How Am I Not A Racist If I Soaked In It?

"I am ignorant about many racist things, but I am not a racist." Why do we often hear such a statement, and consider it a valid response by millions of white Americans? Maybe three percent of Americans would call themselves white supremacists, or express clearly racist views. And if that was the extent of our "racist problem" in America, there would be almost no need for antiracists. Yet it is our complacency, or our mostly bystander status that allows our racist historical inertia to continue oppressing black Americans.

When you, a white person, say something critical about black Americans in general, black activists and/or those who you may see as their spokespersons, then say, "But I am not racist", you are very likely wrong. First, realize that few white people are, or ever have been, purely non-racist. It is like saying, "As to quantum mechanics, I work with a few quantum people, I have thought about it, saw some memes, heard on a podcast, read in a tweet, talked with a few friends about it, but I never looked into it very deeply, yet I know the entire world of the quantum." 

A complete understanding is never accomplished; only hubris provides that level of surety. For example, consuming all the books I have on racism shows me how ignorant I am on the subject, and how much more is out there for every American to learn.

Therefore to say "but I am not racist" is a categorically untruthful statement. As Madge would say about racism, we have all been soaking in it. Wringing it out of our culture requires more than shallow learning and superficial knowledge.

Second, at least one hundred million white Americans, like you and I, must become very active antiracists to sufficiently excise our racist present and ongoing problems. Ridding ourselves of the ten million or so traitor-flag-waving, white supremacists and their sympathizers would make us feel better. However, it would not remove most of the effects racism generates and upholds. Most white Americans are still trapped in the racist denial, and policies of our recent and distant ancestors.

The entrapment of whites by racism continues because our lack of focus on it is directly related to our superficial consideration of systemic racism. Every day from the end of slavery, whites have done at best the bare minimum to excise racism. Reconstruction had a few powerful years of transformation, but was allowed to degenerate into what became a white-backlash habit, which continues up to the present day. 

Our ugly backlash culture was/is excused again and again, whereas black Americans have been consistently and falsely stigmatized as culturally deficient. From such waterlogged and bloated hypocrisy, it should have been easily determined that white Americans were the societally deficient culture not black Americans. That deficiency was made possible by our hegemonic indifference, revisionist perspective and ubjugation of the truth.

This racism knowledge superficiality is evident in our non sequitur gravitation towards the concept of a colorblind society, barely a generation removed from Jim Crow. For the insidious influence of Jim Crow ideology to subside in such a rapid way is very unlikely in a white culture that justified, and held onto slavery for almost 250 years. Yet the superficiality of the white psyche makes these dramatic swings more readily believed. "It is simple to not be racist since it was not really a big problem in the first place." Denying the complexity of our soaked in racist culture makes it easy to dissociate from any current responsibility to the problems we are causing, and have caused in our lifetime or historically.

Separating ourselves from what our ancestors did is an ingrained denial, and ongoing flipflop mechanism whites utilize. Intergenerational responsibility must be a thing since we know nothing fully dissolves in a culture without significant effort. Whites bathe in our previous "take our country back" culture, yet the racist cesspools we constructed are conveniently forgotten or remembered inaccurately.

Changing white culture has been very difficult because its power has been nearly absolute. Why admit fault when our corruption has no equal and opposite force to challenge it? Generation after generation of whites were confronted with slavery, and generally did little to end it. But the slavery logic, baptized in religiosity, fostered by white Americans was so corrupt only deaths by the hundreds of thousands, and much destruction could bring about its abolishment. Today we still have enough corruption in our logic to blame the victim for their outrage, and disgust at our egregious dominant culture actions, and more often inaction. These same people and/or their logic would have downplayed Jim Crow and slavery.

As to racism, seeing the forest through the trees is a constant struggle for whites. That is why systemic racism is a blindspot. How much we overvalue white America's purity and its advancements are proportional to our inability to recognize our systemic racist culture. These contradictions have been found in many generations due to our schizophrenic, lacking-introspection perceptions. 

At times over the last 245 years, the British, Haitians, African dignitaries, Russians, and others have "pointed out" our systemic, even blatant racist culture for us to clumsily "defend", deny and dodge. Of course in 2020 we are too advanced to have systemic racism even though many regularly point it out to us. Whitewashing the truth about our racist society is our reflexive standard.

