Connections on Wise "Between Barack and a Hard Place"

Tim Wise argues that, although we have a black president, we really haven't come all that far as a society in terms of SCWAAMP, particularly the W part. We can see this, and how his argument relates to the Brown v. Board of Education case in the following video:




When we see here, that the study done by Dr. Clark at the time of Brown v. Board of Ed has the same results today, we see how little our society has advanced to diminish race-bias. In a major-ally white class, it is easy for us to look at how SCWAAMP affects our ideas of race. This video gives us an eye-opening portrayal of how SCWAAMP affects ideas of race for people of color. Kiri mentions that as a child, she knew she couldn't be a princess because princesses are white, not black. Relating to Christensen's essay, "Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us," it is not until just now that we have had a black Disney princess. It is easy to imagine that, as Christensen argues in her essay, the children in this video were affected by the "secret education." It forces us to be aware of how powerful the subliminal message is in teaching children the values of society. Clearly our society is still teaching children that being white is more valuable, and therefore more desirable, than being black.

Let's pull back the lens a bit, and get a larger view:



In his interview, Tim Wise coins the phrases racism 1.0 and racism 2.0. He defines racism 1.0 as "the sort of old school, overt kind of bias that people can realize when they see it." He warns that although our society is moving away from that type of bias, what we need to watch out for is racism 2.0, which he calls "enlightened exceptionalism." This allows people in the culture of power to hold onto their biases, and consider minority individuals that are intelligent, articulate, and successful to be exceptions to the norm. Wise states that "the proof of racial equity will be the day that people of color can be as mediocre as white folks and still get hired." This video is a great example of the role stereotypes play in racism 2.0 and of why we need to be critically aware. Although these people are concsiously aware of what stereotypes exist, they may be unconscious to the fact that they are accepting of some of those stereotypes, and because of that they are serving to keep SCWAAMP in its place.

Here are two examples of racism 2.0 in action:









In these videos, we see how people act on biases they might not even be aware that they have. Awareness is the key. Wise writes and speaks out on these issues to raise awareness. The first article we read by Johnson was specifically explicit about raising awareness to these kinds of issues, instead of just turning the other cheek, or sweeping it under the rug. When we use awareness to critically analyze the way things are, we can start to make things change for the better: