False Charges of Racism Against Corporations - Players Need to Leave Table with Their Race CardsPosted on 05/23/2010
Minority populations (Scientologists, homosexuals, blacks, honest attorneys) can sometimes feel outnumbered and against overwhelming odds. It’s rational to scramble for power by any means necessary, but some unethical tactics to gain footing against other races backfire, such as subversive and unfounded allegations of racism.
Falsely charging racism can gain big concessions from whites. Feeling a warped sense of karmic and poetic fairness, some whites fearfully examine their motives, whether the charges are blatantly false or require further serious investigation.
In Dayton, Ohio on February 21 of 2005 the burning of a cross on the face of a church was initially attributed to racial hate crime. It was later found to be from an electrical short in the backlighting. Charges of racism have become so commonplace, that even electricity is suspected of harboring racial hatred. (The possibility of a thought crime by electricity is offered under the principle that if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.)
In response to allegations by civil service employees of racism in job promotion practices at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in June of 2005, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference spokesman responded, “Wright-Patt is the last great slave plantation.” In Government institutions, there is always the assurance that slave plantations will die out under the crushing weight of paperwork and regulation.
Comparing a military base to a slave plantation adds only clutter to investigations into allegations of racially discriminatory hiring and promotion practices. Similar allegations had also been addressed in 1992 when commanders at WPAFB explained that blacks are in less valuable positions, have low rank, and get unusually low performance ratings, making them prime targets during layoff actions. Recently hired employees, whether they are white or black, are also candidates for reduction in force (Clark and Gaffney, “AF cuts concern NAACP,” Dayton Daily News).
False charges of racism work because too many addle-brained liberal Americans
- Aren’t litigious enough to sue for libel and slander
- Care more for the reputations of their slandered businesses than they do holding accusers responsible for providing proof to support their allegations
- Feel that even if the allegations are false, blacks have been treated so unfairly historically, that they deserve whatever they can extort (“A” for boldness)
- Don’t want to chance that the charges are false, extending the benefit of a doubt (a variation of the rationale for objecting to the much more permanent circumstance of a successful capital punishment)
- Feel that blacks are presumed to be more attuned to subtle racism and, therefore, better able to detect it than whites
- Accept that the (usually) wealthy among the accused have funds enough to disprove a negative–which is, that they didn’t commit racial discrimination–and that the accuser has too little money to prove baseless allegations
People are overwrought with the possibility of racism, viewing racism as a given when people of different races in America get together. Minorities condition the mindsets of other minorities and anyone who wants to be part of a cause, to see racism as a major factor in every innocent transaction. Emphasis on conflict between the races, for some, makes racism a latent factor in the everyday actions and assumptions of mainstream American life, giving allegations of racism far greater credibility than they deserve. The felony indictments of four adults for arson and ethnic intimidation for burning a cross on a black family’s lawn in Middletown, Ohio, also lend credence to suspicions of racism in cases like the electrical short in the light behind the church cross in Dayton. Unsubstantiated and premature blame for a hate crime indicates that people are thinking in ways that are constrained by a need to see racial controversy where it doesn’t likely exist.
Increasingly, the term racism is being misapplied to perceived racial injustices that don’t merit the charge. Charging racism as a means of rebuking people who exhibit garden-variety prejudice was an initially successful technique for eliciting compassion and condemning whites, who felt an urgency to address the alleged racist action. Racial etiquette, according to columnist Walter Williams, “requires that whites not openly criticize blacks, ask embarrassing questions, or hold blacks and whites to the same conduct and performance standards” (Williams).
Playing the race card, a term popularized in nominee Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing and during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, has an insidious impact on race relations. According to Blauner, the “tendency to cite racism as a blanket explanation for all manifestations” of failure erodes “the black community’s belief in its own autonomy and capacity for self-determination and to minimize the value of individual responsibility” (Blauner, pp. 318 – 319).
True RacismPosted on 07/05/2011
Depending on who provides the definition, racism can mean overt hatred of a race and culture, usually accompanied by violence and the intent to eradicate a race. Racism has been attributed to anyone who has the power to control certain societal rewards, such as employment, whether or not these people acknowledge that racism naturally colors their world vision and determines how they approach daily interactions. But racism has been claimed to manifest itself as the deprivation of a television cable station that a few blacks want in an area populated predominantly by whites. The word racism can conjure nasty images of victimization, job discrimination, unfair housing, legal precedents intended to reverse racism, substandard education, poverty, and a host of other indistinct negative correlation.
