Can't we all just get along?: Part 3 - Let's Blame Whitey

In my last post I made the case that we can not just ignore racial issues and hope that they go away. We have to be proactive in our attempts to deal with racism. But we have to be careful to take the right actions.
There is one type of solution that is understandable, but incomplete. That is what I will call the "let's blame whitey" approach. More academic names of it include Anti-Racism, Critical Race Theory etc. They are variations of a way to address racism by looking at the culpability of European-Americans and the culture they created.
Before I point out the shortcomings of this approach, let's see why it developed. Anyone with even a basic understanding of American history knows that we have a history where whites have abused non-whites. As I discussed in the last post the racial disparities we suffer from today is connected to that history and continuing racial problems that have not disappeared. People of color have not benefited from historical racism and contemporary racialization of our society. Whites have. So it makes sense that whites have to give up their racialized advantages if we are going to have true racial equality and peace.
Of course this is correct to a point. We will not achieve what we should in our society unless we change some things that have been advantages to whites. But is that all that we need to do? I think not.
For example, some people with this approach state that blacks can not be racist. They state that blacks can be prejudice, in other words have race-based hate on a personal level, but they do not have institutional power and so can not exhibit racism. Maybe that argument could have been made twenty years ago. But today? Are we to say that President Obama has no institutional power. Or even myself? Can I not impose power over my white students? Whites still have disproportional power in our society but some people of color have power as well. Just looking at whites as the problem is no longer viable.
There is another even more intrinsic problem with this approach. By removing all responsibility from people of color we often allow their worst personal demons to develop. The term "Playing the Race Card" is not without merit. It occurs every time a person of color uses the accusation of racism to escape responsibility. For example when in 1994 the former black congressman, Mel Reynolds, was caught with a 16 year old girl he blamed racism. A clear case of a person of color trying to "play the race card" to escape his own shortcomings. This case is obvious, but I suspect all of us know of cases where a person of color is using the charge of racism in a false and misleading way to either escape responsibility or to gain power. We just may be too scared in our racially charged society to point it out when we see it. I am not but then again I am a trouble-maker.
The character of people of color is just as good and just as bad as the character of whites. People of color can be just as greedy and manipulative as whites can be. But as long as we only look at whites as being the problem, we will be vulnerable to those people of color who will use the sympathy in dysfunctional ways.
Furthermore is not this approach disempowering to those people of color who do not want to play the race card? If whites are the only one with any responsibility for fixing racial problems then all people of color can do is wait for whites to get their act together. That means that whites still have all the power. Some say that people of color can tell whites about the problems of racism. But that still leaves them helpless until whites get their act together. Ultimately this approach leaves people of color powerless.
There is some value in this approach. But ultimately it falls short of creating a complete solution to our racial problems. We will not solve our racial problems by just blaming whites. Doing so energizes the bad characteristics in some people of color even as it disempowers them. We have to find better answers if we are going to overcome our racial problems.



Sincerely,



Trouble-Maker