I've been thinking about this a lot lately. My own oldest daughter told me I was a racist. Not that I said or did anything to demonstrate this, but she thinks everyone is on some level a racist, if you've grown up in a society with racial tension.
I don't deny that there is racism and it is a recurring evil that never seems to get entirely stamped out. I know there are racists, both deliberate and active, and those maybe more passive, but who like to mock or make snide 'insider' jokes that are racist. (Ralph Northam seems to have been of that variety). It's a terrible, terrible problem. I don't want to seem to discount its profound depravity. But I don't think I am a racist at all. I don't think I am because I have never thought of myself or the white race I happen by birth to be part of, as better. I have never seen anyone who looked different from me as somehow lesser. I search myself and nope, that's one sin I have not committed. Praise the Lord! I have plenty of other sins to worry about but that particular one? It's just not there. And I can say that I have lived my life, all my life from childhood up, not being racist. My parents were not racists. My schools were not racist. My neighborhood was not racist. Both my neighborhood and all the schools I attended were integrated. And maybe I was blind and naive (and those two things I can definitely be guilty of) but I never noticed anything being a big deal! I don't remember anybody ever mentioning anything. I did have one friend whose father was strange. We were all afraid of him. And then one time my friend discovered a lot of racist material her father had. It really alienated her from him. She was deeply troubled by it. She knew, even in 7th grade, he was wrong. She wound up marrying a Muslim guy. Somebody her father would call a 'sand n****r.' We were disgusted with him. So that's the earliest racist I ever had oblique contact with. I avoided him too. Honestly, I was friends with her for years, visiting her house often and I think I said maybe three words the whole time to her father. He was a weird guy.
Another encounter with racism was my prom date. My prom was a horrible experience. I was talked into going with a guy who was a friend of another friend. This person though I didn't really care for. She was very coarse and slept around. She was actually sleeping with an older married man! Anyway, I was a socially inept, shy, longing to fit in teen and forced to go to the prom with this guy. And one of the first things he said on our date was a remark about someone else: 'that was very white of him.' I had never heard that expression before and I was horrified. I was so repulsed by this guy and had to fake being excited about the prom. He gave me my first kiss (which I did not want! But by that point in the evening I was so cowed and miserable I think I was disassociating psychologically) and I actually ran up to my bathroom and vomited. This guy and his sister, who was the friend of my friend, were from Boston. They had heavy Boston accents and were the most racist people I'd encountered in a social way. Ugh.
The scenario my daughter used to show I was bigoted was: what I would think or feel if I was walking down a dark street and saw a black man coming towards me. If I was fearful then that means I'm racist. Honestly this is really unfair. For one thing, walking down any street in the dark, I'm already going to be a bit fearful. When you are in a flight or fight situation you do operate off of too little knowledge and thus resort to instinct or stereotypes in those few moments. But I can say that clothing would probably have the most influence on me. If a black man was walking toward me on a dark street and he was wearing a suit and tie or even a polo shirt and khakis, I probably wouldn't be as fearful. So maybe I am more of a classist. Because it would be the same with a white guy. If it was a white guy who looked especially tough or punky, or like he was a heroin addict or something, I'd be afraid of him too. Also age would factor in. If it was an elderly guy I might not feel so menaced.
I just don't think that scenario equates to actually being racist. It's like saying to a mom who is tired and worn out and shouts at her kids occasionally because of that, you are a terrible mother! Or catching anyone in a moment of weakness and using that to define the rest of their life.
And I think it is really unhelpful to use the same term for that kind of response, (you're a racist) when dealing with truly blatant evil, like Jim Crow or slavery. That was systemic racism. That was institutional racism that was written into our laws. That's a whole other ball of wax and to conflate the two is to make it hard for people to actually relate to each other in a positive way. People get anxious that they will accidentally misstep and commit a faux pas that will have them labeled a racist. There really is a difference between being clumsy but good willed and being deliberately racist. Ralph Northam looks like he was deliberately racist. He wants to say he was just clumsily insensitive. I was almost the same age as him in 1984 and believe me, society at large knew that doing what he did was wrong, wrong, wrong! But maybe in his little bubble of Southern Christian, wealthy white folks, that wasn't the case. (Seems to me he is a person with really bad judgment.) I would never, ever have dreamed of dressing in blackface or donning a KKK outfit under any situation. Never in a million years! Unthinkable!
