Before I read the article, “Rethinking Racism” by Barbara
Trepagnier; I thought of racism as someone who is either is or not. I guess it
did not occur to me that someone can be in the middle. More importantly, the
article did get me to rethink about racism. It was interesting to see racism to
be modify into a continuum, “Changing the oppositional categories ‘racist’ and ‘not
racist’ to a continuum ranging from ‘more racist’ to ‘less racist’ would more
accurately depict racism” (Trepagnier, 2006, pg. 5). This makes sense because I
do not think that anyone (maybe) can be 100% racist or not. With the continuum
anyone can stand where they believed in. Furthermore, I think the continuum
stay away from indicating whether someone is intended to be racist and focuses
more on the racist’s effects of one’s actions.
A question that I have is that I see people
advocating/promoting to stride away from racism and with the continuum, would
it be possible for a society to get away from racism? I mean if someone cannot
be racist at all, then would racism ever end? This would be interesting to see
how the continuum would change depending on how someone act because someone who
is less racist arguing against someone who is racist but still is quite racist themselves.
Chia C.
Graded Reply 6: Kim K
ReplyDeleteYou raised some very interesting questions in regards to thinking about racism as a continuum. Before reading the article “Rethinking Racism” I had never thought about racism as a continuum either. It seems that society in general believes that someone is either racist or not racist without ever considering how everyday actions, even subconscious ones can be a form of racism. If Trepagnier is correct, and the majority of us fall somewhere in the middle when it comes to racism how will it ever end? If it is not possible for someone to be 100% not racist then how will we ever become a truly equal society?
I do believe that transracial adoption can be the answer to some of the questions you have raised. If there are families raising children who are not their own race it will hopefully motivate them to learn about and appreciate different cultures than their own. This could then spread throughout their adoptive families and their community and bring us closer to a truly equal society. However, the only way this can occur is if these families work really hard towards helping their children discover their own identity and how to deal with the unfortunate stigmas their race may produce.