Music and More

What shade of Race are we - Part III

It is hard to entertain the suggestions from the marginalized Anglo-American asking for equality or fairness. One suggestion is how their disadvantages are comparable to or elevated by the attention given to Non-Anglos, the kind usually associated with American racism.  Some of these are affirmative action, civil rights, and political correctness.  Some of these different Anglo cultures have a need to be seen as discriminated, disadvantaged, or limited.  Their barriers or disputes appear to be sharing the same source of pain and economic injustice as non-Anglo cultures.

It is sad that race boxes these marginalized Anglo-American peoples into a stereotype of un-oppressable.  I've had an idea that Anglos can't be disadvantaged or discriminated because by default they are the privileged, rule makers, control brokers, and don't need advocates.   I have to acknowledge that I stereotype and I have my own prejudice against Anglo-Americans.  I think it is has been called reverse racism.  I think is more, a human reaction to victimization.  How a victim might have fear for their victimizer. We may find that reverse racism is more of a protective response rather than an ideology.

We may need to recognize how Anglo-American prestige is more about how greed doesn't discriminate.  Anglo-Americans are starting to see themselves as compromised by their "race", yet that is not the obstacle as much as their loyalty to a neglectful corporate culture.  It might be easier to say that Anglo-American disadvantage is not because they are "White", not because institutions are asked to include a diverse population, but possibly because our institutions refuse to expand and creatively reinvest the wealth in newer communal ways.  Communal ways, that would encourage the replication of effective accessible education, technologies, resources, and lifestyles for more than 38% of the Non-Anglo citizenship (Reeves,R.V.,Joo,N, 2017).

It seems like these marginalized or disadvantaged Anglo-Americans want to blame the interventions our American legislation has provided for discrimination based on xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and prejudice. The support of ethnicities that are not Anglo, struggling through prejudice, are now seeming to be re-attacked.  These Anglo-Americans would rather look at these policies than to look critically at the corporate or capitalist strategies that have evolved to no longer need race as an economic strategic tool.

Corporations can no longer easily compartmentalize a race as superior and depreciate darker people as disposable. This seems to force the once elevated Anglo-American class to now suffer the consequences of corporate neglect, disinterest, greed, and disenfranchisement.  This is something many Black, Latino, Migrants, and Women have experienced regularly.  But it is new to the middle class Anglo-American people.  Its no longer about keeping these people off table, after having to make room for us at the table, now its about asking us to trust that your attitude has matured enough to keep us at table as space shrinks.  Trusting this idea, given the Anglo-American's leadership record on self imposed benevolence and non-malfeasance is near impossible. 

Many corporations have a disregard or loose interest in being responsible to the communities they find themselves harvesting for human resources as soon as their return on investment suffers.  The corporations and executive classes do an effective job of bringing life to communities but struggle with transitions or worse responsibly having to say good bye.  We want to admire these businesses when they bring economic growth and accept how they pick up and move on when there is nothing left to harvest.  Some could argue this is exploitation or abuse.

We need to teach businesses how to die or transition with greater respect for their employees, communities, and environment.  Or at least, learn to not blame civil rights and protections from discrimination when economies flounder.  The economic disregard for community as profits and resources shrink seems to create acceptance for corporate abandonment, neglect, or an exploitative attitude.  And possibly for the first time, these Anglo-Americans are feeling the angst of exploitation.  This seems to lead to blame towards minorities, migrants, and any other susceptible community competing for opportunity.

What if we taught ourselves to look critically at the corporate or capitalist strategies we seem to romanticize. It is scary to be asked to believe that discrimination is gone when so many indicators reveal it's active.  Its sad that some Anglo-Americans deny these indicators or conveniently interpret them in their own advantageous ways.  It distracts from looking deeply at the roots to their own growing disadvantage. The complexity behind how Anglo cultures have manifested competitive advantage and conveniences to economic progress is not hard to present, but it has been nearly impossible for enough Anglo-Americans to acknowledge.  Possibly because oligarchies that have benefited the most were able to camouflage themselves with a loyalty to the concept they called "Race".

The toxic strategies Anglo-American ancestry once leveraged to elevate their status and wealth cannot continue to be ignored.  Some of these strategies, like slavery, barriers to entry, segregation,  preferential education systems, or deregulation need to be seen for what they are and likely will continue to be seen as useful by those who cannot bare to be identified as equal. Blaming these corrective policies ignores how the entire working class are susceptible to these newer, non-race based, forms of exploitation.

As I reflect on civil rights because we recently celebrate Martin Luther King Jr, I find myself blessed to have the clarity and perceptions that help me not need to deny other's beliefs more than I try to understand them.  Some in these Anglo cultures feel a strong resentment for the retributions put in place to remedy the carnage of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, racism, discrimination, genocide, robbery, pollution, and inequality. It is unfortunate that some in these Anglo-American communities want to undo, uninstall, and reintroduce non-Anglo disadvantage as a solution to their disadvantage. What a tragic way to solve problems. I hear it as let us all be equally disadvantaged, when we really have clues to a history that has shown us that birds of a feather will punish less those that have similar feathers.  It is calling past discrimination resolved without having any way of accounting for the present day economic gaps for Black, Latino, Women, and other marginalized peoples.

Immigrating Without Borders

      I immigrated from Albuquerque’s city life to a quieter Santa Fe.  Santa Fe is 50 some odd miles north of Albuquerque along the Camino ...