On Racism 1

On Racism: The Value of Acknowledgement

Bob L. Wallace

SCFD 6984: Diversity and Equity Issues

Professors Wang & Olson

December 9, 2002

On Racism 2

On Racism: The Value of Acknowledgement

Abstract: This article employs autobiographical reflection as a lens for examining how the

intersection of fact and perception result in the construction of reality. It proposes a

reconceptualization of the term racist and maintains that it is necessary for whites to

acknowledge their membership in an oppressive group as a first step in effecting improvement in

relations among the myriad ethnic groups in society today. Empathy is suggested as an effective

means to this end. It concludes with the proposal of a pedagogical approach incorporating these

considerations.

But America is a racist and bigoted country... (Payne & Biddle, 1999).

I am a history. Histories are selective in order to present the story their makers desire to

promote. My story concerns how I grew up to be a racist and how I have come to view being a

racist as not so bad a thing, provided it’s done right.

My thoughts go back to Luther Green when I reflect on the many sources of my racist

conditioning. The year was 1954. Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education had been decided that

very year and, as we lived in Parsons, a small southeast Kansas town of about thirteen thousand

people, the Supreme Court decision of a case that had been initiated in our own capital city was

of particular interest to everyone. Everyone except me, that is. I tended at that age (as I fear I

still do) not to pay particular attention to such gigantic issues; instead, I tended (as I fear I still

do) to concentrate on the significance of the day-to-day art of getting by the best I can.

When I entered my third-grade classroom for the first time that year, I was overwhelmed

by all the changes that accosted my senses and defied my memory to accommodate all that was

On Racism 3

new. Old Garfield Grade School which I had attended for three years was gone, that large red

block of brick walls, concrete sidewalks, and multi-paned windows. In its place was an L-

shaped building of one story with the latest style of roll-out windows and tile floors throughout

the building in place of the hardwood and gray-painted concrete that my feet had grown

accustomed to.

Yet another change awaited me when I entered the classroom that September morning on

the first day of school. Along one side of the class sat three new students whom I had never seen

before. This in itself was not uncommon; a number of students had come and gone in rhythm

with their fathers’ changing employment or military transfers. But there was another difference

that I found at once intriguing: they were not the same color as I and all the other kids with

whom I had gone to school up to that time.

During the first recess I found out who they were. Bobbie Owens was a boy a little

shorter than I with dusky, gray-brown skin and a sense of humor everyone found just a little odd.

George Johnson was almost as light-skinned as the rest of us but built on a tiny frame, and his

lips were much fuller than ours resembling more those of the other new kids. We all surmised

that his small size was the reason he was always able to run faster than the rest of us. Luther

Green was by far the darkest individual I had ever seen. It is no exaggeration to say that when he

squinted against the bright sunlight, his dark eyes all but disappeared against the backdrop of his

dark brown, almost black, face.

Throughout the next four years I learned much. I learned that plate tectonics was

impossible and that anyone who believed it was foolish for doing so. I learned that our nation

had been founded by altruistic pilgrims whom the Indians all but worshiped as evidenced by

On Racism 4

their offerings of food just in time for Thanksgiving. I also learned that each of my friends

tended to belong to some group.

It did not occur to me at that time that the differences which had drawn me to my friends

might make a difference in our friendship. Once in the fourth grade I accompanied George and

Bobbie over to Luther’s house on Main Street. Luther’s mother and “auntie” sat on the porch

with a host of other women that I didn’t know but figured they belonged somehow. One of us

noticed a half inflated inner tube—this was long before the advent of tubeless tires—leaning

against a tree and picked it up to fashion a game with it. The yard contained no grass at all, and

our antics soon kicked up a cloud of dust that the women on the porch objected to, but we

managed to continue our play for a few hours longer.

I recall that I felt at home there because the environment—the dirt yard, the women on

the porch watching the kids playing in the yard, and the feel of total freedom we each

experienced in our play all recalled to me my grandparents’ home in south central Oklahoma

where we spent each summer during my childhood. These boys might well have been my

cousins, and the women on the porch might well have been my grandmother, my many aunts,

and other relatives for all the thought I gave the matter.