Much of white America's vicious racist cycle may derive from our willful ignorance defense. We purposefully dismiss the offensive and oppressive outcomes we whites have inundated blacks with . A current example: if you are out in public without a mask to protect you and others from COVID-19, you are flouting your white privilege, and being "passive-oppressive" racist. The fact that COVID-19 is harming black Americans much more than whites also proves systemic racism is still prevalent in America. 

Our desire to prematurely release ourselves from a racist society has been a major stumbling block in our ability to overcome our past. Therefore as to racist policies and racism the past is present, and our future if significant change is not forthcoming. How many times in our past have we declared victory , and settled back into much of the same ? Shortly after welfare was made "somewhat" more equal in the 1960s, whites were accusing blacks of dependency when our own dependency is, and was legion. Consider either or both our distant past and recent history, and you see that whites have received orders of magnitude more "welfare benefits" .

Today whites ask that black Americans continue to suffer from our refusal to face our systemic racist policies including lack of COVID protections, police murder immunity, mass incarceration and economic destitution . Their predicament "cannot be our fault" because we are unable to fathom our racist complicity.

Three oft used victim blaming tropes denigrate absent black fathers, cast aspersions on out-of-wedlock births, and overhype so-called "black-on-black" crime. These are supposedly cultural problems blacks must deal with before whites will consider the damage caused by over enforcement/under-protection, mass incarceration, housing/mortgage discrimination, overpriced housing, inhumane eviction rates, segregated and unequal education, school to prison pipeline, hiring discrimination, especially felons who are also denied post-prison public housing, felons unable to vote, voter suppression, killing by police of unarmed black men who are listening to headphones, dancing down the street, and being American while black.

Another example of racist trope excretion is the disparaging of affirmative action in college admissions. There is nothing more inconsistent and hypocritical than denying a proper primary and secondary education to most black students in this nation then post hoc ergo propter foct coming up with the specious idea of reverse racism to avoid taking any corrective measures. Seriously, what is reverse and perverse is the victim blaming strategy and illogical concatenation that enters into such decision making. 

The whitewashing of systemic racism is profoundly evident in this concern, unless you are infused with white privilege denialism. Either comprehensively fix the earlier education abuses now, or be quiet about the after abuse remedy. On the other hand, an antiracist would pursue both educational enhancements.

Finally, you can call the canard of voter fraud, "reversal" racism . The Supreme Court in the last decade headed down a tributary that is wholly antithetical to eliminating racist policies. Chief Justice John Roberts, in Roger B. Taney style, flushed away the voting rights of black Americans with his 2013 Shelby County ruling. 

Removing Section 4(b) from the Voting Rights Act opened a formerly closed systemic racism floodgate. Due to its removal, states have been able to institute a myriad of laws that are meant to suppress the vote. This waterboarding of black Americans' voting rights is another sad entry in our torturous history of racist traumas. We must pull back from the brink of further racist misadventures.

While there is no perfect solution to extinguishing all our racist inclinations, whites must better recognize our complicity, and where our culture is deficient. To that end, some type of reparations will need to be "foisted on" white Americans, which would be poetic justice for black Americans since the United States has always been, and sadly still is the Capitol of "Foisted On POC". Of course, white Americans have difficulty dispensing consistent, proportional justice, and most whites would not be woke to the art of a poetry slam . 

That said, if we whites were antiracist, such worries would evaporate because we would know there are no other alternatives except to make things right. Some sacrifice by whites is warranted; although even that is an overstatement for what actually would happen. Most whites would never see a change in their lives, except for the better.

Whites have so elevated our worthiness for being on top, it is near impossible for us to allow any nonwhite person a leg up, ever. It is a color-coded meritocracy with reflexive trapdoors and systemic biases. Consequently, humility is something all white Americans, and our national leaders should definitively learn, a lot sooner than later, as we must thoroughly drown our undeserved hubris.

Sincerely,

Richard The Chwalek also on medium.com

Read my previous article on racism: Prefrontal Cortex Meet Your Antiracist

Article inspired by MLK's Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?