The Indifference of White America by W E B DuBois

[intaglio]

Written in 1934 and still relevant.

The colored people of America are coming to face the fact quite calmly that most white Americans do not like them, and are planning neither for their survival, nor for their definite future if it involves free, self-assertive modern manhood. This does not mean all Americans. A saving few are worried about the Negro problem; a still larger group are not ill-disposed, but they fear prevailing public opinion. The great mass of Americans are, however, merely representatives of average humanity. They muddle along with their own affairs and scarcely can be expected to take seriously the affairs of strangers or people whom they partly fear and partly despise.

For many years it was the theory of most Negro leaders that this attitude was the insensibility of ignorance and inexperience, that white America did not know of or realize the continuing plight of the Negro. Accordingly, for the last two decades, we have striven by book and periodical, by speech and appeal, by various dramatic methods of agitation, to put the essential facts before the American people. Today there can be no doubt that Americans know the facts; and yet they remain for the most part indifferent and unmoved.

Hat-tip to Lisa Wade, PhD in Sociological Images

W E B DuBois wiki page

[BlueCaliDem]

1. Sad, isn't it, that a piece written in 1934 holds true even today.

Xenophobia and racism, propagated richly by incorporated media that has killed our Fourth Estate, is to blame for the stagnation we're suffering in our country eighty years after that article was written.

I recall returning from Holland after having lived there for eight years, and discovering that I was in an "interracial marriage". That was news to me!

I just thought it was a marriage, period. But my marriage was given a new definition - interracial. I'm Asian, hubby is blond,blue-eyed Dutch. It still bothers me that our marriage gets that extra and unasked for adjective because it only serves to put our union (of 32 years since 06/30/2014) in a "separate but equal" light.

I wonder ... if we didn't have Murdoch's papers and shows infesting in this country, would we still be so divided as a people? Or would we have evolved as the Europeans have evolved because they prohibit any kind of "hate talk/speech"?

[upaloopa]

2. Not true at all today

It is not true that most White Americans do not like African Americans. I do not mean to minimize the racist problem in America but to overstate parts of it is wrong also.
Just look at the amount of angst on this board over the treatment of the residents of Ferguson and the murder of Michael Brown as evidence that the first statement in the post is not true.

[intaglio]

3. Sorry to have to break it too you, upaloopa, but DU is a very small segment

... of American Society.

[leftstreet]

4. A very LARGE segment of the US voted for Obama

How does that square with racial attitudes from the 30s?

[BlueCaliDem]

8. That's true. Since the White electorate is still the largest demographic in this country

because they remain the dominant ethnicity, by far, in the U.S. - despite a fast-growing Latino population - it was important that Obama would win at least 39% of the White vote in order to win re-election. And he did. Of course, it has to be said that Mitt Romney did get the majority of the White vote, but lost the Latino/Hispanc vote severely.

We have to note, that there was a 20% drop in the White vote for Obama - "the widest losing margin for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1984" - that went to Mitt Romney. But Obama won a clear popular vote of which the majority came from White voters across the nation.

[upaloopa]

6. Sorry but I am not that stupid to think it is

[HipChick]

5. I don't think you can equate angst with liking

[upaloopa]

7. You don't have angst over people you don't like

[loyalsister]

9. "Today there can be no doubt that Americans know the facts

Today there IS doubt that Americans are willing to acknowledge and question them, however.

"Today there can be no doubt that Americans know the facts; and yet they remain for the most part indifferent and unmoved."

This is more evident in a time when we try to have discussions that some try to silence by saying "neither I nor many of my friends are racist."

Zero tolerance is the position those of us who are white should take if we are to be convincing allies. Because, only white people can reject the system from which they benefit. Herman Cain, Ben Carson, and Clarance Thomas have joined the chorus of white people who claim racism is a thing of the past. Of course, they benefit from privilege in ways that few blacks or whites do. It seems to me that this is no accident.