'I Don't Have a Racist Bone in My Body'

[Amimnoch]

75. "Everyone is racist. The Question is, what are you going to do about it?"

This was a quote from a Designing Women episode in the 1980's. In 1994, my husband and I were watching this syndicated rerun episode called "There's some black people coming to dinner". For some context here, I'm in a gay interracial marriage (was a very young and new relationship at the time we watched this episode, but I digress). The father of the son, near the end of the episode uttered the subject quote. This utterance caused one of the first heated debates/arguments between myself and my husband. To that point in my life, I fully and completely believed that I was not a racist.. at all.. period.. end of story. I was raised by 1960's hippies, and absolutely did not "have a racist bone in my body." There was no way that line could be accurately applied to me. I was wrong.

You see, it is not possible to exist in this society and not be racist. As a litmus test: Say you are interviewing people for a job. You have 2 prime candidates. One is a white male. One is a dark skinned male. The white male has a marginally better education background, and/or work experience. Whom do you hire?

The "colorblind" person will hire the first candidate, since they are basing their decision purely on education and experience. This completely ignores the systemic and systematic racism challenges that the 2nd candidate may have come to the table with. It ignores all the statistics and data out there on the additional challenges women and minorities face in education, and employment opportunities, and propagates the continuance of said stats and trends.

Even if you are a person who will take all of that information, and decide to hire candidate #2 based on the more complete and enlightened use of information, you are still knowingly and willingly deciding to hire a less qualified/educated candidate based on the race and background of the candidate. That is still racism, even if it is a more socially aware and enlightened version of it.

And this hypothetical is just one of MANY.. Who does/doesn't get invited to our children's birthday parties, social gatherings, PTA meetings, or whom we are looking at and weighing evidence present on in a court room.

Some of the other comments to your thoughtful post are.. illuminating.. as well.