Ignorance is Bliss

With all the pressing and novel issues in America today such as the war on terror, gay marriage, domestic wiretapping, or fear of cartoons, it seems that we should have had the old “racial discrimination” problem solved by now.

But in a typical suburban town in North Carolina there is a church that does not allow African Americans to join. The members of this “Christian” organization oversaw the construction of a smaller church for all of their unwanted members.

So, when a black family unknowingly comes into the church (which I must remind you is supposedly Christian), there is a member who tells them that they aren’t welcome. Before anyone makes any attempt to get to know the hopeful new members, they are directed to the smaller minority establishment which is several miles away.

This is not the only place in the United States to overlook the Supreme Court’s decision that “separate but equal” facilities are unconstitutional, but the fact that this church is in my hometown left me extremely unsettled. (They also refuse people who choose alternate lifestyles.) I had accepted the fact that some people were still about a hundred years behind the times as far as “basic human rights” went, but I never expected it to hit so close to home.

After I found out about this, I started to wonder what would cause my neighbors and friends to have this backwards attitude, and also what would cause such an immoral tradition to be encouraged, yet kept under wraps so well.

It used to be easy for me to dismiss stories of racism as something that only happens several hundred miles southwest of here and only comes from extremists or radicals who ride their horses through the streets dressed head-to-toe in white bed sheets with hoods. This stereotype of racists may fit the bill some of the time, but mostly, as in the case of this church, racism is ultimately perpetuated by traditionalists, and hidden behind walls of churches and other façades.

However, the most baffling thing about all of this is to wonder, “Who would stand for such a thing?” Who, in their right mind, would knowingly be under the influence of racism or racial profiling and think to themselves, “This is just the way it has to be,” and then give in without a fight? It is baffling that this indifferent attitude is present today at all, but what of the people who simply put up with it?

These people are as much to blame for the racial prejudice that is around today as those who are actually racially prejudiced. Even though they are not the direct cause, those who do nothing about it also perpetuate its existence. Like people who yell at referees during basketball games because they know that the referees can’t yell back, racists are encouraged when they encounter no resistance to their ignorant madness.

Some Americans are taking steps in the right direction, however, especially those who are in the public eye. Kanye West has the general idea of how to solve this problem - although putting Mike Myers on the spot perhaps wasn’t the best way to go about doing things. He hits the nail on the head, however, in the song “Never Let Me Down” off of the album “The College Dropout” when he says that “racism’s still alive, they’re just concealing it.”

Indeed, the defeat of racism will come when people do not stand idly by and watch as something happens that is wrong. When people speak out, a real change can occur. It is easy to write racism off as something that happens in far-off places, rather than an actual problem that must be faced by everyone.

Still, the fact that this church encounters no resistance leads to another question: Is racism all right as long as it is accepted by the community? Even though the answer is obviously “no,” based on examples such as Nazi Germany or the forced servitude of Africans in the United States before the Civil War, on the surface it seems that many people feel that such acts are in fact justified when a society accepts them.

However, the church admittedly has a first-amendment right to hang up a sign that says, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” Even though I’m sure this isn’t the ideal Christian message, if the whole of the church believes it and encounters no resistance to it, then, in their minds, there is no reason to change.

This is somewhat of a problem.

I have a hard time figuring out why the people in my hometown who are affected simply put up with these racist attitudes. After everything that was accomplished leading up to and during the Civil Rights Movement, it is hard to imagine how anyone could take such a slap in the face and move to the different church without a fight.

Perhaps if the current members of the smaller church had taken a stand against the larger church, a small step towards the ultimate goal of a truly integrated society would have been taken. But when evil is accepted, it becomes the norm.

As a former student in North Carolina’s public education system, not only was I exposed to the revolutionary ideas of the people who first came up with the phrase “all men are created equal,” but I went to a school where white people were a minority.

I have many good African American friends from the classrooms I was in, the athletic teams I was a part of, and the clubs I participated in. Through these friendships, I was able to learn that the idea of equality was not just something that is preached in textbooks and proclaimed by people throughout history. Equality is in fact an undeniable truth, and for anyone to preach against it is something that must somehow be stopped no matter where it occurs.