You Have the Right to Insist Racism Is Recognized
By: Walter Rhein
Tags: Politics, Trump, BlackLivesMatter, Elections, Racism

You Have the Right to Insist Racism Is Recognized

Don’t let people in your social group dismiss the issue

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The last few years have highlighted how many truly vile people live in our nation. Every population has terrible people, but the problem in our country is the staggering number of awful human beings that have managed to achieve positions of influence, respect, and authority. From lunatic evangelicals who fleece the elderly out of their life savings, to a criminal president who chortles about putting children in cages, the United States demonstrates a reprehensible tolerance of the very worst of humanity.

The last four years have ripped the scab off a deep wound that has lingered far longer than the Trump administration. Decent Americans are tired of all the lies and exhausted from having deflect attacks from seemingly all quarters. As we sit and watch the dust settle on a needlessly contested election, it’s impossible not to ponder just what we’re going to do with the fervent Trump supporters that still live among us.

The question that confronts us all is: how do we get through to them? How do we get entitled white people to start recognizing the realities of racism? How do we get the fervent religious community to acknowledge the corruption that exists within the church? How do we get our wealthy elite to admit the police force targets and oppresses the poor? For starters, we’re going to have to have some tough conversations, and it’s likely we’ll see our nation become even more divided before it ever has a chance to heal.

Those that are indifferent to racism

Human beings can always be divided into leaders and followers. When it comes to acts of evil, the followers are held responsible for the atrocities and the leaders get to continue on to influence a whole new generation without consequence.

It’s sad how many Americans simply don’t take racism seriously. Middle-class, suburban whites, for example, simply aren’t all that personally affected so they can’t be bothered to even think about the suffering of many of their fellow citizens. Even worse, they’ve become programmed with an entitled mental state which causes them to become offended when the subject of racism is even mentioned.

Most people just don’t want to recognize the true horrors of the world. This isn’t a justification, it’s an observation on how the human brain works. The truly terrible people in our society recognize this, and have managed to create a narrative structure that leverages the human inclination towards self-pity and indifference to perpetuate a system of oppression.

How do we get through to them?

It’s frustrating to watch a person who becomes an unwitting promoter of racism. The sad fact is that there are a lot of people who do not have the backbone to stand up for what is right. It is important to note that there is always a consequence for saying and doing the right thing. For many people, it’s not worth making what they perceive to be a sacrifice if they cannot see what they’re likely to get in return.

The majority of people will not do the right thing just because it’s the right thing to do. There’s a temptation to get frustrated with people for behaving this way, but as infuriating as it is to behold, we can’t allow their lack of action to incite us to rage. We must act, yes, but we must focus our actions so that they have the best chance of bringing about the most productive change.

It’s easy to hate the indifferent racists because their laziness and entitlement contributes to the anguish and injustice we see piling up all around us. However, we must be focused on the objective of conveying the fact that racism poisons the water everyone drinks. It poisons our children, it poisons our loved ones, and we can no longer afford to stick our heads in the sand and ignore it.

For many people, racism wasn’t even on the ballot

When people snort and say, “playing the race card,” they’re simply dismissing the whole topic. They want to pretend it’s not there, and the spokespeople for the narrative of oppression stroke the ego of the masses that regurgitate this nonsensical position.

You don’t have to go very far to hear struggling white people scoffing at the idea of “white privilege.” For them, it’s impossible to look upon the train wreck of their lives and understand they had advantages over other groups. Doing so would force them to admit their own incompetence. It’s very easy to gain a following by telling people lies and encouraging them to believe the pain they’ve endured in life has an outside source.

It’s much harder to take responsibility and recognize your own faults, even though that’s the only path to personal growth. Most people pick the easy route, especially when encouraged by words of sweet manipulation. They’re told they don’t have to improve, that they’ve been cheated, and they believe it because it’s what they want to hear.

Hard conversations

We all encounter greater and lesser acts of racism on a daily basis. Racism is ever-present in our society. You have to pick which battles to fight. It’s comparable to a parent that sometimes makes a child clean his plate, and sometimes scrapes the remainder off into the garbage. There are times we endure things because we lack the strength to resist. However, inaction does not indicate consent.

The mechanism that has been built to support the culture of racism that infects our country ensures that even the most basic acknowledgment of racism is met with blatant hostility. They’re trying to condition us to think discussing racism isn’t appropriate for polite conversation. No matter how courteous you are, if you say, “What you just did was racist,” you’ll be brutally attacked and dismissed for saying so.

