Strong Roots of Racism in the US History - Research Paper Example

RACISM Why is there racism in the professional field? Racism exists in the professional field because even today, in an enlightened, modern society with an African-American president, racism has strong roots in US history and society. The professional field is still rife with ideas of unfair privilege. White privilege is the idea that whites or Caucasians have an automatic advantage in US and Western societies, not based on any sort of merit, but simply because they are born white. “On the other hand, members of minority groups tend to be constantly aware of the privileges denied to them. Persistent confrontation with a system of unearned privileges that benefits the dominant group serves as a constant reminder of their status as second-class citizens” (Niehuis, 2005). The idea of white privilege deals specifically with prejudice, many themes are explored in examples which are primarily psychological and historical. People have tried to counteract white privilege with programs like Affirmative Action in some professional fields, but essentially, what is at fault is not in any industry or field specifically, but is a general taint on American society. This taint can be traced all the way back to slavery and its aftermath, when African-Americans were treated as less than human. 2. What has changed over the years? After slavery was abolished and African-Americans began to move freely about the country, they faced a whole new rank and file of racist policy designed to oppress them, and keep them down as a people. Over the years, there has been a general questioning and lessening of this racist and oppressive policy, but it still remains today in many cases. Our knowledge can be heightened by the fact that it is not just an historical relationship, but also reflects on society as it exists today. It is also important to view sources like Katznelson in terms of how not to let history repeat itself. “Rankin fought assertively to make Jim Crow safe. He had reason to be anxious. The immense extension of federal largesse could threaten segregation. He keenly grasped that black veterans would attempt to use their new status to shift the balance against segregation” (Katznelson, 2005). All of the texts considered in this report have shown the main theme of how social forces that affect others can be destructive, if they support policy that is racist in nature. As history moved forward, African-American thinkers like DuBois began to propose that the solution is to equalize the respect and opportunity for empowerment in both public and private consciousnesses. “Once the US joined the war, many blacks, including Du Bois, sought to achieve civic gains as a corollary to their steadfastness. Seeking to turn ambivalence to instrumental change, he offered an historical argument… the history of race relations in the US… demonstrated a republican principle. In peacetime, black oppression remained unshaken” (Katznelson, 2005). There are also educational issues to consider. Differences in schools are mainly brought about by property tax rates and the economic conditions of the district. In a poor district, the children are less likely to get the help that they really need from the educational system, and in a rich district, there is more than enough for everyone. “Since the sixties, when race relations held promise for the dawning of a new era, the issue has become one whose persistence causes ‘problem fatigue’—resignation to an unwanted condition of life” (Steele, 1992). The desegregation of the educational system after Brown v. Board of Education was a major step forwards for equality, but it had to be shoehorned by the national government in many cases, because some Southern states refused to integrate their schools. After the Civil Rights era, many organizations began to change by instituting affirmative action. While many people think that affirmative action is about making quotas and dividing people, what it is really about is fairness. People who believe in fairness do not like preferential treatment, but they know about evening the scales: it is not fair to exclude students who want to achieve from higher education, just because the system has given them a delivery of inadequate curriculum learning, a system where all the good teachers transfer to the suburbs, and a system where many schools in inner city areas are literally falling apart. One has to ask, is this a fair place for students to start and move towards college and higher? The obvious answer to this question is that it is not fair at all, and this is something that opponents of affirmative action refuse to understand. The process of affirmative action in educational and workforce initiatives puts people into positions that they are qualified for, but couldn’t get to before because of oppressive policies. Now, since there is affirmative action, there is more equality and balance in the system. The program is not about taking away minorities’ ability to achieve on their own. If this was true, individuals would get a free ride and not have to do anything. It is up to the individual to perform; affirmative action simply gives a greater amount of equal opportunity, rather than paving the way for them or making it too easy for them. Today, we are in a world where all of this racist history is still very close, and society must find ways to move forwards into a more productive future. 3. What does Greenwald document about this issue (OUTFOXED)? Greenwald looks at Fox News as an organization in his documentary, and finds that the organization seems to have a Republican, anti-minority agenda. The democratic idea of the consumer of media being able to choose from a number of given perspectives is involved explicitly with radio and television broadcasters like FOX. From Greenwald’s perspective, there are responsibilities which these broadcasters must uphold to the public so that the information that the viewing and listening public receives is fair and balanced and opposing viewpoints get a chance to be presented. However, as Greenwald shows in the documentary, fair and balanced, at FOX News, are just empty words without meaning. In essence, it is a measure of responsibility and accountability for the free press that is able to give counterarguments and provide a space for counterarguments regarding issues that are controversial and require a public forum so that the viewing and listening public can get a full cognizance of the issues being presented on both sides. Race relations is just one of these issues. Objectivity has always been a key tenet of journalism, but the achievement of objectivity is less clear, as Campbell and others note quite frequently. “Embedded deep within journalism is a belief in the two dimensionality of news. A reporter sent to cover property tax increase might be told ‘Interview Republican and Democratic leaders and have them fight it out in the story’ Such balance is a narrative device that helps generate story conflict” (Campbell et al., 2006). In Greenwald’s documentary, it is shown that much of journalism has responded to a need for clarity in this presentation by highlighting balanced reportage of issues that concern the public or may be political, controversial, or the subject of dis- or misinformation… aside from FOX News. The idea of journalism being a requirement of democracy is somewhat misleading, because it is not to say that non-democratic countries or societies do not have journalism. What seems to be more to the point is to say that a free press is a requirement of democracy, rather than journalism in and of itself, which might be run even in this system by societal biases, but which isn’t, at least, explicitly controlled and censored for ideological content by the status quo. In certain industries, racism is more insidious and harder to combat, than others. 