When I say “Racist,” it Might Not Be What You Think…
By: Charly Pimentel
Tags: Racist, Racism, Anti Racist, White Supremacy, Anti Racism

What I Used to Think Racism was…

I used to believe that a racist was simply someone who knowingly and intentionally held prejudice against someone else because of the colour of their skin. I used to believe that a racist was simply someone who saw themselves as superior to people of colour, and saw people of colour with hatred and anger and as such, said or did things that demonstrate this discriminatory attitude. When I thought of the word “racist” I used to think of the KKK, the Nazis, the Alt-Right, and White Supremacist groups. In short, I used to believe that a racist was simply a bad person. And I think many people think of racism this way.

Consequently, when anyone made even the slightest suggestion that my words, actions or behaviour was racist or that I was exhibiting racist beliefs, I would think (based on the definition that racist = bad person), that they are calling me a bad person akin to the KKK, Nazis, etc. As such, I would naturally try to defend myself and focus on convincing myself and my accuser that I am not racist — that I am innocent of racism.

Many good people have been in this situation — told that they have exhibited racist behaviour, actions or words, and as such feel that they are being called a bad person, that they are being categorized or placed in the group of people listed above, a group associated with hatred, bigotry, and evil. It is quite understandable then that the mere suggestion of being a racist does not sit well with us. The cognitive dissonance that we feel when it is implied that we are racist or exhibiting racist behaviour is because our own self-image is being questioned, and our understanding of ourselves as good people — who vehemently oppose bigotry, hatred and evil — is being challenged. But this need to defend one’s moral character is based on an incorrect and overly simplistic understanding of “racist” and racism. And unfortunately, this need to ensure our accusers that we are not a “bad person” who practices bigotry, hatred and evil — as well intentioned and understandable as this reaction is — is actually detrimental to learning, and detrimental to the dismantling of racism itself. Defensiveness is in fact helping to perpetuate racism. And by definition, racist is anything that helps to perpetuate racism…

But here’s the thing, many of us don’t really know what racism is. For starters, racism is not simply discrimination based on race. Racists are not simply people who intentionally hold prejudice against others because of the colour of their skin, nor simply people like the KKK who believe they are superior to people of colour because of the colour of their skin. Racism is not as clear cut as the “good/bad” binary that many of us reduce it to. Racist does not mean “bad person,” and “good people” aren’t all anti-racists. Many good people can be racist. In fact — and I say this knowing the reaction you might feel when reading it — we can all possess racist world-views, and as such can all be racist at any given moment.

Before you get defensive, tell me that I am generalizing, or dismiss this seemingly radical statement, I ask that you please put aside the definition of racism as mere “discrimination based on race”; please put down your understanding of racism as a belief reserved only for bigots of the alt-right persuasion, KKK, and Nazi’s; put down your oversimplification of these baddies and “racist”, and try for just a moment to consider that racism (and “racist”) is much more complex than this simplistic and convenient definition. Consider that if racism was as simple as this definition implies, then we perhaps would have defeated it already, and it wouldn’t be considered one of the biggest problems of the 21st century. Consider that if I were to go so far as to claim that you (and I) are racist, and risk offending readers, that it’s not something that I am doing recklessly and without thought. Consider that perhaps racism is much more complex, insidious and pervasive in all aspects of Western society than we might think, and the need to recognize this is the first step in countering it. In fact, I would say the first step is to say the words racist or racism, and not worry that you are saying a taboo or bad word. Racist is not a racial slur; it is not like the N-word. It is a concept that we need to get used to talking about, even if it makes us uncomfortable, so that we can understand it at a level far deeper than what we currently know, or think we know.

What I Have Learned Racism is…

If racism is more than racial discrimination, and more than active, conscious or individual acts of bigotry, as explained above, what is racism?

It is many things.

Racism is a system of oppression, in which there is an oppressor and an oppressed. A societal structure in which there is an unequal balance of power based on race. A racial hierarchy. A hierarchy in which there exists a dominant group (at the top of the hierarchy) that is considered standard and therefor, superior to the rest of the groups. It is a system in which the institutions, policies and culture in place afford privileges to this dominant group, over the other groups. In the Western World, the system of racism is founded on the ideology of white supremacy. In the Western World, white people are the dominant group and whiteness is the standard and the measure of which everyone uses to determine their own identity, status and value. If you are not white, you are a person of colour. If you are white you are the standard, if you are not white you are the other. If you are white you are superior, and if you are not white you are inferior. Simply put, racism is a system founded on the idea that white bodies have much more value than dark bodies.

You may not agree with nor believe in this ideology, but it exists regardless if you believe in it. It is the ideology of white superiority or white supremacy, and it is not reserved for guys in white hoods…it is the foundation to which all our current systems and structures have been set upon.

