We, in America, seem to be stuck in this cycle of misunderstanding about discrimination and racism and how they continue to play out in our daily lives.
Authors Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown are known for coining the phrase “cycle of misunderstanding.” This particular cycle begins with the differing perceptions of whether or not discrimination is a problem in America today.
When those who believe it is not a problem express their opinions, then those who believe it is a problem feel compelled to disagree. According to the authors, minorities experiencing discrimination feel they must voice their different view. This insistence sounds to whites like hyperbolic complaining. The cycle continues then, as minorities decide whites are not seeing the problem, may even be denying its existence.
Widening the viewpoint-division are specific events, such as the George Zimmerman trial. Are there racial overtones involved? Many believe there are – even apart from the fact that the victim and his killer are both minorities.
The conflict can be found in both microcosmic and macrocosmic examples. Take the word “profiled,” for example. Defense attorneys were eager to keep the word out of the opening statements from the prosecution. They felt the connotations the word suggests could inflame the jury. The judge ruled it could be used, as long as there was no linkage to race. The prosecutor successfully argued that profiling can be done in ways that have nothing to do with race.
Typically, we think of profiling in terms of law enforcement – when police take action based on the look of a person, rather than his or her behavior, they can be said to be profiling. Stereotypic associations then come into play. African-Americans are suspected immediately of engaging in criminal behavior: Hispanics, with being in the country illegally; Arabs, with being part of a terrorist plot.
Author Yanis Varoufakis, writing in The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy, differentiates between two types of crises. The regular ones, he maintains, allow the past to continue by periodically being revisited. The second crisis, though, is spelled with a capital “C.” This type of crisis wipes out the patterns of the past. The Crises to which he refers point the way to revolution, to radical changes in the future, to the evolution of new mindsets. Varoufakis speaks of a brave new world being born when these Crises take place.
We need to be attuned to, and then support, the emerging Crises – they alone, it seems, can break the cycle which so often turns vicious.