Fourteen Ways Your Racism is Showing
Your racism is showing when we are invisible to you; an afterthought solicited to integrate your white organizations.
Your racism is showing when in frustrated anger, you don’t understand why we won’t do your racism work for you. Do it yourself. Educate yourself. Don’t ask another Black woman to explain it all to you. Read a book
Your racism is showing when you pay too much attention to us. We resent your staring scrutiny that reveals how much we are oddities to you.
Your racism is showing in your cowardly fear of us; when you send someone else to talk to us on your behalf, perhaps another sister; when conflict resolution with us means you call the police. When you ignore what the police do to Black people and call them anyway, your racism is showing.
Your racism is showing when you eagerly embrace the lone Black woman in your collective, while fearing, resenting, suspecting and attacking a vocal, assertive group of Black women. One Black woman you can handle, but organized Black women are a real problem. You just can’t handle us having any real power.
Your racism is showing when you comment on our gorgeous “ethnic clothing or ask us why we wear dreads when we are perfect strangers to you. Would you do the same to a white stranger wearing Ralph Lauren and a page boy? These are also ethnic styles.
Your racism is showing when you demand to know our ethnicity, if we don’t look like your idea of a Black person. We are not accountable to you for how our bodies look. And we don’t have to be “nice” to you and tolerate your prying.
Your racism is showing when you insist upon defining our reality. You do not live inside our skin, so do not tell us how we should perceive this world. We exist and so does our reality.
Your racism is showing when our anger makes you panic. Even when we are not angry at you or your racism, but some simple, ordinary thing. When our expressed anger translates to you as a threat of violence, this is your unacknowledged fear of retribution or exposure and it is revealing your guilt.
Your racism is showing when YOU, by your interference, will not allow us to have our own space. We realize you never expected to be denied access to anything and any place, but sometimes you should stay away from Black women’s spaces. You do not have to be there just in case something exotic is going on or just in case we are plotting against you. In these instances, you are not just uninvited guests, you are infiltrators. This is a hostile act.
Your racism is showing when you cry, “Reverse discrimination!” There is no such thing. Only privileged people who have never lived with discrimination, think there can be a “reverse.” This means thatyou think it shouldn’t happen to you, only to the other people it normally happens to — like US.
Your racism is showing when you exclaim that we are paranoid and expecting racism around every corner. Racism inhabits this society at a core level. Ifwe weren’t constantly on our guard, we, as a people, would be dead by now.
Your racism is showing when you daim you have none. This economy and culture would not have existed without slave labour to build it. The invasion and exploitation of the Americas depended upon the conviction that people of colour were less than human. Otherwise, we could not have been so cruelly used. You grew up in a racist society. How could you not be racist? You cannot simply decide that racism is “bad” and therefore you are no longer racist. This is not unlearning racism. Black people could not afford to be this naive.
Your racism is showing when you think that all racists are violent, ignorant, card-carrying Nazis. You are fooling yourself, but not us, if you think that racism refers to the unconnected, isolated, “just-plain-meann actions and attitudes of bad people. Most racists are nice folks, especially in this country. Racism is systemic and cannot be separated out from this culture.
We do not want to witness or dry your tears. Yes, racism hurts. It hurts you, but please do not entertain the notion that it hurts much as us. Racism kills us, not you. Your tears will not garner our sympathy. We are no longer your property, therefore we will no longer take care of you. We don’t want to see your foolishness, so take your racism work to your own place and do it there.
TO WHITE FEMINISTS, BE YOU LIBERAL, RADICAL, SEPARATIST, RICH, OR NOT-YOUR RACISM IS SHOWING. YOU CAN EXPECT TO HEAR FROM VOCAL, ORGANIZED BLACK WOMEN WHO WILL BE IN YOUR FACE ABOUT IT.
- Carol Camper, “To White Feminists” Canadian Woman Studies, 1994
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so…….much……THIS!!!!!!!!
this is a gift. thank you.
From one radical African women to another, this was hot fire! You said it all!
The Black/ dark is revealed to white/ Light.. Now the whites must be scared of their own race..
Thank U
Nothing, because people of color (poc) lack the power to utterly disenfranchise any white person for any reason. Example: 1 cabbie refuses to pick up white man because he doesn’t like white people. There are still hundreds of cabbies that will pick him up. The reverse is demonstrably untrue.
@candicepenelope, I have to disagree that “reverse discrimination” cannot exist or is “untrue”. What about affirmative action-type “quotas”? If you *have to* hire a “person of color” simply because they are one when a “white person” (although white is a color too last I checked) that was also equally qualified applied as well, isn’t that *discrimination* in a form that is the *reverse* of what one would generally expect (and thus “reverse discrimination”)? We should move towards eliminating racial discrimination in *any* form (that includes discriminating against a majority to try and “make up for” separate discrimination against a minority).
