How to Talk to a Racist
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
William Widmer for The New York Times
Southerners aren’t alone in believing such mendacity, but the South is where slavery and segregation metastasized, so it may be more concentrated here. Wherever this insidious delusion takes hold, however, it requires a gargantuan ignorance of history to maintain, and there’s a lot of ignorance afoot in the land right now. More people here in Tennessee today drive cars bearing license plates emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag than ever before. A strong majority of Southerners — 61 percent — are committed to keeping their Confederate monuments on public land.
I have exhausted my ability to understand why, deep into the 21st century, I’m still hearing otherwise good-hearted people use the same arguments that white Southerners used to discredit “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” more than 150 years ago: It couldn’t possibly have been that bad . But worse in many ways are the white people who will tell you point blank that the world today — the world they actually live in and can see with their own eyes — can’t possibly be as unfair as black people say it is.
Maybe this is what happens when a person’s only “news” source is the alternative universe of “Fox & Friends.” Or maybe they’re all just racists.
I get that it’s hard not to scream “Racist!” at a racist. If you’re a white person who wants to be an advocate, it’s both infuriating and demoralizing to know that the people causing all this suffering are people who look just like you. That much is true about being a white liberal in a culture of white supremacy. But it’s not the only truth.
Here’s what’s also true: Prejudice is endemic to humanity itself. Human beings are tribal creatures — we trust the familiar and are drawn to it; we distrust the unfamiliar and keep our distance. White people, liberal and conservative, often claim not to notice another person’s race — “I don’t even see color,” they argue — but it’s just not true.
We are hard-wired to recognize difference and to view it as an aberration. Noticing difference is not the same thing as hating difference, of course, but I’m not talking about vicious white supremacists here. I’m talking only about garden-variety prejudice, the kind that operates at an unconscious level in everyone. And the difference between an unconscious liberal racist and an unconscious conservative racist is only a matter of degree, not a matter of kind.
But the grumpy old neighbor who voted for Donald Trump out of frustration with Washington? The high-school classmate who posts an Obama joke on Facebook? The white woman on the plane who tenses up when a Middle Eastern man sits down in the seat beside her? Try not to give up on them yet. These folks are your sisters and brothers. You belong to one another in exactly the same way that you and the targets of their racism belong to one another. Welcome to the Hotel California: You are at the most uncomfortable family reunion ever, and you can never leave.
If you’re a white liberal whose goal is to feel morally superior to such people, go right ahead and urge them to check their white privilege. Call them stupid rednecks. Get online and tweet your feats of moral derring-do in the cause of a more just society. You haven’t made a single thing better for anyone suffering the actual effects of racism, but when has that ever stopped a white person from airing a little righteous indignation?
So take a breath. When you encounter a person who believes he’s merely honoring his ancestors by driving a car with an image of the Confederate battle flag on the tag, when a Facebook friend announces that it’s disrespectful to take a knee during the national anthem, when you sit down next to someone at the church picnic who genuinely loves and respects the black people they know but who consistently votes for politicians with overtly racist policies, stop for just a moment and take a breath.
Before you say a single word, think of all the times you made an assumption about a stranger that proved to be untrue. Think of the times you found yourself feeling uneasy in the company of strangers of another race — think about how you were forced to interrogate that uneasiness. Think of the plank in your own eye.
To begin a real conversation about racism, start there.
Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.
Tags
Who is online
196 visitors
My own blind spot is the Southern accent. Anyone who has one is automatically a racist. Intellectually, I know that's not true. Viscerally... they're all racists!
Until I moved to the South, every time I heard someone speak with a Southern accent, I automatically deducted 10 IQ points from them.
I grew up in Pennsyltucky, a very racist area which happens to be in the North East. Not all racists come from below the Mason-Dixon Line. I had to educate myself so that I became less racist. The military really helped me with that because many of my TIs were Black or Hispanic. My first first supervisor in the Air Force was an African-American who was the best boss I ever had.
I try not to feel morally superior when I hear my "friends" say stupid things like "Jew them down". I hate that and the next one that says it is going to get an earful from me. And they also know that I will not tolerate the n word.
The attitudes of veterans are so varied. There are a lot like you, who truly integrated the "equality of opportunity" that the military makes a real effort to ensure... and then there are others who forgot it all the minute they got out.
I worked in a medical environment so the people I worked with were for the most part smart. I think intelligence goes a long way in determining if a person will remain a racist all their life.
I never had that reaction pe se, at least not before I got to meet and know some southern conservatives.
But what I do remember is that the first time I traveled to Charlotte NC as a kid I had a hard time understanding some folks because their accent was so different from mine.
Surprisingly there seems to be a push to segregate from small groups of minorities lately. Seems like that would be going backwards.... a lot of different view points I guess