by Neil Deo

Created on: July 03, 2008   Last Updated: July 16, 2008

I do not agree that racism can be taught. Racism, in order to thrive, has to be sought and learned actively. I do not believe that mere parental biases or public sphere propaganda can make anyone racists in the real sense of the word. Unless sought for and learned by the learner, racism will lessen generation by generation.

Slavery made racism a science, and gave it a veneer of respectability. The "racist" who learned racism stood to benefit materially and psychologically, especially in terms of prestige. With the end to chattel slavery, most members of racial groups can, and do, interact as and when interaction is socially or privately desired. Even though there is a criticism that America is not a race-blind society, I will argue strongly that the public culture does not promote overt racism and blantant discrimination based on racial origins. Racism persists. Yet, for racism to be important for anyone, that person has to be actively learn, imbibe and incorporate this prejudice into his or her worldview. That is why children, though they may repeat what adults say or what parents demand of them, prefer not to exclude other children or peers from their social interaction and play, when left to themselves!

In fact, even as education levels suffered setbacks in the US since the 1960s, people of all race groups were forming more relationships and initiating all manner of intercourse among them (Jews, Latinos, Native Americans, Blacks, Whites). It is a truism all over the modern world that when economies do well, racism declines and prejudices rear their ugly heads during tough economic times. Hence the saying by many minorities, "Last to be Hired; First to be Fired!" In fact in the roaring 1920s in the USA (the jazz age etc) Irish Catholics had a harder time getting jobs in some northern cities than other minorities. This is symbolised by the acronym NINA posted in wiondows of businesses: NO IRISH NEED APPLY. African-Americans, including many veterans, were experiencing the same phenomenon in the South (references: Eric Foner, GIVE ME LIBERTY, 2007 and Joseph Conlin, OUR AMERICAN PAST, 2006).

Students of education (teacher trainees) and sociologists know of operant conditioning, which is a form of propaganda or heavy-handed teaching. This involves positive and negative reinforcement, or reward and punishment FOR the learner/s by the "teacher." Yet, like much else in education, the learner has to be actively involved in the process for negative (racism) or positive

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