thoughts about race

Coming from a small, until recently very homogeneous country I have become a lot more sensitive to issues of race. I don't treat racial issues as jokes as I did ignorantly before I came to the States.

But, since I re-flamed my passion in politics, I found the opportunity to think about race in America. This morning the Round Table on WAMC asked the question "what can we do to improve racial relationships today?" My very simple answer to this question is "talk about it." Talk about race without fear. Acknowledge the racism of our economic system, which ironically is not dependent on color, but class and income. Our economic system perpetuates a cycle of injustice: the school funding which is dependent on property taxes. An underfunded school district is more likely to be of lower quality and not enable students to get into good colleges and get better, higher paid jobs. This, in turn, will lead to people who live in inner cities to be constrained to lower paying jobs because they did not get a good education! If this is not racism that is systemic, embedded in our institutions, well, I don't know what it is!

I am a white, middle-class woman, who has experienced sexism in my interpersonal relationships. Yet, I believe that my children will never experience the constraints that the children of black woman will. That infuriates me, and honestly, it should infuriate you!