Do not tell me you are above the social racial norm.
Please.
Do not sit there and rattle off the number of Black friends, Latin amigos, Arab habibis. Do not go on and on about how you were raised in the urban area of EthnicCity, USA and at this point you don’t even see color.
Stop.
And welcome to Phrases That Ought to Stop Existing Now. The:
“I don’t think the social narrative applies to or affects me. I just don’t think that way.”
I don’t believe you.
To an extent we all fall victim to the storyboard. It has become a social reflex to claim indifference to a person’s otherness. Even in the face of the millions and billions of dollars pumped into the social machine, we refuse to believe in its efficacy. It may be tweaked and oiled to perfection by sociological studies, media consultants, nightly news casts, and casual urban myth the individual remains immune. Nope! Never gets to me!
The proof of this marketing is easily detectable within this society. Even though many will tell you they don’t even, like, care, the obvious lives on. See, if marketing and status were not effective, McDonald’s would have ceased to exist about 2 years after they served their first hamburger. 550 million Big Mac’s sold per year (yes, really) is a testament to how susceptible we all are to being programmed.
That even though I know a Chicken McNugget will neither satisfy me or bring me happiness, that crispy, golden brown skin swathed in ketchup makes me want some McNuggets bad. Even if logically I realize that not every piece of chicken should taste the exact same year in and year out. Even if half of the ingredients in that nugget I wouldn’t see fit to feed my dog with. Marketing and branding is far more powerful than most in the Western world are willing to give it credit for.
Considering this reality, to be a person who believes in real human equality needs to become less of a thought and more of an exercise. I’m damn tired of hearing about principals that are rarely practiced or voiced when publicly confronted.
So if, perchance, you find yourself walking down a city street and the Angry Black Woman stereotype finds its way into your musings, it is then intellectually lazy to think, “whoops me, that’s racist and wrong.” Such a shallow chastisement is the moral equivalent of a used band aid. The response ought to go deeper. “Why does that phrase exist the way it does?” is a good place to start. “Why did I look at a woman in distress and instead of wonder if she is alright, reduce her?” is better. And maybe even a “what in my life is encouraging these stereotypes. Who taught me that her emotions were worthless.” could be added to your list of questions.
I think it is imperative for us to realize that every day we might need to fight off a force to “other.” That every day we might need to check ourselves and examine our thinking. We need to be able to call ourselves out on our own thoughts, and examine their origins and not just half assedly police our words when caught with our feet down our throats (or shoved into our thoughts).
I know people who will earnestly claim freedom from such influences and in the next breath complain about “The stupid Mexicans that hit on me outside the 7-11.”
“No” they will tell you, “It’s not racist, it’s just a fact they are raised with machismo. I know. I dated one.”
There is, of course, some truth to all cultural generalizations. Latin and Arab men are generally raised with a level of social machismo that young men in, say, Nepal are not.
The issue is not to pretend we are so apathetic and colorblind that all culture looses inherent meaning and worth. The point is not to avoid the discussion of race. That’s just a convenient farce that will lull you into arrested development.
See, the issue, I’d argue, is not policing jokes about Americans wearing shorts with socks, Arabs yelling on the phone or women being emotional. We do these things and are these things. All the time. On the phone and especially during dinner. It’s using ones ethnicity to describe a negative trait that is not exclusive to that culture/gender/sexuality or race.
In my life, some Mexican men have yelled untoward comments in my general direction. However, if were only Mexican men yelling, life would be much simpler: Avoid Mexican men. Done and done. But I’ve had my space disrespected by almost all men, regardless of genetic makeup. And here is the biggie: Misappropriating blame removes any real social culpability. Sexism, not ethnicity, is the actual problem being swept under the rug. Men being taught in almost all cultures (including American) that a woman’s right to say no should be influenced and relegated by their level of desire is the real issue. And when we chalk it up to simple machismo, or Black men being more forward, or Frat boys being sex maniacs or Arabs being undersexed, we slowly excuse away our own rights to private space.
Nobody is above prejudice. Nobody is above making generalizations and lazy stereotypes. If the movies didn’t show you how evil Russians and Arabs are, the 24 hour news cycle no doubt has. If token Black actors in movies didn’t show you that People of Color were expendable, then another unpunished police shooting did. And if Asians weren’t shown through the media how auxiliary their presence in society is, their numbers in government most certainly will. Our society and how it reacts to race teaches and influences all of us. From six year old Black girls who think the white doll is prettier, to my brother being told to “Go the fuck home” in a grocery store, two blocks from his house.
To remove oneself from racist, sexist, homophobic and all forms of ‘othering’ is, and should be, a daily exercise. But to admit that in American or Western European society is to meet with horrified stares and proclamations of, “Well I’m not a racist!” We like to assume that we are all above physical stereotyping when it comes to color, and yet we all know that deep down, this isn’t true at all. We claim to be uninfluenced by the ethnic physical, and yet we freely admit our brainwashing when it comes to stereotypes of woman’s bodies. It is a schizophrenic confession.
It doesn’t work, and modern culture in America and Western Europe makes that abundantly clear. We need to see color. We need to recognize what it means to each of us. We need to challenge it; we need to think on it. But first we need to stop burying our heads while claiming to be so above it all.
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