But if you only have love for your own race
then you only leave space to discriminate
and to discriminate only generates hate
and when you hate then you’re bound to get irate.

By Victoria Morphy

It’s a sad commentary about our culture, but racism is still prevalent in the United States - and even exists inherently in some of those who preach against it. Consider renowned author and speaker Tim Wise, who has dedicated much of his life to fighting for equal rights for minorities. Yet, just last fall Wise felt uneasy when he was about to board a plane and noticed that the pilots were black.

With only 3% of all commercial pilots black, Wise admits that his response was fleeting and totally irrational but not out of step with “a culture that seems to say black people are not as intelligent, they are not as capable.” As a result, his first thought was, ‘Oh my God, can these guys really fly this plane?’

Intellectually, Wise understood that the pilots of his airplane would have to be amongst the best in the fleet because otherwise they wouldn’t have their job. “Black folks have to be twice as good to get half as far,” said Wise. “I understood that my emotional response was a racist response and that’s in spite of the fact that I was raised in a progressive environment!”

So, despite the heightened awareness, programs like Affirmative Action, Civil Rights legislation and our pop culture that reveres black artists, why are we still so bogged down in issues of race? Wise believes that whatever our thoughts may be about issues of race, race is a product of our experience. “History doesn’t stop because a Civil Rights Act gets passed,” he said. “The affects of history in terms of who has what and why and who has wealth and who has income and who has the top education and who has the best jobs - that doesn’t get reset like a video game every generation.”

Raised by progressive parents in Nashville, Tenn., Wise was enrolled in institutional settings where blacks were the authority figures and he was one of only three whites in a group of 35 kids. This alone didn’t make him a militant anti racist activist, but it gave him insights into racial disparities - his black friends were disciplined differently and never permitted to enter honors classes. His experience also showed him how those distinctions played out in later life. “You go away to college in New Orleans, which is very much a black city and very much an apartheid city,” he said, “and you see that 3% percent of the businesses are owned by blacks that represent 64% of the population. So it’s a very divided, very much white dominated, but very much a black cultural and demographic city.”

Yet, personal experience alone is not the root cause of what has essentially become an institutionalized issue of race. Many of our ideas are born in the media and pop culture, which seems to create distinctions between blacks and whites. Blacks, on the one hand are disproportionately represented as the criminals, the drug dealers and the rapists. But in reality, Wise says, “75% of all drug users are white and only 26% of all the violent crime in the country is done by black folks.” On the other hand, several blacks are now among the most popular celebrities - Michael Jordan, the Williams sisters, Tiger Woods and Oprah. “[These extremes] leave a lot of white folks thinking that either black people are dangerous, which leads to racist beliefs, or that blacks as a whole are doing really, really well and that they don’t face any problems anymore.” Aside from the fact that 98% of blacks don’t fit into either extreme, these categories feed the misassumption that racism is an idea of the past.

Even our pop culture seems to reflect racism. Dominated by blacks, 85% of all rap and hip hop music is purchased by whites and is produced by white people. “When rap was first introduced,” said Wise, “it was black produced, much of it was black owned and very much more black controlled. There was a lot of biting social commentary and more party-type tunes as opposed to more hardcore ‘gangsta rap.’” In part, gangsta rap grew out of the record industry that saw it as commercially viable for white audiences. “It wasn’t an industry conspiracy,” said Wise, “and I don’t think artists were actually ‘told’ to put their politics on the back burner. I do think that the record labels marketed gangsta rap as if it were the entire part of urban black life, thereby missing the point that violent rap comes from a violent social condition largely imposed by structural and social institutions.”

But the message is clear and this kind of music seems to suggest that scary violence is the black community experience. “The blame lies with the larger culture that places such an emphasis on violence and on making money,” said Wise. “It would be unfair and unrealistic to expect more from, say Snoop Dog, than we expect from the head of Warner Brothers - one is a creation of the other.” There are, however, revolutionary artists who are black whose lyrics have considerably more depth - like Dead Prez, The Coup, Public Enemy and more recently Black Eyed Peas (however, their political lyrics don’t seem to enjoy the same commercial success as other artists).

So how do we overcome our racist views and create true equity? Certainly there have been some advancements, but blacks are still disproportionately unemployed, blacks still get a disproportionately lousy education, and they receive disproportionately worse treatment in the justice system that seems to send more black men to jail for crimes they didn’t commit. Progress is in the eyes of the beholder, Wise contends, and Malcolm X’s famous statement “Don’t put a dagger in my chest 12 inches, pull it out six inches and tell me that you have made progress,” still seems to hold true in our culture today.

Wise believes that in order for true change to exist, we have to acknowledge that discrimination is still widespread. “White folks need to understand that they receive benefits in the labor market, in the educational system, that in affect we receive a preference, a privilege,” he said. “This is very difficult for us.” Once admitting that prejudice exists, we then must commit to more than just talk. That means big changes need to occur on the institutional level, where the powers of authority must do more to make the opportunities for success possible. “Unless the school system gets more equitable, unless the job market becomes more equitable, unless discrimination is rooted out in those institutions where it happens,” he said, “the attitude of people will remain racist.”

Wise believes a good first step is to offer mentoring programs. “The issue is not how to give a boost to black and brown kids, that’s about money,” he said. “The first and foremost step is about challenging white people, challenging their beliefs that have been internalized. If 95% of all teachers in this country are white and they don’t know how to teach black and brown children because they haven’t been around people of color and they have these fears and stereotypes and 60% of them, according to surveys, don’t think that black kids are ever going to go to college - if they have that attitude, then they are going to do damage to black children no matter how much money those black kids receive in school, no matter how much better we make their home environments.”

Another way of breaking down bias, he suggests, is by creating inter-dependent networks of people: pairing a white affluent school class with a school that has kids who are mostly of color. Working together “in a spirited equity” on a science project, a literary project, a community service project, where every member of the team is dependent on every other member, is another way we break down barriers and create true equity as well as paving the way for opportunity to exist for everyone to succeed.

By challenging what we have been taught to think, we can begin to see past the color of someone’s skin. Like the Black Eyed Peas song suggests, we need to respect not just our own race but also others. Unless we make some important changes in the way we think and in the way we act, we will be swallowed by our own irrational instinct. And the dagger Malcolm X describes will remain stuck six inches inside our country’s belly.