I personally love this phrase: “I’m
not a racist but…” Have you ever heard this phrase not followed by something
overtly racist? As if simply prefacing something completely rids you of any
responsibility. Wouldn’t that be nice. I’m not mean, but you are truly awful at
your job and I just really want you to know that.
But
thus far, I have only written a few lines of text, so this phrase must have a
deeper implication, you astutely observe.
Well,
yes. Let me explain. Racism aside the fact that someone would use this phrase
at
least
implies that they recognize racism as a negative that they do not want to be
associated with. Of course there are still outspoken racists who will actively
tell you of their twisted beliefs, but for the most part, we as a society have
agreed that we should not be racist.
So there is no more racism? Great!
What social injustice shall we tackle next?
Hold
on a second, what happened to your astute observations? There is still very
clearly racism in this world. A few social experiments can unequivocally
demonstrate that. Turn in the same application to a hundred potential employers
changing only the ethnicity and see how many call backs each candidate gets.
But you just said people don’t
typically want to be racist?
You’re
right. Here is where that magic phrase comes into play. People don’t want to be
racist, but they also don’t typically consider themselves racist, even if they
are in fact the offender. You hear exact same résumé and think I wouldn’t
discriminate. However, you are already biased in that you know you are part of
the experiment. The only way to know how a man truly acts is to watch him when
he is convinced you’re not looking. That is not even to say that people are
only racist when they think they can get away with it, but rather they get away
with it from under even their own noses. They don’t realize that they are even
doing it.
There are too kinds of racism, that
which is done consciously and that which is done unconsciously, and the conscious
racism certainly seems to be on the decline, just look at media from the past
few decades for evidence of that. The question then is how to change something
that is done unconsciously. The answer is exposure. Bring it to light. Call
yourself out on it and remind yourself just how ridiculous you’re being about
these two applications, because really, they are exactly the same. Social
standards and attitudes take time to change, and calling someone a racist is
going to do nothing to actually change their beliefs, but if we all take it
upon ourselves to make a little self-improvement, then perhaps we can expedite that
social movement just a little bit.
-AMS
