>Now let me give examples of what I comfortably not consider "tacit racism."
>When my son was 2.5-year old he encountered about same age black toddler in
>Moscow (the toddler was from some African embassy that was around place we
>used to live). My son cried to death when the toddler came up to my son.
>My son referred to him as "unclean baby boy" ("gryazny mal'chik"). I guess
>my son was scared not only unfamiliar color of boy's skin, but also by
>foreign language never experienced before (this boy did not speak Russian)
>and by unfamiliar motorics of the boy (the boy seemed to be much more
>energetic than typical Russian male and female children of this age).
I understand your point, Eugene. But what if the atypical Russian=20
children were seen as atypical not because they were very
few in number but because they, a much more numerous they, were
marginalized, institutionally discriminated against. Then I would
say your son's reaction to the "difference" would be an effect of
institutional discrimination of the basis of whatever
the perceived "difference" (which would then be not only=20
a matter of perception but a matter of material effects).=20
Also, I would say that in either case, what matters is not your
son's reaction to another child's difference, but your response to
your son's reaction...
Eugene wrote:
>I also do not consider as "tacit racism" people's desires to live in safe
>neighborhood, or to move away life threatening situations by avoiding young
>black males on streets or public transportation, or to find good school for
>their own children and so on. =20
I think what you don't appreciate, again, is the power and privilege
you enjoy here as a white male. You may not feel very privileged=20
at the moment, but you have flexibility, room to maneuver, that
others don't have. So what you do with respect to those=20
inequities is a matter of conscience, and there are many ways to
act with a social conscience, but not to admit the inequities
seems to me not conscientious.
In
>sum, I think the issue is how to manage prejudices rather than how to avoid
>them.
I agree! (Yey!)
And thank you for your concluding anecdote :)
- Judy
>In conclusion, I'd like to share some personal anecdote. Once I had a very
>interesting discussion with an American Christian fundamentalist (she does
>not allow her kids to read fairy tales because these stories are "a bunch=
of
>lies"). She asked me how I'd differentiate legitimate faith from=
fanaticism
>(I think that fanaticism feeds on demonization of problems).
>Half-seriously, I answered that healthy faith comfortably tolerates jokes=
at
>itself while fanaticism does not =96 it is too serious. I added that when
>people become too serious or too facetious about something, I usually
>suspect either fanaticism or cynicism. She laughed at this.
Judy Diamondstone diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Graduate School of Education Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
_____________
=09
Eternity is in love with the productions of time. - Wm Blake