RACISM

Racism is an ideology that attaches value to individuals on the basis of skin color.  It is a color based hierarchy, that ascribes the highest status to people with the lightest complexion, and the lowest status to people with the darkest complexion. The enhanced status given to light skin, encourages light complected people, to incorporate their racial status, into their personal identity. When this effect takes hold, the victim is in the beginning stages of becoming a racist.

A racist is discomforted when the behavior, achievement, possessions, appearance or experiences of dark people, contradict the the idea of white supremacy.

In effect, racism requires a diminishment of the identity of dark skinned people, in order to support the false identity of light skinned people as, better than, dark skinned people.

Aspects of the life of a dark person, that are racial contradictions, threaten the personal identity of the racist, producing anxiety, that is generally manifested by rage, and behavior that is designed to humiliate, coerce, demean, isolate, punish, or otherwise diminish that person in order to "correct" the discrepancy.

In effect, racism is not a reaction to inferiority, rather, it is a reaction to racial contradictions that challenge the self-image of the racist.

Copyright Hargrove Jones 2002

Examples:

Day camp girl: A self-willed, aggressive, four-year-old Diasporan female, attending a day camp, was awakened  during nap period by four of her white female peers.  After getting her attention they announced, "we're white!" 

They recognized, through their interaction with this girl, that she did not recognize their special status, so they informed her . . .

Even as young as four, they recognized white skin as status, but they were too young to appreciate the value of hiding or denying that status.

Boy in a post office line:  A boy of around 16 years-of-age, was standing in line at a post office, in the deep south, during the 60's, when a middle-age white doctor boxed his ears so hard that he lost his balance. As he was falling he looked up at the man and mouthed, "Why?" The man replied, "because you look too self satisfied. This boy's satisfaction was seen by this man, who was probably unhappy, as a racial contradiction to the superior effect, life in white skin should have.  How could a dark person be happy, when a white person, with every advantage, was not.  So, he interjected negativity into the life of that Diasporan, to "correct" the image.