“Grand Revelation”

Choosing to believe something different has been my little catchphrase for this blog.  It represents the journey that I am on, to take a closer look at the things that I believe and ask why I believe them, to investigate further the values and “truths” of conservative white middle class culture.  These are values and truths that my culture has passed on to me and until the last three years, I have generally accepted without much thought.

One of the topics I have been thinking alot about, and have commented on before, (White Middle Class) is race. 

In the last few days, my friend Ariah has started a conversation about Hip Hop on his Blog, I’ve been reading a book called “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop.  The History of the Hip Hop Generation“, we watched a movie about Ruby Bridges, and I took a final for my Sociology class, where I had to comment on racism in America.  It all collided together to create this “grand revelation.”  One that I’d like to share.  

Recently, a friend and I were engaged in a conversation regarding the “blacks� that he supervised at his job.  He made a blanket statement that most of them were lazy but couldn’t be fired because of anti-

discrimination laws.  I consider my friend to be intelligent, so I was very surprised by this comment.  The next half hour felt like an episode of “All in the Familyâ€? with me playing the son-in-law and my friend starring as Archie Bunker.  I refer to this conversation as a reference point for my ”revelation.”   

It’s only been forty years, one generation, since it was legal, and preferred, to discriminate against minorities, mainly blacks.  The law of the land holds great power with many of our nation’s citizens, so much power, that we can allow it to do the thinking for us about what is right and what is wrong.  It’s only been forty years since not hiring a black person simply because of their skin was legal, and encouraged.  It’s only been forty years since a black person could be denied admissions to college, or sold a house, or kept out of a restaurant or a store, simply because they were black.  A great injustice has been done in that the law said discrimination and racism were okay.  This planted in our psyche that what was being done was right and too few people chose to think for themselves and say and act otherwise.  Unfortunately, it is very hard to erase something that has been planted in the psyche of the masses.  It takes a desire, and then great effort.  This is something that my friend has not taken the energy to do.  I finished the conversation by asking him what if African-American’s (a term that irritates him) would have arrived on the American scene in a different way.  I then pointed out to him that his perspective is being shaped by the ideas of a few egomaniacal rich white men who a few hundred years ago, stole humans from their homes and forced them to work for nothing.  We are shaped, often unknowingly, by the ideas of the past.  When will we choose to believe something different?