RTOD: Racism

Let's talk about the "r" word. A lot of people have been throwing that around in the last few weeks and I truly believe that people have no idea what racism really is.

According to Merriam Webster, racism is a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
Prejudice is preconceived judgment or opinion; an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge or injury or damage resulting from judgement or form of action of another in disregard of ones rights.

In sociology, my professor told me that in order for one to be racist, one must have power. There is a difference between racism and prejudice. People love to throw around the "r" word when some things are really prejudice and classicism. Everyone can be classist. It doesn't matter what race or what your socioeconomic status is. We all can find someone to look down on. Oftentimes classicism and racism go hand in hand. In India, the untouchables, or pariah's, or the poorest of society, are given the most repulsive jobs and they are usually dark skinned. In South Africa, Blacks were considered the lowest of the low because of their skin color. While studying black history, I found that most of the black firsts were done by light skinned blacks, often mulattoes. Darker skinned blacks were usually relegated to the sharecropper positions, which meant they didn't have enough money for their kids to get an education and break the cycle of poverty. This is not a light skinned or dark skinned post because we have enough of that, it's just facts.

Back to racism, it annoys me that Black people always want to throw the "r" word around when something happens that they don't like. I believe the media runs with it because they know it creates a better news story. We are always quick to cry racism when it probably isn't. Don't misunderstand me, there is racism alive but not everything is racism. I don't believe that George Zimmerman is a racist. I believe that George Zimmerman saw someone he perceived didn't belong in his upper class neighborhood, classicism and prejudice, and he wanted to be a hero. I do believe that George Zimmerman said that racial slur, because coons and punks do not sound anything alike. That was racist and out of line.

I'll give you another example, in the case of the 6-year-old who was handcuffed after acting crazy in the principals office. People are crying racism, but as someone who used to work with unruly children, who threw stuff that often hit other people and hurt them, I can tell you that I would have used that solution no matter the color of the child. I don't think race had anything to do with it because I'm sure that kids of all races are handcuffed on a daily basis. I could go on and on, but racism is not a cry that needs to be decreed every time something we deem wrong happens to a black person.

I also want us to realize that racism goes both ways. I realize that we, as black people, have suffered a lot of injustices at the hands of whites, but that does not give you a pass to commit hate crimes. I have noticed that we are very prejudiced too and make a lot of stereotypical, and what some may deem racist, jokes about people of other races. We can't cry racism at every turn and then expect a pass. It doesn't work like that.