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Hey Blogfans. I'm serious about getting work done these days, so I'll have to just say here: IOU One (1) post on race. Listening to some old BBC news today about an Indian company than bought Jaguar trying to buy a controlling interest in a line of hotels, and told in essence that they don't want their kind buying the hotel (kind of), and a rehash of some Jaguar dealers saying Americans weren't ready to buy luxury cars from Indians brought to my attention again the contradictions of modern race relations. The BBC commentator said that he'd hesitate to call the rebuffs "racist", he thinks they were just "poorly worded." It's this kind of thing that puts the calls about racism in the public sphere over many things that evoke public backlash or queasiness in perspective: they're debatable, but they draw attention away from the real racism of the present day, Institutional Racism. After all, the argument against Indian ownership was basically, "It's not about race, it's because people don't associate Indians with luxury or comfortable hotels. It's not our fault, it's just the perception." Yet to give in a to a perception just because it's tradition is exactly what perpetuates institutional racism -- and it doesn't have to be because you're racist, but just going with the flow, allowing what has historically happened to continue happening. But when the history it comes from is racism, you're being racist when you don't fight it. Not in the "I hate Brown Folks Personally" way of yore, but in the very pertinent and real and omnipresent way of saying "Well, we should let the status quo work itself out," when the status quo itself is based on years of discrimination. Not taking responsibility for that (and changing it) is itself (institutional) racism, is self-deluding, and is wrong.

Ok, this is almost a real post, but I'll probably want to clean it up. Watch this space (or don't, since I'm not sure when I'll get around to it). Cheers.

J