Old post that I forgot to post...
My morning routine of the last two days has been to wake up at 8 am, shower, get dressed, walk to the local vegan bakery/cafe pick up a mock-egg salad sandwich (made with tofu) a large coffee and get a taxi to work. I would normally ride my bike but the weather here has hit a record low... well, not really, it's just that it's really f*cking cold outside and no matter how many layers of clothing, scarf and hat I wear the cold air hits my face like giant block of ice. I tried it the other day, when it was 12 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside, that's about 20 degrees below zero in Celsius and by the time I got to work I couldn't feel my legs so I was walking pretty funny.
Anyways... this morning a cab actually stopped for me, they usually don't stop when I try to flag them down on 14th ST, especially if they sense that I'm headed towards the northeastern parts of the city.
The driver was a 60-something year old “African American” man (I do have issues with that description since we don't call white people who have been living here for over 3 or 4-generations Irish American or German American, British American, so on), very friendly and wearing an outfit not unlike that worn by my grandfather when he was still alive: Button up v-neck sweater, flannel shirt, driving ivy hat (or paper-boy hat as some like to call them).
As I settled in the back-seat and took sips of my coffee, 89.3 fm. - D.C.'s Pacifica station, was playing over the radio. The host was talking about the history of racism in the U.S., all the way back to colonial times. He was recalling some really important historical information on the early American colonies and at the same time commenting on the contradictions that lie within the glorification of the so-called "founding fathers" and the U.S. Constitution which Americans are usually submitted to throughout their lives. What I liked best about the show was how the host described the early colonialists who were mostly outcasts (Protestants, criminals, debtors, etcetera), as people who went from being the oppressed to the oppressors.
Although that descriptions is pretty obvious to anyone with a little knowledge of history and common sense, that’s not what most people consider or see as the “official story”. The colonial past is usually romanticized and viewed simply as the beginnings of a “great nation” where all kinds of people from all over the world came to this land and found freedom and prosperity. The truth is, most of those crackers that landed on Plymouth Rock were of the same ilk as the criminals who colonized Australia and the immigrants who came later who were not English were treated a lot like the African slaves that followed shortly after. Therefore, this whole idea of a “white race” didn’t really come to be a unifying factor until much later.
The English considered themselves superior to all other Europeans, both as a culture and as a “race”, no matter if the other Europeans were of the same anglo-saxon descent. We can trace that same behavior back to Rome, where the gauls, celts and germans were seen as inferior civilizations. Racism as we know it today, based on skin tone, language and religion; may have its roots in the Age of Exploration (15th-18th centuries) when Europeans, following the model created by the now defunct roman empire, looked to expand their territories and find new sources of wealth in far off lands.
Race, as many other terms we commonly use in our language is a social construct. It is applied almost exclusively to the human species (well, my understanding is that we separate animals of the same species by breed, not by race). Darwin once called the concept of race "an arbitrary number of categories used to divide up the human species", as some "experts" (scientists) will claim that there are two races, some three, some four, and so on. The problem is that there are always degrees or gradations between the “arbitrary number of categories” used and there are always “exceptions to the rule”.
I have to agree with that definition, specially coming from a family of mixed race. I look white (or European) and have green eyes, light brown hair and light skin. My maternal grandmother is Spanish/Serb and my grandfather was Greek. As for my father’s side, things get a little bit trickier; although he resembles your typical light skinned Brazilian, his mother was an African woman with bright green eyes. I’ve got the thick lips and wide nose to prove it. In spite of all this mix and match, which I am very proud of, I have always benefited from my appearance. I have lived off the privilege of looking white and that is something that deep down can sometimes make you fell a bit of guilt and drives you to constantly re-assert yourself with people and remind them who you are and what you consider yourself to be.
Society is not color blind and racism in the U.S. is rampant, it’s institutional. It’s in the educational system, in government, in the work place, on TV, in the media, in the prison industrial complex, in popular culture, in your house, in my house. But oppression can take many shapes, and it has, maybe society has gradually become less explicit when it comes to discriminating against Blacks, Jews, Latino, Asians, Arabs, women, gay/lesbian/trans, the differently abled, overweight, you name it; but legislation and moral codes do not have a considerable effect on hundreds of years of cultural racism. We are still pretty fucked up, specially the privileged.
Shit... I lost my train of thought.
