The Future of Racism

Recently I read an opinion article posted in the New York Times that touches on the issue of racism and the place it may hold in the future of our society. I found it interesting to read this article a little more closely, as we have touched a lot on the matter of racism throughout the course. While, as a class, we have reflected on America’s history with racism, the opinions of this author represent a different twist on the issue, predicting the ways in which it might affect our society in the future.

Ross Douthat begins by questioning whether or not there is an “over-optimism” about the role that racism will play in our society. He mentions that if racism is just “an ideological and political problem that’s specific to a particular time and place” then as the old white generation dies out, racism in our country will continue to decrease. Many people, myself included, have thought of racism as an outdated flaw of our country. While it is still present, we like to think that it is constantly decreasing as the younger generations grow, and those who were immersed in a racial dominated society begin to pass away. I believe that something can be said for this, as the acceptance of a society where the institution of slavery was thought to be “normal” drastically changed when the slaveholder generation died off. Time heals some wounds, but not all.

Douthat counters the argument that racism is a thing of our past by stating, “I can think of a dozen reasons why public expressions of race-based hostility might become more common, not less, as the America of the Boomers gives way to the America of the millenials.” Douthat includes the internet’s ability to make the taboo a little less taboo, and our growing distance across time from the horrifying social injustices based on racism that took place in our country’s past, as significant reasons that we may experience a growth in racism. It makes sense. The “shock factor” of many things that may have seemed unthinkable to speak of in the past has now decreased due to the internet and media. A large number of people have become numb to extreme behavior, due to their consistent exposure to it. This makes people less likely to act out against a racist comment they may see posted on social networking sites, perhaps even passing over it as if they never saw it. Furthermore, the generations that are moving into adulthood never experienced the civil rights movement. Sure they read about it in history books, and they all know who Martin Luther King Jr. is, but they were not present to experience the drastic social changes that took place during this time. This makes our society vulnerable to an increase in racism if lessons learned are not passed on from generation to generation. Surely there will never be the institution of slavery, or the appalling Jim Crow laws that blatantly segregated races from one another, because politically these lessons learned from our past have been set in stone.

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/the-future-of-racism/