The idea that difference might make a difference did not come to me until after we

graduated from elementary school. Since the two junior high schools were fed by four grade

schools, my seventh grade year saw the influx of a number of new students who were black,

Italian, Mexican, Indian, white, and some who defied classification. The larger number in each

category made it easier for the various groups to segregate themselves from all the other groups.

I began to see less of Bobbie, George, and Luther. In the mornings before school on the two

long concrete ramps that ran along the north and south sides of the three story red brick building,

On Racism 5

clots of students separated by their color or their religion or their heritage stood apart from one

another and discussed matters close to themselves.

I recall the time when I saw Luther and George standing in the basement hallway

between classes with Welton Booker, an angry young man who seemed to go out of his way to

start a fight with anyone who was not black. I approached the group to greet my friends and was

appalled by the silence that greeted my words, and the expression on Luther’s face was one I had

not seen before and which I still find difficult to describe. It was a look almost of exasperation,

of exhausted tolerance for someone who had proven to be a bother.

This and other similar experiences caused me to feel an isolation that I had never

experienced before. Even many of my white friends, a group to which I had always thought I

belonged, seemed unwilling to tolerate my presence at times. I eventually came to understand

this as the price one pays for daring to have friends that do not belong to one’s own group.

I saw little of George, Bobbie and Luther during high school since they went to Parsons

High and I went to Labette County Community High School ten miles south. After graduating

from high school, I never saw them again although I have thought of them from time to time. In

1967 while I was studying as an undergraduate at Washburn University of Topeka, Kansas, I was

reading the Parsons newspaper in the university library, an indulgence I permitted myself from

time to time, when I came across Luther’s obituary. He had joined the service with the first

noises of war in Viet Nam and had come home in a body bag.

As I sat alone in the library stacks, I thought back. I recalled how Luther never seemed to

be quite as quick as the rest of us to learn new things. I recalled how he loved to play baseball

but could never seem to hit the ball because he was one of those rare individuals who simply had

no rhythm and so could not time his swing. I recalled that day in fifth grade when the whole

On Racism 6

class laughed upon turning around in their seats to find him at his desk in the back of the class,

his hands folded neatly before him on his desk, his feet crossed casually at the ankles, his head

lolled over to the right as he snored softly. I laughed with the rest of the class, but not at him. I

laughed because it occurred to me in that instant that Luther was very likely the only one in the

class at that time who knew exactly what he was doing.

In the greater scheme of things Luther’s passing was a minor event; thousands of young

men died in that conflict in Southeast Asia. One more or less could hardly be expected to make

much in the way of a difference. And if the number of one’s mourners can be viewed as a

measure of one’s value, then Luther’s life could not have been worth more than any of the other

thousands whose homecoming did not lead to rejoicing, for not many wept at Luther’s loss, only

we few who knew him and loved him.

I stated in the beginning that histories are selective in order to tell the story their writers

intend to tell. This is not entirely accurate, as the reader also brings much to the story as well.

At this point then I have made one unsubstantiated claim, that I am a racist, and one implied

statement, that there is more to the story than I have told. I shall dispense with the claim first

since that involves a simple explanation.

To me a racist is one who constructs biological differences as racial difference and then

imposes meaning on the latter, to which one then reacts as though this process of construction

somehow constituted the making of truth. My account illustrates this process. When I first met

by black schoolmates, my reaction was to notice the biological differences between them and

myself. Their skin was dark; mine was light. The texture and color of their hair was different

from mine. Their dialect was different as were their mannerisms, with both of which I came to

be familiar over time. I attributed the physical differences to the fact that we were of a different

On Racism 7

race. I attributed the behavioral differences to the fact that we belonged to different families

with different histories.

