by Grant Martin, Midwest Voices Guest Columnist '09

Attorney General Holder encouraged everyone to stop being wimps and start talking about race. Here's my contribution:

I first heard the "end of racism" talk when California put affirmative action up for a referendum. Some suggested that since institutional racism had been outlawed for some time there was no real reason to give a leg up to minorities- in fact it might hurt them by encouraging dependence. Others suggested that although racism was no longer legal, it still existed more subtly.

Later, while attending school, I heard about so-called "unconscious racism". This was the idea that, for whatever psychological reasons, people were unconscious of their racist feelings and therefore we needed affirmative action until the numbers of CEOs, pay levels, etc. were more reflective of minority population percentages.

Recently, some were asking whether President Obama's election was a cause to celebrate a change in America- a start to the 'end of racism'.

I must digress a little and explain my own "racial history". I was born into a military family and grew up playing with kids of all races and backgrounds. Spending six years in Germany on military bases and most of the rest of the time on military bases in the States caused me to have a skewed attitude towards race. My parents lived next to, partied with, and worked with and for Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, and others. I went to school with their kids, played with them, and lived next to them. I think I heard maybe one or two racial slurs growing up and although I knew they were rude comments- I didn't really think of them that much and equated them with the other mean things kids did to each other.

During my senior year in High School my family moved to Louisiana. Maybe because I was only there a year and lived again on a military base I really didn't pick up on a lot of racist attitudes. I vaguely remember going through one town on the way to play a baseball game and the coach having our Black players duck down because "this is a bad town"- but at the time I wasn't sure if he was joking or not. The fact that the Black players did duck down maybe should have worried me, but at the time it seemed an anomaly.

When I got to college all of a sudden I was confronted with race. The Black students had their own clubs, sat together at basketball games, and some brought up race in class discussions frequently. Since I had had no real experience with in-your-face racism at the time I felt that the Black students who talked about race a lot seemed to be overly sensitive. I was genuinely surprised that these students had been taught prior to coming to college that every issue could be (or should be) linked to race. I thought it was a shame that they had been forced to view the world through this negative prism and to identify themselves more strongly through their race. I remember feeling glad that my upbringing had not forced on me a feeling of group identity that stifled my individual growth.

Later on I read books like Blink that opened my eyes to the way society conditions us to think about others. Specifically, the book tells the story of a Harvard test that one can take on-line that will measure a person's propensity to be negatively affected by a person's race. This "unconscious racism" was deemed to be more social in nature- Blacks and Whites together are conditioned by society to couple "White" with value and "Black" with negativity. It went so far as to affect Black schoolchildren- those who had to identify themselves as being Black at the beginning of a test scored lower than those who didn't.

The book Blink refers to it as priming- and I remember doing something similar by holding up a piece of paper to someone and asking them the color of the paper three times and then asking them what cows drink. Everyone always says "milk", although the real answer is "water". People say "milk" because they are "primed" to say it based on the mental picture they get from the white paper.

So, the idea is that pop-culture pushes a picture of Blacks as uneducated inner-city gangsters, and not only does this make Whites unconsciously racist, but it makes Blacks unconsciously self-hating and racist as well. It probably doesn't help things that many Black youth imitate these negative pop-culture portrayals, nor that many Black leaders excuse it.

Like most complex things, however, I don't think just putting more Blacks in a positive light on billboards and movies will change everything. Many studies I have seen lately point to self-destructive behavior as the main explanation for failure- regardless of race. But, there is something to be said for how minorities are portrayed in mass media. I'm not sure affirmative action will change anything- unless self-destructive behavior is also changed. Part of that problem is whether we should identify "social" norms as self-destructive- i.e., if they keep you out of the boardroom, are they self-destructive?

If minorities are helped through affirmative action (and don't change these "social" self-destructive norms), I would think that would lead to Whites getting another bad social impression about Blacks that would then feed unconscious racism. Believe me, whenever a minority with a college degree gets up in front of a group and displays terrible grammar, it reinforces the stereotype that affirmative action is not working.

Some view this issue as one of "pay-back". We cannot expect a group that was historically oppressed to overcome not only the "head start" Whites get, but also the unconscious racism that society breeds. While I think this idea does assuage some "White guilt", I'm not sure it will do much more than be a short-term fix because I think there is some merit to the argument that it could contribute to dependency in some. There's a reason that many rich kids who get something for nothing end up going bad.

On the other hand, some want to change society so that the "culture" of the majority is not the recognized path to success. They would advocate diversity in language to be accepted (and would classify bias against incorrect grammar to be racist), dress and other appearance norms to be changed, and diversity in behavior to be championed. In other words, it is the majority that must change and accept the minorities in all their "cultural uniqueness". I'm not convinced, however, that trying to get Whites to accept different cultural norms will work. Although this might sound good to some, I think prior to attempting to change the dominant culture, we should be sure of two things: 1) that this effort doesn't further inflame racial animosities, and 2) that it doesn't lead to the norming of self-destructive behavior (again, we have to decide what self-destructive behavior is- both obvious and practically-speaking).

Others think "tough love" is the answer- that it helped other peoples who were prejudiced against when first arriving to the U.S. Although I do think we tend to overlook the negative aspects of supporting people too much, I also believe that the history of Blacks in this country is a little different than most others who came here. So, while I don't believe giving something for nothing helps most people, I do believe that Blacks in this country do hail from a special historical position relative to others. How those two issues are reconciled is the hard part.

One very difficult issue that needs to be addressed is how to slow the increasing gap between the quality of life of America's poor and America's rich. Since many poor are disproportionately Black, it would follow that confronting this issue will go a long way towards improving race relations. I personally think the key is education- primary and secondary public education. I struggle with the idea that kids born into rich families that can afford private schooling get into the best schools and pretty much run this country. Although I think we are closer than most to a meritocracy, I think we could do better.

To answer the question in the title and conclude, I am very confident that my children's generation will see an "end to racism"- or at least the racism that we have seen to date. The reason I think this is two-fold. One, I think that there will be much growth in wealth, education, position, and health among Blacks over the next 25-40 years.

Second, I think that there will be a huge change in perception by both Blacks and Whites once my generation is gone. My generation will be the last that had parents who grew up during the time of segregation. My generation had a different exposure to Blacks than my parents did. My kids are having even more of a different exposure.

The other day my 5 year-old asked, during the President's address, "who is that, daddy?" I answered, "That's daddy's boss. That's the President of the United States. Do you know his name?" He answered, "Oh, that's George Washington." Needless to say, he knows President Barack Obama's name now. But the fact that he coupled President Obama with our first president immediately upon hearing the word "president", gives me that hope that I talked about earlier.