“That Conversation about Race” category archive

In a particularly timely post at Psychology Today Blogs, Camille S. Johnson explores why it is so difficult for some of us white folks to have that conversation about race.

I’m not going to spoil it by attempting excerpt it or summarize it. Just give it a read.

Trumpled at the Zuckerborg.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

A salivated Trumpling.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Neil Shpancer suggests that incidents of outright racist brutality, such as the recent killings of George Floyd and others for being while black, as horrifying as they are, may distract us from the true character of day-to-day racism. He argues that racism is embedded so deeply within American culture, laws, and public life that it propagates itself, even in the absence of individual acts of overt racism.

Here’s a bit, including four elements he identifies as blinding us to the systemic character of said systemic racism:

. . . we must first acknowledge that racism in America, much like capitalism, is no mere ideology but rather a systemic feature of our social architecture, interwoven into the collective fabric by way of myriad traditions, legacies, laws, myths, institutions, and habits.

(snip)

• First is the process of habituation, by which nervous system activation decreases after prolonged exposure to a stimulus. In other words: things we get used to no longer register. . . .
• Second is internalization, defined as the integration of others’ attitudes, values, standards and opinions into one’s own sense of self. . . .
• Third is learned helplessness, defined as the sense of powerlessness arising from trauma or persistent failure. . . .
• Fourth is the one-two punch of confirmation bias . . . .

(Slightly edited for grammar and clarity.)

I’m a Southern boy.

I grew up under Jim Crow, went to segregated schools, and used segregated facilities for functions that are common to all human beings.

I know from my own experience that the N-word doesn’t “just slip out.”

It’s either part of how you think, or it isn’t.

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Note: When the caller is talking about Greenwood (a neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma) and refers to the “18th and 19th” centuries, he has a slip of the tongue. I am certain that he meant to say either “Eighteen and Nineteen Hundreds” or “19th and 20th centuries.”

Aside:

I think that the had a slip when he referred to , but meant to say “19th and 20th” centuries.

Yet another frolicker racisms himself right out of a job.

Addendum:

Yet another frolicker fail.

I disagree with the Elizabeth Dye’s suggestion that this lawyer’s Facebook fail had anything to do with age. Stupidity and racism are independent variables from age.