This satisfies that part of my definition having to do with constructing biological

differences as racial difference. It also foreshadows the second part, the reaction to the

construction of racial difference as though it were fact, in that I came to consider the behavioral

differences to derive from the “fact” that people of different races have different backgrounds.

That my response to this difference was positive, in that I sought to befriend them, has no

bearing on the notion that my reaction, based on my acceptance of a racial difference, indeed

does satisfy my definition of a racist.

My explanation of this process finds support in Weber (1998) who points out that a

critical examination of race, class, gender, and sexuality reveals that they are “based neither in

polar opposites nor in biology” as the white male hegemony maintains, but that they “are social

constructs whose meanings evolve out of group struggles” (p. 18). Nonetheless, the fact that

they are “deeply embedded in the practices and beliefs that make up our major social

institutions . . . illustrate[s] their significance as major organizing principles of society and of

social identity” (p. 20).

It is this realization of my racist state, independent of any will on my part, which prompts

me to consider the “more to the story” that I alluded to above. As I stated, it is the reader who

brings this additional meaning to the text. This claim derives partly from Derrida’s concepts and

partly from those of Jung, although on the surface these ideas seem so contradictory as to be

mutually exclusive. Jung (1970) maintained that it is that which humanity shares in common, a

collective unconscious or a shared set of archetypal preconceptions, which permits

communication between author and reader through text. By contrast, Derrida’s emphasis on

On Racism 8

difference between author and reader effectively removes the author from the picture and places

the construction of meaning entirely on the reader with no consideration at all for authorial intent

(Crotty, 1998, pp. 205-207). But what if the reader is the author?

Pinar (1994) offers autobiographical reflection as a way to reconceptualize the self with

respect to “the temporal and conceptual” (p. 19). Edgerton (1991) employs this approach to

discover how “via another’s life one understands more fully one’s own” (p. 78), and Greene

proposes engaging students in reflection “to carve out new orders in experience” so that “a

person may become freed to glimpse what might be, to form notions of what should be and what

is not yet” (p. 19).

Delving into one’s own literal text as a narrative recorded with the written word causes

one to contemplate one’s metaphorical narrative as a life actually lived. The buffer of temporal

distance from one’s own past allows for examination of events and attendant emotions from a

conceptual framework vastly different from the one from which they were first formed. The

“more to the story” starts to emerge in new insights and new connections between what one was

then and what one is now. Eventually the reader begins to discern patterns and consistencies that

offer insight into the larger issues that order one’s life. One such pattern I have found in my own

narrative concerns how fact and perception intersect to create significance and how this defines

the way people manage to construct meaning from an essentially meaningless reality.

Since the process of constructing meaning starts with perception of fact, an examination

of these terms is in order. First, fact derives not from truth but from reality. If something exists,

it is a fact; if it does not exist, it s not a fact. Second, facts exist in the two categories of objects

and phenomena. Third, to perceive is to become aware: of objects through one or more of the

On Racism 9

five senses, visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile; and of phenomena through being

confronted with a situation or action.

Awareness of fact, whether as object or phenomenon, gives rise to the need to deal with

it, to account for it in some way. This need emanates from the desire to keep one’s view of

reality as simple and as consistent as practicable; simple because complication makes one’s view

difficult to manage, and consistent because inconsistency tends to disrupt one’s view rather than

maintain it. To address this need people have developed the practice of naming.

Names allow people to approach unfamiliar facts with a certain amount of

foreknowledge. This is an important tool for the efficiency it offers since, as a simple example,

foreknowledge about trees in general affords a great savings in time and effort when dealing with

trees never before encountered. Use of names in this context defines the concept of stereotype.

On the other hand, people are not trees. Their actions are guided by their own realities, a fact

which, once learned, tends to replace stereotype with understanding shared among people.

A final aspect of this process, which forces it into a peculiar perspective, is a fact

concerning facts: it is impossible for anyone to know all there is about an object or phenomenon,

for there is simply not enough time to delineate all the connections any thing shares with

everything else. And when one adds to this consideration Derrida’s notion that the significance

of a thing “is founded as much on the absence of what it is not as on the presence of what it is,”

(Crotty, 1998, p. 207) time gets shorter still. People therefore satisfy their need to understand, in

the face of this inability to know, by venturing a guess.

