A friend recently sent me the article, I, Racist, by John Metta. I copy my initial email response to her below. These were my initial thoughts after reading the text, and I will follow them up with further remarks and greater consideration in a later post to this website.
Dear ...
Thanks for the article. It’s certainly very powerful.
The article calls white people racist when they fail to actively work against racism and actively benefit from racist institutions. In my research, I have found it important [useful] to distinguish between being racist and being prejudiced. On this distinction, racism is like sexism and other forms of bigotry which actively [and purposefully] sets up one group of people (whites, men, Christians, etc.) as superior to another group (blacks, women, Muslims) who are therefore entitled or obligated to exercise power over the latter group; this is what we see in Dylan Roof’s words that “you are taking over the country,” before murdering nine people. By contrast prejudice is an often sub-conscious disposition that makes one skeptical of those in the other group, and usually inclines one to act towards them in a way that unfairly limits their opportunities and outcomes; this is what we see in the author’s claim that African-Americans are “systematically challenged in a thousand small ways [white prejudices] that actually made it easier for you [whites] to succeed in life.”
One reason to draw up this distinction is because, the fact of the matter is, that Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, Ben Tillman, Bull Connor, Dylan Roof and and all the rest are different in kind to the kind of racism exhibited by the author’s northern aunt. These people actively justified, agitated for, benefitted from tremendously and directly, and established the political and social concepts and language that entrenched slavery and Jim Crow and the egregious institutions of racism in the US. Now, it’s worse than foolish to think that the end of Jim Crow means the end of racism, but, even by the examples of the author, the kinds of racism he points to are very different in type to that which came before. As Karen and Barbara Fields put it at one point, ““There are white people and there are crackers.” Jefferson and Tillman are crackers… I’m not so sure about the Northern Aunt.
A second reason is to defuse the ridiculous argument that whites are also subject to racism. As an example, you’ll sometimes see people claim that if a white person moved into a black or hispanic neighborhood, they’d be looked at funny, isolated, and quite likely subject to discrimination in a directly analogous way to a black person moving into a white neighborhood. If we define racism merely as being subject to forms of prejudice, or the social norm being one skin color (the norm is white in the white neighborhood, but black in another neighborhood) then, the argument above is coherent [it's valid if we define racism as being subject to prejudice]; white people are subject to racism. But that’s patently absurd. So, by separating out racism and prejudice, we can say that, yes, the white person might be subject to prejudice (we all are in different ways), but they’re not subject to racism. The experience of racism is reserved to [particularly] African-Americans that are subject to a cumulation of prejudices in almost every sphere of life (by being "systematically challenged in a thousand small ways”) and live in a country (not just a neighborhood) with social institutions designed to directly harm and hinder them (for example, mass incarceration as discussed by Michelle Alexander, or Voter ID laws designed to disproportionately impact people of color).
This distinction becomes problematic when we have things like cops killing black persons without any good reason [and, of course, these reasons must be extraordinary]. It’s possible to get caught up in a whole series of questions over whether, for example, Darren Wilson was really racist, or was he just (just!?) prejudiced when he killed Michael Brown. And, after all, when people are being murdered by police, the distinction between prejudice and racism doesn’t fucking matter. They’re both equally as bad for the person killed (and, as the author of the article notes, it’s as bad for all other black persons who fear that they or their children could be the next victim of this racism, prejudice, or whatever it is). Now, the department of justice report found ample evidence of overt racism in the Ferguson Police Dept, and I’m sure that this kind of racism is prevalent throughout most (if not all police departments to some degree [not because of the unusual nature of police departments, but because it's present in many, many areas of society]). But, I’m not convinced that this is sufficient to call the author’s aunt a racist; it’s not like she’s sending e-mails depicting Michelle Obama as a monkey like people in Ferguson P.D. did.
[That being said] Having read the article, I can see why it might be worthwhile to simply use the word racist instead of prejudiced. At the very least it’s a way to shock the complacency out white folk. The main thrust of the piece is that white people are to blame for slavery, Jim Crow, and contemporary racism, and that by failing to speak out against racism in any meaningful sense (all the while benefiting from it). And, as the comedians Key and Peele note in one of their sketches (In Season 1, Episode 6. It’s mentioned briefly by this website) “Racist is the N word for white people,” because when you call a white person a racist, they freak out as if you’ve just said something incredibly offensive. Well, if it’s the case that offending white people gets them (us!) to think about their role in tacitly supporting a racist political system, then there’s good rhetorical reason to just call the author’s aunt a racist, even though she’s hardly in the same league as Ben Tillman.
Over all, I’m increasingly convinced that, like the author suggests, the impetus for the end of racism has to come from the white population. Although I’m inclined (maybe because I study political theory and therefore tend to focus on political institutions) to think that the primary things that need to be changed are laws and political institutions that work to disproportionately harm persons of color (rather than the compounding effects of everyday prejudices), it’s the willingness of so many to acquiesce in these institutions that perpetuates the institutions of injustice. I’m currently reading the book Racecraft by Karen and Barbara Fields, and they have a really interesting discussion of the nuances of how and why people continue to believe in the importance of race and end up supporting racist institutions (like white schools and black prisons). The book is challenging, but I recommend it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the article.