'You Calling ME a Racist?' Why It's So Hard for Whites to Confront Their Own Failings

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'You Calling ME a Racist?' Why It's So Hard for Whites to Confront Their Own Failings
By Frank Joyce / AlterNet

A look at history illustrates a clear and disturbing pattern of institutionalized advantages for whites.

Statement: Racism is deeply embedded in our system. 

Response: Don’t you dare call me a racist!

One of the obstacles to creating a less racist society is the enduring confusion over individual attitudes as distinct from social and economic policies and practices. As Arun Gupta put it recently, “The social practices of racism have fused with market relations, making racism rational, effortless, and invisible.”

Systemic white racism not only impacts our economy and politics, it confuses our thinking. It inhibits our ability to see continuity from when plantation capitalism began in 1619 to the present. Whites are detached from the “historical roots and routes” of their identity and experience, as Canadian scholar Rajanie (Preity) Kumar explains it. 

We don’t get much help understanding this. No school, no media, no religion teaches whites about racism with regard to slavery or genocidal policies toward indigenous people. To the contrary, most of the time, those institutions play a major role in perpetuating the confusion. Pay attention to how often discussions of racial topics in the media include weasel terms like the "racial divide” or “racial tensions,” instead of the word "racism." It is hardly surprising, therefore, that most whites think they have neither a connection to the white racism of the past nor much awareness of any responsibility for the racial reality of the present.   

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