{"id":1068,"date":"2009-07-22T22:29:09","date_gmt":"2009-07-23T02:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielgoepfrich.com\/?p=1068"},"modified":"2022-10-24T19:46:34","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T23:46:34","slug":"how-to-perpetuate-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/how-to-perpetuate-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"How to perpetuate racism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you are a regular here on my blog, you know that I don\u2019t get into controversial topics like this very often. But I have had this thought running through my head most of the day, so I decided to get it out of my head and onto my blog. It\u2019s really more of an opinion piece than I normally write, but I\u2019d really like to get your thoughts on this, too.<\/em><\/p>

This current thought-stream stemmed from the incident at Harvard this week, where a black man (who happened to be a Harvard professor) was spotted breaking into a house (which he happened to be renting). When the police arrived, this professor refused to calmly sort out the matter, shouted all sorts of nasty things at the officers, and was arrested for disorderly conduct. (You can read the news article here<\/a>.)<\/p>

Now, here\u2019s my line of thought.<\/p>

Was it racism that prompted the neighbor to call the police when she saw \u201ctwo black males with backpacks on the porch\u201d because one of them was \u201cwedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry\u201d?<\/em><\/p>

I don\u2019t know. I hope that she would have called the police regardless of the color of the men she saw breaking and entering into her neighbor\u2019s home. And I assume the professor would have been extremely grateful had she caught someone (other than himself) actually trying to commit a crime.<\/p>

Here\u2019s where I have the problem. In the professor\u2019s mind, she was being racist because she reported two black men trying to break into a house, even though that\u2019s what was happening!<\/em> The racism wasn\u2019t there until the professor injected it into the situation. She was being a neighbor; he saw a racist. He is the one who brought it up.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>

The title is \u201cHow to perpetuate racism\u201d<\/em>. We don\u2019t do it by reporting or imprisoning criminals, regardless of their skin color. We do it by intentionally pointing out the things that don\u2019t matter and making them a big deal.<\/strong> Here\u2019s what I mean.<\/p>

When a person uses the phrase \u201cAfrican-American\u201d to refer to a black person, or when a black person demands that he or she be referred to as \u201cAfrican-American\u201d, I believe that is helping perpetuate racism by placing black people into a separate category than other people around them. It\u2019s pointing out their differences and making those their defining characteristic. The same holds true for Asian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Native-Americans, and the rest.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>

\u201cNow,\u201d some would say, \u201cwe just want to hold onto our culture and customs. That\u2019s why we call ourselves that.\u201d Great \u2013 I have no problem with family traditions. We have customs in our family, too. But we don\u2019t force them on our neighbors or expect others to treat us differently because of something that really has nothing to do with them.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Our family eats homemade pretzels every Christmas; it\u2019s our tradition. I really hope you don\u2019t treat me any differently because of it. Will you pretzel-haters out there start calling me a \u201cpretzel-lover\u201d? Will you avoid me the day after Christmas because you know we ate pretzels the previous day? Will you define us by our culture of Christmas pretzels?<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Silly? Of course. But why should a country of origin a couple of years, decades, or centuries ago be any different? Does my family background define me any differently than the pretzels I eat?<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>

The fact is that many people who demand to be called \u201cAfrican-American\u201d are from families that have been in America longer than mine! I have traced my family\u2019s move here, and it wasn\u2019t all that long ago.<\/p>

Should I, then, demand or deserve to be called \u201cAustrian-American\u201d? And even moreso because my blond-haired, blue-eyed son fits a German-Austrian stereotype better than many lighter-skinned blacks fit the African stereotype?<\/p>

Do you see that every time we point out these things and make an unnecessary distinction, we are actually growing the very cancer we say we want to remove?<\/strong><\/p>

It\u2019s not racist to call a black man \u201cblack\u201d any more than it is to call me \u201cwhite\u201d. Most people just really don\u2019t care that much. Neither do they care where your family came from or what your family had to go through to get here.<\/p>

It\u2019s when we focus<\/em><\/strong> on those things that we not only allow racism, we actually continue it.<\/p>

You want the solution? I\u2019ll offer it in another post entitled \u201cHow to end racism\u201d.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you are a regular here on my blog, you know that I don\u2019t get into controversial topics like this very often. But I have had this thought running through my head most of the day, so I decided to get it out of my head and onto my blog. It\u2019s really more of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issues-ethics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"gutentor_comment":68,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"widget-thumbnail":false,"rpwe-thumbnail":false,"woocommerce_thumbnail":false,"woocommerce_single":false,"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Daniel Goepfrich","author_link":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/author\/dgoepfrich\/"},"uagb_comment_info":68,"uagb_excerpt":"If you are a regular here on my blog, you know that I don\u2019t get into controversial topics like this very often. But I have had this thought running through my head most of the day, so I decided to get it out of my head and onto my blog. It\u2019s really more of an…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}