I Am A Racist And, Hopefully, So Are You

When I say I'm a racist, what I mean is that I have come to the conclusion that our culture perpetuates certain myths about race-- black, white, and others-- that leave almost imperceptible biases deeply embedded in our psyches. I happen to be white, for the record. For example, I was not raised in an overtly racist home, and my parents were registered Democrats with very socially liberal views, and I knew, intellectually, from a very young age that people really are basically the same all over. But in my early twenties I noticed that I got a very uncomfortable feeling whenever I was around a "successful" black man. It was something visceral, below the level of conscious thought. I hadn't noticed it before, but I realized that it probably had always been there. This was very troubling, because if I could have given a voice to this feeling, it would have said something like, "How did he rise to this level? Who in the hell does this uppity n_____ think he is?" It wasn't a conscious choice, and those words didn't actually come to mind. It was more instinctual. It was just a wordless (thoughtless, actually) feeling of unease.

It was a shocking realization. I was, and remain, a staunch social liberal. I'm for equal rights, gay rights, women's rights, the ACLU, and so on. I'm intimately aware of the implications of Darwinian evolution and the prevailing "Out of Africa" theory on our species [hint: all living people can trace their lineage back to not only a common ancestor, but to a common African ancestor]. Yet here I was with this sickening and deeply flawed sense of my own racial superiority, and the converse, black inferiority. I couldn't deny it once I had allowed myself to see it. I was disgusted with myself.

But then I had a crazy thought. Maybe this is how a post-racial world begins. Maybe it's not about white people donating to black causes, buying hip-hop albums, and counting black people as among "some of their closest friends." Maybe it's about questioning our own assumptions, re-evaluating some of our own conclusions, rooting out the old baggage that we really don't want to carry anymore, and reconditioning some of our conditioned responses. Maybe it's about acknowledging, if only to ourselves (but especially to ourselves), any and all intolerant thoughts and feelings, and then having the courage to challenge them and ask ourselves, "Is this in alignment with my values? Is this how I would choose to see the world? Is this what I would teach my children? Is this how I would wish to be seen and remembered?" This is why I say I am a racist. I'm not proud of the intolerant thoughts, but I am extremely proud of my awareness of them and of my willingness to change. I'm happy to report that it does help, this vigilance, and change does happen. Try to remember that I started from a position that most would consider progressive, liberal, and tolerant. I think I was and am those things-- but I also had/have some of those nagging thoughts and feelings. I wonder where they come from.

Last night I caught Tom Burrell, African-American advertising mogul and author of "Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority" on the Tavis Smiley show (check your local PBS listings). Fantastic show, as usual, and a fantastic guest. The man really connected the dots for me in his brief interview promoting the book. He says that although the black community can and should challenge black fathers to stick around and work at being good fathers and husbands, they should remember that until just a few generations ago it was illegal for black men to be fathers and husbands. They were studs meant for siring property. Their mates and offspring could be sold and shipped off at any time, and usually were. White slave-masters actively discouraged familial bonding among their slaves because such relationships made them seem too much like real people, to both the whites and the slaves, themselves. Better for slave and slave-master alike to view them as property; better for the institution of slavery, that is.

Another gem he shared in that vein was that it was necessary to dehumanize the African slaves in the infancy of our nation, more so than in other places and times, precisely because the United States of America had bravely entered into the Great Experiment of genuine democracy. Genuine democracy and state sponsored abject slavery are contradictory concepts. They call it cognitive dissonance when the mind attempts to hold two mutually exclusive ideas simultaneously. You can not write and embrace the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and support the enslavement of your fellow man. Slavery must either be abolished or justified. Since it was already a two-hundred year old practice in Europe and the colonies by the time of the American Revolution, the founders chose to justify it. It was imperative that the African slaves be less than human. Unlike the Jews and others who have been enslaved, historically, yet were able to maintain a cohesive sense of identity, the Africans who came to America against their will were stripped of their religions, their cultures, their languages, their families, and even their hopes of ever having families. They had no identity. They were just property; truly just things, in the eyes of their white masters, and in their own eyes, as well. I can not even begin to imagine what that must be like. And I don't want to.

It was that whole Democracy vs. Slavery angle that really kind of showed me a slightly different way of looking at race in America and helped me to get just a glimpse of what it must be like to be a black man in America. We all have deep psychic wounds from this abhorrent past. It is no wonder that misconceptions and mistrust persist. It is no wonder that the black community (for lack of a better term) suffers to this day. It is no wonder that an otherwise sensitive, intelligent, and compassionate young white man can have such distasteful and demonstrably false thoughts arise from seemingly out of nowhere. We should, all of us Americans, take a step back and a deep breath, and reflect on where we've been, where we are, and where we'd like to go. And then we should try to be a little gentler with ourselves and each other.

Anyway, the book is not all doom and gloom. Mr. Burrell points out that when you start to see your own conditioning, or brainwashing, you start to "flip the script." In fact, it is only by seeing your own false programming that you can hope to overcome it. It sounds like a fabulous read and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.