But acknowledge race as a social construct with real world consequences isn’t doing that. Neither is embracing an identity that has historically been considered less than. As much as it’s been a means of oppressing people, it’s also been a way to build up community action against that oppression. That doesn’t mean we can’t eventually move past it, but like Malcolm X once said (I’m paraphrasing here), we can’t do that until more white people are willing to admit and understand what the construction of racial categories have done in history - we have to pull out the knife, before we can even begin to heal the wound, none of which has really been done with regards to race in America. It’s easy to be white in America and say that we should move past race, because then we get to unburden ourselves from some troublesome baggage that comes with be categorized as white. It’s one of those things that are again a white privilege to be able to do. It’s an intoxicating solution to a troubling set of problems, to be sure, and might be in our eventual future. But we still have civil war monuments that were raised during the era of Jim Crow as a specific reminder of white supremacy. We still have people who are unable to wrap their minds around the idea that race itself isn’t a real thing (for exactly the biological and genetic reasons you suggest in your comments here).
When people say “we should move past race” they usually mean “ignore the past, pretend race doesn’t exist (but I still think of me and you in racial terms)”.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. Racism is very real, and will be with us for a very long time. We do need to deal with it, and we do need to deal with the people who still think race is a real thing, based on biology. Just the comments on this thread show that these two things are, unfortunately, present everywhere.
What I’m talking about is not something we need to work on INSTEAD of dealing with current racism, it’s not fleeing from the culpability of the ancestors of many of us - instead, it’s a suggestion for moving forward more effectively.
Many people think racial thinking and actions based on race only impact non-white people badly. I think it impacts us all badly. Differently, but badly. If a white guy who’s not qualified for a job gets the job instead of a black guy who’s qualified, that one white guy seems to have gotten away with a prize, that one black guy seems to have been purposely damaged. And yes, those things are true, but that kind of racist action contributes to the dysfunction and damage in our country. It increases our distrust in those who have power over us. Even the white guy who got the job now knows that his bosses are profoundly unfair, and willing to break the law to support their own prejudices, and that will change his behavior in the job for the worse in one way or another. Racist behavior continues to eat away at what we say we believe vs how we behave, it increases the shame and defensiveness of those who benefit from it, it increases the fear many “white” people feel when they see people of other racial categories, it increases the cynicism in the country, and it directly damages the black guy in the case, his family, and his community.
None of this is good for anyone, in the end. It damages us all. Yes, the financial damage and trust in fairness damage is greater to the non-white guy, and that’s obvious - but the fact that he and his suffer greater damage does not mean that the white folks involved suffer no damage - even the ones who think they did the right thing. They may not notice the damage that ensues, but they, especially, are corrosive to our society, and that damages us all, including them, by increasing anxiety and fear, reducing our comfort with our neighbors, and further damaging our not-very-healthy economy.
In cases where people manage to step outside of the racial categories and see each other as members of other, more reasonable categories (computer programmer, sales person, nice guy, bad guy, bad dresser, good dresser, self-centered, good listener, etc etc) they may, in that moment, be ex-white or ex-black or ex-asian or whatever, formerly tangled in the web of racial thinking - but, for that interaction, they have stepped outside of racial thinking. That doesn’t mean they don’t know about it, or that they are pretending to ignore it, or that they’re denying the reality of racism. It means that in that interaction, race is not an active participant. We need more interactions where race is not an active participant!
When enough people start stepping outside of the structure of race, the majority will see what a pile of crap it really is. This will be a revelation to a lot of liberals who think we should ignore race but who still think in racial terms themselves - they haven’t taken that next step yet. We will have actual white supremacists around for a long time, too - the educational system in the country is so bad that only a small percentage of the population understands what evolution is, and how genetics totally debunks racial thinking. For them to understand that race is not real will take a lot of work, since they don’t have the mental tools to understand the false assumptions and false stories racial thinking is based on. Perhaps their children or their children’s children will escape their delusions.
But - If we cling to racial thinking and only try to make every “race” equal - that’s doomed to failure. Separate but equal never has worked. It may be a good interim goal, but it can’t be our final goal. Really, our only hope is to start paying attention to the non-racial categories people fall into, and use those in preference to racial categories whenever possible. And yes, discuss race, acknowledge the damage that race has, does and will cause, but move forward.
I don’t think you were saying that, and I hope you don’t think I thought you were saying that.
I agree, but those categorized as white still realize benefits from the structures of racism, which is part of the reason why so many whites are loath to face the whole thing in the face and see it for what it really is.
That’s true- but the problem remains that that instance isn’t the totality of racist structures. Given that racial thinking was collectively built over centuries, and is still reinforced via culture daily, it will take large scale structural changes to have people think differently. The reality is that the ideological structures are invisible to many people, and hence they are harder to dismantle. And the people who are the ones who need to do the dismantling are not generally speaking people of color, but white people. We saw the power an appeal to white, racial solidarity can do with the election of trump. The individual work is important, but the larger structural work must be undertaken too.
Take this story for example:
It’s about how students in American schools are not being taught the realities of the classical civil rights movement - they are given a white washed version that ignores the agency of black Americans, in an attempt to bring back a white supremacist narrative of US history - one of continual progress, rather than one that has progressed in fits and starts. Of course the privatization of education under Betsy Devos is only going to deepen and reinforce that. The kids who lose out on such historical education, oddly enough, are really the white kids. This is because (in my experience teaching history in a school made up primarily of working class students of all races) black students often get an education about civil rights as it actually happened from their parents and grandparents, many of whom were themselves part of the movement. The Kochs are paying for the erasure of black people from their own movement, but the people who will most likely learn this lie as the truth are white kids, because most likely, their parents and grandparents weren’t part of that movement or even opposed it. And more white students go on to get advanced degrees and to dominate historical education at the collegiate level.
