Just a little niggle re: While I accept that white racism and its reverse -- black hatred of whites -- is a definite factor,...
I find it a somewhat captious opinion to lump mere "racial hatred" with "racism"... The problem with whites' racism is that it's plugged into the power structure itself --hence the "-ism". Unlike "hatred", racism is an institutional phenomenon. I mean, we can all live with others' hatred. Sub-Saharan Africa's blacks don't expect to be loved by white Americans and Europeans and, somehow, they don't give a damn about whether whites hate them or not --because it doesn't translate into more or less opportunities for them. When idle Congolese seek for a job in Kinshasa, they don't get dismissed by white employers, when they get into trouble with the police, they don't get beaten up by racist white cops... If anything, many African youths hate their own black-run countries --so much so that they'll do anything to make it to lily-white Europe... where they'll experience firsthand what racism is all about.
Likewise, most white Americans had no problem at all living in a segregated society that spurred millions of blacks to "hate" them... because the good thing with Jim Crow was that it never translated into institutional racism of blacks against whites. Yet the 1960s Civil Rights and Affirmative Action turned the tables and, all of a sudden, whites had to adjust to a new ball-game where "black hatred" could translate into less opportunities for whites: white-collar job denied because the black quota must be filled, fat municipal contract lost to a competitor because the latter fits the "minority rule", admission to university missed because room must be made for non-whites, etc, etc.
Nobody, whether white or black, can seriously expect to be loved and favored by all the races and, most of the time, people can put up with others' animosity so long as it doesn't severely hurt their opportunities and lifestyles....
Gus |
