| Number 100 | December 29, 2000 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, It's no secret that I am not a big fan of our Governor, Jesse Ventura. It's not some personal vendetta, it's just that he seems so intent on cutting taxes that he is continuing to underfund some crucial services that only the state can provide. Maybe it's because he's a millionaire. Who knows? In any case, I will be hammering him repeatedly during the next couple of months, as he introduces and attempts to defend another "bare bones" budget while he plans the next rebate of the already-collected tax funds that could be used to provide health care and senior services and legal aid and you-know-the-story. So, if you're a big fan of the governor, you may want to cancel your Nygaard Notes subscription now and avoid the rush. Readers will notice again in this issue of the Notes that I usually put the word "white" in quotation marks when referring to the racial designation of pale people of European heritage. This is done to reflect my belief that the idea of "race" is a socially-constructed device that should continually be questioned. While the effects of racism are real enough, the basis for the whole system i.e. "race" is a fiction. The designation "white" is particularly suspect, about which I'll say more as time goes on. For now, I just wanted to remove any mystery surrounding my punctuation. I was going to do some sort of meditative and profound essay on the occasion of the 100th issue of Nygaard Notes this week, but it seemed more important to finish my essay on racial shame. Maybe I'll do it next week. Although, now that I think about it, next week I was planning to say something about health care, and Canada, and domestic abuse, and... There's never enough room. Oh, well, I'll figure it out later. See you next year! Nygaard |
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On the Pacifica Radio show Democracy Now! on Monday, December 11, there was a debate/discussion between two lawyers for Leonard Peltier, Jennifer Harbury and Bruce Ellison, and two representatives of the FBI who are involved in the effort to deny clemency to Mr. Peltier. Toward the end of the debate, one of the FBI agents, John Sennett, the President of the FBI Agents Association, uttered the following words that I found immensely revealing:
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In Nygaard Notes #s 94-96 I talked about the ongoing crisis called welfare "reform." Minnesotans have a chance to make their collective voice heard on the subject next week, when the state legislature convenes for the 2001 session. All sorts of groups from all over the state will converge on the Capitol to protest the whole idea of time limits on welfare, and to demand more access to meaningful education for recipients, and to call for respect for the rights of immigrants. Typical of the grassroots organizing ability of the Minnesota Welfare Rights Coalition, free buses will be leaving from various food shelves and homeless shelters around town, and lunch will be served at the rally! I plan to be there. For more information, call 612-822-8020. |
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The new title of this semi-regular feature comes from State Finance Commissioner Pam Wheelock's comment on the size of the state budget surplus, which she uttered on November 30th, 2000: "I was here a year ago to tell you we had a boatload of money. Today I'm here to tell you we're busting at the seams." On Friday, Dec 8th, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) carried an article entitled "Minnesota Pollution Agency Says it Expects More Cutbacks." Here are a few choice quotations from that story: "The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency could lose up to 17 percent of its staff from last year's peak due to an $8 million budget shortfall, agency officials said." "[Agency officials confirmed that] the agency's staff, which numbered 840 two years ago, may be reduced by 100 to 740 workers by 2003." 'Clearly we're not going to be able to do the same amount of work with 740 employees that we did with 840,' Deputy Commissioner Lisa Thorvig said, adding I' ve been at the agency for 22 years and, for the first time in my memory, our budget is shrinking.'" Thorvig pointed out that "Federal grants are shrinking or ending for certain programs, such as hazardous-waste cleanup and petroleum-tank management," and said that "The MPCA has been unable to collect some fees because of lower state funding for the agency." The article continues, "Thorvig said the agency won' t even appeal for more money. We have a governor who very much believes in limited state government and who wants to have a budget we can live within in flush times or in lean times and that is not going to change,' Thorvig said. He campaigned on that, won on that, and I haven' t heard people say he was wrong about it.'" So, Ms. Thorvig "hasn't heard people say the Governor was wrong about" cutting budgets when we are busting at the seams with money? Well, you can reach Deputy Commissioner Thorvig by phone at 651-296-7305 or by email at lisa.thorvig@pca.state.mn.us. Of course, a call or letter to your federal representative or senator wouldn't hurt, either, telling them what you think about that "static or decreasing federal funding" for clean air and water in your state. |
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Last week I talked about the shame dynamic as it applies to individuals, and suggested that the therapeutic journey which is needed to overcome it might involve an internal re-working of inappropriate adaptation responses in the adult. This week I will explore my hypothesis that there is a white racial shame dynamic on the national level which shapes all of our institutions in profound ways. I will be talking about our social "therapeutic journey" of escape from white racial shame, which begins with an internal process but goes much further, since it cannot be resolved without an active engagement with the ongoing racism of our institutions and policies. I will attempt to show how this shame dynamic plays itself out by looking at what else? the news media, although any number of institutions bear a look in this regard. In order to make the point as clear as possible, I will focus on the highly