It’s the conclusion one has to make, really. In the wake of Pat Buchanan’s obviously racist comments, it’s worth revisiting the concept that although America still has problems with racism, it’s strangely difficult to identify any racists who live here. At least, not if you take their denials seriously. Ta-Nehisi Coates has some thoughts on this today, and he links to his previous Slate piece on the subject (written back when Geraldine Ferraro made a fool out of herself before the November election). Key ending:
“In some measure, the narrowing of racism is an unfortunate relic of the civil rights movement, when activists got mileage out of dehumanizing racists and portraying them as ultra-violent Southern troglodytes. Whites may have been horrified by the fire hoses and police dogs turned on children, but they could rest easy knowing that neither they nor anyone they’d ever met would do such a thing. But most racism—indeed, the worst racism—is quaint and banal. There’s nothing sensationalistic about redlining or job discrimination. No archival newsreel can capture what it means to be viewed as a person who, minus the beneficence of well-meaning whites, simply can’t compete.
All of this leaves me wondering, Who does a guy have to lynch around here to get called a racist? If twice claiming that a presidential candidate is only in the race because he’s black doesn’t make you racist; if shouting, “He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger” from stage doesn’t make you racist; if calling an accomplished black woman “the cleaning lady” doesn’t make you a racist, what does?”
That last paragraph refers, respectively, to Ferraro, Michael Richards, and Don Imus.
On the flip-side, because of America’s poor definition of racism and poor observation thereof, my students often describe everything vaguely discriminatory as racist.
Look, kid, I’m not being racist when I punish you for throwing a stapler, especially when I would give the same punishment to everyone else. That is just called life.
On the other hand, it’s often incomprehensible to them that calling all your classmates your “niggas” despite the fact that you are Puerto Rican and there are black kids in the room who disapprove might be construed as racist.
This is a natural outgrowth, however, of not understanding racism on a fundamental level, because frankly, we don’t TEACH racism and anti-racism in the schools, only the watered-down textbook version that Coates describes.