In My Opinion: The
New Racism is the Old Racism
There has been a lot of commentary on race in America, but
also race and the role it plays in the world at large. I can’t speak for all
Black Americans or all people of color, but I can share my experience.
In my opinion, the “new” racism we are seeing play out in
the media more than ever before is the same “old” racism of the past. Sure,
there are new players, but it is the same game.
The gunning down of Black Americans, male and female, is nothing more
but modern day lynching by firing squad. The perpetrators are not men in white
sheets, but those in police blue, our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends. And the lynchings do not always end in
physical death, but sometimes the lynchings end in professional death for the
victim, or even a loss of freedom.
I personally have experienced the more covert racism – being
followed around stores by salespersons while others have be left to browse and
shop at their leisure. In second grade, I was singled out from my White
classmates for doing the same thing, in this case, a little too much talking. I
was literally snatched out of my seat and pulled into the hallway by my teacher
and received a stern talking to. It stunned me and left me in tears. In the
fifth grade, I had a teacher who graded me harshly and accused me of cheating
on an assignment because she couldn’t believe I had produced it myself. When I
moved to Maryland during the same school year, the same teacher wrote such
derogatory information about me in my file that my new teacher called a
conference with my mother to discuss it. She couldn’t believe it because I was
not the same child my file reflected. I
ended up being put into the gifted and talented program before the year was
over, and I excelled. In college, I wrote an editorial article on Lee Jackson Day and the MLK holiday. The result? I had Confederate flags plastered all over my hallway and put on my door.
Racism isn’t something people of color deal with just in
adulthood. It starts to invade the sanctum of our childhood innocence from the
time we can begin to comprehend that we are being treated differently – and I
would venture to say, beforehand. I remember the first realization that my first
best friend and I, who happened to be White, were different. Before, she was
just Heather, but then I realized the fact that her skin was a lighter than
mine, made us different. I didn’t understand what that difference was yet – but
I understood from that day that race was a part of how a person was identified.
In elementary school, I loved learning and participating in
class. I spoke very properly – probably part of speech therapy due to speech
impediment I had and also due to being an advanced reader – and somewhere around
second or third grade, my Black friends started calling me out on “acting White.”
You may be thinking, “What?!” But I, along with many others, can probably
relate to this experience. The implication is this: excelling in school and
speaking properly are associated with White people. This is perception young
Black children have in grade school!
Where did they get this idea? Society? Home?
In my opinion, this attitude in itself is a relic of slavery
and the surrounding racism that drove it. Ever hear that saying, if you want to
hide something from a Black person, hide it in a book? That may have come from
slavery too – Blacks weren’t allowed to learn to read or write. Though the law
is long abolished, the attitude remains.
We all, regardless of the amount of melanin we are blessed
to have in our skin, need to attack these attitudes and educate our young. Blackness or lack thereof, should never be a
litmus test for character OR intelligence. In my case, it is likely my
ancestors were slaves. It is also equally likely that some of my ancestors were
the slaveholders, regardless of their race. It is also likely my ancestors were
kings or queens. These things may have resulted in my skin color and are a part
of my makeup, but they do not define my intelligence, my character, my strength,
nor my weakness as a human being.
In my opinion, we need to stop being afraid of one another.
We need to take down the mystique. I am
not the hypersexual Jezebel, I am not a Mamie, I am not the angry Black woman,
I am not the video vixen, I am not Super Negro.
I bleed red. I love. I hurt. I cry. I laugh. I joke. I play. I work hard. I get frustrated. And I get
upset that no matter how many degrees I get, how hard I work, how many books I
write – right now in this society, many of these things will be judged based
upon the color of my skin and not just upon the fact that I’m Tiffany.
Change starts here. It starts with us. All of us. Racism is
not dead. We can either deal the death blow or continue to feed it.
