Gore talks about racism, human nature

By B.J. Chaplin

Former Vice President Al Gore encouraged acknowledging racism inherent in human nature and working to correct it in a lecture held at MTSU yesterday.

The lecture, part of the American Democracy Lecture series, was broadcast live via satellite to more than 30 universities across the nation.

"I do believe we are inherently vulnerable to the 'sin' of racism, if you'll allow me to use a religious word," Gore said.

He insisted that he was "not proselytizing here," but he used his faith to illustrate a metaphor for racism.

"In my faith tradition, the first act of violence in the Bible is when one brother kills another," he said. "Cain killed Abel."

He then explained that, according to the Bible, God accepted Abel's offering and then rejected Cain's.

"Cain felt dissed," he said.

"Preferential treatment" such as this, Gore argued, is one of the bases of racism. He also linked his theory to atrocities in Rwanda, the Balkans and other places of genocide.

He said that in Sri Lanka, although different ethnic groups "coexisted for a long time," for example, that violence ensued "when there was a colonial power that differentiated between them."

The differences, he argued, are then conflated by the media or the government and become points of division.

"They invest these differences with exaggerated proportions," he said.

Gore said that the first step to combating racism is acknowledging that it exists.

"Race is always present," Gore said, paraphrasing claims he said were made by historian John Hope Franklin, "If you pretend it is not, you are deceiving yourself.

"But if you acknowledge it and deal with it in appropriate way," he added, "we can transcend it."

Another theory Gore proposed that contributes to racism is "vicarious traumatization," in which one generation pA*es down racist feelings to another. These feelings arise, he said, when one race feels discriminated against by another. These feelings of injustice, according to Gore, are just as fresh and personal to the new generation as they are to the old.

"If the experience is a traumatic experience...that experience is transmitted into a memory that has no time tag," Gore said. "It doesn't decay. It doesn't weaken. When it is recalled, it is ever-present."

Gore also used attachment theory, which is based, according to Gore, "on the study of infants interacting with their primary caregivers" to examine the origins of racism and its effects.

Gore argued that when an infant is in distress and makes its distress known, the response it receives shapes its view of the world.

"If the response is appropriate, reliable, [and] consistent, then the infant learns an important ability: 'I have power to affect the world around me. I have power,'" Gore said.

If the opposite holds true, Gore said, "then the infant learns a lesson of powerlessness."

The feeling of powerless then, "often ferments into rage," Gore said. The feeling of helplessness holds true for minority groups who feel left out of the "American dream," Gore said.

While he insisted that he was not condoning violence, racism or rioting, Gore said that the process of communication and representation between the majority and minority races needs to be further examined.

"Democracy depends upon clear communication," he said.

Characteristic of Gore, some not-too-subtle critiques of the current presidential administration were made by Gore.

"I think that for the president of the United States to claim in a (television) ad that those that are against war in Iraq are against attacking terrorists is a disgrace," Gore said.

That kind of campaigning, Gore said, is not characteristic of presidential campaigning.

"It's something you'd find in a down-and-dirty sleazy campaign for city council or something," he said.

Gore also attacked President George W. Bush for what Gore views as too far-reaching powers to incarcerate suspected terrorists. He said that Bush labels them "enemy combatants...if he can pronounce those words."

Gore also tied what he called one of racism's roots - fear - to the fear he believed Bush used as a "political weapon" to garner support for war in Iraq.

"I'm concerned that he's turning out to be a divider, not a uniter," Gore said.