Racism is making decisions and taking actions based primarily on race of others. Period. It doesn’t matter what race they are. Furthermore, racism doesn’t necessarily imply that the target of it not helped by it either. Although a little more rare, one could be racist in a “positive” manner. For example, one may choose to have voted for Barack Obama based on the color of his skin instead of the content of his character and his positions on the issues. In doing so they would have made a judgement based solely on his race even though that judgement was a positive one for the one it was made about.
Other than the “reverse discrimination” bit the rest of this letter was pretty much dead on given the time period it was set in. I would hope we as a people (either in Canada, the US of A or any county that’s had such movements) are past racism “inhabiting our society at a core level” by now … roughly 15 years later.
I’m sorry, but you lost me at “How could you not be racist?” That is flagrantly offensive. Maybe that’s the point, but it does *not* make me receptive to trying to hear more and learn more.
@MerlinYoda – there is no such thing as ‘reverse’ discrimination – it is in itself a racist construct. affirmative action, etc., is a RESPONSE to racism, an attempt at dismantling racism. in order for there to be a ‘reverse’, everyone has to be going the same direction at same speed.
@Xan Joi – It is not *literally* “reverse”, it’s figurative. The opposite of discriminating racially is being racially indiscriminate which entails *not* making *any* distinctions with respect to race … especially where such distinctions are irrelevant. In the literal sense, we *want* the “reverse” of racial discrimination (i.e. that people’s actions are racially indiscriminate).
When people speak of “reverse discrimination” they are doing so in the figurative sense. Generally speaking, it is racial minority groups that have been discriminated against. Most notably blacks prior to the Civil Rights Act, but others have been as well like, for example, Irish immigrants. As I previously noted, discrimination is *commonly* against such minority groups and thus favors the majority. Therefore, “reverse discrimination” would be against the majority and favor the minority. Both are still forms of racial discrimination and both are equally unacceptable.
How is this so hard for some people to understand? Especially that you can’t “make up for” the reprehensible behavior of the bigots among a given race by giving any sort of special privileges in the least to those that were discriminated against. Doing so just discriminates against everyone else whether they were bigoted or not. Like the saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right (but 3 rights can make a left ;-) ).
@Alexandra –
Clearly not getting it. Its not the job of people of colour to make you receptive to seeing racism. If you want to be an ally, if you want to unlearn racism, its your job to be receptive, its your job to do the work, to look for the problem, to look for the answers for yourself and to change your own behaviour. And it isn’t easy (I know that, as a priveleged white person myself) but this work has got nothing on the work and struggle of people of colour.
If you’re not already receptive, you’re part of the problem.
As for being offended, well, again, it isn’t the wirter’s job to smile and make you feel better. She’s telling her truth, if it upsets you, look in the mirror.
@Alexandra: As another privileged white person I have to agree with Keira. It is not the author’s job to convince us, or coddle us as readers. It’s our job to read, and be mature about it.
Were we raised in a racist society? Yes, of course we were.
We should take it at face value that racism exists, that we’ve benefited from it, and have a responsibility to fight it. That doesn’t mean staying somewhere in the middle, and lecturing people on both sides, ie, “racism is bad,” on one hand, and “you can’t call me a racist! That’s too radical!” on the other.
If you truly were dedicated to doing something about racism, you would take the author’s lead, not be deluded enough to think that you know better.
….how can a white person help to do anything positive about racism when we are seen as being patronising at best, or false at worst?
@MerlinYoda – You seem to be making the assumption that dismantling oppression is always about “discrimination” and “some bigoted people,” when policies like Affirmative Action are not designed to negate the impact of someone not liking someone. They are designed to account for the fact that systemically some people have been shut out of opportunities for generations, and that because we live in a white supremacist world, POC have been denied generations of wealth, educational access and networks that afford them the same level playing field as white people of similar backgrounds (yes, even when controlled for class and gender). It is also worth noting that white women, at least in the US, have been the largest beneficiaries of such policies. This video does a good job explaining some of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBb5TgOXgNY
Also, Rachel Maddow has a pretty great take down of the ridiculous Affirmative Action is reverse discrimination argument here: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-debunks-pats-racist-statemen
@david –
That’s the wrong question to ask. If you oppose oppression in particular, and not just racism for the purposes of dealing with liberal guilt, then you have to oppose the social system which engenders and relies on it. Ultimately this means breaking from liberalism and opposing capitalism in its entirety, and recognising that capitalism won’t be abolished without the active integration of all minorities.
If you oppose oppression, you shouldn’t have to ask permission from the relevant minority for calling people out on their racism/chauvinism/sectarianism/patriotism. You should do it because it is right. That’s not a big thing, but but it is certainly a start.
The key is to stop seeing racism as some kind of personal issue for the victim, but a social issue that needs to to be smashed.