Well I can just hear my moderately racist father screaming bloody murder now (interesting how MS Word suggested I remove the adverb and simply put “racist”)... Austin US
Ok, breathe people. Bigotry aside, this does not really mean much in the short term. However, while I fly no flags of hate, I do have some comments on the subject.
I dearly hope this does not come off wrong, as ra-CIAL commentary so very often and tragically seems to in our racially over-sensitive society, but here goes: I am glad this is happening. The reason I am glad this is happening is that hopefully, in time, it will truly equalize us. What do I mean when I say to truly equalize us? I mean (and oh, I giddily hope) that it may be possible someday to live in a society where everyone casts the chips from their shoulders, ceases to make presumptions about people and holds no more grudges against things (albeit horrible) that each other’s grandfathers and great grandfathers did in an ignorant time and place.
It is hard to argue charges of a white male power hold on our society, as it plainly has existed for some time. We are observing it slowly disintegrate, but it is still there. And while this may not be Alabama Detroit
So I hope for a world where all of this goes away. Will it ever completely happen? Not as long as humans are humans. Will a reality check to the white majority as it stands speed up the process? Probably not much. However, there is a slight chance, if those who come into the majority role learn from the sins of their oppressors instead of perpetuating them, we as a people just might see some real progress.
The latest blog post “Red White and Brown,” by Mike Youngblood, is about the city of Austin officially being a white-minority city, applying to the population under 18. Youngblood believes that “hatemongering is sure to come” because of predictions that the youth population will be a minority-majority by 2020 and the nation as a whole by 2043. I agree with that statement. The growing minority population is certain to bring up many differences among the nations population.
ReplyDeleteI do not feel like this is a racial commentary and I agree with Youngblood, that this is a racial over-sensitive society. There are still many racial issues in America, but people are too quick to accuse others of being racist. I am also glad that the minority population is growing, but I do not think that it will “equalize” us. As long as there is a majority and a minority, there will always be differences among them two. We can only hope that the majority, who was the minority, will stop the racism, but that is very unlikely. As Youngblood put it “I’d hate to be a white child in certain parts of Detroit.” Even if the racism stopped on the minority-majority end, that still will not change how the white racists feel. Some people’s minds are just stuck “in an ignorant time and place.”
This was a well put together blog post. I like the way that Youngblood associated racist behaviors as “ignorant beliefs,” and that those beliefs were from “an ignorant time and place.” Racism is ignorance! The lack of knowledge and culture of a society to another makes people to perceive the differences in them, not the similarities. We are all humans, and I think most of us want the same things in one way or another.
"Red, White and Brown" is a post by Mike Youngblood about America's demographics changing so that the current minorities will be the majority by 2020 and how that may change societies perceptions.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree about the theory of society casting away their previous negative beliefs about other races once there is not such a huge gap between us; however, as Mike mentioned in his blog my breath is not held for such a day to arrive any time soon. My pessimistic view is that nothing is really going to change at all, minorities are still going to be treated as minorities even if they are not, and the majority race is always going to act just as that. Until society as a collective can learn to completely rethink the hierarchy that has been in place for so long, I do not think that any dramatic change will be seen.