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(Disclaimer: in no way does this article assert that
- racism isn’t a thing,
- white racism hasn’t been the root of horrific crimes and sins against humanity,
- racism is “over,”
- there is such a thing as “reverse” racism,
- racism in communities or people of color is “just as bad” in terms of impact and harm inflicted
- people of color have to “go first,”
- any of the other nonsense I just know people are going to try to read into it.
So save us both some wasted time and energy and just don’t. Please: Read what’s written, not what you expect to be. Thanks and I look forward to your thoughts.)
There’s a popular, informal theory which says only white people can be racists. It’s white supremacist theory masquerading as advocacy for people of color. The appeal of the theory to people of color who are rightly frustrated to outrage at entrenched white supremacist power should be obvious. Unfortunately, it’s also toxic and plays on the very same impulses that fuel white supremacy.
This notion was probably most prominently featured in the important, worthwhile, and influential 2014 film “Dear White People”:
Black people can’t be racist. Prejudiced, yes, but not racist. Racism describes a system of disadvantage based on race. Black people can’t be racist since we don’t stand to benefit from such a system.
Tessa Thompson as Samantha White in “Dear White People” (2014)
The people primarily advancing this theory don’t want to end bigotry, oppression, and racism; they want to be the ones benefitting from it. They look to destroy Orwell’s Boot by wearing it, which has always been a misguided and fundamentally evil goal.
Most insidiously this rhetoric directly fertilizes more racist and bigoted psuedointellectual hogwash from white supremacists (including validating the questionable concept of “race” in the first place), often from cover of academic qualifications that are themselves a result of the very racism being denied by those producing it.
The theory clearly only considers US and Anglosphere cultures founded on European imperialism in its assertions of dominance. This is immediately obvious from the most basic considerations:
- “white people” are no more a monoculture than any other color of skin
- “white people” simply aren’t the dominant social group universally. They’re third, and closer to fourth than second by about double the gap.
Even if you make the case for white dominance on a global scale, it still breaks down as you get closer to the ground and start looking at smaller cultural groups like nations. This theory roots itself in supremacist reasoning simply by framing itself as a universal rule when it really only applies to part of the population. So you end up with three problems:
- White people aren’t the dominant ethnic or social group on this planet, yet in modern history they’re responsible for the most widespread, systematic, and egregious racism at the largest scale. That immediately negates the premise that the “dominant group” is the only one that can be “racist” in the theory’s definition.
- Attempting to create relative merit distinctions between “racism,” “prejudice,” and “bigotry” not only attempts to justify ignoring racism by people of color, it further stratifies and ranks “types” whereby one “type” is judged more or less “bad” than the other, e.g. prejudice is “not as bad as” racism because, under the theory, the merely prejudiced can’t access abuse-able power
- These narratives erase the multiracial community whose lived experience often draws from multiple cultures but emotionally identifies with none of them deeply (disclosure, the author is among this group), and often finds them discriminated against for being part of one group by members of another group that they’re also part of.
Rather than challenging racism, the theory validates, energizes, and promotes it without ever questioning the basic premise that any particular “race” possesses inherently “superior” attributes, trivializes the power (malignant power is still power) of non-white cultures, ignores racist behavior found in nearly all cultures, assumes in contradiction to evidence that the US perspective suffices for the general case globally, and seduces people of color into employing the same excuses for their racism used by the white racists they’re fighting
If you prejudge someone based on what you perceive as their race, you are a racist. What ethnic groups you’re part of or how much power you have to make your personal racist beliefs into a cultural norm isn’t relevant.
Don’t fall for it. Anybody can be a racist, even if it never has any outward expression at all. