The Audacity to See Our Society as "Raceless"

Even as a sociologist, I began the Jesuit Volunteer Corps believing that we had moved to a raceless society – one in which we all have the same opportunities, and one in which we have moved passed any sort of prejudice. And when confronting with statistics of the overwhelming numbers of minorities who are poor in America’s urban centers, I had the audacity to simply label this as economic inequality and forget that race could or should be incorporated into the analysis.

Could I fully blame myself? Yes and no. Coming from a predominately white area where I myself was a minority, it was easy to dismiss the fact that racism exists; after all, I am not white, and look at me – I have successfully used my talents and middle class-instilled work ethic and social compass to not only “succeed,” but actually obtain almost everything I had ever asked for – with slim to in some cases no adversity.

Coming to Washington has slowly eroded the fantasy I held to be true. Even as quickly as getting off the plane at National Airport, I noticed that the people in business attire are most generally white, and the people in service jobs are indefinitely black. But, sure I thought, this is tied to economic inequality, and it is not racial inequality, for that doesn’t exist.

I work in NW Washington in an office that is in a predominately and historically African American neighborhood. I live just north of our office and walk to work each day. Our location also lends itself to other Latino/Hispanic clients, and I notice the rare white client who walks into Bread for legal assistance. But still, through this, everything must be tied to economic inequality only, for we are now a raceless society.

Nevermind that in my attempts to pretend that we are raceless, I still watched (to my horror) that I had my own prejudices that surfaced. We can blame a list of relevant factors and sources of this prejudice, but the fact is that I held prejudices that I didn’t even know were there. Working at Bread for the City has challenged me daily, and has helped destroy the prejudices and replace them with relationships with real people.

Even heading to Southeast Washington, across the Anacostia, where the deepest poverty perpetuates itself overtly, I still continued to believe that all our problems are tied to economic inequality. I remember my first visit to our Anacostia location. The blatant absence of any sort of commercial establishments (minus the plentiful liquor and corner stores) coupled with the hopelessness in the tone of the buildings and the fact that only African Americans were present should have been a clear signal that we cannot continue to see a raceless society. Even travelling back across the river, commenting on the contrast to the luxury condo buildings and the omnipresent cupola of the United States Capitol, I failed to see what should have been so clear.

After many more conversations, more visits to SE, more daily walks through my neighborhood, a sociological observation at Landlord-Tenant Court, media coverage, and inner reflections, I believe I had my grand epiphany in early June. For what should have been obvious in my courses at Gonzaga now finally made sense. There is a reason in modern sociological theory that race, gender, and class are tied together, and not viewed only independently of one another.

In the context of race, it now clear to me that the term “racism” applies to institutions in society. Institutions are racist because they give power to the views of the majority at the expense (and disadvantage) of the minority. The power reinforces the majority while condemning the minority. The very foundations of who we are as Americans is dependent on this system of power. The majority power has used African Americans in an exploitative manner since their original days in this country. Freed from slavery, they began their new lives without any of the wealth many others had been able to accumulate through prosperity, inheritance, and the advantages of being white in a racist society. Naturally, African Americans stayed in poverty and entered a life of a new slavery – this time as sharecroppers. And finally, when escaping this new type of slavery, African Americans headed towards the city where they faced new types of racism and segregation. When wealthier Americans fled cities for the suburbs in the 50s, African Americans were left without sufficient wealth and thus found themselves in the center of decay and fleeting capital. Even when having sufficient wealth to move to the suburbs, African Americans faced racist policies written into law, preventing them from actually achieving the American Dream.

Today – the result is so easy to see that it’s abhorrent to think that it wasn’t clear on my first visit to our SE office, when such an image was so blatant. Lack of capital resulted in neighborhood decay. Dependency grew. Poverty concentrated deeper and deeper, due to policies in housing and in prejudice of individual Americans. Lack of jobs in the urban centers, the coming of drugs, the fall of the American family, terrible schools, lack of tax base to provide services, hopelessness and mental illnesses, conditions of squalor, deep segregation, and perhaps a forgotten symptom – the apathy and lack of concern by the dominant power and society, has led to the state we are in today.

I can no longer believe that we have moved to a raceless society.

As a sociologist, I am partly ashamed to say that it has taken me this long to recognize the strong impact of race and power in the United States. But perhaps – it sheds light to the packaging of our middle class values – it is easy for us to believe we are in a raceless society when we live lives of privilege, wealth accumulation, affluent neighborhoods, and higher quality schools. Even when we come from families who are in the lower middle class, we still can look to the working class, working poor, and underclass as people below us who we continue working to avoid becoming. Our values become reinforced in the successes we experience, and we continue believing the American dream is equal, just, and gives equal opportunity to all. Others must not be taking advantage of the opportunity.

Our values are reinforced when we hear the word diversity. We cringe because it has been a buzz word and we become upset that someone might be an equal candidate (or more upsetting, worse than us) and we will lose our opportunity because the policy is favoring the African American over us. It is a power struggle and we are afraid we will lose. We know that the other has been oppressed, but we tell him that it was in the past. We tell her that it is not our fault. We rebuke the other for trying to give us guilt for the sins of the past. After all, if you only work as hard as I, you too will be at the same place. For you see, we are a raceless society now, a society of equal opportunity. Nevermind the 300 years of advantage I have over you. That is over now. What is important is that we both work hard, and let’s be honest, I have worked harder than you. I deserve it more.

And so, this is how we continue to perpetuate the great myth in our society that we live in a raceless society, a society that now is colorblind, a society that sees everyone as equals, a society that judges by merit and skills, not by skin color and economic class.

For a long time, I believed this great American myth. But, alas, after this year in Washington, the lie has become exposed. I can longer believe that we live in a raceless society.

Yet – I am not left alienated, hopeless, and powerlessness. No – the revelation is like a bittersweet taste. The bitterness floods my mind, heart, and soul, tempting me to turn to hopelessness. But, the taste of hope is sweet, and some enters me and convinces me that there is still hope. We can still fight for policy that combats a racist society. We can still confront the prejudices we don’t even know we have, just as I have this year. We can still work together to break down this great American myth and work for our brothers and sisters who are disadvantaged at our experience.

We can do it together, and we will. For now that the myth has been revealed as a fallacy in both our society and in our hearts, we can move towards establishing what we know is just.