This Is Probably An Interesting Blog (but in the offhand chance it isn't…)

I think the NAACP ought to consider the possibility that the residuum of racism that exist today are more thoughts of omission than acts of commission. Racism is a very different beast today than it was on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation, or on the eve of the Civil Rights Act. Indeed, it is so difficult to detect and even harder to eradicate precisely because it is no longer hidden behind a white conical hood.

Because our standard for what counts as “post-racialism” has gone up with each civil rights milestone, the NAACP should realize that as the old in-your-face racism is gone, so too should the old confrontational techniques of accusation and litigation. Unconscious racism can only be taught and remedied by explanation, not declamation.

– Elvin Lim, Assistant Professor of Government, Wesleyan University, writing in a blog post regarding the recent spat between the National Tea Party movement and the NAACP.

A little backstory: last week, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning racist elements within the Tea Party. I’ve been somewhat loosely following how this story has unfolded over the last couple weeks and this seems to be the only summarization that clearly explains the dismissive logic being used by members of  the Tea Party to deride the NAACP as being inappropriate and out of touch. Frankly, I’m a little shocked that anyone could dismiss the NAACP when it’s suggested by them that they may be harboring inappropriate racial attitudes, but this is why Lim’s argument seems all the more compelling as reality.

Tea Partiers, it seems, are completely unwilling to admit elements of racism because they don’t believe their attitudes or actions to be racist. The NAACP’s charges of racism are then met with frustration and anger from individuals who resent the notion that they are being racially insensitive. Both groups are operating under an older, historically categorized idea of what racism is and what it looks like, when in fact our attitudes with regards to race have come to look much different. It’s a willful ignorance by an insular group with a martyrdom complex, but it also reflects the NAACP’s unwillingness to change the terms of the discussion. Believing that we live in a post-racial society isn’t a justification for racially insensitive actions and statements dismissive of an entire community of American citizens, but it is an explanation for the behavior. I don’t see a solution to such endemic division between class and race without first a willingness to experience other cultures and communities. But that’s never been very comfortable, has it?