What Systemic Means

This racist ideology is structural and foundational to all of Western society, pervasive in its systems, politics, industry, education and culture. White supremacy and coloured inferiority is the bedrock of which North America was built. When European people came to America to colonize it, they built their economy by stealing and enslaving Africans. During this time, Africans were seen as mere commodities to be bought, sold, used, abused and discarded. They were simply the fuel to the capitalist engine that developed America. To justify this inhumane economic system, white people came up with the idea that dark people were inferior, and fit for slavery, thus employing racism as a way to rationalize slavery. Back then, people believed this was scientifically proven. And when the Transatlantic Slave Trade ended, and slavery was abolished through the 13th amendment, the ideology of white supremacy did not disappear. Jim Crow laws were soon created which continued to dehumanize Black people through segregation. And after the Civil Rights movement, which changed these laws, policies such as redlining continued to oppress Black people economically. And though these terrible systems of oppression were all abolished, they evolved into other systems that achieved the same dehumanization, albeit in a seemingly more justified and nuanced way — For example, the Prison Industrial Complex ushered in the age of mass incarceration, a system which sought to criminalize Black people for economic gain. This system currently exists and we live in it. You can learn more about it here.

So, after centuries of policies, practices and beliefs that reinforced the idea that Black people are less human than white people, one would be naive to believe that society no longer holds this white supremacist world view, and does not live within a racist system. If for centuries society expressed the idea that to be white was the norm, and to be Black or dark was second class, how can one expect to have forgotten this ideology so quickly? Though many of us have evolved and have since learned that white supremacy and coloured inferiority was an idea created to justify slavery, and that people should not to be judged by the colour of their skin, nor valued based on something (skin tone) merely determined by geographical location relative to the sun, we unfortunately do not live, work and play within a post-racial, meritocratic society. We like to believe we do, but the underlaying racist premise of white superiority still permeates through our systems, policies, and culture…and most insidiously, within our implicit biases and deep-seated beliefs of which we have been socialized and conditioned to hold. As Robin DiAngelo says “we are literally swimming in racist water.”

What Racism Can Look Like

Anything that perpetuates this system of oppression, deliberately or not, is racism. Racism exists in our textbooks at school, where white faces are seen as representative of the standard; where the novels we read, considered to be “classics” or “canon” are written by authors from a mostly white or euro-centric perspective. Racism also exists in the movies we watch — movies made by mostly white filmmakers, starring mostly white protagonists and heroes. This one-sided, white/euro-centric perspective in which we are taught to see the world through socializes us to see white as not only the standard, but even as superior, and in turn, everything else as substandard and even inferior. And while this might not be intentional by the education system, filmmakers, or publishers, this lack of representation and perspectives contributes to racism. Truth be told there may be plenty of movies with people of colour, perhaps some of them even made by people of colour…and perhaps many white people watch and love these movies. But are these films generally seen as the norm or considered mainstream? Are these white audiences seen as having typical taste? Are these films seen as films or as “Black Films”? If it is the latter, then this implies that “films” are by default white; and centring white people is a significant aspect of racism.

Racism exists when we see the standards of beauty as exemplified by women with light or white coloured skin, and annual lists of most beautiful people in world being dominated by people of white complexion. Racism further exists in comments intended as compliments such as, “You look so pretty in this photo, you actually look white” or “Oh, I had no idea you were from _______, I thought you were white.” Though unintentional, this type of thinking serves to uphold white supremacy and coloured inferiority. As such, racism exists when white people continue to centre themselves as the norm, the default, the original, the defacto…and everyone else as exotic, different or other.

Racism exists in our conversations about nice neighbourhoods to live in and neighbourhoods to avoid, or rather, neighbourhoods to gentrify, which in other words might just mean, “to make more white”: “That neighbourhood used to be really bad, now it’s really up and coming, since it’s been gentrified” is akin to saying, “we added a lot of white businesses, and lots more white families have moved in, so the property value has increased a lot.” But this begs the question, why did the neighbourhood need whiteness to increase its value? Why did it need whiteness to become a better neighbourhood to live in?

While definitely different in the extremity of the results, one of which saw the genocide of entire cultures, the underlying ideas behind the gentrification of neighbourhoods as a general good, seems to share a similar mentality that saw, as a general good, residential schools and their attempt to assimilate Indigenous people into Anglo/European culture. Both see whiteness as a benchmark for success.

With whiteness as a status symbol, a standard to uphold, and a benchmark to reach, whiteness maintains its superiority and supremacy, and in turn, Blackness and colour maintains its inferiority — in addition to any other “negative” associations with not being white. In other words, racism is anything that serves to centre white people, and in turn marginalize or other everyone else. But what are the manifestations and consequences of this type of racist thinking?

