I am not a racist!
Am I?
You may have landed here just out of curiosity. How did a person become “Not Racist"?
Or, you may have landed at this page because you sincerely believe you are not racist, "I Am Not Racist". Know that you are not alone in this belief.
Very few people would call themselves racist, and getting called out on racist behavior tends to elicit defensiveness. This reflex is so culturally ingrained that its scripts are practically punchlines: “I don’t see color.” “Some of my very best friends are Black.”
According to Robin DiAngelo “We've been taught to think about a racist as someone who consciously and intentionally seeks to hurt people based on race. And if that's what you think it means to be racist, then of course it's offensive that I would say you were racist. That's not what I mean by that. ... All of the racism I've perpetrated in my life was neither conscious nor intentional, but harmful to other people nonetheless."
Racism is the foundation of the society we are in. And to simply carry on with absolutely no active interruption of that system is to be complicit with it. And in that way, we can say that nice, people who really aren't doing anything other than being nice people are racist. We are complicit with that system. There is no neutral place.
DiAngelo continues, “When you change your understanding of what it means to be racist, you will no longer be defensive. ... Who among now would ever say they're consciously, intentionally mean across race? I think that definition ( racism as individual, conscious, malintent across race) is the root of most of the defensiveness.
When you change your definition, it's actually liberating. ... It's transformative. You know, you can stop defending, deflecting, denying, explaining away, giving all the evidence for why you are different and couldn't possibly have been impacted by the society you live in.
And you can start getting to work actually trying to identify: All right. It was inevitable that I was socialized into this system. It's inevitable that I will have blind spots. ... And so I'm going to focus my energy on how I've been shaped by the system, but not if.”
And perhaps, just maybe you are beginning to see that by virtue of living in a racist system, breathing the air of racism you are, though unintentional and unconsciously, racist. If you are ready to we explore more about how you may be a racist, we invite you to join us, and many throughout this country and even the world, addressing our individual racism in order to become actively anti-racist.
