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by Tim Wise
12.04.2000
if three white guys chain a black man to a truck and decapitate him by dragging him down a dirt road, that’s a hate crime; but if five white cops pump nineteen bullets into a black street vendor, having shot at him 41 times, that’s just "bad judgment?" And what’s more, we should pass hate crime laws that require enforcement by the police? Call me crazy, but something about this brings to mind the one about the foxes and the henhouse.
Now don’t misunderstand: I realize there are horrible acts of violence perpetrated every day in America against people of color, not to mention gays and lesbians, women, and religious minorities. And I have no problem in principle with passing special laws to send a message that such hatred won’t be tolerated. But is this really the point? Does it do anything to address the larger issues of racism, sexism, or homophobia that plague our society? And will it save Amadou Diallo, or prevent Abner Louima from getting a toilet plunger shoved up his ass by bigots in blue uniforms? Of course not. Hate crime laws make us feel better. But in the end, the biggest injuries suffered by people of color continue: job and housing discrimination; unequal access to health care; and the development of a prison-industrial-complex that is locking up black and brown people faster than you can say "three-strikes-and-you’re-out;" all of which could and would persist, even if there was never another cross-burning on a black family’s lawn, or another violent assault on an immigrant.
And this is what’s wrong with the "national dialogue on race," as our former therapist-in-chief called it. It only takes place in a comfort zone where pretty much everyone can agree. So when James Byrd gets dragged to death in Jasper, everyone, including the Klan, is quick to condemn the atrocity. But when the Centers for Disease Control and National Center for Health Statistics report that about 6500 African Americans and a few thousand more Latino/as and American Indians die annually because they receive inferior health care relative to their white counterparts, few people say anything.
When we hear about people of color harassed by neighbors in white communities and forced to move due to the bigotry of a few, most of us react with horror. "How terrible,’ we insist ‘people should be able to live wherever they choose." But when study after study indicates that people of color are denied home mortgages at twice the rate of whites, even when they have similar credit and twice as much annual income, and that they face housing discrimination over two million times a year because of more subtle biases—far less blatant than the racist neighbor—few raise their voice indignantly, and no one thinks to send bankers or real estate agents to jail for bias crime.
And when we turn on Jerry Springer and see some Klansman or skinhead ranting about the inferiority of black and brown people, we laugh, and yell at the TV, and collectively condemn them. But when two well-respected social scientists named Murray and Herrnstein write a book like The Bell Curve—which argues pretty much the same thing, only with footnotes—we not only fail to condemn them, but white folks go out and make their book a best-seller: half-a-million copies sold in the first 18 months. Furthermore, Murray gets interviewed on every major news show in America, and is then asked to speak to the GOP Congressional delegation one month after the Republicans took over Congress in 1994.
My point is simple, but given what passes for our national understanding of these issues, apparently in need of explicit recitation: The problem of racism is not to be found at the extremes. It’s not about "intolerance," and a need to "love your neighbor," hold hands, and sing Pete Seeger songs. The problem is the everyday discrimination, inequity, and mainstream silence about these things by folks who pretend to care about racism, and think they can prove it by condemning lynch mobs: an act which ceased to be courageous about forty years ago.
To that effect, we have groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center spending all their time taking a handful of Nazis to court, tracking hate groups on the Internet, and sending out stamps that say "teach tolerance" to folks on their mailing list so as to raise more money (despite an endowment in the tens of millions of dollars)—all so they can do anything but help poor people–which, given their name, I had always assumed was the point. In addition to the Center, there are at least a half-dozen organizations nationwide that focus almost exclusively on doing battle with "the far-right." They can tell you everything you’d ever want to know about even the most insignificant Christian Identity church (members of which believe Jews are Satanic and persons of color are "mud people" without souls), or let you know who attended the most recent meeting at the Aryan Nations compound, all of which might be helpful the next time you’re sitting around playing militia trivia with Morris Dees, but is likely of little use the rest of the year.
It makes one wonder: with all these nice liberals focusing on intolerance and "extremists," who’s challenging the persistent institutional injustices which will do more damage to people of color in the next ten minutes than the National Socialist White People’s Party has done in their entire history? Unfortunately, the answer is not nearly enough folks to meet the challenge. Indeed, not only does mainstream liberal discourse on these issues siphon off time, money and energy from the real battles against structural injustices, it makes it harder to convince anyone those problems really are problems after all. When President Clinton says "we have torn down the barriers in our laws. Now we must break down the barriers in our lives, our minds and our hearts," it makes it easy for people to believe racism is nothing more than an attitude problem in need of adjustment, or perhaps a 12-step group to put us on the collective road to recovery. What’s more, since hardly anyone will admit to racial prejudice of any type, focusing on bigotry, hatred, and acts of intolerance only solidifies the belief that racism is something "out there," a problem for others, "but not me," or anyone I know.
