Re: denny's

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Kelley:
>of course it is all bound up together and difficult to separate in the muck
>of ordinary life.  these are analytic distinctions made for heuristic and
>research purposes.  nonetheless, i think they have some bearing on
>strategies as to what is most important to focus on and precisely how so.
>we've already got plenty of efforts in place to deal with cultural
>imperialism of the sort denny's engaged in via educational and curriculum
>reform, cultural and racial sensitivity training, as well as outright laws
>against that sort of behavior.  but what i want to see people work on as
>well is breaking down the hidden, not so obvious sources of structural
>racism.  that approach asks us to question the taken-for-granted
>assumptions and norms that regulate our social institutions.

I think you are putting too much emphasis on the dichotomy between "hidden"
and "unhidden," which is not the same as that between "individual" and
"structural."  I think that your posts have tended to conflate the above
two, as Andy noted.

Also, the fact that anti-discrimination laws are on the book doesn't mean
they will be interpreted and enforced in such a manner that produces
anti-racist effects.  We have to force the power that be to make sure that
such laws will work in the interest of anti-racism.  In fact, the rightward
drift of American legal practice (in legislation, execution, and
jurisprudence) has gone in the direction of denying even a visible pattern
of discriminatory effects as evidence for racism in need of correction
(e.g. the disparity in sentencing between crimes that deal with crack and
those that deal with cocaine).  The racist use of civil rights laws to rule
out affirmative action practice is a case of anti-discrimination laws being
used contrary to the goal of anti-racism.  These two examples are not
hidden at all, and in fact the latter is advertized sensationally, but they
are structural nonetheless.

As to the educational reform, the best thing we should aim for seems to me
to be to nationalize and equalize the funding and structure of public
education, ditching the inequity of basing school funding upon the yield of
property taxes in each locality.  Further, we should struggle for
de-tracking.  Such efforts, coupled with efforts to rebuild the welfare
state (without humiliating means-testing), to pass living wage laws, etc.
must go a long way to improve the status quo.  The exposure and correction
of hidden assumptions in everyday norms of behavior that you advocate is
also necessary and should be supplementary to the above, but it is only a
part of struggles.

Yoshie