When I was invited to submit a paper for this issue of Phylon, I immediately knew that my topic would be “Confronting Institutionalized Racism.” That is because I have become convinced that it is only by naming racism, asking the question “How is racism operating here?” and then mobilizing with others to actually confront the system and dismantle it that we can have any significant or lasting impacts on the pervasive “racial” health disparities that have plagued this country for centuries. However, it has taken me a long time to actually write this piece because each time I started, I had so much to say that I didn’t know where to start or end, or what my tack should be. Should it be a presentation of a scientific roadmap for addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation’s children? Or a review of the domains of racism that should be covered in any measures that we develop or use? Or an outline of strategies we might employ in launching local efforts to combat institutionalized racism in our cities? In the end, I decided on this format, a conversation centered on/in what I consider to be some of the emergent questions facing us today as we seek to understand and intervene on the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of this nation. Some of these questions are: Why discuss racism at all when talking about health? What is racism? What is “race”? Is there something about the environment that we have previously not named that we can usefully describe as the racial climate, and if so, how do we measure it and what is it doing? If we want to confront institutionalized racism, what does that really mean and how do we get started? So sit back in your office chair or your airplane seat or your bed, and wander with me as I raise and seek to answer some of these questions. After all, it is only in the raising of important questions and the naming of the un-nameable that we will be able to focus our tremendous personal and intellectual resources on a system so powerful and pervasive that the majority of Americans are still in denial about its very existence.
Contours of the contemporary workplace pose peculiar challenges for black American workers. Employment policies supporting affirmative action, desegregation, and mandated federal court decrees have facilitated the opening of labor market portals. The enforcement of antidiscrimination laws has muted the prevalence of overt, blatant, and obvious forms of employment discrimination. Nonetheless, barriers to the full participation of black Americans in places of employment have still become increasingly more entrenched. The pervasiveness and elusiveness of these barriers has contributed to them remaining unnamed. While high profile discrimination cases and litigated class actions chronicle and amplify the scope of disparate treatments that fall outside the reasonable boundaries of law, the literature is generally silent on the system that has effectively limited and restricted the participation of black employees in institutional mainstreams. By identifying the peculiar and predictable structures underpinning this system's architecture, ways in which black employees at all strata of the labor market are disadvantaged may be codified. From such an analysis survival strategies may be constructed for those affected by these intractable phenomena. Indices for gauging degrees of organizational inequality and equality may also be deduced from such examination. More significantly, structures that contort the playing field may be more strategically dislodged if their codes and currents are named.
No issue has been more hotly debated in the African-American community than violence and nonviolence. No two persons symbolize this debate more than Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. They represent two radically different responses to nonviolence and violence in the freedom movement during the 1960s. Their perspectives are still widely discussed and debated today but seldom understood. Martin King's followers frequently misrepresent Malcolm X's views, referring to him as a messiah of hate and a black Ku Klux Klan of racial extremists. Malcolm X's followers distort Martin King's views, often calling him a century religious Uncle Tom pacifist-the best weapon of whites who want to brutalize people. Any view can be discredited by simplifying it to the level of a caricature. In this essay, I will present a brief analysis of Martin and Malcolm's views on nonviolence and violence, beginning with Martin's view because Malcolm's perspective was developed largely as a critical response to the white and media's presentation of Martin's views as normative for the African-American community. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a pastor and civil rights leader and is arguably not only America's most distinguished theologian but also the most influential American in the twentieth century. He was named Time's Man of the Year in 1963 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He is the only American with a national holiday in his name alone. With the support of many ordinary people in the freedom movement, King's practice and thought radically transformed America's understanding of itself and inspired liberation movements around the world. One can hardly go anywhere and not encounter his moral influence. Martin King is best known as America's preeminent advocate of nonviolence. From the time of the yearlong, triumphant Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott (1955-56) to his tragic assassination in Memphis, Tennessee (April 4, 1968), Martin King embraced nonviolence absolutely. For King, nonviolence was not only an effective strategy of social change; it was the heart of his philosophy of life. There was no limit to his advocacy of nonviolence in conflict situations. He contended that nonviolence was the most potent weapon for both blacks in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and for other oppressed peoples struggling for justice throughout the world. Nonviolence was not only the best tool for solving conflicts within nations; it could also resolve differences between nations. For
Over the past forty years, the United States has experienced a significant increase in diversity intensity with respect to race, gender, age, religion, politics, and sexual orientation to name a few dimensions. Similarities and differences along these lines and others are now much more visible than before. In part, a growing comfort with being different has fueled this growth. Until recently, most people did not want to be different or to acknowledge their differences, for it meant they were inadequate, lacking in some fashion, or simply than. Today, more and more individuals raise up their differences not as making them less or more than others, but as part of a contentment with being different. These individuals have contributed to a growing visibility of our country's diversity. Signs are plentiful that this pronounced diversity is challenging the fabric of our society:
For several years, we have reviewed the literature and attempted to understand interaction dynamic within families.' literature review has revealed only partial information about family adaptations because sociologists, like journalists, are more inclined to document social problems rather than social possibilities. They tend to focus on family failures rather than successes. Much has been written about the negative consequences for children when parents default on fulfilling their roles. We need to know, also, about the positive effects for sons and daughters when mothers and fathers function in appropriate and proper ways. Many discussions about offspring and the contributions parents make to their lives have to do largely with fathers and their sons2 or mothers and their daughters.Mothers are seldom discussed in studies of the success of sons. As a corrective for this omission of information, a chapter on The Roles of Mothers in the Lives of Outstanding Scholars was included in the book, A New Look at Black Families.4 Reported are findings of a small study mothers were significantly related to the success of their male offspring. Despite [living] in a variety of family structures [including single-parent] two-parent, and extended family household.. encouragement by mothers was a common experience for all [of the black male] scholars in the study.5 Fathers, and particularly black fathers, are seldom mentioned in studies of the adaptation of women. Jill Ker Conway's book Written by Herself 6 reports on the lives of women which can't be crammed into conventional cultural
THE OPPORTUNITY to achieve higher education has been one of the most persistent and highly sought values in the history of AfroAmericans. The discrepancy between a desired goal and an achieved one has much to do with the opportunity structure and access to decision making resources. It is commonly known that slave statutes forbade the teaching of reading to slaves, yet prior to the Civil War, three black colleges were founded, Cheyney State College in Pennsylvania (1839), Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (1854), and Wilberforce University in Ohio (1856). This is only one indication of the high value placed on education. Achieving higher education continues to be one of the most highly expressed values of AfroAmericans and other minorities. In the 1985 Gallup / Phi Delta Kappa survey on education, 73 percent of nonwhites, the highest percentage of any other group [national 64 percent] said a college education is very important.
