"They have no values." That was my coworker's judgement of "illegals" as I talked to her in the kitchen this morning. The racism in her statement took my breath away while I searched quickly for how to respond.
The context for her comment was a conversation about violence in American society and troubled youth. I suppose it's a matter of perspective. Neither of us wants to see youth being shot on a regular basis in L.A., as is currently the case. But my first reaction is to say we should invest more federal, state, and private resources--and invest those resources more wisely--in schools, in violence prevention programs, and in community assistance for youth and low-income families. Her perspective was that it came down to illegal immigrants with no values. Ouch.
Now, any good anthropology student can tell you that there is no such thing as a collection of people with no values. People's and societies' values can be extremely different, but everyone has values. I was reading an article about gang members in the paper and the policeman who was giving a quote said that although gang members break the laws of the broader society, they will remain staunchly true to the values and rules set up within the gang. He seemed to think this was weird. It's not weird at all, not anymore than that white middle-class Americans are true to different values and ways of expressing those values than middle-class Japanese--just think about the question of individuality/family-society obligation. Perhaps one could say that the broader American society has some problems with values when we can callously label immigrants as the reason why we have problems while at the same time abusing them through unjust labor practices and attempting to deny them basic human rights such as access to health care.
Aside from the falsehood of the statement, however, what really breaks my heart is the way that racism is so deeply embedded that it comes out in a comment like that in a kitchen conversation between two well-meaning people. I debated even posting her comment, but I think it's important to honestly see how prevalent racism is. I am coming to love the Latina junior high girls I work with, and at least half if not more of their families are illegal, and let me just tell you that they are far from being people with no values!
1 comment:
Racism Whom among us does not harbor some?! How can we keep from moving from the individual case to the generality? Or keep from applying the societal tendency to the individual life?
I cringed when some generality was made about Americans(while living in Thailand), probably mostly as a defense mechanism, not wanting to be painted that way. Though at other times feeling quite free to denounce some elements. And even if there was some truth about the general criticism that did indeed apply to me, I did not want to be defined in that way. There is then a feeling of having lost any voice, even opportunity to grow and change. Mutual relationship is lost, grace is absent, learning and encouragement in the midst of brokenness is not possible.
When I would make some generality about Thais in a meeting, I immediately felt like I had stepped over some boundary. Partly gross generality, partly the defensive response of tribe, and certainly not something the individual listener feels like has given them a chance to be heard and seen as the individual they are.
So what do I do if I think the Chinese government tends to view themselves as at the center of middle earth, that all revolves around them. Do my acquaintences with Chinese blood necessarily think this way? No. But I find in myself a tendency to want to generalize, "the Chinese think ...". This moves to sometimes not liking Chinese people in some generic way, but this is not extended to certain more intimate friends.
How about other readers; what racism or if you don't like that term, what complex feelings do you harbor?
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