Racists aren’t confined to high-level power positions in social, corporate, religious, or political institutions. They aren’t found only in the white race or only in the black race.
Racists may verbally announce their senseless hatred, or they may hide it if revelation could conceivably subject them to allegations of racism and the bad public relations that come with such allegations. Racists may also hide their attitude to avoid legal punitive action for racial discrimination or personal reprisal.
Racist thinking has no moral component, is not moral or immoral. Thought, and much speech, is legally protected. Illegal acts, whether motivated by racist thought, greed, anger, or chemical imbalance, are not protected.
Tolerant superiority among slaveholders meant that they didn’t need to waste energy “hating” those to whom they felt superior. Hatred is only one emotional response to racial diversity, though the most inflammatory one.
Contemporary arguments that blacks are inherently inferior (morally, intellectually, socially, and ethically) are less a product of racial hatred than of resentment that minorities are allowed to compete unfairly, whereas they were legally barred from any competition in the past. People resent changes to the status quo that remove their own unfair advantage. Extension of the right to compete is one of those changes. Extension of the right to compete with unfair advantage based on race feels like a slap in the face to many in the racial majority.
Racism is learned. Any generalized hatred is. Somebody teaches a child to hate, make fun of, oppress, and fear children of other races. Somebody teaches people that people who are different are bad or dangerous, just as somebody must teach children that some snakes and fire can be dangerous. In backward cultures, children and their teachers are plainly ignorant, having been taught their entire lives to automatically distrust other races and to generalize negative traits to them. In an interview by Gates, white parents are reported to be irresponsibly teaching their children racial hatred: “My daddy told me not to listen to a black man,” commented a white soldier charged with military insubordination to a black commander (Gates, PBS Special). Segregated, isolated within their own race and culture, children may have few opportunities for countervailing positive experiences with other races/nationalities. These racists-by-tradition may not be aware that the benefit of such thinking and consequent avoidance behaviors are intended to heighten personal safety or advance economically, for instance. Unlike Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, who hate one another from tradition and knowledge of horrendous crimes that continue to be committed by each side, racists-by-tradition have no intentionality.
Few whites still truly believe that the white race is inherently and generally superior to other races. Widespread education has made such views inconsistent with reality. To hold beliefs of superiority is irrational in light of contradicting, and often daily, communicated evidence of the educational, intellectual, social, cultural, and political contributions by members of all races. The dramatically improving social and economic condition of blacks in general disputes faulty proclamations by speakers who overestimate how bad the lives of minorities are, how unjustly minorities are being treated as a race. “Forty percent of blacks are now comfortably middle class, compared with only 5 percent in 1940” (Charen, p. 86). Those brainwashed few within Nazi and skinhead extremist groups who still hold such beliefs, though conviction is flagging, usually are so ignorant that they fail to see the value in keeping their mouths shut, thereby forming a very verbal, but discredited, minority. Being racist gives these people a sense of purpose.
Because racism exists doesn’t mean that it exists rampantly everywhere in everyone in every instance
A worldview that revolves around the belief that racism is prevalent forces the viewer to see prevalence whether or not it exists. Interactions with other races are framed with the presumption that others key on race in their daily activities and thoughts. This is an ego-centered view of the world that doesn’t reflect reality and results in habitual though unfounded distrust, anger, suspicion, offense, and frustration. Perceptions of mistreatment based on race burdens interactions between members of different races.
Institutional racism is the term used to describe the practice by those in major societal institutions in education, business, and government of systematically discriminating against races. The term institutional racism condemns, in an overarching way, large groups of people of planning and premeditating racism, regardless of the race of those employed in these institutions. Some or many people in an organization or affiliated with an institution may be racist, but the institution or organization is not, just as brightly colored shirts aren’t “gay,” though the men wearing them to Broadway musicals may be. Inanimate objects can have no sexual preference, just as systems can have no racial preference. Policies and regulations can’t be racist, though the people who created them as a means of racially discriminating and those enforcing them may be. There are a few good reasons to illogically label an institution or organization racist, rather than holding affiliated individuals responsible: in lawsuits, more monetary damages can be squeezed from organizations and corporations, and negotiations for concessions can often be granted more readily by organizations than by individuals.
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Posted on 05/16/2010
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