The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Susan Young is the Bangor Daily News opinion editor.
Racism is lazy. That is a phrase I heard repeatedly during an intensive series of leadership and equity training sessions that I participated in over the last two years. It resonated with me, in part, because it does not ascribe ill motives or intent. Instead, it is a statement of a troubling reality: It is easy and lazy to perpetuate the status quo when it comes to racial equity. That status quo, largely, means a country shaped and controlled by white people.
To be clear, some people are blatantly racist and hostile to people of color. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the lazy acquiescence to the status quo that perpetuates systems and policies that have racist outcomes.
This is a broad oversimplification, but generally, white people make the rules, control the institutions that implement them and have largely written our ongoing national history. That means the needs, interests and perspectives on non-white Americans have often been ignored, downplayed or even dismissed. This pattern also applies to other non-dominant groups such as religion, sexual preferences and gender.
Falling into a pattern of perpetuating this reality is easy, but it is harmful to all Americans.
The Bangor Daily News opinion section was lazy last year when we reprinted, for the umpteenth time, an editorial meant to honor Martin Luther King Jr. that was an excerpt from his famous 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech. This decision was not based in racism or malicious intent.
But King and his legacy deserve better. And the work that remains to be done to move closer to equality demands better than republishing the same words year after year. Because racism is lazy.
The excerpt that we republished for years highlights the more pleasant and well-known parts of King’s speech: His vision of a world where people are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
It did not include the harsher — and vital — parts of his speech. It did not include his assessment of an America where Black people are isolated on islands of poverty, victims of police brutality and handed a bad check by their country. He explicitly warned white Americans about returning to “business as usual.”
As we know, the country did essentially return to business as usual. Yes, progress has been made. We’ve elected a Black president and a growing number of people of color have been elected to Congress, although increasing diversity has somewhat stalled in state legislatures. More people of color now attend college and their earnings are rising, but, in too many instances, Black Americans continue to be left behind.
Black Americans are paid less than their white counterparts. They are more likely to live in poverty, in part because of racist policies that limited their access to homeownership, the largest building block of wealth in America. Removing those barriers was an important step forward, but it will take continued proactive steps to increase homeownership and wealth among people of color.
Black Americans are less likely to have a college degree than white Americans. Again, decades of legacy admissions that follow decades of policies to actively exclude people of color from American colleges mean that far too many Black families have been left behind. That’s why affirmative action — by its name an affirmative effort to actively increase the number of students of color on American campuses — was so important. It was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
The status quo also means that Black Americans have a shorter life expectancy than their white peers and that Black mothers are at a much higher risk of dying during pregnancy or after childbirth. It means that Black Americans continue to face a disproportionate amount of police violence in this country.
Tackling these, and many other inequities, require action, not just support, from white Americans. Without that deliberate, sustained action, the power of the status quo — laziness — can easily overcome good intentions.
