Racism and high blood pressure

Racism is like high blood pressure or cholesterol, which most people have or will harbor, in relatively wealthy countries at least.  The difference is that those chronic diseases usually develop late in life, while racism is often instilled during childhood and fostered ever after.  What they share in common is that both have to be countered conscientiously: for high blood pressure one needs to take pills and modify routines daily for the rest of his life; for racism one has to remind himself of this mental disease and actively fight its tendency everyday.

In the DNA/genetics or morality setup, nobody can claim 100% perfect, so nobody can claim autoimmunity to high blood pressure or racism.  High blood pressure and other chronic diseases are in the human physiological nature, the same as that racism is in the human psychological nature.  Racism might be an evolutionary product, being part of the broader “us vs them”.  They are many manifestations of this us vs them mentality, e.g., people from different tribes in the old days, now different places or cities, even of the same race.  But only when there is another important, superimposing social ill, inequality, that this distinction becomes toxic.  Inequality is what makes it racism and what makes racism worse.  Inequality is reflected not only by materialistic things, but also by thoughts.  Snobbishness is almost a second human nature: who does like someone with more money, wearing better clothes and shiny shoes, driving fancy cars, living in big houses, or speaking perfect language or “our” language?  Yet practically all human disasters have been due to screwups by these people.

Nowadays, joining the George Floyd protest is in vogue and politically safe, but it doesn’t negate the reminder that racism should have been fought and need to be fought in all fronts, everyday and everywhere.  One area is in the field of social sciences including statistics.  There are supposedly three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Many statistics may be true, but also nonsense.  An old but prominent example is by Heather Mac Donald who wrote that based on 2015 statistics: “An officer’s chance of getting killed by a black person is 0.000033, which is 18.5 times the chance of an unarmed black person getting killed by a cop”, and, therefore, “Black Lies Matter”.  A comprehensive rebuttal was here (https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/06/how-conservatives-use-made-up-nonsense-to-justify-police-killings/).  Just three points about the absurdity of “Black Lies Matter”.  First, a simple, similar calculation would show that a cop was ~100 times more likely to be killed by a white man than an unarmed white man is to be killed by a cop!  Second, 0 police officers were killed by women in 2015, but 12 black women were killed by police officers, so maybe “Black Woman Lives Matter” instead?  Third, because an officer can’t be shot by an unarmed black man, maybe “Unarmed BLM” is better?  There are all kinds of numbers and statistics in the world.  One needs contexts and sometimes mechanisms to understand.

There is another very important, yet often glossed over topic, but well covered by Huffingtonpost, one of them in https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anti-blackness-asian-americans_n_5ed87ca8c5b6ea15610b5774.  It pertains to racism by many Asians, in the US and overseas, including China.  One must acknowledge that 1. It is true and quite pervasive, and 2. It is sheer ignorance but not the same as systemic racism in the West.  As to its origin, most people in many Asian countries have no direct experience with black people, and few countries have blatant racist policies.  So their views of black people are shaped by what is portrayed in the media and movies, often dominated by the West, i.e., US, and amplified by snobbishness: who doesn’t like the well-groomed white guys and glamorous white girls, but dislike the penniless dark-skinned thieves, so common in the movies?  Latinos are in the same boat, as Asians had even less interaction with them in prior histories.  Then, when some of them came to the US, they first typically lived in the “slums” shared by poor black people, and conflicts invariably arose, solidifying the negative stereotypes.  However, the second generation Asian immigrants are much more receptive to the plights by the black and brown, when they have had first-hand experience.

A viewpoint in many Western reports that lack perspective, though, is that they like to equate Asians preferring lighter skin to racism.  At least in East Asian cultures, it is not racism, since this is a hundreds or thousand-year-old tradition, when the previous people likely had never seen a black person in their lives.  In the old days, most people worked outside, e.g., farming or hard labor, and their skin got darker because of the sun, and such people were generally poor.  Those who didn’t need to go out much, hence with a lighter complexion, were those giving orders, and likely the rich and powerful.  So merely based on one’s skin people could tell a lot about a person, and by fooling with skin’s darkness, he or she might gain an initial advantage.  A bit snobbishness, yes, but not racism.  It is easy to see how it morphs into racism in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, but the history is undoubtedly distinct.  

Joining George Floyd protests or voicing supports is the convenient and simple part, but it doesn’t mean one was not, is not, or will no longer be a racist.  It shouldn't be a feel-good exercise for two weeks, then everybody forgets about it.  Chanting defunding the police is easy.  Doing the actual defunding is hard.  Following through with the next steps, defunding or not, will be the hardest.  Much worse happened when MLK was assassinated in 1968.  Then over 50 years later, it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.     

One last thing: racism is not country-confined.  Racism among countries is likely more dangerous.  Especially combined with nationalism.  If you fight racism in your own country, but don't fight racism of your own country against other countries, you are still a racist.

Note on June 11, 2020: This piece about the 1917 East St Louis riot (https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/east-st-louis-race-riot-1917-protests/) says: “In East St. Louis, as in other cities across the nation, white people resented every effort of African Americans to improve their social and economic conditions …. In response, white business owners worked to block new migrants from gaining economic or political power. Even though Black workers held the most menial jobs and received lower wages than their peers, white people in East St. Louis still viewed them as a threat. And they were determined to keep Black people “in their place” through acts of violence and intimidation”.  One can easily replace with countries, foreigners, etc., and it still makes perfect sense, more than 100 years later.