I’m usually not one for stating the obvious, but people brush this aside way too often. Racism is alive and well in our country, and it’s a problem. Let’s get technical for a second. Racism is defined as “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”
I’m quite sure that just about anyone I asked face to face would say that they do not believe racial characteristics mark certain groups as inferior or superior to one another. The prevailing narrative these days is “We’re all human beings, we’re all equal!” Anyone who doesn’t think this way is a racist! In no way do I mean to be pessimistic and accusatory, but let’s get real for a second—we are all racist.
Now, please don’t stop reading this article or leave expletive-filled comments because of that last statement. I once had a brilliant Black Studies professor who said “Am I racist? Of course I’m racist, I grew up in this country!” America has long been a hotbed of racial strife, and regrettably still is today. The fact is, despite the liberties promised in our constitution, our country was founded upon a system that inherently subjugated African Americans in order to serve white interests. Slavery may be gone, we may have legislated segregation out of the picture, but our culture still echoes loudly with the ideals that allowed these institutions to flourish. Consider this timeline for a second.
Our country was founded on July 4th, 1776. Slavery existed long before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and lasted until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865. After this, segregation plagued our country until the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1965. We’re now 50 years removed from that momentous achievement. Think about that for a second. For 189 years of our country’s history, racism was institutionalized in the form of slavery and segregation. Only for 50 years have black Americans been “free”. Our country has been subject to legally institutionalized racism nearly four times as long as it’s been without it.
Certainly, black Americans are now free from those terrible institutions. But they are not at all free from the ideology that allowed these institutions to exist. There are people alive today who actively segregate themselves from blacks, people who murder black Americans in the name of white supremacy. As long as the media keeps portraying white criminals differently from black criminals, and as long as police keep racially profiling, we are not free from racist ideology.
I’m not saying we’re all liable to go out and murder someone for no reason, but we all carry that ideology within us. We may not consciously discriminate, but we do so subconsciously. Honestly, I don’t think there’s any shame in having these subconscious stereotypes. What’s shameful is not acknowledging them and not doing any work to fix them. People across the board are afraid to admit these subconscious feelings because they don’t want to be labeled as a racist. If we could forget this fear and open ourselves up to conversation, we can continue to make progress.
“Racist” is a stigmatizing word, to be sure. Let’s get rid of it. I’ll retract what I said—we’re not all racists. Think about it this way instead --we’re all just victims of a culture that has legally perpetuated racist ideals for 79% of our country’s history. Those of us with white privilege are ideological victims, and black Americans are social and physical victims of the pain this ideology brings. We’ve got a long way to go—another 139 years until the timeline of legal freedom for black Americans reaches the timeline of subjugation. The fight to solve racial issues in this country is not a sprint—it’s a marathon. But we’re not going to fix anything if we act like it doesn’t exist.