So here's how to avoid being racist in my mind: don't tell racist jokes. Don't flirt with racist ideas. Don't romanticize the racist history of your particular culture (as Southerns are wont to do). Don't be racist out of a longing for 'identity' as white supremacists do. But, as for people who are more liberal, don't always see everybody first in terms of their race. This is the huge flaw in the trendy intersectionality world view. Because always making that difference (race, sexuality, etc) the number one factor is also bigoted. Anything that gets you painted as a part of a collective culture, seemingly monolithic, is judging others on externalities. It's the opposite of being color blind. I'm with Dr. MLK, Jr. Content of character is better than color of skin in terms of how we relate one another. The details of our external characteristics are ultimately not important. We have vastly more in common than what distinguishes us. Racism is shallow, vain and borne out of insecurity; the sinful impulse that has haunted us throughout ages to demean others for our own aggrandizement. Men did and do it to women, women currently seem to be doing back at men, now that they've gained some power. Pro-abortionists do it to the unborn, gentiles did it to Jews, the Tutsis did it to the Hutus in Rwanda and there are many, many other dismaying examples in almost every culture. We live in a sinful world, always battling sin.
I like to watch certain intellectuals on bloggingTV. My favorites are Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. They have the best conversations about current events. They are perceived as 'conservative' which is ridiculous because they are probably moderates, but because things keep shifting to the left more and more, they've been pushed to one side of the spectrum. Anyway, one idea they've brought up is that racism isn't like small pox that you can vow to wipe out. It is an evil more like murder. No one vows to wipe out murder. We certainly don't want it and try to make it so murder is hard to commit. Socially, culturally, morally there is pressure to not do such an evil. We have laws against it that we prosecute vigorously, but people talk about decreasing murder rates, rather than vowing to make it so murder never happens. Because we know we'd have to go to such extremes to actually prevent murder it would undo other important elements of civil society. We'd have to give up all freedom. And it's the same with racism. There is always going to be some jerk who does some jerky thing or even violent thing somewhere in our population of 325+ million. And it gets broadcast widely, but the vast majority of people are not doing jerky or violent things.
If we work on poverty issues in general, we'll help all impoverished people, including those who are African American. If we work on trying to diminish tribal thinking and focus on promoting civility, that will decrease clashes. But instead we seem to be promoting identity politics that feeds into zero sum games of competition over who is more victimized. This leads to a heightened sense of all our differences. I think intersectionality is perhaps well meaning but extremely short-sighted and misguided.
When I was in law school, I worked for the Public Defenders and the student law center. I helped represent both black and white defendants. When I was in Baltimore I lived in a majority black neighborhood. When I worked as a program director for pre-law internships in Washington DC we would take students from places like Iowa and put them in situations, for the first time in their lives, where they had African American bosses and co-workers. Where their neighborhood was majority black. I remember one time the students hosted a Valentine's Day party for homeless kids in DC. (We always tried to work in a service project). I remember a little black girl sitting on the lap of a white college student, son of a farmer from Iowa, asking him what farms were really like? She was so enchanted with hearing about cows and chickens and corn! And as we left, the student said to me, that little girl gave to me more than I gave to her! I raised my kids by reading to them about Ruby Bridges and listening to Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech. I am currently housing an asylum seeker from Africa and her son. They have been living with us for 2.5 years! Yet my daughter told me I was racist.
The trouble I see, with being so 'woke' is that a daughter can tell her own mother that she is a racist because it is a given that everyone guilty of this evil. That is so problematic. How do you even start a conversation when everyone is automatically labelled with that offensive moniker? It shuts down any discourse! I wanted to say, methinks thou doth protest too much! Speak for yourself, dearie! But of course that would be so hurtful! That my own daughter who knows me can say such a thing shows such a disconnect from reality! And this is a sharp, smart, perceptive woman. But she's been so influenced by the internet tribal wars, she's swallowed the assumptions hook, line and sinker. Wow.
I do blame the political milieu right now, especially in Catholic circles. Most Catholics aren't very good at being Catholic. We are way too influenced by the political tribalism going on, due to the liberals' rejection of protecting the unborn and their tendency to push post modern sexual mores on everyone. That meant that if you actually wanted to follow Church teaching on those matters you either got pushed into the conservatives' arms or you had to discount or ignore the importance of those matters. And then Trump came along and riled up or re-awakened a lot of racial tension. Depressingly, most pro-lifers see him as the most loyal president ever in terms of their fight to protect the unborn. And they are quite blind to his other faults. They twist themselves into apologists for him. Honestly, they are searching for a hero and pathetically they have chosen him. Absurd! I have never in my life expected any politician to not have major flaws. I have never agreed with anyone 100% Just because you are critical of one thing doesn't mean you are critical of everything. I can agree and even be grateful for Trump's support of the pro-life movement and yet think his immigration policies are horrid. I think in the end he'll do more damage than good, frankly. I think his ascent right now is a Pyrrhic victory.
Anyway, it has taken me several days to write this. And the politics in Virginia is so messed up right now. I'm disgusted.
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