Silent Racism

Hey everyone! With Trepannier’s “Silent Racism” coming to an end this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the different ideas she discussed throughout her book. In particular, I want to discuss Trepannier’s notion of identifying a certain race of people with events that occur that may be especially “important” to the people of that same race. This notion was discussed earlier in the reading yet I continued to think about it and last week at Gerald Early’s reading in Sykes, an example of this occurred.
Early had completed his readings and allowed for questions. I asked him a question relevant to his reading: How old were your daughters when you wrote the book? Another person in the audience asked him about his views on James Baldwin’s work. Then, an older gentleman raised his hand and asked Early the following question: “How do you feel about the Tiger Woods scandal?” Early laughed a little bit and through his smile said: “I don’t really know…” I think Early was just as surprised by this question as the rest of the audience. I then started thinking of Trepannier’s reading. Was this s form of Silent Racism? Had Early been white, would the older gentleman have asked the same question? Probably not. The older gentleman associated Early with the Tiger Woods incident because both men shared the same race. How do you guys feel about this? Is this Silent Racism??