The Racism Behind Denying Racism in America and What To Do About It
A Lesson on American Racism from Post-Apartheid South Africa
One of the most infuriating things about being a minority in America is the denial of racism that happens so often since anything short of saying the n-word or burning a cross doesn’t count in many people’s eyes. That said the countless videos of white people having racist episodes in public, dropping racial slurs, threatening to unleash the cops, or feeling empowered to police minorities almost without exception are followed up with apologies and claims of not being racist at all (eye roll).
With even over the top racists denying their racism, it only follows that people with more subtly racist views would just as forcibly, and I suppose sometimes sincerely, make the same claim. This includes the president who said we wouldn’t have another black president for a long time because Obama was so bad. Trump and his supporters will tell us this isn’t a racist statement, but it is. You can say Obama was a bad president and not be racist, but to connect him being bad to his race is blatant racism and says a lot about how a person sees the world.
Still, an even more nuanced, and arguably more harmful, racist world view comes with denying the existence of racism. Speaking strictly about the black community, in every measure of the quality of life in America, education, wealth, and even health, African Americans lag dramatically behind whites. More importantly to racism deniers are crime stats and incarceration numbers that purport to show higher rates of criminal activity across the board in Black communities.
Where I look at these higher numbers as clear evidence of the continued functioning of a system that was built expressly for the purpose of oppressing Blacks, racism deniers say no way. They claim at some point in time (though they can never tell me exactly when) racism just up and disappeared. America healed itself from 400 years of racism overnight despite making no concerted effort to do so and thus every issue now facing the Black community is an issue caused by the Black community.
So why is it racist to think that problems facing Blacks are self-inflicted and entirely unrelated to systemic racism? Simple. To have that opinion requires having an exceedingly uncharitable view of Black people to explain away all these lagging indicators of success in order to not put any of it on the historical mechanisms this country has built to hold Blacks down. The sickest part of claiming racism doesn’t exist and what makes it an Orwellian claim is how often the people saying this have positions of power over Black lives. These people are, while saying they don’t have a racist bone in their body, harboring deeply racist views. Whether it’s The President, lawmakers, business owners, teachers, doctors, or cops, if they believe racism has nothing to do with the present state of Black America then they see many of us as the laziest, most criminal, most unhealthy, and unintelligent people in America who can’t succeed despite living in “the greatest country on Earth.” This leads to people who say they don’t hate Black people also not hiring them because “just look at the crime and poverty in their community.” Thus the cycle of holding Black people down while continuing to use us being down to justify further discrimination.
Meanwhile, these people fail to appreciate, as I write in the portion of my upcoming book about living in southern Africa, that America has never come close to facing its racist past. “…As a country, we ended segregation by law but did nothing to address what was in the hearts and minds of those who imposed these cruelties on others. Hell, we didn’t even make a concerted effort to remove from positions of power and influence those who implemented segregation and fought against its dismantling. So, the racist police officer, principal, and government official kept training and mentoring the next generation. There has also never been an accounting for the whereabouts of the mobs of adults and children who blocked schoolhouse doors, yelled unspeakable things, and committed unthinkable acts during those times. They just disappeared like a foul stench in the wind into society, where they’ve been allowed to linger in the air and continue to transmit their hate, even if in less pungent form, to future generations.”
In this way, the original functioning of the racist machinery this country was built on was never dismantled. All we did was change the user manual to say don’t use this machine to discriminate anymore while purposely ignoring the fact that every gear, wheel, and cog inside it needed to be replaced to prevent it from functioning as it always had because it was hard to do and many had no interesting in doing so anyway.
What we should have done and still need to do is follow South Africa, Cambodia, Rwanda, and other countries leads on how to heal. As I again say in my book, “South Africa did not make this same mistake. It confronted the horrors and atrocities committed during apartheid head-on by enacting a Truth and Reconciliation Committee to ensure the past could not be denied, forgotten or rewritten. Victims were invited to give testimony, which was often heart wrenching and tearful, before panels all over the country. Perpetrators were also allowed to confess in exchange for cleansing their conscience and the possibility of receiving amnesty. The most profound testimonials were aired every Sunday on TV for several years, and that had only ended two months before I arrived in Botswana.”
We need this here. More and more it feels like I’ve been living in a country where Blacks have a separate and independent knowledge of the real history of this country. Collectively our experiences represent a wealth of information about what has really been going on this entire time, along with many whites who might also come forward to say what they know or what they did, and it is far past time we hear it as an entire country.
For another excerpt from my new book. “When a Stolen Child Returns: A Black American Teen Volunteers in Southern Africa During the AIDS Pandemic,” click here.