A framework for civil discourse about race and racism | Wornie Reed | TEDxVirginiaTech

Over the years I have been a part of many discussions and debates about social issues and what we should do about them and inevitably in these discussions I would be asked what your solution is and I would say let's not rush with solutions, let's define the problem and then I would say that if in my lifetime we can agree on definitions of problems, then I'm not too worried about solutions. Solutions would arise from the proper definition of the problem and the common understanding of those definitions; That is the situation we have. in defining a problem sometimes because we don't define problems properly we can have problematic

discourse

s, for example, in recent years there have been many calls for individuals, communities and people across the country to come together and have discussions about

race

.

racism

some dialogues about

race

and

racism

, but all too often these discussions become problematic because what happens when you have a small circle of people having these discussions is that these things are approached from an individual or personal perspective, so the individuals who participants are They are asked to confess their own prejudices and prejudices, and that can be very uncomfortable for the participants and I would add that they are also unproductive.

How did we get to that situation by defining the problem that way? I would say this is a result. of what is called the institutionalized structure of thought the institutionalized structure of thought is the structured way of seeing things it is the social structuring of knowledge it is the ways of thinking about problems it is the ways of thinking about social problems and it is the ways of Thinking About Race and Racism Now There are some assumptions I want to go over with you that are problematic with the ways of thinking about these ISS issues that abound in the country today.

Number one is that racism is an issue that no longer exists and has disappeared. Well, that's problematic. because that's not true, another assumption, a definition about race and racism, is that racism is something that bigoted people do intentionally, which could very well be true, but racism is much more than that. Another issue is the general way we approach this, the assumption is that prejudice caused racism, individuals are prejudiced and if they are prejudiced then they are likely to commit racism and then the assumption is that if we want to cure racism or eliminate racism, we have than to cure or eliminate prejudice, that could be useful, but I want to To suggest to you this afternoon that the error goes in the opposite direction, from racism to prejudice, we must first understand that individuals are not born.

Prejudice has to come from somewhere, so if we start with something that was developed later, we are starting too late. I would say that we must look at the value that goes from racism to prejudice. Typically, one would assume that prejudice develops as a result of life experiences that may have something to do with being in an environment of racism and if we assume that and if you go with me there, a lot of people would say, well, okay, we have We have to focus on people, we have to focus on individual racism, we have to focus on people who commit racism and deal with it now that's all very well, however, we can deviate by Following the dimension of individual racism, let me give you a example.

A few years ago, a graduate student conducted a study to try to determine why African Americans in this major American city receive so many more TR traffic tickets than whites, and so what he did was establish study areas, one by looking at a Thorofare that was worn predominantly by whites and another Thorofare which was worn predominantly by blacks. He found that the Thorofare used by whites had many fewer traffic tickets than the one used by blacks, even However, and he had a radar gun to demonstrate this, the speed and speed on the predominantly white Thorofare were much higher than in the predominantly black Thorofare.

He discovered something else: the police deployed many more cars in the black Thorofare than they deployed. the so-called white thorir, so it appears to be the result of the deployment of these police cars. If you follow me this far, it would seem that we can begin to think of racism as an attribute of the institutions of our society. um, like criminal justice, education, health, employment, etc., if we went further and said how do we remedy this problem well if we take all the police officers who are on the black track and subject them to months of sensitivity and diversity training.

I can assure you that there will be no changes. Black people will continue to be ticketed unless police department policies and practices are changed, so that's what we need to pay attention to. We have a problem definition issue here, so we need to spend some time thinking about what the nature of the problem is and also defining the problem appropriately. There are people in our history who can suggest how to do it. John Dy says that a well-defined problem is a problem that Einstein used to solve. Let's say if you give him an hour to solve a problem, he will spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and defining the problem and the other five minutes thinking about the solutions, so what I am suggesting is that we should focus on institutions, it is very simple. why we need to do this not too many years ago racial discrimination was legal in this country and widely practiced the way it was carried out was through the institutions of society and if those institutions have not been changed they are likely to be producing racism now, another reason to focus on institutions is that the impact of racism that arises from institutions is much greater than that which comes from individuals.

Yes, individual racism is something we should be concerned about; However, the impact of institutional racism is much greater. If we define the problem properly and focus on the institutions, then we remove individuals from the equation and then we can have

civil

discourse

, we can have discussions about race and racism because we can be discussing something that is much larger than the impact of any individual. Also individuals can have this

civil

ized discourse because they have not been asked to confess their prejudices and so on, and finally, I would add that if we do that, then we will be on the way to solving the main problem of racial discrimination, thank you.