I could not agree more with Dickerson's reported assertion that white America should not be held up as a norm, or worse yet, a role model. (However, it seems to me that black conservatives are more likely to do that than the liberal civil rights establishment.) As James Baldwin put it, why should one want to be integrated into a burning house? Instead, the task for progressive people of all complexions should be to improve ourselves as human beings and rehabilitate our national house simultaneously.
Whether to blame institutional racism for the problems of people of color turns on the circumstances, I believe. Individuals definitely should do what they can to improve their lives. But, the societal framework one operates in determines how well those efforts work out much of the time. A black child in Mississippi with an IQ of 150 is probably still more likely to find herself stymied by resentful whites than helped. If her potential isn't met, a society that deems her inferior even when she surpasses its measures of merit is at fault. To try to shift the responsibiliy from society's shoulders to hers is unfair.
| Continue Silver Rights' "Reviewer's biases may distort Dickerson's views," and be sure to get you some of Cobb's "Must I?"
posted in weblogs on January 30, 2004 8:26 AM | t (1)
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