Far too many people (mostly white)….
…..think that I just did something racist by saying “mostly white.”
People might think that because, if you stop someone on the street and ask them, “what does it mean to be racist?,” a lot of them would say it means:
1) consciously categorizing people by race;
2) and you can know that someone is doing that by “making race an issue” (that is, mentioning race);
3) “stereotyping” a race (that is, making a generalization about it), especially if the generalization is negative;
4) as a consequence of that conscious negative stereotype about the race, treating everyone of that race with aggression and hostility.
It would seem I’ve violated the first through third rule, so, if you think those are good ways of deciding what racism is, I’m racist.
Those actually aren’t good ways of deciding that something is racist (although it’s true that I’m racist). In the first place, these rules imply useless and cognitively impossible solutions to racism. They suggest that the solution to racism is to: not see race; not mention race; not make generalizations about groups; and never consciously behave badly to someone just because of their race.
In the US, we can’t not see race. Race is so important in our culture that saying you don’t see race is like saying you don’t see gender. Unless you are literally blind, you see race and gender. Those are the things we notice about someone immediately. We’re often wrong about someone’s gender, just as we’re often wrong about someone’s “race,” but we can’t help but categorize people. Individuals can resist, but never completely free ourselves of, the culture in which we have been raised. Even Gandhi struggled to free himself of thinking in terms of the caste system. What matters about Gandhi is that he recognized, and acknowledged (publicly) that he wasn’t free of thinking about people from within the caste system, and he tried to account for it.
Aristotle describes ethical action as much like aiming with a bow and arrow. His argument was that every virtue has extremes on either side. It’s a vice to be reckless, and a vice to be cowardly. It’s a vice to be spendthrift, and a vice to be a miser. We all have a tendency toward one extreme or another, just as we are prone to pull to one side or another when aiming a bow and arrow. [1] We need to acknowledge our tendency, so that we can adjust for it. That’s how racism works. We can’t escape it, but we can try to figure out how much it’s making us miss the mark, and adjust for it.
Aristotle’s point is that none of us is born with perfect aim. We can get to ethical actions by acknowledging our tendency to unethical action. The notion that acknowledging (or naming) race makes the action/statement racist guarantees we will not correct our aim. It’s like saying that your shot must have been good because you don’t see misses.
So, are Trump supporters racist? Yes. Are Biden supporters? Yes. They/we are all racist because we’re all Americans and Americans are racist. But not equally so.
Racism isn’t an either/or. It isn’t that we’re racist or not; it’s how racist we are and what we’re doing about it. It’s the fourth (false) criterion for racism that enables racism most effectively.
Racism is an unconscious bias. No one is unbiased. That isn’t how cognition works. You can’t perceive the world without perceiving it in light of what you already believe. Imagine that you’re a white person trying to find an office in a university building. You can find the door to the building because you have a stereotype about how buildings work. You walk past classrooms because you have a stereotype about classrooms. You walk into a room because you have a stereotype (and prejudices) about what an office looks like. For instance, it might say on the door, “Department of Rhetoric,” and you’re looking for that department. You have a prejudice (you have prejudged) that departments put their name on a door.
That’s why the argument that you shouldn’t stereotype groups is nonsense. We stereotype. That’s how we think. The very statement, “Generalizations are bad” is a generalization. Generalizing isn’t the problem.
You walk in to that office. There are several people. Whom do you assume is the executive assistant, and whom do you assume is the Department Chair?
You see a tall white male with slightly graying hair, a short stout Black woman of the same age as the white male, a younger white woman elegantly dressed, a person whose race and gender you can’t immediately identify. Whom do you treat as the receptionist?
Your decisions about whom to treat as the Chair are just as much questions of prejudging, stereotypes, and expectations as your decisions regarding finding the door (and it’s decisions, and not decision—there are a lot of factors). You can rely on your prejudgments, stereotypes, and expectations, or you can decide to treat humans differently from doors. You can’t not have the prejudgments; you can treat know that you have prejudgments and then act differently.
Racism isn’t getting up in the morning and deciding on whose lawn you’ll burn a cross. Racism is assuming the Black woman isn’t the Chair.
Does that mean that the non-racist thing to do is to walk into the office groveling in shame, filled with guilt, hating your whiteness? If you get your information from the GOP-propaganda machine, that’s what you’d think. They say that being anti-racist means being ashamed of being white (something no anti-racist activist has ever said would solve racism). Would walking into that room full of shame for being white change anything about the interaction? If, full of shame, you assumed the white guy was the chair, you’re still racist.
A lot of people assume that racism is a sin of commission, and the common notion about sins of commission is that you know you’re doing something that is a sin and you do it anyway. I think that’s pretty rare in racism. In fact, I’m not sure it’s ever the case.
My experience is that racists—even actual Nazis—don’t (or didn’t) see themselves as acting out of racism. Nazis these days call themselves “racial realists,” the real Nazis claimed that they were acting on the basis of objective and realist science. Racists think racism is irrational hostility to a race; racists believe that their stereotypes are grounded in data.
They’re grounded in confirmation bias.
Sometimes, racists say that they aren’t racist because their actions–such as wanting to restrict immigration from some group–are grounded in concerns about politics, not race. Therefore, they aren’t racist!
That’s how race-based genocide is justified. Native Americans had to be exterminated because they were a military threat. Jews were, the Nazis said, a political threat, as were Poles, Czechs, and various other non-Aryan “races” of central and eastern Europe. The people who engaged in lynching didn’t say they were doing something racist; they said they were trying to preserve a social order (that was racist). I’ve spent a lot of time crawling around the nastiest of the nastiest racist writings—both current and historical—and I can’t think of a time when racists called what they were doing “racist.”
In other words, even people engaged in racist-based genocide—the most extreme version of racism–have ways of rationalizing those actions so that they don’t see themselves as committing the sin of racism. Racism never seems to the racist to be a sin of commission because there are ways of pretending it isn’t racism–we pretend it’s about upholding “objective” (actually racist) standards (such as standardized tests, or arrest rates), reducing crime (but really the crime of not being white).
These were exactly the ways that Nazis criminalized being Jewish. Jews were more criminal, they said, and had arrest rates to prove it (because Jews were arrested for things that wouldn’t have resulted in an arrest for non-Jews), science that agreed Jews were essentially criminal, and media that promoted the stereotype of Jews as criminal.
Are Trump supporters racist? Yes, because they support the most openly racist President we’ve had since Wilson. Racism isn’t a binary; it’s a continuum. And Trump is very far on the racist side of the continuum.
Are Biden supporters racist? Yes, because Americans are racist. He isn’t as racist as Trump.
Does it hurt the feelings of Trump supporters to be called racist? Well, then don’t be racist. One way for Trump supporters to show they aren’t racist is for them to condemn Trump’s racism. Until they do, they’re more racist than Biden supporters.
If I’m a shitty driver and regularly run people over, I don’t get to say that I’m just as hurt by being called a shitty driver as the people are hurt by my running them over. If I want to stop being called a shitty driver, I should try to learn to drive better.
[1] If you’re a geek about this kind of thing, and you want a very scholarly, but beautifully written, book about the Athenians of Aristotle’s era and justice, Martha Nussbaum’s Fragility of Goodness changed my world.