Over recent decades, important trends have significantly improved the path away from racism in many places through the metropolitanization of life in the United States. According to the U. S. Census, only 40% of the country lived in urban areas in 1900, a percentage figure that had doubled by 2020. One critical byproduct of this trend has been that individuals are not tied so meaningfully to an inherited family, certainly not so much as when persons were previously integrated into rural settings and were more narrowly and more thoroughly insular and dominated by close family life, culture, and message. With more diffusive lifestyles, derivative of increased metropolitanization, filiopietism, in particular, is now maintaining less of a hold on more people. Indeed, a modern family form has evolved as a consequence, known conventionally as the “family of choice”. In turn, we simply see more diversity in people’s preferences in urban America and a more accommodative environment for a less racist life.
Why did I start the essay this way? Because, from my vantage point, most everything about racism, especially the kind that has existed and continues, in many respects, to exist between whites and Blacks in this country, resides from a longer-term structure. The media, on the other hand, much prefers to emphasize attitude over structure, for that’s where the conflicts lie. The media appears to promote attitudes for explanation, regardless of the structure that drives those attitudes.
Taking into account the manner by which the media handles the topics of race and racism, we are often left with an inference that the current state of white racism against Blacks is only a function of attitude (one set of opinions versus an opposing set of opinions). However, we do know that an historical structure has had a prominent role to play in the continuation and degree of white racism that has plagued this country.
As an outgrowth of the media’s concentration on attitudinal differences when covering racism and related subjects, it should not be surprising that the media, in turn, tends to require controversy, as controversy fuels greater audiences, and greater audiences fuel more advertising, etc. So, there is an inherent reason for the media to choose, for emphasis, current attitudes rather than traits associated with an inherited, historical structure.
Yet, whenever three or four generations of whites reflect similar prejudicial views about Blacks, one has to step back and question whether attitudinal differences or structural dynamics should be given preeminence. If three or four, successive generations think alike on race, it is no longer accurate to think of those proximate opinions in terms of attitudinal significance – they’re structural in nature. Of course, to explicate the structural takes longer-term analysis than it does to recite attitudinal dissonance, which merely instills an establishment of a contrast between two sides, or should the media be so fortunate, three or even four points of view.
At the same time, once we decide to pursue a structural analysis, we need to examine specific reasons for the commonality of generations that bear similar views over a long period. One journalist of a major news outlet recently displayed vexation when he asked of me, “I just don’t get it. How and why do teenagers of a white American family often have the same ideas about Blacks as their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. Please give me an answer.”
To begin an examination to uncover structural effects, we look at how imperative limitations are placed on younger persons to determine what those limitations offer; we then see the distinctive melding of past and present. Moreover, to codify those perspectives further, repetitive declarations constrain what may be said or believed by the younger generation, which, over time, would no longer be the younger, but the parents and, soon, the grandparents of the younger. Thus, to the extent that adoration of the past and antecedents is thrown into the mix, then the phenomenon becomes doubly guided by the old and oldest.
With predetermined expectations, conclusions, beliefs, and behaviors of the most revered, then a firm foundation is established that permits little variation or creative additions to apply. Nonetheless, exceptions can exist that may squeeze out the door and find their way onto open fields or open range for fresh vistas and breathful air that yield new and different thoughts and tracks and aspirations. A return, when one has been once freed, is ever impossible. Yet, those who remain are expected to continue that which went before and after – in other words, that endured.
Any solution for the breakdown of this structure, having the characteristics just described, will have a most formidable nemesis to confront and engage, as this structure has proven basic, foundational, and not subject to change without determinant, compulsory influences.
Of course, we should realize that conceptually, attitudes would derive sequentially from an applicable structure; at least, that’s the way philosophers would present the sequence, but we whites in America seem to have missed a few essential steps. If we hadn’t, we would now be fully and specifically informed on how current racists got here. That having been said, we would have begun many generations ago when terrible things were done in the name of slavery to Black people – so horrific, so bloody, so brutal that many of our forebears simply could not live with their acts of subjugation and inhumanity, resulting in those antecedents submerging themselves in the filiopietism-damage heritage axis, which also included a commitment to the doctrine that called for an inherent inferiority of Blacks to whites.
In order to live with such outrageous and unGodly treatment of Black brothers and sisters, numerous whites sought refuge in building up a white way of life and white ancestors to preposterous levels of conduct, gravity, and importance so that filiopietism frequently became a normal function for the living and remembrance of the dead. Together, a filiopietism-damaged heritage axis frequently continues to guide daily conduct and racism in this country, well beyond what most Americans should, even today, fathom. So, to that journalist from the well-known publication, I’ve just given my answer to his request: “How and why do teenagers of a white American family often have the same ideas about Blacks as their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents?”
As discussed elsewhere in this series of essays, while the axis began in isolated, geographic areas of our country, it still holds a grip all the way to the halls of Congress and state houses across the United States. White nationalism is just a faux, heroic name for what I have described as the origins of the axis. The degradation and inhumanity of Blacks are fundamental tenets of white nationalism, and until we consistently apply ways of disassembling the axis, we won’t have a truly effective and abiding process to deal with this American brand of racism. I earnestly believe the answer lies in a sufficient and energetic implementation of authentic passion on a one-to-one basis, combined with related allyship, as proposed in the contents of this continuing “For Racial Healing” series, the personal antidote to the multi-generational poison of American white racism against Blacks.