Another stab at the Problem Definition Analysis

Problem 1.
"It's Human Nature"- This viewpoint asserts that the world has a particular, biologically-based understanding or belief about race that underlies all attitudes about how society should function.
Solution: This is a common belief, and one that has become fused into our collective memories and psyches. And it's okay. We are different and should not pretend that we are in fact equal. There are fundamental differences between the races and it should be accepted and negotiated with to achieve social justice.

• By operating under this assumption, the conversation can get easily steered from one that challenges racism to one that reinforces the concepts of a natural racial order as it were. A concerted effort to break down essentialist understandings about race would help to show that race is not a biological fact, but a social construction.

Problem 2.
"What about Colin Powell, and Condeleezza Rice, and Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey, and..."- Some believe that racism is dead and is no longer an issue in today's society. Many see the accomplishments of people of color and believe that this is a clear cut indication of substantial progress, and that the urgency for universal civil rights is dead.
Solution: By highlighting the successes of people of color, we can begin to let go of the need to look for racism in our everyday lives. The thought is that we are past the historical moments where things were unequal, and by focusing on this, we fail to celebrate the strides that have been made and move forward into the future.

• Still, for every success story, there are hundreds of thousands of others that counter the possibilities of "the American Dream." For every successful immigrant story of someone who "moved here with nothing and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps", there are the lived realities of licensed doctors, lawyers, educators, etc. who migrated here to the United States and are unable to practice their trade because of unfair restrictions or flat out rejection of their academic and professional credentials. The myth of meritocracy holds an enormous amount of sway over the biases and community stories that are circulated about other races and ethnic groups in the US. By giving an accurate account of the experiences challenges, successes and failures of our neighbors, we might be better equipped to see that race is not the only factor in shaping our lives.

Problem 3.
"I'm not a racist! My best friend is a person of color."- Some see racism as someone else's beliefs rather than belonging to ourselves. We use extreme examples of overt racism to distance ourselves from the beliefs and practices that makes one an blatant participant of racism.
Solution: Since we are not the ones committing the headline-worthy acts of racism, we should focus our efforts on stamping out those groups that breed hate in this way. The KKK, Aryan Nations, Al-Qaida and the like are the real monsters, and we should find a way to stop them through legal recourse or military action.

• This approach does not require that we check our own complicity, because racism is somebody else's problem. We assume that since we know a few people of a different race, and generally hold anti-racist beliefs, that we are not required to do the work of resolving race relations in our own lives. It creates a division between those that hold their racist ideologies on their sleeves and the "rest of us."

Problem 4.
"It's the economy, stupid."- Issues of race are really masking issues of class. The world is not divided by notions of race, but the goals of capitalistic greed. Individuals across class lines have more in common with one another than we think, and it is capitalism that is keeping us all distracted with discussions of racism.
Solution: If we all just realize that there are more white women on welfare than women of color, or that the impoverished whites in Appalachia are just as marginalized as the migrant farm workers, then we can get past race and get some serious social justice accomplished. Modes of oppression work to support capitalistic ideals and corporate interests. It is less about race, culture, or religion than it is about profiteering at humankind's expense. Particularly since race is a social construction, there is no need to continue to invoke it when looking for paths to justice and liberation.

• This is great in theory, but it ignores the fact that the rest of the world still operates using ideas of race as being real. It covertly invalidates experiences by coding them as issues of class and may reinforce racist beliefs that claims of racism have always been exaggerated or false.
  

Response 1: Our Super Initiative

On Monday, March 27, 2006, Jacob posed the question to our class, “To what degree is your super-initiative empowering?” This question seemed timely and extremely relevant to our topic. A common comment that I hear from people when it comes to racism, is that it seems like a problem so big that it cannot be tackled. That our individual efforts have little effect on the larger issues at hand. In many ways the impetus behind pushing for solutions to the end of racist ideologies and beliefs is that history will repeat itself. We are constantly looking for an end to the cycle.

In our attempts to zoom in and discuss racism from the worms eye view, I want to continue to stress the idea that change needs to occur on the micro level. One of the primary ways that this can occur is though the support and creation of diverse communities. I still believe that diverse communities do not happen organically, but are intentional. It is natural to self-segregate, it is a value that has been intricately woven in to our understandings of American life and culture. On the same token, I posit that segregated communities do not occur by accident either. A book titled Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by Dr. James Loewen seeks to prove my assertion to be true. Sundown towns are towns that through violence, threats of violence and codified laws excluded non-whites from communities throughout the United States. Located primarily in the Northern states, Illinois had some of the highest numbers of Sundown towns on record, with nearly 70% (up to 472) towns listed. Considering that a large majority of our class comes from Chicago or the outlying Chicago Suburbs and that Dr. Loewen has identified that almost 80% of these suburbs were Sundown towns, the experiences that our peers were brought up in are directly related to our understandings of race and racial politics. Race is often tied to class, but here we see where class was not a factor in the shaping of our communities, insomuch as racist ideologies. These attitudes have persisted.

Dr. Loewen outlines these areas and the detrimental effects of creating and maintaining segregated communities. He asserts that despite Federal mandates, many towns still covertly operate as Sundown towns. It is only when cases are brought to court that the town laws are reviewed and reversed. This is not merely a black and white issue either as he illustrates that Latinos, Asians, Jews and Italians were prohibited from purchasing property

An excerpt from an online chat he gave about his book: "Many towns became sundown -- expelled their blacks -- upon learning of the misbehavior of one black person. For example, Vienna, IL, burned out its black community quite late -- 1954 -- because one (perhaps two) black(s) molested a white woman and her daughter. Vienna has no black household to this date. This kind of collective responsibility is NEVER done to whites. How could we -- do it to ourselves?" Chilling stuff huh?

Many towns like Hawthorne, Calif., in the 1930s, had signage that literally stated "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne.” Others had signals such as bells, as in Villa Grove, Illinois that rang every day at sunset as a warning to non-whites who may have worked or traveled through Villa Grove. It has been less than a decade since that town stopped the traditional ringing the bell. Many of the younger generation were unfamiliar with the legacy of the bell and took the racial exclusivity of their town for granted as a natural part of their upbringing. In this way, I believe that our Super-Initiative will empower our class to reconsider our immediate world. We can see the complexities of race relations and that there are more than just stereotypes at work here. Hopefully, those of us who are affected by this will make an intentional effort to live in diverse communities and to stop the cycle of self-segregation. We can see that this problem does not have to be bigger than ourselves. We can see effective change, on the micro level, through deliberate interactions with the varied, diverse, unique world that is all around us.