July, 31st, 2006
last updated March, 16th, 2010

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Race:

Racism

by Chris Sunami

1. The Other (see Fanon's Law):
   We all tend to distance ourselves from negative traits by associating them with "The Other," which is any group recognizably identifiable as one to which we ourselves do not personally belong.
   
   For black people "The Other" may be white people, and for white people, black people. For gay people it may be straight people and for straight people, gay people. For the poor, "The Other" is the rich, and vice versa.
   
   In other words, a person tells him or herself "I'm not lazy, ignorant, violent or stupid; it's those people who are lazy, ignorant, violent and stupid. If we could do something about those people we could get rid of laziness, ignorance, violence and stupidity."
   
   Race enters the picture only in as much as it is a easy trait to identify and a hard one to change. For this reason, people of a different racial group are the best and easiest targets for "Othering."
   
   They are also the safest targets: you never have to worry about waking up one morning and finding that you (or a close friend) have become a member of the racial group you despise. On the other hand a rich person can become poor, or a "straight" person discover him or herself to be gay.
   
   
2. Social stratification: Almost all societies divide up into different socioeconomic levels, with some people being wealthy and powerful, and some being poor and powerless. Most societies also try to keep the same people on the bottom and top all the time. Race makes it easy to identify one group as the one that should be kept at the bottom, or another as the group that should be on top.

1. Divide and Conquer: Those in power will often distract attention away from themselves by stirring up racial tensions between the different groups below them.
   
   For example, in America, poor whites and blacks are often encouraged to hate each other so that they won't unite over issues of poverty.
   
   
2. Blame the Victim: Conversely, those at the top of the social ladder tend to feel guilt about the plight of those beneath them. Accordingly, they create elaborate justifications of why the people at the bottom deserve to be there. For example, most American states now rely heavily on "high-stakes" (graduation-determining) educational tests. The pro-testing movement promotes the notion that success or failure is based on individual merit and effort, while deemphasizing the fact that the results on such tests correlate strongly with the race and socioeconomic class of the test-takers. Although the resulting social stratification remains the same, the test legitimizes social inequity through convincing those on top that they have achieved success by their own merit; and those on bottom that their failures are entirely their own.

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