The imposing of meaning on facts and the building of understanding based on that

meaning defines the process of constructing meaning, of constructing fact as something

possessed of significance. That this construction of understanding is entirely the result of

On Racism 10

guesswork signifies that all construction is inherently flawed, and considering that the

preconceptions that shape the constructing process are the result of previous iterations of this

flawed process, one begins to wonder just what people can profess to know for certain.

Of course, the answer to that question is little if any at all. However, although people

may know nothing, they suspect much. And it is these suspicions rather than any understanding

of reality that shape people’s actions. Reality’s fact gets constructed into internal “fact” so that it

will fit into one’s overall construction of reality and then this “fact” and the “understanding”

deriving from it constitutes the whole of human motivation, for as one believes, so will one do.

Committing these observations to written text causes me to reconsider my previous text

to ascertain how I learned it. Sartre’s model of Self and Other provides a useful lens through

which to view my learning process. Crotty (1998) points out that Sartre “makes a cardinal

difference between en-soi (the ‘in itself’) and pour-soi (the ‘for itself’).” The latter is “conscious

being”; the former is “being-as-object.” From this distinction arises Sartre’s distinction of Self

and Other. As Crotty continues to explain, “even though the Other is itself a pour-soi, we

dissociate ourselves from it as from an en-soi. This is a mutual dissociation: we each constitute

the Other as an object and perceive it as a threat” (p. 167).

Although I am not aware of having felt threatened upon first encountering my black

schoolmates, perhaps owing to my trusting nature, I do find that I approached them with the

preconception that derives from stereotype. My reality already accounted for white people; the

addition of black people into that construction required little alteration of the concept. Their

similarity to me, as the one example of “white people” I am most familiar with, caused the

differences between us to stand out in my construction of them as I pointed out above. Thus Self

constructed Other in accordance with Self’s preconceptions. The fact that they shared physical

On Racism 11

features became constructed as Self’s new understanding of what it meant to be “black.”

Through my association with them over time, their mannerisms and peculiar viewpoint added to

this “understanding” of them. My use of the term “viewpoint” in the singular illustrates my

construction’s acknowledgement that their being black seemed somehow to matter more to them,

as a group, than it did to me. I was not able at the time to account for this, so I merely noted it,

although it did become a major organizing “fact” in my construction of their later rejection of my

friendship.

The fact that Self and Other did manage to construct an association hints at a mechanism

working to counter Self’s inability to know anything about Other. I approached them initially

because that is what I would have appreciated in similar circumstances. The golden rule became

a vital part of my reality because I learned its wisdom through experience instead of by rote. The

assumption that anyone else would tend to react as I would illustrates Self’s tendency to

construct Other within the framework of Self’s own construction. This constitutes what Freud

called projection and forms the basis of empathy as a means to initiate contact as well as the

method whereby Self tends to refine the construction of Other over time.

Britzman (1998) objects to Freud’s notion of the efficacy of empathy, as it constitutes

“feel[ing] our way into people” by projecting onto Other feelings constructed within Self. This

objection arises on the grounds that “feelings are not capable of transcending history and the

relations already supposed” and are therefore “symptomatic of contradictory pushes and pulls of

relationality and need” so that empathy “cannot explain itself” (p. 84). I disagree that this view

constitutes an unwavering truth or even a mildly hopeless situation. Objecting to a method of

connecting to Other because it may be betrayed by unconscious concerns would disallow

reading, writing, talking, indeed any method of communication. That this process both proceeds

On Racism 12

from as well as results in an imperfect understanding of and appreciation for Other is

understandable and sufficient as a start, for success in this endeavor is a function of how well

Self understands Other. As Self gains knowledge of and appreciation for Other, the process of

empathy gains a sort of efficiency improving Self’s ability to empathize with Other.