Maybe, maybe not. We are not even close to that yet, though.
Overall, I get what you’re saying and I don’t think you’re saying that we should ignore race as it shapes our society today (the color blind argument). But I’m not sure that we can get there from here without first pushing through a narrative that doesn’t erase people from history. Since race is a social structure, we have to make people understand that first, before we can move into a society that is free of racism. Pride in blackness isn’t the primary stumbling block to change, it’s a refusal to understand race as a social construct among mostly white people.
I think we’re in agreement on nearly everything, except the utility of stepping outside of racial thinking as a good current tactic to escape the structure of race. I don’t want to dismantle it, I want us all to just leave it, so that it becomes a ghost town with no inhabitants, a historical relic that scholars can visit.
I, too, am horrified at the Sinclair Broadcasting takeover of radio, the Koch brothers interference in honest teaching, the GOP refusal to follow their constitutional obligations, and all the other attacks on our country right now.
One benefit of truly stepping outside of the structure of race, though, is that if you just do that, just change the categories you put other people into, from racial categories as a primary category to other categories, you subvert racial thinking whether or not you understand how it works now and how it has worked in the past.
That loses a lot - if you truly didn’t think in racial terms, and had no understanding of how race has been institutionalized and enforced by both social and governmental forces, you would be puzzled by the segregation of our neighborhoods and a lot of other features of our world. But even at that, getting rid of thinking in racial terms (meaning people who are currently white or black or indian or asian or middle eastern or whatever would ALL stop thinking in racial terms, and would meet as members of different non-racial categories which would not map to the old racial categories) would be a good thing in and of itself, if we can find a route to get there.
I’ve thought about all this for years, I’ve watched people of all kinds live out their lives under the curse of racial thinking, I’ve read a lot of views on race, and this is the conclusion I’ve come to. I’m perfectly willing to adopt any other route to escaping (rather than dismantling) the whole structure of race, if it seems more workable - that’s the goal I want for us all, and I’m not picky about how to get there. But I think changing categories is the simplest idea. It requires the least understanding of how we got here (subverting the propaganda of the Koch brothers and the white supremacists), and it’s a simple enough idea for people to experiment with. And with some people, especially kids, it can be fun thinking up alternate categories, and getting into it as both a game and a behavior-changing activity can subvert the racial teachings of their parents and preachers. Racial categories lose their toxicity when you just don’t use them, when they’re not how you categorize other people.
I gather you’re white.
It’s a white privilege to think of such things as “experiments.” It’s also a common white tendency to obstinately avoid the ongoing reality of white supremacy, as you’ve been continually doing here.
I mean really, have you ever tried suggesting to a member of an oppressed, racialized minority, “You know, you should experiment with stepping outside of racialized thinking. Just try thinking of those many, many white individuals who have made your life worse than yours in so many ways (never mind the white supremacist systems that impinge on your livelihood), think of those individuals as something other than white! I swear, it’s a really useful experiment, even a fun one!”
One large category which will be with us for a very long time is “racist”. And the member of an oppressed, radicalized minority who engaged with this category-changing experiment (life is full of experiments, my friend, we all do experiments all the time, it’s not a race-specific activity) will certainly both understand and recognize people who fit in to the category of “racist”. The members of that category are not all white, as you certainly know, and not all white people are full-blown members of that category. It is more accurate to use “racist” to talk about the racist people in your example than to call them “white”.
So no, I’m not proposing idiocy. I’m proposing finding accurate categories to think in, rather than racial categories.
“White Supremacist” is also a useful category, and unfortunately it will be with us for a long time. It’s a cultural name for a particular group of racists, not a racial category. You’ll never find anything in my comments which denies how corrosive and dangerous white supremacists are.
Pro-tip: It’s condescending to suggest that members of racially oppressed minorities have trouble telling the difference between people who are racist and those who aren’t. And that thinking of them differently, “beyond racially categories,” would be helpful in avoiding (let alone ending) racism.
I’m sorry, but no, it’s not condescending to say that “racist” is more accurate in your example than “white”. Thinking of white racists as primarily white helps maintain the structure of racism, thinking of white racists as primarily racists helps us move away from the structure of racism, while leaving us free to discuss racism.
And I think you misread me, I said:
Thanks for engaging with me on this thread.
Which I have to leave for awhile -
2+2=5 you can call an error. “If A then B; B; therefore A” you can call an error.
There are few better ways to seem condescending than to:
- Say that someone else’s opinion is an “error”
- Tell someone you aren’t being condescending
Now, let’s throw transracialism into the mix for some really fascinating conversation.
What I was objecting to was that MillieFink claimed I had said the opposite of what I had actually said, and accused me of being condescending because of the mis-represented statement. So MilleFink had made a plain old factual error, A = Z, which I explained. I was not objecting to MillieFink’s opinions which are different from mine - I have learned useful things from MillieFink, and don’t have any desire to trash her for her opinions.
And yes, I know that for some people the accusation of being condescending is unanswerable, because whatever you say about it, they will accuse you of being condescending by answering, even if you were not condescending originally. It was an awkward sentence which didn’t say what I had intended, so I had edited it out before you responded to it.
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