I get really sad and annoyed when I hear people say things like "I didn't have slaves and those people were never slaves, so why can't they just get over it? It happened so long ago. I don't know why it's still a problem."
I know immediately they have no understanding of structural racism. I also realize they don't care to learn.
Passive, structural,
institutional or social racism is a lot like pollution. People long
before us started throwing their trash in landfills, in rivers and the
ocean, and along roadsides. Companies long before we were born started
spewing toxins into the air and water. It’s been done for
centuries and it’s become a way of life for many because they benefit
from it in some way (profit, convenience, etc.). What was dumped 300
years ago, 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, and yesterday,
has built up over the years. Some of it decays and turns into earth, but
much of it remains and builds upon itself, growing into huge smelly
heaps that cause problems in our lives today.
We say “I don’t
litter”, or "I didn’t put that landfill there”, or “I don’t pollute that
water”, “this is not my fault”. Or we think “This isn’t happening to me,
where I live, so it’s not my problem.”
But this pollution has and will
continue to have an impact on us: chemicals slowly start tainting our
water supply, trash washes up on our shores and gets clogged in our rivers, our air becomes heavy and causes difficulty in our breathing, or it kills vegetation,
the landfill becomes too full and the county decides to start a new one
next door to our house, we get cancer because of the chemicals sprayed
on a neighbors fields. And we think “Why is this happening? I shouldn’t
have to deal with it. I didn’t cause this.”
We forget that the
plastic water bottle we drink out of has to go somewhere. No, maybe we
don’t throw it out of our car window (overt polluting) but we do put it
in your trashcan, where it gets picked up by the trash collector, who
takes it to the landfill, where it gets dumped and adds to the heap of
trash that won’t biodegrade, then becomes somebody else's problem (passive polluting).
So you say “So I won’t
use a plastic water bottle”. But not using that plastic water bottle
doesn’t make the rest of the pollution disappear. It’s still there,
whether you caused it or not. Because it's there and because it's effecting you and everyone around you it's your problem. Because you have the power to do something about it but aren't, you are part of the problem. Unless you do something to clear away the trash that is piling up, and do something to help others see they should not be polluting
the earth with their plastic water bottles and other trash, the problem
will not go away and will cause worse problems for future generations.
If you simply stand on the edge of the trash heap and look down at
others who have been buried by it, instead of putting your hands out to
them in an offer to pull them out of it, you are responsible for keeping
them there, whether you put them there or not.
