Re: denny's

[Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kelley,

These are examples of structural racism because they are systematic,
patterned, and widespread. A feature of social structure is any relatively
persistent and stable pattern of social behavior. Employers do not meet
and have a discussion about how much they hate blacks and all agree to
preference whites; yet they systematically preference whites. Realtors do
not share a handbook telling them to steer blacks away from white
neighborhoods; yet they systematically show African Americans to black
neighborhoods. Employees of Denny's were not instructed to give priority
to white customers; yet this was the outcome. In fact, Denny's just
happens to be noted for racial discrimination; one sees the same thing at
Shoneys, etc.

One of the liberal strategies to deny racism has been to demand that
instances of racial discrimination be shown to have an intentional basis.
At moments some patterns can be shown to have an intentional element. Most
of the time they cannot. This is the trick of focusing on the individual
and motive: one legitimates whites privilege. This is, incidentally, one
of the difficulties in combating corporate crime; mens rea is difficult to
determine in the case of group or corporate actors.

When we see a white individual advocating segregation, then we have an
example of racist ideology. This is still at some level structural, of
course, since this ideology is widespread, held by people who have never
met each other. But when we see white women locking their doors when black
men walk by their cars, or white men's anxiety rise when groups of young
black men enter convenient stores, we are dealing with deep socialization
that results from the racial structure of US society. These are not
expressions of ideological racism or individual hatred. It is this that is
at work as Denny's and in realtor's offices, etc.

One way to understand the operation of structure is to combine three
crucial social facts--relations, structure, and interaction--into a single
sentence: relations structure interaction. It is the racial relations of
bourgeois society that structure the interaction of racialized groups.

This is why affirmative action is so absolutely necessary (and ought to be
expanded and intensified) to break the stranglehold of institutional
racism. Affirmative action is the conscious selection of race to
counteract the unconscious selection of race. This is also why the charge
of reverse discrimination is so completely bogus; in a system based on
white privilege it is not reasonable to claim that blacks are racist.
Individual African Americans may be bigots, but they cannot be racist.

Because structural racism often operates through human agents does not
reduce institutional discrimination to non-structural instances. Sure, the
fact that blacks are disproportionately picked up on the street by police
officers has to do with the structural-racist consequence of blacks being
disproportionately located in those social locations where crime takes the
form of street crime which is more often policed. But the fact that police
act in similar ways throughout the United States is also a structural
fact.

This is why people claiming they are not racist doesn't make them not
racist. Indeed, it is only after recognizing the ways we behave to
perpetuate racism that we can actually change our behavior. We have to
undergo a resocialization. Whites have to become race traitors.

Andy Austin