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What White People Don’t Understand About Racism
Racism begins with believing that race is a valid means of categorizing people. That is the heart of racism.
I hear white people — especially boomers — grousing about how ‘everything is racist these days’ in tones of bewilderment. There is a lot of unpack from that sentiment, but one critical feature I’ve noticed when pressing them to explain what exactly they mean by ‘everything is racist’ is they don’t actually understand what racism is.
The picture of racism for confused white people is this: Race is real. Different races are different kinds of people with different attributes and different brains and different ways of doing things. It is normal and expected for different races to keep to themselves. ‘Racism’ is when one race attacks another race, and that is wrong.
Many — if not most — white people take this for granted. For white people it’s the most normal way to think of race. If you’re the type who ‘isn’t political’, if you simply accept whatever you’re told as valid, then this is the kind of racist you become as a white person. This is part of why white people who claim they aren’t racist don’t think it’s wrong that they, say, have no non-white friends, never include non-white people in their lives, and live in all-white places. Such racist practices as separation by race is felt as normal to them…
