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| "Blind Trust" (Photo by Lead Beyond) |
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The ongoing debate about race in America has been jolted by the alleged racist comments by Donald Sterling, owner of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Clippers for more than 30 years, and the musings about the cultural characteristics of “the Negro” by Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy.
The comments were made in very different contexts and expressed very different types of views.
Mr. Sterling, a high-profile real estate magnate, allegedly chastised a former mistress for appearing in public with black people, specifically former NBA superstar Magic Johnson. Mr. Bundy, who became a hero of conservative state’s rights advocates after standing up to agents trying to enforce federal grazing laws, never expressed dislike or contempt for other races, but espoused an ideology of racial supremacy that he apparently thought unremarkable.
For many who study racial attitudes, such views – from rank racial hatred to casual assumptions of white supremacy – may lurk more commonly than assumed. They suggest that the racism of today has been papered over by how Americans talk about race in public, which squares neither with many people's private beliefs nor with the realities on the ground.
“We are now living in a society where there is a huge gap between what people say publicly about race, and what they say when they think they are among trusted friends,” says Mark Naison, the chair of African-American studies at Fordham University in New York. “This allows us to think we have placed race behind us even though there are deep underlying tensions.”
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