West River Eagle

Racism living well; overtly and incognito



On Facebook with friends not afraid to use the social media venue to discuss political and social issues in a respectful manner, I read as a discussion as it unfolded about a county sheriffs release of mug shots in which the people arrested were given Nike shirts to wear.

The Eldorado, Arkansas Union County Sheriff’s Office posted photos of 12 people wearing various Nike shirts according to WISHTV.com, a channel 8 Indianapolis news station.

The television station reported that the photos were posted by Shaun King with the caption “putting Nike t-shirts on people they arrest and making them wear them during mugshots. Source says it is to mock Nike and Colin Kaepernick. Disgusting,”

Shared by a friend of mine, Ben Rose, who lives in Indianapolis, Rose wrote, “If they feel comfortable enough to do this what kind of attitudes do you think they enforce when patrolling neighborhoods?”

In his thread, an officer responded that this act of protest at the expense of the people arrested was not motivated by racism, but classism.

Classism, which is ‘prejudice against or in favor of a particular social class’ according to the Google dictionary.

Racism is historically defined as a “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races,” and seems to have evolved to mean, “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior,” again defined by Google Dictionary.

In America, racism seems to be more narrowly defined as any act of discrimination or show of prejudice against any people of color, and we have a long history of laws and policies that support that definition even in today’s alleged liberal and more accepting society.

On one level, I know we are not living in the world of the 1960s, or even the 1980s. Yet, even in the past 20 years, I have friends who put up with subtle forms of racism and have been slighted by invisible forms of racism – often called hidden, institutional or systemic racism.

One example of hidden racism is the tendency to claim that reservation kids are different, and as a result, people need to teach at a slower pace, or use all hands-on activities, have them take classes typically taught at a lower level when they are seniors.

While this sensitivity to the perceived capabilities or lack thereof of kids who live on a reservation seems like it is caring and takes into consideration the environment of the students and their learning styles, it is in fact a subtle form of institutional or systemic racism.

How and why you ask? Making educational tasks easier for students than they would be for students elsewhere in the Nation or world assumes that the students will not be competing against people off the reservation.

This consideration of the student does not really show an understanding of the culture in which the student has been raised, rather it tries to alleviate the student’s stress in what may be an already over-stressed life outside of school.

Unfortunately, reducing the educational rigor in school classrooms fails to prepare students for the educational and career-oriented rigor outside the classroom, and sets the students at a disadvantage when competing for jobs with people who did not grow up on the reservation.

This kind of racism is not intentional and is founded in a genuine concern for the well-being of students, but its consequences can have a negative impact on the lives of students for a lifetime to come.

Since I hear and see this kind of talk in schools less and less, there seems hope that instances of hidden racism are changing as people become more aware of the unforeseen consequences of their policies and procedures.

Perception is a powerful weapon, and often, people argue about what is racist and what is not racist based on their own perceptions rather than considering the perceptions of others may be as valid as your own perceptions.

Quite frankly, I think we need to practice in our workplaces thinking about what we learn from one another through the policies and procedures we put in place, and how people are treated based on these policies and procedures.

The saying, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions,” was not made up on a whim without justification. We often have good intentions with what we say or do, but it is not every day we think about the unforeseen outcomes might be of our good intentions.

Other times, we feel so strongly about something that we do not care to think about the consequences of our actions, and care only to insult as much as we feel insulted, and I think that is the case with the Union County Sheriff’s office, whose employee(s) wanted to upset people as much as they were upset by the knee Kapernick took during the national anthem.

The truth is that Kapernick probably knew that people would be upset with him, but his action was meant to raise awareness about his concerns of violence against people who often have been guilty of being black, and nothing else. In this mugshot instance, it appears that Kapernick’s concerns are mocked by police in Arkansas, a state with a history of violence towards people of color — i.e. the Little Rock Nine at Central High School in Little Rock, AK.

In Central High School, the institutional racism revealed itself in a 2007 Little Rock Nine: 50 Years Laterdocumentary with the institutional classism of the school – mostly rich and middle-income family students were in Advanced Placement (AP) classes, and mostly poor and black or Hispanic kids were in regular or lower level classes.

The one black student shone in the film whose parents lived in the more affluent neighborhood was also in AP classes. There were only two black females who were not from affluent families in the AP classes. Students in the lower classes were treated like they were in kindergarten by one teacher.

My friend Rose said that classism is rooted in racism, and when I look at the examples I see in our school systems across poor communities in the United States, I think I would have to agree.

The problem is that many people do not see the connection, and their intentions are often not rooted in a feeling of racism – rather they are rooted in a culture that is not even always aware of its own oppressive nature.

When I hear people complain about being from the rez, or wanting to get away from the rez, or on the flip side, saying I am just a rez kid, I will never go anywhere, I am saddened and I usually challenge the comment with what I was always told – that this place and you can be what you make it.

If we could all recognize that even our best intentions may be flawed and could be changed to create a society we all want to live in and can contribute to, then maybe we can begin to shape the culture of our country into a nation with integrity and character that is not attached to a negative perception and fear of our physical features and what those features might imply about us.

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