RACIST AMERICA BY: JOE FEAGIN A continuing foundation: European colonization and imperialism eventually reached most of the globe and thus created a global racist order, which has had severe consequences for the worlds people now for centuries. The U.S. Constitution, which embraced slavery and imbedded the global racist order in the United States, remains the nations legal, political, and— to a substantial degree—moral foundation. Its openly racist provisions, though overridden by amendments, has not been deleted. At no point has a new constitutional convention been held to replace this document with one created by representatives of all the people, including the great majority of the population not represented at that the 1787 convention. Moreover, the racist spirit of the original document persists today. Even as they live in, and often maintain, a racist system, most white Americans still do not see slavery, legal segregation, or contemporary racism as part of the nations foundation. At the most, the majority see racist institutions as something in the distant pass, something tacked on to a great nation for a short time, and something nonsystematic. From their perspective the racism that may have once intruded into the American house is substantially been eradicated. Racist attitudes and images are central to the operation of systematic racism in the contemporary United States. They can be seen as every day expressions of the overarching white racist ideology that undergirds the nation. An array of racial prejudices and stereotyped images lie behind much discriminatory action taken by whites (and other non-blacks) against blacks. Among whites these attitudes are reinforced and perpetuated by millions of taken-for-granted comments, stories, and actions that target black Americans every day White racist images and attitudes do not stop at U.S. borders. At any given moment, White Americans working overseas are telling anti-black stories to people around the globe or television stations across the globe are playing racist American movies, such as Gone with the wind or the old Tarzan and cowboy and Indian classics. U.S. media corporations have long played a major role in circulating racist images and attitudes overseas. These corporations dominate much of the worlds mass media. Thus one recent analysis found that a fifth of Western Europes news broadcast are based in US sources, as are half of Europes entertainment programs other than sports. In addition, many people around the world get their information and entertainment from US movies, syndicated television programs, and videos, as well as directly from the US Armed Forces radio and television broadcasts. Various cable channels also reach around the globe. In the mid-1990s the MTV channel alone reached no fewer then 210 million households in 70 countries. As a result, the US media is one of the most important forces shaping racist stereotyping around the world, including negative images of black Americans. --------- RACIST AMERICA BY: JOE FEAGIN Joe Feagin moved to Boston where he went on to earn his Ph.D. in sociology (social relations) from Harvard University in 1966. Currently, he is the Ella C. McFadden Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University.[1] His research and teaching interests concern mainly the development and structure of racial and gender prejudice and discrimination, especially institutional and systemic discrimination and racism.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:59:55 +0000
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