4. What is the glass ceiling? The glass ceiling is an invisible barrier faced by women and minorities in organizations. There is the assumption, classically, “that over time they will become more and more American and in the process strengthen their competitive position until they are accepted as equal” (Steele, 1992). Critical factors in this issue involve an emphasis on assimilation and multiculturalism as opposed tendencies related to the history of the US and its various and often opposing stances on assimilation, or making minority communities more like the US culture, and multiculturalism, or respecting the other cultures that make up the nation. Many have commented on this issue as having roots in Americans’ common ideas of minorities as being entire group type representatives of a confusing blend of cultural positive and negative parts, staying the same and newness. “Americans are so used to thinking about minorities as either a poison or a cure for the diseased national body that they are poorly prepared to think about them simply as persons’” (Steele, 1992). This type of thinking keeps many from getting ahead, and represents a way of thinking that contributes to the formation of the glass ceiling. Breaking through the glass ceiling means recognizing diversity and ending conflict in organizations. Montiero’s article deals with how diversity intersects with conflict management in organizations. This article is mainly a theoretical text which seeks to apply its theories to the reality of the organizational space, but does not conduct actual empirical scientific research regarding the efficiency of its theoretical conclusions. One of the author’s main assumptions regarding the elimination of the glass ceiling barrier, is that, “Common in-group identity, as well as dual identity cognitive strategies, could in a certain way co exist in the context of inter group asymmetrical relations, where diversity does not oppose or prevent a super ordinate cohesive representation of groups” (Montiero, 2003). The article also deals with different stages of conflict management, such as the manifest conflict stage. During the manifest conflict stage, conflict strategies are enacted in communicative interaction, and there are many different categorizations of this that are mentioned in the text’s literature review on diversity, which seeks to define and differentiate different styles and types of conflicts in terms of their relation to theories of diversity, such as formal/informal, content, relational, objective/subjective, and so on, balanced against issues of prejudice and discrimination which too often plagues the workplace. This is very important for any organization’s awareness during any disputes or complexities in diversity, because it is important to make the glass ceiling a thing of the past. 5. How does racism affect the broadcasting industry? Racism in the broadcast industry is a function of the majority, or the same complexity as an individual or essential nature as a human being that is denied the minority. Despite positive trends, racism in this and other industries, continues. The community or cultural level of minority communities in many areas of the US is adversely affected by this racism in that it is not recognized as going deeper than sensory perception allows, and often this perception is controlled in terms of stereotypes that are handed down through the mass-media. It is also difficult for the structural level of the group to gain power and depth when it is not assessed in a manner that respects essential human beings, but rather glosses over the surface and denies depth to political structures. On the individual level, this drives a wedge between how the individual is perceived, in terms of one dimension, before they are actually essentially known. There is also the idea of many whites not being self-conscious enough about white privilege. “According to McIntosh (2001), privilege, whether in terms of race, gender, sexuality, or class (Lorber, 1994; Penelope, 1993), is "an invisible package of unearned assets" that a person "can count on cashing in each day" (p. 95), but of which most privileged people are entirely unaware because they take these privileges for granted” (Niehuis, 2005). To follow the definitional parameters of prejudice and discrimination as purely ethnic or racial phenomena, one does not have to look far in the modern broadcast industry. “The most extreme form of prejudice is called racism: the belief that members of certain racial or ethnic groups are innately superior or inferior” (Chafe, 1977). The impact of racism on the industry is various, especially because it remains an industry that can selectively hire based on race and political affiliation. Solving the problems of racism in the broadcasting field involves looking at organizational conflicts and solving them. When the broadcast industry is truly sensitive to multicultural issues, this will be a major step forward, because it means that broadcast companies will be better able to handle conflicts with the public, as well as among employees. “Informal conflicts may occur among coworkers, employees and supervisors, with or within between groups, and among departments within an organization. Such conflicts often occur when there are differences in values, beliefs, or opinions regarding how the work gets completed, how resources or tasks are distributed, or where priorities should be” (Montiero, 2003). The main point that one can garner from this article is that professionals have to recognize that there are informal and formal conflicts and these have different sets of rules, settings, and expectations in the organizational workplace environment. There are also attributes of conflict that raise goal-setting to a new importance. Any effective policy will naturally have to be refined to reflect diversity and its reflection on different conflict types and styles during the collaboration process. Montiero also deals with difficult issues of racism and diversity in the organizational environment, in terms of in-groups and out-groups. In the broadcasting industry in general, “The media always likes to put blacks in a box as though they are separate from the rest of society. They have been doing it for so long that they dont even realize this is why they cant handle an African American president-- because they thought it wouldnt happen in their lifetime” (Racism, 2010). Until people can really start to become multicultural and sensitive about diversity, this may continue to be a problem in society, as well as in the specific societal space of the broadcast journalism industry. REFERENCE Campbell, Martin, and Fabos (2006). Media and Culture. New York: St. Martin. Chafe, W (1977). Race and sex. Woman and Equality. New York: Oxford. Katznelson, I. (2005). When Affirmative Action was White. New York: Norton Montiero, M (2003). Dealing with inter group conflicts in organizations. PJSS. Niehuis, S (2005). Helping white students explore white privilege outside the classroom North American Journal of Psychology. Steele, Claude M. (1992). Race and the Schooling of Black Americans. Atlantic Monthly. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/race/steele.htm. Racism backlash—African-American voters hate FOX News (2010). http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x448731 Read More