Sunday, January 9, 2011

Racism and Oppression

Although I had heard about the Stanford prison experiment before, I never considered thinking about it in racial terms. After watching this video and the other videos concerning race and racial profiling we can draw some analogies. Obviously in racial terms the guards represent the majority (white, usually male) and the prisoners represent the minorities.

It is interesting to note that in the experiment both the guards AND the prisoners where young college white males who were attending what some can consider to be an elite college. However the guards and the prisoners where told to think of each other in terms of either being a prisonier or a guard and nothing else. This is essentially stereotyping guards as the powerful ruling class, and prisoners as the oppresed, obediant class. How was each person assigned their role initially? Random chance, since it was an experiment the prisoneers performed no crimes and the guards did nothing to deserve their status, they were just given it. Overtime the guards became more and more powerful and the prisoners became weaker and weaker.

Compare this to racism were people are givin their race at birth as a social "tag". To is no "formula" used to decide if a person is born black,white or otherwise, it happens by random chance. This isn't very different from how prisoners or guards were chosen, what basis do people have to create divisions based on random chance.

One solution that some pose to racism is to put the responsibility on the minority to elevate their status and improve their image. Such a solution is futile at best since as long as divsions exist, people will still find ways to segregate and oppress others. Even the best behaving prisoner in a prison is a prisoner and subject to beatings, confident, or embarisment if they step even the smallest amount out of line. Additionally even the worse behaving guard is still a guard and entitled to punish any prisoner if they (or the guard thinks they) step out of line.

Finally I would like to point out that I have always thought of racism as the cause of people fulfilling stereotypical roles. If black males are stereotyped into being criminals, doesn't that show that society has little faith in them, which will lead them into a life of crime? If whites are stereotyped to be hardworking successful people, doesn't that mean that society is more supportive of them which will allow them to be successful? I believe the more we do away with racism the safer this world will be.

No comments:

Post a Comment