On one end of the spectrum, we have the generic office micro-aggression about a colleague of colour: “He’s actually really educated; you’d be surprised but he’s probably the smartest person here.” Or a little further into the spectrum, we have people like Amy Cooper who weaponize their whiteness, and call the cops on average civilians, like she did to a bird watcher in Central park, identifying him as a African American man who is threatening her, knowing her status as white woman and his as Black man, will work to her advantage and to his detriment; if it weren’t for his cell phone, she would have been right.

Whether Amy Cooper actually believed that Chris Cooper was a threat to her because he is Black, is irrelevant… what is significant, is the fact that she knew that there is a system in place that sees Chris’ Black body as a threat, and she tried to use that system against him.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Derek Chauvin — a white police officer — and George Floyd — a Black man who is murdered by said police officer, a murder which is caught on camera, and a murder which was ignorantly debated by the public for whether or not it was justified, a murder in which the character of Floyd — the victim — was brought into question, because to some, he apparently deserved his fate.

This is racism…and it is in all facets of our society.

The fact that Chauvin saw Floyd as someone deserving of this type of dehumanizing treatment, and the fact that there are people who agree, and justify this type of dehumanization due to Floyd’s behaviour, character or history are indicative of the racist society we live in. Moreover, the idea that it seems to be natural for people to see Floyd and others with dark coloured skin as potential threats or as criminals means we inhabit a racist society.

The tragedy here is that the seemingly harmless comment at work, or seemingly meaningless racial bias we quietly hold, all help Derek Chauvin leave his knee on George Floyd’s neck for an unnecessary amount of time inevitably killing him.

In other words, our micro-aggressions and racial biases all play a role in the racism that many confidently place in a different category of racism than their own. When in fact, racism is racism is racism.

So, if racism is a system of oppression, a system that we have normalized and inhabit all the time, being racist is when at any given moment a person perpetuates this system of oppression, whether that’s through explicit words, actions and behaviour, or through seemingly banal, inconsequential words, actions and behaviour. If being racist is when we perpetuate this system of oppression, then even mere complicity to racism is being racist. Which is why you hear a lot of activists say, “being not racist is not enough…we must be anti-racist”. In other words, actively against racism. Because racism is the default.

My Own Racism

Many white people have had the experience of walking alone in a street in which they cross paths with a person of dark coloured skin. Many white people during these situations have also felt even the slightest tinge of nervousness, with perhaps the need to clench their bag a little tighter, or in some cases to cross the street. While this is a seemingly harmless sort of racism, it is exactly the type of racism that insidiously corrodes our society, and serves to add weight on Floyd’s neck.

I’m a person of colour (with a tanned but light skin tone), and I have perpetuated racism in this way. I was with my wife in New York City one summer, and we were visiting a friend who had just moved to Brooklyn. When we got off the subway and walked up the stairs from the underground into the busy sidewalk, we were surprised to see so many Black people walking around. Coming from Vancouver, BC, where the Black population is very low, this was a shock to say the least. But we would be lying if we didn’t admit to feeling slightly nervous; we’d be hypocritical if we didn’t admit that we clenched each other’s hands as we walked around an unfamiliar place looking for our friend’s apartment.

But why did we feel this way? What made us so nervous? What was it about seeing a lot of Black people that made us hold our hands a little tighter than usual? Simply put, racism.

We exhibited racist behaviour in that moment, and this behaviour was a result of our unwarranted feelings of fear and anxiety. These feelings of fear and anxiety were a result of our terrible ignorance, born from our lack of experience, knowledge and exposure to Black people. But perhaps even more so, these feelings of fear and anxiety is because of the type of limited, ignorant and bias exposure and socialization we had experienced up to that point in our lives. All of those things are a cause and product of racism. Growing up in Vancouver, BC. we had limited interactions with Black people, and while we had Black friends, we were never in situations in which mostly everyone in a given space and time were Black. As such, we were used to an environment in which lacked Blackness, and instead had a lot more whiteness. Because of our experience, white was the standard, Black was far from. Moreover, our understanding of Black was heavily influenced by the media and popular culture. What we knew of Black people and New York City, was what we might have seen on TV or film, which often associates Black people with criminality. And since this association made up a large part of our understanding of Black people in an urban environment, our perception of Black people in New York was ignorantly coloured and limited by this racial bias. Though we never considered ourselves racist, we had been forming a racist world view for a long time. Consequently, stepping out into the street that sunny day in Brooklyn, we were bringing this racist worldview with us, which was the reason for our fear, anxiety and clenched hands. Our racist behaviour wasn’t because of anything the people of Brooklyn did, it was because of a racist world view that we irresponsibly and ignorantly fostered (even if unknowingly), and a racist world view that we were socialized into by virtue of living in a racist and white supremacist society.

