During the course of my lifetime a number of words have changed or added meanings. Till 1968 I thought racism was an overt act against people of color, like lynching, calling persons names, separate lunch counters, separate bubblers and restrooms. In the sixties a number of students at Marquette started looking around and saw, outside of basketball players, there were very few African-American students. Of course Marquette denied being racist, saying anyone of any race is welcome to our school.

It was at that time I learned that racism was not just overt acts like those above but were at times institutionalized or structured into a university or organization. There was too many obstacles build into the system that did not allow minorities, outside of basketball players, to attend and excel at Marquette. There was money for tuition, preparation for college in high school, fear of black students and a whole list of stereotypes of people of color. We started to call for end of “institutional racism” at Marquette. We had a list of demands for the university, like more scholarships for local African American students, that were at first denied but then accepted. Over the years the university became more racially diverse and was proud of the Equal Opportunity Program (EOP) that came out of this structural change. But now that the program is grown with all kinds of minority students from all over the country and world I tried to find out how many local African American students are in the program. No answer coming so far.

Institutional or Structural racism has become more accepted over the years. In her book, “The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” Michelle Alexander borrows from another author’s metaphor of a birdcage to describe structural racism. “If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand only one wire of the cage, or one from of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way and connected to one another serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.” (p183)

Racial profiling, mass incarceration of African American males, the War on Drugs are all parts of the structural racism of today. Overt racism was easy to recognize and acknowledge but this new form of racism is not. Pointing our ‘racism’ in attitude toward basketball players at the local County park or the investment of groups, like Society of St. Vincent de Paul in white suburbs not African American neighborhoods is making trouble and many do not want to hear about it. Some persons have actually said that now we have elected a Black President we no longer have racism in this country.

But I believe we must embrace the word ‘racism’ and understand this modern meaning in ourselves in our system before we can really make a change for the better. Awareness of modern day ‘racism’ is the first step of eliminating it.

Comments

Please send any comments on this post to . Let us know which day’s post your comments pertain to. If the comments are appropriate we will post them here for you.