Racism Thrives When We Focus on Blame

If we put our attention to the faults in the systems, rather than in the people, we can begin to make meaningful change.

It isn’t a reach to proclaim that over many years, in many situations, individuals and groups have behaved in ways that have caused and perpetuated the racist system within which we live. People are behind the institution of slavery, of segregation, of internment camps, of immigration detention centers. People are also behind violent and petty crime, abuses of power, and all aspects of the drug trade.

It’s important to look hard at the people whose ideas led to the institutionalization of racism in order to understand the intricacies of how human beings, born with an innate sense of morality, could have built a system that clearly punishes some of us with greater frequency and force than it does others. It also is important to look hard at the people whose actions have continued to perpetuate racism in this inaccurately-named post-racism era.

But, at some point, the focus on the cause of the problem needs to shift to a focus on the solutions, and to do that requires us to shift our attention from the deficiencies of people to the deficiencies in the system.

Assimilation, Segregation, and Antiracism

I started thinking about this while reading Ibrahm X. Kendi’s, HOW TO BE AN ANTI-RACIST.

In an early chapter, he talks about the concepts of assimilation and segregation in contrast to antiracism. My progressive 1970s primary education taught me to despise segregation because it treated others as so different they could not be part of regular society; in contrast, I was taught to look at assimilation, with its acceptance of others, as the more desirable choice. It was the whole “America is a melting pot” vision that appealed to my young idealistic self.

Considering my family came to America in the 1920s and 30s, and the Jewish community into which I was born has seen its share of discrimination despite being “successfully” integrated into American society, it’s hard to square why I never looked any deeper into the “either segregation or assimilation” scenario. But I didn’t.

Kendi, in HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST, says that both segregationist and assimilationist policies are racist, albeit in different ways. And he brings into the conversation the idea of antiracist policies as an alternative.

Here’s how he explains:

“The history of the racialized world is a three-way fight between assimilationists, segregationists, and antiracists. Antiracist ideas are based in the truth that racial groups are equals in all the ways they are different, assimilationist ideas are rooted in the notion that certain racial groups are culturally or behaviorally inferior, and segregationist ideas spring from a belief in genetic racial distinction and fixed hierarchy.”

Since we have difficulty seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles people have, my generation, including people of all races and nationalities, has tried to improve the race situation in America through assimilation, a striving to save and civilize Black people rather than liberating them.

A Better Option

What I am learning as I read more from the viewpoint of people of color is that there is another option. We can address the problem not by focusing on the struggle of the individuals hurt by racist policies nor on trying to change the hearts and minds of the people who put those policies into place but by working on the policies themselves.

In some ways, fighting racism is a terminology that suggests the only way to get from here to there is to go to war so one group can proclaim that their ideas are right and their foe’s ideas are wrong. The problem with this is that it doesn’t address the actual problems faced by those who struggle.

Based on Kendi’s words, I’m beginning to think that the fight isn’t a fight at all; it’s a structural realignment, which does not pit one race against another. Through adjustments of the rules, the notion of equality shifts and society embraces the idea that all groups of humans are equal according to the law, even in their differences.