While this world view is definitely worth condemnation, and something I feel terribly about today — especially since I’ve only come to this critical realization in my 30's — there is nothing to be gained by wallowing in guilt, because guilt paralyzes action.

The truth is, none of us living today created the foundation of this racist society, nor did we choose to be born into this racist society, so we cannot feel guilty about creating this racist society. We should, however, feel guilty for perpetuating this racist society. When one becomes aware of this racist reality, aware of the detriments of it, aware of the hurt and pain it causes so many people of colour (especially those of Indigenous and Black identities), aware of how one’s actions, in-action, and complicity can serve to perpetuate this racist society, and after coming to this awareness still does nothing about it, then we should definitely feel guilty. That complicity is a racism that serves to empower the KKK, Nazism, the alt-right, and white supremacy groups. In other words, if we are complicit in this respect, we can no longer distance ourselves from the bigotry, hatred and evil in which we see racists like the above, for we are merely a less explicit version of them.

And this is the reckoning…when I come to accept that I’ve held a racist world-view and exhibited racist behaviour (conscious or unconscious), I should feel responsible for humans like George Floyd who died under a knee that I helped enable. And this guilt should make me want to atone and desire to make things better. If it doesn’t, then I am part of the problem.

“The Single Story”

In an attempt to rationalize this type of racism some might allude to the “the chicken and the egg problem”, and question where these racial stereotypes come from. The racial stereotype that associates Black man and criminal is something perpetuated by the media, for these identities are often depicted in our popular culture as well as in our news stories. These stereotypes are represented on the screen, though many will be quick to point out that these stereotypes are also a lived reality. No doubt, data shows that Black people make up a disproportionate amount of the humans behind bars (never mind that the amount of the Black people incarcerated for far less egregious crimes than white people who have been sentenced with much lighter sentences is staggering). No doubt that Black on Black crime is responsible for a tragic number of deaths in the Black community (never mind that the % of black people killed by police officers compared to the % of white people killed by police officers is staggering). However, the way in which Black people have been depicted on the screen for more than a century (as violent thugs or gangsters, to name a few common stereotypes), the way in which laws and policies have recognized Black people as lesser than, the way in which Black people were stolen and brought to this country to build it, given the dehumanized status of slave, then freed merely to be seen as criminals to populate the prison systems and manufacture goods for the country, has all served to create this reality. Consequently, the racial stereotypes that many hold which associates Black man and criminal (which many will still justify is a stereotype based on data) is both a product and a cause of systemic racism. And since there are many who view Black people based on these stereotypes — whether they see the data or not — the existence of the data is less important than the recognition that the oppressive system of racism has led to both the perception AND reality of many Black people as poor, uneducated, thugs, and criminals, absent fathers, angry mothers, and every other negative stereotype many hold of Black people. In short, we live in a world where perception becomes reality. And this is the danger of what Chimanda Adichie calls “the single story.” When are you told a single story about a people enough times, it is the only story you will believe.

If we continue to perceive criminal, uneducated, violent, poor, and inferiority, as BLACK, we will continue to help perpetuate this reality (even if it is far from truth). And in turn, we will also continue to perceive success, wealth, intelligence, and superiority, as WHITE, and continue to help perpetuate that reality. Consequently, we will inevitably continue to preserve the false narrative of white supremacy and coloured inferiority. We will continue to live within a racist society with racist world views, and will continue to exhibit racist behaviours deserving of condemnation…whether we realize it or not.

The Question is not IF we are Racist, it is HOW we are Racist

So, when I say that at any given moment we can all be racist, I now hope you know what I mean by this. I hope we realize the criticality of our racism, however minuscule or harmless we may think it is. And while I hope it might sting to hear this truth — that we can all harbour racist ideas — I hope this doesn’t spur you — reader — to defend yourself; instead, I hope it spurs you to recognize that we all play a part in perpetuating racism, and as such, we all play a part in dismantling it.

How might we do this? Well, therein lies the rest of the problem. I think we can start by learning what racism really is, recognizing what we do that perpetuates it, and interrupting the current narrative that reinforces it. But whatever the solution(s) might be, perhaps we might agree that the goal is to create a society that is not only anti-racist, nor a society that is merely diverse, equitable and inclusive, but one in which the systems in place and the culture we inhabit, lift each other up — a society in which we no longer consider ourselves as superior or inferior to one another, a society in which we no longer centre our perspectives and marginalize others, but instead, a society in which we…

Well, I don’t really know, nor do I want to get ahead of myself. First and foremost, I think we must work on genuinely understanding what racism means, accept that we help perpetuate racist ideas, and learn how to be anti-racist.

As DiAngelo says, “it’s not a question of IF we are racist, but HOW we are racist”

References:

DiAngelo, Robin J. White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard to Talk to White People About Racism. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.

Kendi, Ibram X., How to Be an Antiracist. New York: One World, 2019.