Trump today: “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans”
Yes, Trump, racism *is* evil. However, the more we talk about it like that, the less people are going to admit that they are racist. I am racist. I'm in recovery, but I'll never be cured. Talking about racism in addiction terms has helped me go from 8th grade me: "let's kill all the racists and that'll solve the problem," to today where I realized that it's not a matter of identifying enemies and "bad guys" (which is very self-righteous of me).
From this angle, focusing my energy on overt bigots/white supremacists is finding scapegoats at the cost of holding myself and my community accountable.
I've heard a Trump supporter say that Dylan Roof should be shot. I've heard a police officer say that the cops who killed Laquan McDonald should be executed. How convenient: now there is no responsibility to look at how white supremacy and police brutality don't happen in a vacuum, but in fact are part of the dominant culture in America. There is no responsibility to see how they or I could have become Dylan Roof or those murdering cops if a few things in our life had gone differently. These men are my friends and I don't want them thinking that they should be ashamed when they realize that they have the same implicit biases against Black people as overt racists (see the website projectimplicit and take the test "race"). Or the University of Colorado test where average people hesitate less when they pull the trigger on unarmed Black and Latino people.
Instead I want them to think about the implications of these subtle, unconscious biases playing out in how Black Americans get treated in terms of pay, job offerings, respect, homes, 911 calls, arrests, sentencing, parole, and being put on a track (college prep, remedial, special, advanced placement, etc.) in school and manager track at work, etc. and how this plays out in their occupation. I want them to think about how politicians can ring all sorts of bells when they say phrases like "welfare queens" and "supercriminals," etc. I want them to think about how we can stop these stereotypes.
I want them to think of themselves as people in recovery trying not to be in active addiction, knowing it's a life-long process of self-examination and working the 12-steps. We're not completely in control of our thoughts and feelings, which can be fucked up ("what is he [this Black man] doing in this [my] neighborhood?" I recently thought to myself because it was so unusual and I had to categorize him by making up a context), but *we* are not fucked up for having them. We're doing just what we were trained to do by a system that can't get over its denial (polls show most white people think they are the most oppressed victims of racism), self-obsession (making historically non-white characters white; not casting Latinos, Asians in roles enough and Black people mostly for stereotypes), willful ignorance (this Pepsi commercial), and fear of changing ("I'm not a racist but I'm scared about the future of America becoming mostly non-white. Fuck press 2 for English!"). In other words, a system that displays all the characteristics of addiction.
The question is, for me in this context (far be it for me to say "the" question), can we wean ourselves, our loved ones, and thus our country off of white supremacy- not just in white pride movements but in the actual literal white supremacy where "The Average Black Family Would Need 228 Years to Build the Wealth of a White Family Today" and we all know that in this country wealth means access to happiness (family time, vacations, chance to find ourselves, travel abroad), politics (lobbyists), influence (buy media time), respect (sadly, our country believes that the ability to generate wealth is alone enough a sign of virtue, though the opposite may be true), justice (attorney fees), services and aid (potholes fixed; no botched response to hurricanes or lead poisoning in water), and most tragically of all, health (see the PBS special Unnatural Causes). Currently America is a white supremacist nation for all of its policies which exacerbate this condition of whites being supreme over Blacks in terms of respect, power, control, etc. - policies which are enumerated in many books but to me most importantly in Black Wealth/White Wealth and The Hidden Cost of Being African-American both by Tom Shapiro, and Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood by Peter Medoff (about the obstacles in place for a Black community who tries to, God forbid, have control over its own resources in this country if they want to develop their own neighborhoods their own way).
The kind of racism of Roof and those officers who killed Laquan McDonald, and the man who plowed into a group of antiracist protesters, is criminal and tragic and deserves full prosecution. My point is, the FBI doesn't just go after the muscle/hit-men in the Mafia. These are the ones at the bottom of the pyramid, with the crime boss on top. America's crime boss of racism is its own institutions, its own psyche. In order to change that, that takes work in our own community institutions' to undo its complicity and teach our children about invisible structures of modern racism, reading books to know how we got here and what to lobby for and against, it takes a campaign to delegitimize commonly held assumptions (such as "urban renewal" and "war on police" and "school redistricting"), it takes work on our own selves and its complicity (from our unconscious biases, othering language, to our gentrifying bodies). Not just a dismissal of racism as "evil" or the idea that we can punch or kill or protest our way out of this. (though some strategic violence and protests are important once one has identified key institutions and higher level culture-setting individuals)
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