Is Racism Part of US Culture?

In the two videos watched in class: the Real Estate and Bike Theft on abc What Would You do show keeps me wondering if racism is part of US culture. In the video Bike Theft, a white boy acts the thief then next, a black boy acts the thief. When the white boy acted the thief, there were only a few people who called the cops on the boy even though many people passed by and saw the white guy trying to steal the bike. When a black boy acted the thief, many people called the cops on him. The TV presenter asked those who called the cops on the black boy if they would do that for any race and they said they would. But the number of those who called cops on a white boy leaves one wondering is these people would call cops on a person of a different race.
To some extent, I’d think that these people’s decision to call the cops on a black boy had to do with his race and the stereotypes about the race. I also agree that there maybe other factors which influenced this reaction but that should not make the difference in the number calls made because of a black boy ‘thief’ and those made for the white guy ‘thief’ as huge. The fact that the people who saw the black boy were different from those who saw the white boy, everyone thinks they would call cops on any person of any race. I would not say that the people were being racist but I think there is a high chance that the boys’ race influenced their decision to some extent. It is not easy to notice that their decisions are influenced because the stereotype that black people are not good people is so natural to them that they don’t realize they are being influenced by it.
For the Real Estate video, everyone get shocked when the lady tells a black couple that they wouldn’t fit in the neighborhood, that there are no black people in that neighborhood. It was clear that everyone who heard about the conversation got irritated to some extent, all of them were not happy about it; some took actions, some didn’t. A quite similar story of a lady who warned a black lady of a black neighborhood thinking that she was white because she was light skinned (Secours, 2002). The lady explains that the white lady whispered when she mentioned that the house she wanted was a black neighborhood with intentions to protect her.
The whispering in this context leaves me wondering if that’s not being racist compared to the woman who just mentioned it? The white lady still went a head to defend herself that she was not being racist, even though her words confirmed it.
Comparing the two videos, I’d say that that one had direct and open racism while the other was not direct. No one would admit that she/he is racist yet racism exists. Would you say that no one wants to be racist, but are unconsciously racist? Which also indicate that racism is so much intertwined into American culture that it is difficult to tell it apart?




http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/02/08/racism-and-real-estate/