racially-charged issue known as "racial profiling." Racial Profiling and Shame If my hypothesis is true, then a news media dominated by "white" people could be expected to exhibit the behaviors associated with shame when talking about race and racism. As I said last week, those dynamics include DETACHMENT, DENIAL, RAGE, a SHIFTING OF THE BLAME, and more DENIAL. Let's look. DETACHMENT: Most people in most major media newsrooms are not the people affected most directly by racial profiling. Racial minorities now constitute 11.6 percent of news staffs but 27.3 percent of the country's population, while the average TV news director takes home $73,000 per year. This segregation by race and class means that major newsrooms are structurally detached from the problem, with the result that the individuals in the newsroom are allowed to literally NOT SEE what is often clear and obvious to many members of the excluded communities. And that's the point. The desire to break through this segregation in order to make visible what has been invisible is one of the real motivating forces behind what is known as "affirmative action." After all, if people in the nation's newsrooms start showing up late for work because they've been arbitrarily stopped by the cops on the way in, we'll likely see a lot more ongoing attention paid to the problem. Real affirmative action would begin to break down the detachment that racism has built into our newsrooms; the fear of losing this protection partially explains the vehemence of the attacks on the relatively minor reform that is affirmative action. DENIAL: When "white" people allow themselves -- or are forced -- to move beyond racial detachment, then they will start to see and hear things about which they feel ashamed, such as racial profiling. Then the denial starts. Even the so-far token integration of our nation's newsrooms has resulted in an increased reporting of the racial profiling which African Americans have been saying for years is a daily threat and reality. The denial takes the form of a pattern of reporting which treats every incident as an isolated case ("a few bad apples"), as "white" people like to see them, rather than as symptoms of the systematic nature of the racism that permeates U.S. culture, as many anti-racists of all colors have come to see them. Racial shame thus affects the volume, tone, placement, and content of the reporting on racial profiling in serious ways. RAGE: On the occasions when the world is treated to a videotape of police brutality directed at people of color, some police respond with rage, and this is often the response that gets into the media. The fury is sometimes directed at the press itself, and sometimes the press simply reports the rage that is expressed toward those who are the most upset about the offense. A more subtle rage response is that exhibited by some "white" liberals, as when so many were "shocked" and "furious" at those cops who beat up Rodney King (or shot Amadou Diallo, or Tycel Nelson, or some other African American citizen). Since these events expose the pattern of racism of which "white" people are deservedly ashamed, they produce the rageful "shock" response that can only come from "white" people to whom these events come as a surprise when they are reported. This "shock" response also gets into the media at times, and contributes to the perception on the part of some that the mainstream media are "white" institutions. This is because this stuff goes on all the time and yet the papers seem to reflect the "white" community's denial response much more consistently than the rage that is ever-present -- and growing -- in large segments of communities of color (and among anti-racist Euro-Americans). SHIFTING THE BLAME: In the case of racial profiling, this takes many forms. The media will report "studies" that have been published, and police tales from the street, and books that have been written, all attempting to show that African American males are "suspicious" (statistics prove it!) and thus are responsible for their own harassment. Much like the argument that a rape victim somehow "deserved" it because of her behavior or dress, the argument is made, and duly reported, that a 20-year-old African American male who walks or dresses a certain way is "asking" to be stopped by the cops. This is just a racialized version of the old game called "Blaming the Victim." DENIAL, AGAIN: Since we haven't run the course with the first four responses, this one has yet to be borne out (or not). But, although there has been a relative blizzard of coverage of the phenomenon of racial profiling in recent months, I expect that this, too, will pass, and it will again be possible for "white" people to tell themselves not to worry because "that's been taken care of." We'll see; this is not a prediction. However, I did a Lexis/Nexis database search which came up with 393 references to "racial profiling" in major U.S. newspapers during the past six months, while a search of the first six months of 1998 came up with just 4 references, and 1995 yielded only one -- nationwide. Might I point out that racial profiling in the United States is not something that began to be a problem only in the year 2000. I believe that similar patterns of detachment, denial, rage, shifting of blame, and more denial would also be seen if we were to look at other major institutions that are dominated by "white" people -- government and business being the obvious ones. And I believe that the shame which lies at the base of this pattern is fundamentally a problem for "white" people to work through. By doing so, "white" people as individuals can begin to liberate themselves from their racist heritage. More importantly, if we can bring ourselves to do so in large enough numbers, then we can begin to end our collaboration in the larger structures of institutional racism, the policies and practices that work to benefit "white" people -- as a group -- every day at the expense of people of color. For those who wish to explore the idea of white racial shame more deeply, I recommend a book called "Learning to Be White: Money, Race, and God in America," by Thandeka (that's her full name). It was published in 1999 by the Continuum Publishing Group; now out in paperback! Call your local independent bookstore; they can order it for you. |