Not a personal failing?

"Racism, the argument goes, should not be thought of as a personal failing; it's a social system, with a specific history."
from the new yorker

It kind of irks me when someone says, defensively, that he or she is not racist. (Mostly because that comment is usually made as a disclaimer on making some sort of racist remark.) I like to think of myself as an idealist, but I struggle with racism. I can admit it; other than admitting it in public horrifies people, makes them think I'm slime. But I don't think I struggle with it more than other people...I'm just aware of it? Racist not in a "omg i hate people who are not white" sense, of course, but in a making-subconscious-judgments sense, a hypersensitivity sense, a I-don't-know-how-to-talk-to-you sense.

Avenue Q tells us that everyone's a little bit racist. I have to agree. Not because we WANT to be...it's just how we're raised. And not through a fault of our parents, necessarily, but because of the social system...I mean, for my own example, I'm from the suburbs. There were black people around, but I never had any interaction with anyone very different from me. There weren't ever any black people in my advanced/honors classes. Here and there in music classes, maybe, but not in calculus; not in college comp; not in physics; not in AP English; not in Spanish 5. I find this extremely troubling.

This is obviously not true of every high school. But it shouldn't be happening at all. Why were there no high-achieving minority students in my graduating class? There were 500ish of us, after all. Even with the minority population being the, well, minority, statistically speaking, there oughta be someone...

On top of the whole societal thing, it didn't help that my first experience with getting to know an African-American person well ended disastrously. I mean, that gives me a bad leg on race relations just through classical conditioning. I mean, if the first time I tried sushi I got sick, I would be wary of sushi, right? Even if it wasn't the fact that it was sushi that made me sick.

And so after that I found myself trying to overcompensate for my being a little freaked out by being hyper-aware of racial attitudes. Like, TOO much, panicking at the n-word, seeing societal racism in everything. Plus, at that same time, I was reading Wright's Native Son, which shows the plight of Bigger Thomas as being entirely the fault of society.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. But, I think society/everyone needs to acknowledge racism in order for things to get any better. But people don't like to think that they're racist, because it's sooooo politically incorrect.

dunno...