Don’t Forget

Racism is a structure and, so far, it has no bright point on the horizon telling its end. It exists in every country around the world, varying from different races and making people’s lives harder. Right now in the US, rippling around other western countries, we have an ever growing “Black Lives Matter” movement. This implies that every life matters, but, at least for the moment, we should be paying more attention to the blacks’, given that since civil rights in the US was established in 1966 (supposedly ending segregation in schools) and still today we have an easily observed disadvantage on being a person of color.

We, as people, are all a little racist. Obviously that varies from person to person, but we have a keen eye to disregard those who are different from us. You can blame that in your upbring or culture, but the reality is that we tend to be close to people who are similar to us. There are some examples in a small study I did which shows that even when people try to have a diverse social group, they tend to be closer to those who are similar to them. That’s the one you can talk about the same topics, be interested in the same things and whatnot.

This is not saying that these people in the study fend from people who were different. It simply concluded that, in the end, in most cases (62,5%), we had those advertising as being “diverse friendly” ending up with similar people closer to them. As observed in the study, everyone had their reasons. I’ll lay here some of them just to paint the picture better.

There was subject A, who was pretty liked and popular in his workplace. People call him to parties, breaks, happy hours, what have you. He declared in the beginning that he always preferred to be around different people, because this way he was able to have his ideas challenged better and, with that, think and reflect about life in a more efficient way. This made a lot of sense, in fact, some of our greatest thinkers used to be like that (Immanuel Kant, for example). But by the end of the study, after a few weeks of letting the subjects know each other and interact with one another, he ended up being “besties” with a person who shared his skin color and cultural background. Subject C was a female and was pleasant to Subject A’s eyes. Does this makes him a misogynist? A racist? A sociopath? Of course not, it was pure chemistry.

I had a colleague saying that, in this case, the people responsible for his education and upbringing were probably racist, or even that “since we live in a bigoted society, his final decision was that of a bigot”. Now this has some empirical sense, but still, should we go to Subject A and tell him that his choice was wrong and for that he didn’t deserve that companionship? How can anyone make that statement?

Now let’s take a look at subject E. He had a successful academic life so far, a good job and had friends and family that loved and respected him. In his initial interview though, he stated that he was his friend’s “token black friend”. That didn’t make him love his friends any less or even imply that he was less respected because of it. If anything, he felt proud of being successful even though he had to go through a rougher path to get where he were (like attending to his suburban school through the METCO program).

In his case, he truly fulfilled the goal of being surrounded by different people than him. Out of the eight subjects, he was one out of three black people. The other two got acquainted with each other rather quickly, because they were “the same”. Subject E was left aside for “not being black enough”, he concluded by the end of the study while laughing with himself. This conclusion is common in many places and cases, heavily in the entertainment industry, but we’ll get to that later.

In the end he was very found of Subject G, a half Japanese man who went at the same school as him. They never had the opportunity to get to know each other in high school, seeing that one was from the lacrosse team and the other wasn’t into sports. Still, they formed a strong bond, specially giving the little time they spent together.
Now, think about these cases for a second. Was Subject E inclusive and sensible when approaching Subject G? Or was he just going for the most familiar, given that they had the same background, even with the racial difference? One can argue that his choice was just as easy as Subject A’s, because they both got closer to what was more familiar.

Again my colleague pitched in his two cents, saying that having a good education and being around people of different races and backgrounds made Subject E not a racist, hence his choice wasn’t the same as Subject A’s at all. However, if they were actually truthful in all their given information, Subject A’s background was surrounded by Asian kids, giving the neighborhood he lived in and also his mother’s side of the family. So, by choosing someone like him, wasn’t him being diverse?

The study itself had more details to it, but this would only drag this article longer than it has to be.

Moving on, the entertainment industry and their choice on casting people of color was also mentioned above. We can take a look at that and with it think about how does it impact the society we live in. To finish our point, I’ll talk about some other interviews I did, some with people mentioned in the study and others that weren’t.

This comment on the entertainment industry came to me from a Brazilian friend, one of which I interviewed as part of our last section. He, as a partially being part of this industry, said something that most of us know, but most likely don’t bring attention to. Whenever a casting director, be that from advertisement or movies, makes the decision to cast a person of color, they to go the far end of the spectrum. You rarely see someone that has mixed races appearing on television or the movie theater.

After he told me that I remember of several occasions, but I couldn’t simply trust my memory. I went to youtube and spent a couple of hours looking for and watching this in real time, with crops and commented scenes, with raw footage and even in ongoing ads. It is very unusual for you to see someone “in between” colors, if we may call it that. That goes for both sides, because you either see someone ridiculously white or a dark black person. It is precisely concerning from my friend’s point of view, because where we live, in Brazil, most of our population (50.7%) is black or mixed race.

If you live in Brazil or in the US you know that the majority of black people are in public schools. Out of the black friends that I had throughout my life, only three were from private schools. When asking them about the reality around them, in 67% of cases they were the only black person between their peers to attend a private school.

There was another study conducted with the objective of getting the point of view of this Brazilians and their experience living as a black person in relation to comfort, studies, their political and social views. I’m thankful to not only have the chance to hear what they had to say, but also to have such wonderful and versatile friends, who jumped in to share their time diligently.

We talked about, previously here, one of the statistics brought by their answers. Another interesting one is when we talked about art. Even those who have a more conservative point of view declared the importance of art when it comes to getting a message across.

“I think that art is a very important foundation in the social thinking structure. I think that has a key role in combating racism. However, above all, education is the main mean of going against it.”

Worth mentioning that, even though most of them agreed that the ongoing riots with the “Black Lives Matter” were getting a lot of attention, it was a pressing concern that “once the dust settles, everything will get back to what it was and most of the people who were fighting for it will forget about their stand and carry on with their lives.”

This has been talked about in other articles as well, but one last point that I want to put into the light is the ongoing far right regimes that are increasingly growing across the world. We see that in its variety and disguises, going from not allowing refugees, to kicking out immigrants or even just being biased and bigoted against people of color. These state’s propaganda gives room for those who are really hateful or are simply frustrated with several unrelated mundane things to lash out their hate, their indignation and violence against those minority groups (which, as we talked about, sometimes they aren’t even the minority).

“I remember my childhood bully. Everywhere I went he’d come and pick on me, but since I was stronger than him, we would just fight it off and he would go away. Curiously enough he’d never given up. Eventually we ended up becoming friends and nowadays I realize something: that kid wasn’t racist. He used to see me as his friend and that was his way to play with his buddy. He only did that by imitating something he was taught at his house (his father telling his adult friends that blacks got his job or cut him off on traffic that morning, etc.). Once we got old enough he saw other kids actually excluding me and he didn’t like that, hence we ended up becoming friends.

The thing that scares me the most nowadays is that we have people in important positions that are just bullies. Although, such positions give them immunity, so not only we can hardly fight them off, they give voice to the bullies all over the nation. Where’s the black kid who didn’t play with him to come along and end this madness?”

Even though this is a short piece I wanted to share this with you and hopefully with that share some helpful insights in this matter. I see some of my white friends and people that are actively online saying that just by the fact they’re white they’re racist. I don’t think that’s the case, not most of the time anyway. But I do think racism is structural and the foundation of our system has been built on it, so naturally we come across things that can be harmful to others, being that with our realization or not.

In conclusion, next time you post a black square in your feed, think of what that represents. Does it mean an ongoing fight and that’s just another day’s piece out of many others? Is it the start of something real and a good and conscientious thought to become vocal and give room to people who might not have it? Or was it just something you did to belong, to be present in “a moment of need” and after it everything will be the same? What’s your role in all of this? What can you do to help?