AN EXPLANATION OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM - AN ANECDOTAL PRIMER

Institutional racism exists when racism is so entrenched and pervasive that the people involved and affected see it as the natural state of affairs.  When institutional racism exists, the person being hurt by racism is unaware of the racism and accepts the situation and the person benefiting from racism is unaware of the racism and accepts the situation.

In modern America, between whites and blacks, we have income disparity, incarceration disparity, hiring and firing disparity, job level disparity, voting accessibility disparity, mortality rate disparity, housing availability disparity, hate crimes and a whole host of pragmatic manifestations of racism.

And there are way too many Americans who are saying that if the blacks are not complaining enough, then racism is solved and ended…

The reality is this: people of privilege, power, wealth and authority NEVER willingly relinquish that privilege, power, wealth and authority.  It’s part of both hard-wired and learned security and esteem needs.

But we should be better than that.  We should be able to rise above both those hard-wired and those learned needs and move closer to the agape concepts of giving without demanding quid pro quo.  We need to accommodate and acquiesce, such that equality can move just a little closer toward becoming a reality.  That means those who are privileged have to recognize that they are privileged and cede some small amount of that privilege.

I am not a saint and certainly not looking to be considered a good example, but an incident that happened to me in fourth grade and my response speaks to our need to step outside the bounds of assumed normal human behaviors in order to begin to achieve some modicum of equity in our culture and society.

It starts in fourth grade with a new teacher.  Since the statute of limitations has passed, I have no reason to hide names.  It was Mr. Ecklund.  Mr. Ecklund was a new teacher of English and was my ‘home room’ teacher.

Mr. Ecklund got called from the room one morning during home room for some reason and – of course – the fourth grade class got rowdy.  There was noise, commotion and everything you’d expect, but this particular morning there was one addition to the mayhem; a paper airplane.

Yes, I threw the paper airplane and yes, it hit a girl in the back of the head, and yes, I found that funny.  But then it’s all fun and games, until someone loses an eye.

Moments later, Mr. Ecklund came back into the room.  Now, I knew the girl who had been attacked by my paper drone.  And I knew that she was prissy and a snitch.  But she hadn’t seen who threw the paper airplane and had no way of pointing me out and getting me in trouble.

What I did not know about the girl who had been hit by the paper airplane was that she had an ax to grind and it did not involve me.  We had a kid in our class named Daniel Kenickie (Yep, just like the name in Grease, we had our own Kenickie).

Well fourth grade first row girl for some reason didn’t like Kenickie.  She actively disliked him and when Mr. Ecklund returned, she took an almost obscene glee in pointing out to Mr. Ecklund that Kenickie had attempted to impale her with a gliding piece of wood pulp parchment…

Due process notwithstanding, Mr. Ecklund – who had probably just found out that his car repair was going to be $500 over the estimate – was in no mood to be trifled with by his new class.  He summarily grabbed the wooden paddle, and summoned Mr. Kenickie to follow him into the hall.

OK.

I was off the hook.  The realities of an unjust system had rewarded me.  I was going to benefit by that very lack of due process and kangaroo court.  I was going to be free of any harm, while the front row girl was smug and satisfied and Kenickie was going to pay the price for something that he hadn’t done, having no idea who the guilty party really was.  I benefited from the brokenness of the system and the institutionalized process.

Whew.

Only, even then in my fourth grade state of education and level of reasoning, I knew that something was not right.  I could sit still, keep quiet, let the whole thing blow over and be none the worse for wear and in a couple days it would be ancient history.  THE WORLD WOULD CONTINUE TO REVOLVE AS IT HAD, AND NOTHING HAD TO CHANGE.  Everybody would accommodate and adapt to their roles and fates.  And I would be in the clear.  I would benefit from the inadvertent structure of the decision making and corporal punishment system in that school.

As they were going through the door toward the hallway where the corporal punishment would be administered, I raised my hand and spoke, without waiting to be ‘recognized.’

“You can’t do that, Mr. Ecklund.”

You would not believe the looks I got from my classmates and from the teacher.

“George, what did you say?”

“I said, ‘You can’t do that, Mr. Ecklund.’”

“Why are you saying that?  Why can’t I do this?  What business is it of yours?  You need to quiet down.  Everybody needs to quiet down and sit still.”

“You can’t paddle Kenickie because he didn’t throw the airplane.”

“But Susie told me that he threw it.”

“Susie’s wrong.  She was facing forward.  She couldn’t see.  She lied.  I know that Kenickie didn’t throw the airplane, because I did.”

Kenickie who had been protesting with all his might, raised a renewed and more vigorous protestation of his innocence.

Mr. Ecklund kind of tossed Kenickie toward his seat.

“You threw the airplane that hit Susie?”

“Yes.”

“Not Danny?”

