There is actually a little more to it. Racism is played out as well because of our system. The system discriminates (any which way the majority likes).
I like your writing a lot, Michelle, because we are not defined by what others are telling us who we are; we own ourselves and we can believe in ourselves. But…society is organized in certain manners and some of these manners discriminate systematically. The inner workings are not always obvious, and you may be seeing the correct thing (we all know you do), but there is actually more going on than what meets the eye.
When looking just one level deeper, our voting system looms large as the instrument that institutionalizes racism. Without change in all the proper places, racism will remain ingrained.
Let me ‘challenge’ you therefore with the question if the term White Privilege is in reality more accurately described with Majority Privilege? That would still promote all kinds of discrimination. Here is my case:
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One in eight Americans is African American. Three out of 100 Senators are African American and that is actually an all-time high. The system effectively promotes racism. The majority rules already when picking the Senators and this ends up hurting voting minorities (of whatever size).
More than half of us are women and we do not even have half of that half sit in all our seats. The system effectively promotes the suppression of women. The majority of the voters rule and that can play out against women because of long-held ideas in all of our minds.
The following explains systematic racism without mentioning it:
In 1996, New Zealand changed its two-party system to incorporate proportional voting. Amazingly, the number of female representatives jumped by a phenomenal 47 percent in the first next new election. This shows real well how the district voting system discriminates. Winner-take-all suppresses large voting minorities. Today, forty percent of the NZ representatives are females. The US has about half that percentage.
I hope you recognize that various systems behave differently from one another. Our system discriminates a whole lot more than we may think.
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The truth of the matter: Being able to speak the truth at the tables that matter.
This is us, to the left. We are segregated in districts where we have to battle each other for that single seat. This is pure divide-and-conquer.
Voting minorities of as large as 49.9 percent of the voters remain unrepresented; they don’t sit at the tables of decision making, not speaking their truths. Fifty percent plus one vote can dictate the outcome to the unrepresented voting minorities. It doesn’t matter if the voting minority is African American, young adults, women, homosexuals, or the poor; when not in the majority, no seat is obtained. All these large voting minorities are not represented to the level of their numbers.
To the right in the image above one can see the actual We The People system. As shown in this example of a city council with eight seats, almost 90 percent of the voters are guaranteed that their vote translates into a representative they handpicked themselves. All substantial voting minorities are represented in this better system. Example.
We can believe in ourselves (as we should) and we can try to make our neighborhood be based on equality. Yet when the city is based on divide-and-conquer, we will never succeed in combating racism.
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When San Francisco moved from At-Large to district voting, the ugly voting system became quite obvious. Prior, in the semi-proportional system also known as city-wide, they had 6 men and 5 women in the eleven supervisor seats. After the change to district voting and with the first district elections in ages, the city had 10 men and 1 woman in these eleven seats (nice twist: a black woman).
The Democratic Party did their best to fix it up over the years. Wonderful as the board may appear today (many females in the seats), the Democratic Machine tried to quickly mask the divide-and-conquer system we have with applying a nice pancake layer of We The People makeup.
It should not be a surprise that the system was changed to the more restricted version. Back then, the Green Party had become a popular party in the Bay Area, getting some of the seats in the region. Today, they are gone. By moving back to district voting, the Democrats made sure that third parties wouldn’t get their seats. Today, all SF supervisors are registered Democrats. The majority per each segregated area dictate the outcomes.
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Let’s not uncover and discard the good parts of our society; let’s fix the ground rules that aggravate racism and ingrain discrimination and suppression of all kinds.
The good news is that the US Constitution is already demanding the We The People system for cities and counties. Here is a visual.
A: Federal and State governments are given powers and freedoms.
B: The 14th Amendment demands the better system put in place.
As shown to the left, Federal and State governments received #A from the US Constitution and they can use #A to create themselves some leeway with #B.
Cities and counties are not even mentioned in the US Constitution, and so they must fully abide by the highest document of the nation.
States did not receive the power to hand over power to third parties within that then extends their right to ignore #B to the same level as the State.
Cities and counties must follow #B strictly as declared in the US Constitution. But as you can see in the same visual to the right, they assumed those powers that they do not have. They perpetuate the divide-and-conquer system to a level that is not allowed. They should have the We The People system in place, per the highest document in the nation.
Racism may never disappear from the face of the earth. But divide-and-conquer can disappear from the face of the earth, and that will be a wonderful day in our struggle against racism. It will make this a better nation for all of us.
We are a diverse nation and we need to honor all. That is best done when all are able to tell our own truths; we should be able to do that in our natural numbers.
Thank you for your heartfelt article. Let’s focus on a real institution of division, discrimination and racism that needs changing: Our voting system.