My biographical account supports this contention. When I first encountered my black

friends, I knew nothing about them other than what I saw and heard. My first attempts at

empathy with them resulted in many awkward moments of misunderstanding and were not

nearly as effective as my later attempts which were characterized by the sharing of joy and

sorrow and by engaging in arguments with the full knowledge that we would be friends again

when the argument was over.

The context of our first encounter suggests a further dimension of the intersection of fact

and perception that illustrates how one’s construction of the framework within which one is

functioning may create an environment conducive to establishing empathy. When we were

starting the third grade, at a time when we were making our first attempts at empathy, we were

all still working out our relationship to the new school year. This uncertainty regarding the

environment, as it constituted nearly the entire framework for our interaction, led to uncertainty

for all of us regarding what expectations we should have.

If the norm is for Self to construct Other as comprising potential danger to Self, then such

environments may lead to the consideration that both Self and Other may be in common danger.

Common ground held in a common framework might explain how Self and Other can connect at

times with little or no preamble. With the introduction of the larger concern of one’s relationship

with one’s environment, guards get dropped, people tend to open themselves more easily to

possibility by suppressing their wariness concerning probability.

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Stories are common of total strangers coming to one another’s aid in cases of emergency

and of people who in other circumstances would not tend to acknowledge each other on the street

electing to huddle together in a doorway or alcove against wintry blasts of cold air. My father

used to tell me of when he was a hobo during the Depression. On a particularly cold night, he

spotted a pile of cardboard in a boxcar and dived into it to keep from freezing. A black man

spied the cardboard at the same time and dived in behind him. Although my father and the man

never saw each other after that night, they were both grateful during that night for the warmth

they were able to share.

Placing Self and Other on similar footing requires Self to view Other more in terms of

similarity than of difference. It also requires that Self take into account Other’s system of

responses. Since Self can not know this about Other because Self is unable to experience

Other’s construction of reality as it is informed by Other’s unique system of preconceptions, Self

must supply a likely response in Self’s construction of Other with respect to the situation in

question. In other words, Self must attempt to empathize with Other.

This analysis would adequately explain the reaction people generally exhibit in response

to disaster and emergencies as well as the inconveniences of inclement weather mentioned

above. It would also explain the more mundane concerns surrounding my first encounter with

my black friends in the essentially unfamiliar and uncertain environment as I constructed it in

response to a new school year, a new building, and a new teacher.

A final aspect of empathy concerns the feedback it affords. Self seeks to understand

Other by projecting onto Other a construction deriving from Self’s preconceptions. Feedback

from Other lets Self assess this process in order to determine what is needed to improve. It is

On Racism 14

rather like driving a car. Feedback provides the driver with two considerations: how am I doing

and how do I need to change how I am doing it?

This volume of feedback allows Self to modify its preconceptions of Other and,

therefore, to construct Other differently. That Self’s preconceptions are thus modified by

exposure to Other illustrates that Self’s construction of Other has come to be a part of Self’s

construction of reality as a whole. In this sense Other has become a part of Self, and Self must

take Other into account not only in dealings with Other but in the whole endeavor of dealing

with reality in general.

I find evidence of this in my present construction of reality. The fact of my friendship

with by black classmates causes me to see blacks as potential friends instead of potential threats.

My construction of my friends’ attitudes deriving from their situation as well as their breaking

off of our friendship causes me to feel that I understand at least a small part of the frustration and

resentment that comes from being oppressed. In view of this I can only wonder at the volume of

unconscious emulation of Other constituting who I now am, but I believe a safe assumption

would be that others have made a significant contribution to my nature.

Feedback also leads to change in Self since confronting difference in Other causes Self to

interrogate its construction of both Self and Other. Some aspects of Self’s construction of Other

are merely noted for reference: my wife likes waffles; I do not. Other instances of Self’s self-

reevaluation result in changes in Self’s nature: I view the consumption of alcohol in any amount

as an extremely dangerous venture because I had to witness what alcoholism did to my father. If

only he had acknowledged his problem as the wisdom of Alcoholics Anonymous dictates, he

might have lived longer. As it is, I must be satisfied that at least I am not likely to constitute an

addition to alcohol related statistics.