The result is that too many of us let too much slide until it is too late. How do we make people take racism seriously? How do we make them comprehend it? So many people in our communities just put their hands to their ears and scream like a toddler having a temper tantrum when you attempt to discuss the issue. What productive action can we take?

Ghosting Trump supporters

Before the Trump administration, I didn’t realize how many people in my social group were fervent conservatives susceptible to the most vile form of manipulation.

There are people that we maintain contact with just out of habit. Family members and classmates fall into this group. Lately, I’ve been culling all the Trump supporters from the heard. Usually I start with a warning. I tell them that a vote for Trump is an act of aggression against my biracial children. I’ve received some odious replies. I’m glad that many of these discussions happened online, because it might have gotten violent if I’d talked to them face to face.

I have a right to declare what I perceive to be a threat to my children. A parent’s instinct to protect goes beyond debate and must be respected. Racists do not respect it, and keep pushing even when common sense demands they stand down.

It’s stunning how many people simply don’t care when you mention a threat to your kids. These are people who have met your kids, who have played with your kids, but when push comes to shove they simply don’t care about your kids.

See no evil

Racists have been known to tie up children in barbed wire and drag them behind pickup trucks. People who are indifferent to racism simply don’t care. They deny such things have ever happened. They live in a delusional fantasy world.

In the early days, the racists I ghosted were people I didn’t much like anyway. I’ve always held myself to a level of acceptance and tolerance that, in hindsight, might not have been in my best interests. But how do you influence people you don’t even talk to? How can you make them see the light?

In general, absent these people in my life, I’m a lot happier. But lately every new Trump supporter I uncover has brought me as much sadness as revulsion. The ones I’ve been eliminating recently are those that at least had the courtesy to attempt to hide their true feelings from me. These are people that I’d invested time with and thought I’d conveyed my feelings to. Some of them nodded and smiled and pretended to agree. When they turned around and voted for Trump, it felt like an enormous betrayal.

Family racists

We all have people in our lives who harbor thoughts that they really haven’t examined. These people are subject to influence. They listen to absurd statements and file these statements away in their subconscious minds as actionable information should they ever get into an improbable situation. It’s not firsthand knowledge, it’s racism propaganda. It’s a ticking time bomb.

You’ll have people complain all day about individuals of Hispanic descent. When you reveal that your wife and kids are of Hispanic descent, these people don’t know what to do. “Well, obviously I wasn’t talking about them.” You’ve caught them in a lie and they’re just as startled by it as you are. You can almost see them comprehend that they’ve never actually met anyone of Hispanic descent, they just complain out of a lack of anything else to say. The right-wing soundbites they repeat are lies.

But even with revelations like that, it’s so darn hard to get through to these people. You’ll show them again and again that what they’ve been led to believe simply isn’t true. However, when you’re not directly in their presence, they go back to their perch in front of the loudspeaker and sit and nod and allow some mouthpiece of evil to reprogram their thinking.

It’s hard to walk away

The worst part about walking away from people like this is that they end up believing they are the injured party and that fortifies their commitment to the corrupted path. They’re hurt, of course, but they lack the self awareness or the responsibility to recognize their contribution to the split. They’ve been seduced by a belief system that coddles them and allows them to maintain a rosy picture of themselves. Of course they don’t like it when you smash the glass of deception and hold up a mirror instead.

These people represent your social group. Maybe they are the ones you call for advice when you have car trouble. Maybe you need them to watch the kids on occasion when you have an unexpected tragedy. We all have relationships where we endure certain transgressions for the sake of maintaining civil contact. Our parents and grandparents come from another era and we rarely scold them when they let slip some racist phrase that was generally considered innocuous thirty years ago.

We need to rethink that impulse.

You have a right to insist people recognize racism

We can no longer allow racists to dictate what does or does not constitute polite conversation. When people say and do things that are hurtful, you shouldn’t have to endure it. We don’t have to allow ourselves to be coerced into enabling some inaccurate world view because the indifferent racists in our lives insist they have a right to feel good about themselves.

You’ll find you can live without the favors you rely on from the members of your social group. You can’t live with the racism. Racism is a ticking time bomb and sooner or later it will go off to devastating consequences. Sometimes cutting off contact is the only option available to make these people recognize that racism is an issue you take seriously.

Explain to them that the separation is their choice. You will not tolerate abuse. Some will feel chastised, and even if they never talk to you again the experience should give them pause in the future. Some might understand and come back to you, but don’t count on it. This only works if you’re truly willing to walk away. We take baby steps towards a better world, but we must have zero tolerance for racism.