown" tactics.

(Hollywood does have a history of racism, but it's complex...beyond the scope of a single film or decade. Hollywood also has an illustrious history of progressive activism, such as Dead Man Walking, etc. Broad condemnations rarely suffice.)

Let me reiterate: America is racist. This is an easily documented fact. But, so is Africa, today, and not just South Africa of a few years past. European football games are rife with horrible racism, as are European politics (see: England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.) Asia, India, Pakistan, the Middle East (see: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and more, all practice racism today.

Humanity, I am afraid, is often violent and racist.

The point is clear. America, like its sister nations of the world and of the ages, has fostered and perpetrated racism to its most extreme.

But to sit here and isolate one society as alone in this, or another as above reproach, is to undermine our long struggle away from such oppressive thought.

America is a complicated land. While some American companies profited from the apartheid, others lost money in an effort to cut off the racist, white South African government from the rest of the world.

When some southern governors carried out segregationist policies, other Americans, of all races and classes, sacraficed their lives to change the system.

It is offensive and counter-productive to sit here and play a game of child-like finger pointing. It is just as wrong to reduce all of these actors, brave and evil, to simple generalizations.

We must abandon the temptation to simplify this issue. We must take thoughtful action. We must look inward and around our own societies, and then the world.

If we succumb to simple finger pointing and anecdotal evidence, the results will be no more sophisticated.

We live in complex times. I hope we have sufficient conviction to see ourselves through.
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