“Race: A History Beyond Black and White”

It is hard for me to discuss “race” in a meaningful way. Like most whites, I would swear that I am not prejudiced, and yet, as a lawyer I see people get screwed everyday at the hands of people who would also swear they are not prejudiced. I have no reason to believe I am any more capable of being objective than they are. I get confused about who can say this word or that word, and who can joke about or criticize this or that conduct based on some perceived racial characteristic.

In this interview Marc Aronson discusses this not so simple question: “What is race?” His new book about race deals with the issue of race from an historical perspective. Actually, according to Marc, this idea of racial (color) discrimination is a relatively modern one and it may be one that is unique to America. Consider this: Of the 10 to 12.5 million slaves abducted from Africa, less than 4% were brought to America. The overwhelming majority, 96%, went to Brazil and the Caribbean. Why? The surgar plantations? So why does the social aftermath of slavery seem to be so different when comparing the US to Brazil or a Caribbean nation?

You will have to read the book and form your own opinion, but one point Marc makes is this: The civil rights movement resulted in legislation that swept away, virtually overnight (okay, a little literary license here), the public exhibitions of racial prejudice. However, it did nothing to change our private expressions of racial prejudice. In fact, it seems there was an unwritten rule that racial prejudices were not matters to be discussed, just denied. They were not issues for us to understand, just excoriate.

Compare the racial sins of Germany in its treatment of Jews. Marc points out that after the fall of Hitler the German people not only transformed the public display of discrimination, but they also sought to understand how it had happened, how individuals fell prey to such strong racial prejudices, and in addition, the struggle through which they dealt with them after the war. As a nation, we have not had this introspective analysis of our own feelings and experiences. We simply subjugate the racial rumblings and deny they have a right to exist. Have you ever read a book devoted to someone’s struggle in overcoming racial prejudice in America? I don’t mean the two paragraphs that explain the before and after, I mean the struggle! It is almost like it wasn’t a struggle, it was just a decision and once decided, it was over, done with.

Obviously, it can’t be that easy. So, a lot of our current struggles with “race” is probably the result that we never went through any national therapy.

According to Marc, race is an 18th century phenomenon that replaced religion as the standard by which people judged themselves superior to others. In the days of Rome, that superiority was determined by whether or not you were free or a slave. Slavery in Rome was not associated with race, but depended on whether you were poor and sold into slavery by your family or whether your community had been conquered by the guys in short dresses with swords. After Rome, the church’s influence in society made religion the standard by which people were judged to be good or bad. And then, along came America with a novel idea: All men are created equal! Social status and religion were discarded, but not color. Race conveniently provided the judgmental standard: black, red-man, yellow horde.

Did you know the 1795 Naturalization Act described the qualifications for a person to become a naturalized US citizen? Those qualifications: (1) free, and (2) white. The law remained on the books until 1952. “Americaness” was “whiteness” even before there was a “colored bathroom.”

Does Marc have a way out of this racial mental illness? Read the book!