Racism

It is about 150 years since this country fought a great Civil War. This was war fought mostly over the issue of whether one person had the right to own another - a condition known as slavery. A few slaves were "indentured". These people had desired to immigrate to this country but were without the means. They would contract with someone who could afford the passage from the old world to the new. In return, the indentured person would agree to work as a slave for a period of years. This form of slavery was relatively benign, being a contract between two consenting persons.

The other form of slavery consisted of capturing people from less technically advanced countries, mainly in Africa, bringing them to this country, and selling them to be owned as property. This didn't fit very well with the model that the country had set for itself - that every man was free and equal, subject only to those constraints necessary to maintain civil order. Ultimately this conflict, which seems very obvious now, led to a breakdown. The southern half of the country was more rural and agricultural and depended at that time on very cheap labor to produce the crops. The northern half did not have this problem and was free to decide to abolish the practice of slavery.

Unfortunately, the legacy of this era lingers on. We are still faced with having a segment of both races which refuses to accept the other race as being merely human and instead maintains that those of the other race are all evil. There is such a problem still with feelings on both sides that even the language used to describe these two races is a topic that is charged with emotion. For sake of simplicity I will just refer to them as black and white. This division ignores lots of questions such as whether people of Spanish or American Indian or Eastern Indian or Eskimo or Oriental or Mongol or Aborigine are white or black. For purposes of this topic it is sufficient to just consider the white folks, many of whom descend from the owners of slaves, and the black folks, most of whom descend from former slaves.

The U.S. has long considered itself a "melting pot" of the races - a place for those to come who valued the freedom of the individual to rise in society to become the best person he could be. Of course, there has always been a problem with that. Those who are here already are not quite willing to admit that this freedom should apply to those who are arriving now. As other cultures have had problems in the past America has seen large inflows of specific cultures or races. For example, the Potato Famine in Ireland caused large immigration of Irish folks to the U.S. For the new Irish immigrants times were hard. Those who were already here resented the arrival of the new folks, fearing that they would take all the jobs, probably because they were content to work for lower wages, preferring little to nothing, and because they feared that the newly arrived would go on the public relief rolls, causing a rise in taxes. There is also apparently a tendency for all animals, people included, to prefer the company of those most like themselves. The newly arrived Irish were often confronted with signs saying "No Irish Need Apply" with regard to available jobs. However, no matter how well assimilated a racial or cultural group, there will still be the equivalent of "Irish Pubs" where the Irish culture is celebrated.

Fortunately, the Irish looked like the rest of us, except for a higher proportion of red hair and green eyes. Within a generation their kids spoke like all the other kids in the neighborhood, and this anti-Irish attitude quickly passed. Unfortunately, black folks do not look like white folks, so it is harder for them to blend in to the white population. Still, the same could be said for the oriental folks, and they have generally blended in very well. Indeed, the oriental folks often have a disproportionately high share of the top achievers in all levels of the school system. They also have their share of the criminal elements of society as well as shopkeepers and all other elements of society. Some have argued that the cultural background of the Orientals have lead them to this high level of achievement. This implies that there is something about the black culture or the black race that discourages achievement. It is hard to imagine what that could be. Some have suggested that the institution of slavery is at fault - that all the blacks who had large amounts of pride, initiative and drive were killed and that only those who learned to b e submissive, complacent and docile survived. This seems to be quite a reach, but it hard to imagine what else could explain their relative lack of success. At our stage of understanding of such matters we just don't know. We still have a large argument about the relative importance of "nature" (i.e., genetic inheritance) versus "nurture" (i.e., culture and education) in determining the personality of a person.

There are two other interesting points related to the problem of assimilation. One is an observation of my older son, Buzz. He is involved in the broadcasting of sports events on television. His major passion in sports is the game of Soccer, as it is called here in the U.S. and in England, or Football as it is known in the rest of the world. (Here in the U.S. we have another very popular game known as football that is virtually unknown in the rest of the world.) Until about fifteen years ago, soccer was virtually unknown here although it is the most widely watched sport in the rest of the world. Indeed, the world cup soccer match is the most widely watched sporting event of all, much to the chagrin of the U.S. sports world. (We apparently figure since we invented TV that our sports should be the most widely watched.) Soccer is now building in the U.S., a professional league having been started a few years that appears to be heading for success.

