Groupthink
If you are a member of Group A, and you are looking outward at other groups, you tend to think that members of Group B all have similar, identical outlooks.
So, when talking about diversity, mention the word "white." Does one image come to mind? Bronwen doesn't think this is right:
‘White’ diversity is often overlooked in the recent flurry of academic interest in whiteness which usually focuses on a singular white ‘identity’. Yet an unsettling of the rigidity of the black/white binary, which has such a prominent place in many Western industrialised societies, demands that the central issue of white homogeneity is challenged. Moreover the notion that ‘white’ groups can also be treated as ‘racially’ inferior needs recognition. There are many parallels between the experiences of African Caribbean and Irish minority ethnic groups in Britain, for example, as evidenced by their locations in the labour market, unequal treatment by the police, problems in accessing social security entitlements and neighbour harassment (Hickman and Walter 1997).
White diversity was officially acknowledged for the first time in the 2001 Census, when the previously monolithic ‘White’ category was subdivided into British/Irish/White Other. However this raised new problems, especially the failure to provide for hybrid Irish identities, including English-Irish and Caribbean-Irish, and the strong tendency for users to revert to a single amalgamated White category. Nevertheless it signalled the possibility of greater diversity in understandings of whiteness. Reframing large-scale migration from Ireland as diaspora opens up possibilities of recognising hybrid identities and challenging linear models of assimilation. They overlap, coalesce and conflict with both majority and minority ethnic groups in Britain in ways which highlight multiple rather than binary categories of difference.
Of course, it doesn't apply to the other groups either. There was a time when people thought that you could understand the thoughts of the black community by speaking to a preacher, a politician, an educator, and perhaps (after 1947) a sports figure. And some people think that this holds true today - those who present a different view are "race traitors":
Dr. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser and now his secretary of state nominee, has been the subject of nasty, demeaning and disrespectful cartoons and commentary. Some of the worst has come from people like Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who said on TV's "America's Black Forum" that he agreed with "The Boondocks" cartoonist Aaron McGruder's characterization of Dr. Rice as "a murderer." A lead article in Black Commentator said, "Condoleezza Rice is the purest expression of the race traitor. No polite description is possible."...
Robert C. Weaver's 1966 appointment to the Department of Housing and Urban Development made him the first black Cabinet officer. Since that time, there have been other blacks appointed to high office. None has encountered the vicious attacks visited on Dr. Rice and Gen. Colin Powell, and what's worse, the most vicious attacks have come from their fellow blacks....
Black people have become Democrats first and whatever else afterward. The Democratic leadership, along with its leftist allies in Hollywood, on college campuses, in labor unions, in the education establishment and in the media, detests President Bush. Too many black people are dependent on the Democrats for handouts and racial preferences. Black politicians depend on the Bush haters for financial resources enabling them to gain office. Black civil rights organizations are beholden to liberal foundations. The bottom line of all of this is that he who pays the piper calls the tune and black people dance along.
The attacks on Dr. Rice and Gen. Powell are the results of one-think where all blacks are to think alike. Any who stray are race traitors. A monopoly on ideas serves no one well and explains why solutions to problems for a large segment of the black community will remain elusive.
See my previous post on the differing attitudes of Harry Belafonte and Al Sharpton on (as Belafonte put it) "house slave" Colin Powell.
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