A hundred years later

It looks like this might be the first “response paper” posted here to the website, so I’ll try to be as crass and negative as possible so you all have something to look good next to. Actually, I’m just a crass and negative person, so I suppose it’s not an acquired stance, now is it?

Anyway.

After going thirty-three pages into DuBois, and let’s not forget the introduction which read like a piece of Greek epic poetry praising the hero’s mighty deeds and besmirching his cowardly enemy Booker T., I feel this is going to be a long month. DuBois’s language is pretentious verging on bombastic (though I understand this is probably a way of proving to the white scholars of the time that a black man could write on their level, so it’s excused though I’m still allowed to dislike it) (and who the fuck am I to criticize, when I’m spouting out phrases like “pretentious verging on bombastic?”). And for some reason, the second chapter on the history of post Civil War civil rights efforts was as dull as the razor I use to shave my slightly oversized head.

But for all that, there is one thing I can’t fault it for, and that is relevance. I have heard people argue that in our modern society, racism is effectively a thing of the past. In a nicer moment, I would say these people are morons. The racism of today may look tame compared to DuBois’s time, and the absence of separate water fountains for whites and “coloreds” is certainly a sign of progress from our past, but the institutions which oppress African Americans are still in place. The older generation which grew up racist is still alive, after all, including my father who still uses the word “jigaboo.” One only has to turn on the television or go to a movie to see “black culture” depicted as the “low culture.” In fact, go to a video rental store and pick out two movies, one with a predominantly white cast and the other with a predominantly black cast, and almost certainly the second movie will present you with twice as many images of poverty, crime, and poor education than the first film. There is still a perception of the African American as being somehow lesser, and no amount of black politicians, lawyers, and doctors will stop WASP America from associating “blackness” with rap, drugs, and trailer homes.

The racism of today is certainly more subtle, and perhaps it’s more a matter of perception, a mental disorder collectively shared by the pale-faced refugees of suburbia, rather than an active oppression that forces African Americans into a blatantly inferior position. But racism still exists, and the problems DuBois spoke of have not disappeared in 2005. You’d think in a hundred years we’d be able to get rid of something so fucking ridiculous as judgments based on skin color, but… well, there are reasons I’m a cynic.