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From: "Andres Muro" <andresm@epcc.edu>
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Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:106] Re: questions about defining when we are
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>>> kate@global2000.net 09/29/00 02:32PM >>>
Discussions so far on this listserv lead me to want to know:
what, actually, does a person have to do in order to *not* be a racist?
Yours for better letters,
Kate Gladstone - Handwriting Repair
1. Understand your position of power and privilege over others.
2. Engage in praxis to reduce your position of privilege.
3. Support efforts to stop oppression of oppressed groups.
Saussure explains that meanings have to do with relations between signifier and signified, or sound and image. Essentially, if I say the word Arab, and image will pop in your mind. Depending on your context, the images would be different for different people. For example, for many in America, this term will produce an image of terrorism. If I say the word "Black" many people will see violent teenagers smoking dope, shooting each other and robbing innocent people to buy drugs. If I say the word "white" the image that pops in people's mind would not be as scary for most whites.
Why do these images pop in our minds? Because the media promotes these images. We see movies, television and news shows in which certain groups are stereotyped, and depicted in ways that are detrimental to those groups. On the other hand, history, literature, arts, omit minorities as if they did not have any contribution to society. By naming a group in a certain context and omitting it in another context, society subtly promotes racist values.
As a child, many learned that only white men had anything to do with anything in history, government, art, science, etc. No women or minorities ever contributed in any way to these areas. However, we also go to the movies, we read the news and we watch tv and we see minorities committing crimes, women having big boobs, and wild sex, and blacks smoking drugs, etc. etc.
This process of naming and not naming creates an association between signifier and signified in various contexts. Peter McLaren argues that we must struggle to change the relationship of signifier and signified, so that when we hear the word terrorism, we don't immediately think of Arab, or when we hear the work cocaine we don't associate it with blacks or Colombians. As Freire argued, we must denounce contexts that marginalize and oppress, and we must announce environments that de-marginalize and liberate.
Andres
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