|
|
|
|
|
|
We as a nation have addressed racism
by pointing out its symptoms rather than
the conditioning that causes it.
Personal prejudice, acts of discrimination, and internalized oppression are important issues to address but do little to stop the conditioning of future generations.
Programs that attempt only to deal with personal prejudice do a great disservice.
Individual prejudice is not there by accident.
Individuals have been systematically conditioned to think and feel as they do.
Failure to recognize and confront the conditioning that is being perpetuated on a massive institutional level actually plays into the problem.
Valuable time and financial resources are wasted
in attempting to point out individual prejudices.
Without educating people to understand the institutional nature of racism and to organize for its dismantling, future generations continue to be conditioned to foster racism.
When we pass laws to try to counter the discrimination that our racially conditioned citizens now perpetuate in the work place, in housing, judicial systems, etc. while once again not addressing how the misconception of inferior/superior race is still being perpetuated through our nation's educational and financial systems, the media, etc., we again miss cause and effect.
Certainly, enacting laws against discrimination and enforcement of those laws is crucial. But if we only deal with how people are acting out patterns of prejudicial behavior rather than what has created those attitudes in the first place, we only continue to put out forest fires while someone finds a shrewder way to set another.
Racism, a Model for Understanding
Other Forms of Oppressions
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
