I was listening to Radio Open Source on KUOW about a month ago and heard a very interesting conversation on race, class and racism. It was an “NPR driveway moment” where engrossed in the program, I sat in my parked car unwilling to turn off the radio.

The main guest on the show was Jane Elliot, the teacher who 40 years ago did the famous blue eyes vs brown eyes lesson in her 3rd grade class to teach her students about discrimination in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Also in the conversation was a comedian and author named Baratunde Thurston. I was struck by his contention that, in general, black people cannot be racist because racism is a combination of prejudice and power. I’ll let him speak for himself:

Can a black person be racist? Can a white person tell a black person NOT to be racist?

Yes and no. I was taught many years ago that there’s a key distinction between racism and prejudice. It goes like this: racism = prejudice + power; black people have no power; therefore, black people cannot be racist. This is not universally true because depending on the context of the situation, black people can have power and thus, can be racist.

Consider a scene I’ve witnessed countless times. A group of young black men get on a sparsely populated bus / train. There’s a white guy there. He gets uncomfortable. The dudes know this and exploit it. They harass the hell out of this man who really didn’t do anything to them. They call him names, maybe fake punch him. He leaves terrified. They leave feeling like they had a good laugh and feeling pretty good. In that situation, they had power over that man, and I think their actions can be referred to as racist. Now, we can argue about whether the power they had over a single white man compares to the power to hire and fire, the power to launch missiles, the power to set policy, but I know I have to acknowledge that what they did was wrong on some level and involved racism.

That second question — can a white person call a black person racist — is interesting to me and is related to the first part. A friend of mine is a teacher in a charter school which is pretty much all black, and she’s pretty much all white. She told me recently that these kids were horribly racist toward other ethnicities, especially Asians. She was having some challenges with how to deal with this and teach the kids something. But the situation is admittedly awkward. “Uh, Dashon, you’re being racist.” followed by “Uh teacher, your great great granddad owned my great great granddad.” It’s like the Catholic Church giving out child care advice.

I asked her if the kids were just being kids, but she thought there was more to it. They refer to all Asians as Chinese and are really, really terribly racist. This is clearly a problem, and especially in a school situation, requires a “teaching moment.” My own thought is that you have to find a way to show the kids what they’re doing, so that they see it and logically come to the conclusion that it’s some horribly racist ish which needs to end.

I know that’s easy for me to say because I don’t have a room full of sugar infused, malnourished, MySpace junkies looking to me for daily educational guidance and counseling. However, one great lesson I’ve taken from standup comedy is that the best jokes are those that you let the audience figure out for themselves. You just have to set it up right, but explaining a joke is just bad comedy. Screaming on a black person that they’re being racist is just bad comedy!

What do you think? Do you agree with Baratunde?
Baratunde blogs and podcasts at baratunde.com.
Read his full post.