We were watching the last World Cup soccer tournament which is held every four years. The U.S. team was playing the team from Iran, a fairly small country that has been on the outs with the U.S. for several years. (This country has much oil under it, and is very rich for its size.) We noticed that most of the audience was Iranian and that most of them were carrying signs that identified them as being against the current Iranian regime. The Iranian government does not encourage travelers from its borders, apparently believing that an uneducated and unsophisticated populace are more malleable than an educated one. The obvious conclusion is that most of these supporters are living in the U.S., the one country where they are most likely to be able to succeed as an expatriate. But they were cheering mightily for the Iranian team. Buzz's observation is that if one is going to come to the U.S. and enjoy the benefits of the culture then you should become an involved U.S. partisan and cheer for the U.S., not continue to cheer for a team from a country that you found it necessary to leave in order to succeed (or in many cases - just to live).

The second related point has to do with the phenomena of the youth of the culture. Biology and the might of hormones being what they are, young people from different cultures are often attracted to each other, sometimes "falling in love", whatever that might be, despite the fact that they are not from the same cultural background. This leads to much strife among the other members of the cultures involved, for the kinds of reasons we talked about earlier. One has to value one's background for it has a lot to do with how we behave and what we believe, or in the final sense, who we are. This is such a well known problem that it has been the subject of many stories, the most famous of which is "Romeo and Juliet". Obviously, if this ability of biology to override cultural conditioning were allowed to follow its lead whenever it occurred, then ultimately it would solve the problem, since we would all evolve into a single race and a single culture. In the long run this will probably come to pass. The price we pay will be the loss of much of our cultural heritage.

I have heard that there have been cultures in the past that solved similar assimilation problems, specifically with whites and blacks, by means of levying a tax on marriages of the same race and providing a tax relief for interracial marriages. This tax policy accelerates the "Romeo & Juliet" trend and ultimately solves the problem. Unfortunately, this kind of a policy has little chance of being instituted in the U.S. The minority races would no doubt claim it was a "genocidal" maneuver designed to wipe them out, and in a sense I suppose they are right. The question is whether that would be a bad thing. The ultimate solution would be for everyone to forget the entire race business and just learn to accept each other as human. Indeed, we should rejoice in diversity since in times of massive changes in the environment they can be a source of strength. Species that have no adaptability can quickly die out if things change too much. It is a strength of humans that we can adapt readily.

It appears unlikely to happen, however. I hear black people speak about how "all" the white folks conspire to keep them down by limiting their access to the benefits of society. I also regularly hear white folks speak about how "all" black people are on welfare, the men all refuse to work and abandon their wives and children, etc. Both of these groups are wrong, of course. I know black people who are fine upstanding family men and productive citizens to the point of being wealthy. I also know that we white folks do not have regular meetings about how to keep the black man in his place. To be sure, white people and black people still kill one another in the name of race, but these are actually a tiny minority on both sides. The only extent in which white people "conspire" to exclude black people is the sense mentioned above - the natural tendency of all people to associate with people who are like themselves.

When I was growing up in Houston, Texas in the 1940-50 period there were separate schools, restaurant counters, restrooms, drinking fountains, etc. for blacks and whites. Black people were expected to ride in the back of the bus. These were habits (and even laws in some cases) that were left over from the reconstruction period after the Civil War nearly 100 years before. In the 60's there was a Civil Rights movement, and most of these laws and customs were abandoned. Some people say that not much has changed - black people are still denied opportunities available to whites. On the average blacks make less money for the same jobs as whites, have greater poverty rates, lower education levels, etc., so there is some merit to this argument. However, there are still those that suggest that no progress has been made. They are either too young to remember the 1950's or are simply ignoring the evidence in favor of rhetoric.

This topic has gone on for much longer than I thought it would. I didn't mean to write a major piece on race relations - I am certainly no expert there. It is just such a pervasive problem in our society today.