“Correct.”

“George, why are you saying this?”

Wow, he had me stumped.  My fourth grade values and morality level might have recognized an injustice, but it didn’t prepare me to explain jumping into the line of fire.

“It wasn’t right.  Danny didn’t do it and you were going to punish him.”

Mr. Ecklund wasn’t angry, although I kind of thought he had every right to be.  I’d stopped a natural, normal progression, and thrown a wrench into an otherwise nominally working academic system.  Mr. Ecklund looked at me long enough to make me nervous and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking as he considered me.

“Come with me.”

Alright… no good deed goes unpunished.  Teacher, paddle and I were going to visit the hallway.

Once in the hallway, Mr. Ecklund surprised me by not stopping, but by making a right and heading down the stairs.  I followed, having no idea at this point what to expect.

Mr. Ecklund crossed the central atrium of the old, big school building, headed straight for the Principal’s office.  He pointed with his paddle toward the bench outside the office, then walked in.  I sat.

He was in the office for about 20 minutes, then he came out and said, “The Principal wants to talk to you.”  Then he walked away, returning in the direction of his classroom.

I walked into Mr. McCarroll’s office.  It was large and imposing.  Back then, there was no secretary, no anteroom, no demarcation other than door.  You went from atrium school noises and activity into the sanctum.

Mr. McCarroll was a large, imposing, ex-football player and coach who moved through the academic ranks based primarily on his athletic background.  He was very gentle and very matter-of-fact when he spoke.

“George, sit down.”

I accommodated.  Sitting, I wasn’t getting paddled.

“George, Mr. Ecklund told me what happened.”  I had no idea what had happened, I was still improvising and still had no idea how this would play out.

“Mr. Ecklund said that while he was out of the room you threw a paper airplane.  Is that right?”

I nodded assent.

“And he says that paper airplane hit Susie in the back of the head.  Is that right?”

I was beginning to wish I’d thrown something bigger and more substantial.  I nodded again.

“And he says that she said that Danny Kenickie threw the plane, but then you stopped him from paddling Danny and said that you threw the plane.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?”  Again that question that I was now asking myself.  I obviously had to work on my keeping shut skills.

“I couldn’t let him paddle Kenickie.  He didn’t do anything.  I did.  Mr. Ecklund just made a mistake when he believed Susie, who was sitting in front and didn’t see anything.”

Mr. McCarroll looked calm and patient and soothing.  Why wouldn’t he?  He had a sports metaphor in his back pocket.

“George, let’s say you’re playing football.  (I had, for a brief time in grade school, and was a pretty decent lineman.)  And you inadvertently cause a penalty and the ref doesn’t see who did it, and calls a penalty against an opposing team player.  Now you wouldn’t go to the ref and say, ‘Excuse me, but he didn’t do it, I did it,’ would you?”

That sounded like a trick question and I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, so I used the skill and cunning that fourth grades have used since fourth grade was invented: I stammered.

“Um… um.. er… um… ah… um… um… ah…”
“Right.  You wouldn’t stop the game and try to get the ref to change the penalty from the other side to you, would you?”

More eloquent stammering…

“Well, that same thing is true of life.  Sometimes you just let the system work.  And sometimes the system benefits you and you just accept it and you don’t make a fuss, or try to change it.  You accept that you’ve gotten a break and you take advantage of it.  It’s the way things are, and when the system works to your benefit, you accept it and don’t necessarily try to change that system.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, go back to class.  And try to remember what I told you.  Sometimes, that’s just how things work and how they’re supposed to work.”

And that’s how my real life morality play ended.
Susie hated Kenickie.  I could live with that.  Passions run deep in fourth graders.

Mr. Ecklund looked at me differently and we actually became friends for my next two years in his homeroom and beyond, when I went to high school.

Mr. McCarroll was careful to speak to me every time he saw me in the hallways and ask how I was doing.  I became adept at being non-committal without stammering.

But what he said was a lie.  To benefit from a system by letting others be injured, despite the system being old and established is wrong.

When we pay the black person more than the white person for exactly the same job…

When we tolerate the arrest of the black youth when a white youth in an identical circumstance would not be arrested…

When we create skimpy budgets for primarily black schools while giving larger budgets to primarily white schools…

And on and on and on…

We perpetuate racism.  We may not be hurting an individual.  But when we acquiesce to a system that benefits the historical racial majority and harms the historical racial minority, we are racist.  When we assume that the system does what the system will do, and that we should stand back and accept it, EVEN WHEN IT SEEMS BENIGN AND BENEFITS US, we are being racist.

And we know it.  Deep in our heart of hearts…  Somewhere deep in our soul, we know it.  Yet we use the system to justify and to rationalize who we are and what gets done in the name of our society and its systems.

And we know it.  And we know that it’s wrong.