Let’s make it simple. If I say, “General Motors,” “BP,” “Amazon,” you understand that I am referring to a company. If I say, “Big Business doesn’t care about the little guy,” “Big Pharma” knows that opioids kill, but doesn’t care,” or “Volkswagen’s emissions scandal is typical of industry,” you understand. What if I say, “Environmentalists,” “Oil Industry,” or “Government”? Yes, you have no difficulty with the terms and might even have used them yourself. But what if I say “Native Americans,” or, gasp! “Indians,” or “African-Americans,” or, gasp! “Coloreds,” or “WASPs,” “Dagos,” “Red Necks,” and, well, you get the picture, don’t you? And it is a picture, isn’t it? An image that is both inescapable once mentioned and characterizing. It is, I contend, your being able to form that kind of image and recognize its connotations that lies at the heart of bias and racism. Let me explain.
The USA’s mottos include “In God we trust” and “E pluribus unum,” with the latter serving as another example of those terms in the paragraph above (“From the many, one”). We understand what those terms mean because we tend to classify, to group, to make the many, one. Grouping makes the world easier to understand, thus, the Linnaean classification of organisms, for example, or the periodic table of elements. It’s easy to say “carnivore” to know an organism’s place on the food chain, and so a term like “Wall Street(er)” makes one’s place on the “economic food chain” more easily understandable. When we personally feel insecure, we can pigeonhole the world around us to gain a feeling of security. And regardless of the legitimacy of the ordering system, just having one is, for most of us, comforting. “Democrats,” “Republicans,” “Catholics,” “Jews,” “Evangelicals,” are all terms of similar nature. They represent aggregations not for the individuals in them but rather as an overriding “one.”
We’re preprogrammed to make the One from the many. We constantly do it. It’s a human default perspective. And it is, I believe, the reason that bias and racism will always be part of human interaction when people don’t know people personally. So, if you know someone who works on “Wall Street,” you know the “Non-Wall-Street” side of the person, and the same goes for knowing a “Democrat,” “Republican,” “gas-well driller,” “Irish-American,” “Nigerian-American,” or “Protestant.”
The only easy solution to racism is to make the one into many, to see the individuals outside the group. To alter the default perspective that replaces internal insecurity with externally derived security, think "individual." Let’s add a verb. “Extrahe unum e pluribus” or “Extract one from the many.” It’s the only way the struggle against racism will ever succeed.
The USA’s mottos include “In God we trust” and “E pluribus unum,” with the latter serving as another example of those terms in the paragraph above (“From the many, one”). We understand what those terms mean because we tend to classify, to group, to make the many, one. Grouping makes the world easier to understand, thus, the Linnaean classification of organisms, for example, or the periodic table of elements. It’s easy to say “carnivore” to know an organism’s place on the food chain, and so a term like “Wall Street(er)” makes one’s place on the “economic food chain” more easily understandable. When we personally feel insecure, we can pigeonhole the world around us to gain a feeling of security. And regardless of the legitimacy of the ordering system, just having one is, for most of us, comforting. “Democrats,” “Republicans,” “Catholics,” “Jews,” “Evangelicals,” are all terms of similar nature. They represent aggregations not for the individuals in them but rather as an overriding “one.”
We’re preprogrammed to make the One from the many. We constantly do it. It’s a human default perspective. And it is, I believe, the reason that bias and racism will always be part of human interaction when people don’t know people personally. So, if you know someone who works on “Wall Street,” you know the “Non-Wall-Street” side of the person, and the same goes for knowing a “Democrat,” “Republican,” “gas-well driller,” “Irish-American,” “Nigerian-American,” or “Protestant.”
The only easy solution to racism is to make the one into many, to see the individuals outside the group. To alter the default perspective that replaces internal insecurity with externally derived security, think "individual." Let’s add a verb. “Extrahe unum e pluribus” or “Extract one from the many.” It’s the only way the struggle against racism will ever succeed.
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