By Richard Hutchinson
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 27, 1997

More action needed against action

Editor:

The letters provoked by María del Sagrario Ramírez's October 10th commentary remembering the victims of colonialism have been educational regarding the state of attitudes on race among whites today.

The latest letter, that of Carrie Algozzoni (October 21), is particularly revealing. Ms. Algozzoni states: "I am not responsible for my parent's (sic) wrongs, my ancestor's (sic) wrongs or my color's wrongs. I am only responsible for what I do and nothing else." This aggressive individualism is out of line with every major moral and ethical system that humans have tried to follow. It rejects the injunction "love your neighbor as yourself" and replaces it with "Don't look at me! It's somebody else's fault. I'm looking out for number one, and to hell with everybody else."

Ms. Algozzoni challenges Ms. Ramirez to focus less on "how a certain race owes her something," asserting that if she changed her attitude, "she would see more equality and less racism." Once again, the problem of racism is reduced to one of attitude. (The individual attitude should be referred to as prejuduce.) The only reason that attitudes matter is that they affect behavioral outcomes. Structural racism results in negative outcomes for discriminated-against groups in terms of income, occupation, housing, rates of incarceration, and many other measures.

Residential segregation is one of the most important examples of how this works. Whites begin, because of the history of racial discrimination, with higher incomes, on average, than non-whites. Large numbers of these whites, with perhaps only mildly racist or unconscious racist attitudes, move out of the cities to the suburbs - white flight. This leaves non-whites concentrated in the central cities, facing discrimination in housing and employment, and now faced with a declining tax base which leads to deteriorating schools. They experience structural racism. Suburban whites, as a group, have acted in such a way as to push non-whites down into a hole with steep sides.

How will "seeing less racism" lead to less racism? Should we forget history? Forget the Holocaust? Forget the genocide of the Native Americans by the European colonialists? Forget about slavery? Closing our eyes to these evils will result in "seeing less racism," but will surely result in more racism, not less. What is needed is more seeing racism, and then, rather than defensiveness, more action to put it to an end.

Richard Hutchinson
graduate instructor of sociology