Racism is a problem. It has been a problem for thousands of years. It is amazing to me that no matter how much progress we make as a society (and as people individually), we cannot get over something as trite as skin color. We are well past the hard, very public stages of racism (specifically regarding African Americans), such as slavery and segregation; yet, the remaining racism factors are even scarier because not only are they more private and less known, but they are just as destructive.
A prime example of the type of racism that plagues today society appeared yesterday in Ty Schwoeffermann’s column, “Jungle Fever”. He argues that black and white relationships cannot work. The reason he perceives this is because our nation has specifically tabooed this and thus created stereotypes to explain why such a relationship would be “acceptable”. He even says, “When the couple is in my sight, my mind justifies it with general stereotypes that attempt to explain reason why the two might be together,” to prove my point. We are so embedded with stereotypes (broad generalizations) in our culture that people stop believing they are stereotypes and assume they are fact, going so far as to use them as actual judgments.
Mr. Schwoeffermann’s prime example is definitely stirring, but more so it is completely pointless and irrelevant. It is a tale of a black man supposedly asking a white woman out, but he admits, “most people believe that he just whistled at the store clerk.” So, therefore it is the tale of a black man whistling at a white woman then days later getting murdered brutally. Not only is this an awful support example, but it comes from the year 1955 in Mississippi, so it is completely irrelevant. This comes only one year after one of the first major desegregation decisions (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954), meaning there was still a generally practiced racist attitude towards African-Americans in certain facets of American culture. Also, it occurred in Mississippi, part of the Deep South, and a much more racist state than most at the time, especially more than those in the North. There is no relevance here. It is outdated and it refers to a man being murdered for acknowledging a white, engaged woman, which of course is not at all relevant to the claim that modern-day Caucasian and African-American couples purportedly cannot work.
One of his other examples is the 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation. This, too is completely irrelevant and outdated. If he was writing an article of the history and progression of racism, then they might be acceptable examples, but he wasn’t.
“In America no interracial couple will survive as long as negative prejudices exist in the general public’s conscience,” says Schwoeffermann. I agree. They will not work because people like Ty write articles like he did. He did not offer advice as to how they can work, and even tried to prove they cannot work with a couple very bad examples and awful stereotypes. Mr. Schwoeffermann does nothing more than advance these negative stereotypes by justifying a conclusion based on those stereotypes and his belief in them. I will stop with that, though, I do not mean this as a personal attack, but rather an attack on what the article provided to us as readers: nothing. There was no idea offered, there was no hope offered for these relationships, just a bunch of statements and a thesis with very little support.
Seventeen percent of all marriages are between African-Americans and Caucasians (according to the 2000 census). That is definitely more than the number he claims can survive, which is none. I believe love should be blind and the only reason it isn’t is because people do still judge these types of relationships, as well as other mixed relationships, negatively, and often based on stereotypes. As a collective group, all citizens need to rise up and accept these relationships (and peoples of other origins in general, not just their relationships) and not make judgments. And it carries over to other aspects of life as well. If we just eliminate prejudices in general, the world will be a better place.
If we would just stop judging and stay out of people’s business the world would be a better, more efficient and more accepting place. But that is a very tall order in a world dominated by terrible misconceptions based on pre-judgments.