On Racism 15

And this provides a segue to my concluding observations, for I see the need to

acknowledge one’s racist state as the first step in addressing a problem that plagues our society

for the same reason that AA requires a similar acknowledgment as the first step in that

organization’s well known path to recovery. My point in characterizing myself as a racist and in

offering a definition of racism that includes most people who share membership in an oppressive

group is to make clear the need to address this problem from the stance of one who is a part of

the problem instead of an innocent bystander. The alcoholic who refuses to acknowledge that

problem is said to be in denial; essentially this means the individual is unaware of the problem.

The result is to remove responsibility for the problem from the alcoholic and to construct him or

her as a victim of circumstance. I submit this is not a useful way to characterize racism in our

society today.

Nor do I advocate the practice of constructing white America as a bunch of racists then

proceeding to show them how they fit that construction, for such an externally imposed nature

can only result in resistance borne out of resentment. Instead I see education as the answer.

Specifically I propose a pedagogical approach which engages students in an interrogation

of the nature of racism and which may ultimately result in their construction of themselves as

both oppressor and oppressed. Two considerations make this a viable approach. First, the

patterns of oppression are so intertwined with the myriad states of each person, variously

constructed as gender, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic background, occupation,

choice of hobbies – the list may well be interminable – that virtually everyone ends up

oppressing some while being oppressed by others. Second, if students can come to view

themselves as members of a marginalized group, regardless of whether such marginalization may

find its basis in what they are or in how they live, then they may be prompted to view themselves

On Racism 16

as sharing an environment of oppression with others. The result would be to enhance the

possibility for empathy, which I have described above as a useful avenue to the establishing of

understanding that would go far toward altering the preconceptions that lead to oppression.

I therefore maintain that it is important for students to disrupt their current construction of

reality by investigating the nature of oppression and marginalization since the reflective

interrogation of their own situations that may result from such activity has the potential to lead

them first to an appreciation of the problems faced by others and second to a consideration of

ways to address such injustice. Furthermore, if students are prepared for this task by engaging in

reflection on how talking to people tends to change the way one perceives them, ostensibly

resulting from actually talking instead of merely theorizing about it, then they may come to view

the value of communication, along with the empathy that invariably results from it, as a method

to address the societal problems they will face for the rest of their lives after graduation. Nor is

this something that anyone can teach them; they must discover it for themselves. Gilman’s

(2002) observation that “what we do modifies us more than what is done to us” (p. 305) applies

to education today equally as well as to the state of women she addressed over a century ago.

And if education can come to see its job as that of raising students’ awareness not only

regarding immediate concerns of how to pass algebra and how to write a theme but also with

respect to how one can and should effect change for the better, then society will be better for it.

On Racism 17

Post Scriptum

It is with some reluctance that I offer this comment on the significance of the preceding

account since it involves owning up to something that I had not anticipated I would have to own

up to. Because of all that I had learned prior to starting my studies at OSU I had come to view

myself as holding an objectivist epistemology and subscribing to a post-positivist theoretical

perspective. I based this opinion on my view of a reality essentially independent of an observer

and characterized by some sort of inherent meaning. Since whatever this meaning might be is

forever beyond our comprehension, or even consideration for that matter, since we can never

experience enough of reality to get a feel for what it is, it might just as well have no meaning at

all except as people create a meaning for it in their own scheme of things.

It is with this statement that I find myself leaning now toward a more subjectivist

epistemology. I still have to figure out what theoretical perspective I line up with. And I thought

I was finished with all that. Now I need to study post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-

feminism (I assume there will be one eventually) in order to determine where I fit. I think Bilbo

Baggins was right: “Don’t adventures ever have an end?”

On Racism 18

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