Some people find it very difficult to deal with their racial biases.
Take for example Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. As this recent local ABC video shows, Arpaio is not at all apologetic about his racist beliefs:
The ABC reporter asked the following question taken from a viewer:
“Are you a racist?” Arpaio’s response:
“I’m not going to get into my personal life, my grandkids, my daughter-in law. I don’t have to defend myself against that vicious attack.”
He could have said, “No! I’m not a racist” and left it at that, but he didn’t. Apparently he feels that if anyone were to dig into his family history they would come up with evidence of racial bias against Latinos. But that’s not the important point.
What is important is that Arpaio “knows” that he is a racist, or perhaps a radical xenophobe. However, he also knows that a large portion of the voting rightwing base in his county shares the same belief.
This week President Obama announced that he is going to challenge the discriminatory immigration laws put on the books in certain states – particularly Arizona. He said he’s not addressing individuals, but rather the “racial profiling” wording being set into law:
Sheriff Joe, of course, came up with a rebuttal to Obama’s address:
Obama is saying that, in certain circumstances (e.g. educational priorities and “known” work experience), he would like to provide reasonable acceptance of American residency status. But Joe Arpaio says no.
“We are just enforcing existing laws,” says Joe. "Don’t try to change those laws so that I can’t keep the 'illegals' out of my state," he implies.
In reality, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is upset that the President of the United States has the audacity to pass judgement on what happens in his Maricopa County Kingdom. In the past two years, the US Department of Justice has entered into two investigations into Arpaio's activities, one a civil rights suit regarding racial discrimination, another involving the criminal investigation of his abuse of power.
But Sheriff Joe remains defiant. He continues to challenge Obama on every point, even going so far as to launch his own investigation into the validity of Obama's birth certificate.
This is considered to be "serious" law enforcement in my state?
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Comments
It's unfortunate that Mexican and Latino immigration gets plugged into the black-white issue, since it's not the same thing really, although we seem to be programmed to do that here. Oh well.
Good for O and his highlighting this probable injustice. I look forward to hearing the outcome.
Great reporting! rated
“I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.”
― Clint Eastwood
we have had millions of uneducated poor immigrants enter the country for decades, they have been allowed to stay
can't you see that this will lead to certain environmental ruin, and the lowering of wages and living standards?
I feel that you exhibit signs of a bias against whites, and an unwillingness to accept that this is a very, very different country than it was when racism was institutional; cries of racism have become a new "red scare" and McCarthyism
Please read Oahusurfer’s comment above, and think about how this may apply to your way of thinking.
What we must learn to do in these discussions is remove the word "race" and all it's variations on the theme. Prejudice is irrational, illogical and born of mistrust of difference. Prejudice exists, in all it's forms, in every segment, class, stratum and ethnic population of any country.
It is pretty much inescapeable. That said, to be honest with ourselves and look prejudice in the eye, instead of sweeping it under the rug with phrases like, "We have a black President, why are we talking more about this now?"
Having a person with a historically discriminated skin color in the highest office today highlights that we have made progress. The amount of talk about his Kenyan birth as opposed to his actual Hawaiian birth certificate only highlights, however, how much further we have yet to go in making this country one in which Dr. King's ideal of a future is, "that each man will be judged by the content of his character and not the color of his skin."
I know a lot of people love this line and a lot of folks think it's pointed at a majority of white people. This is simply untrue. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that this dream was for all people. This means that he understood, as many intelligent and compassionate people do, that prejudice knows no color, no financial class, no educational limits or cultural values. It's a two way street and Dr. King knew this implicitly.
We would do well to take the word "race" out of our arguments. A race is something apart. There is no black, white, yellow or red race of people. We are but one race, the human race. We need to start acting like it.
-r-
We are indeed all members of one race – the human race.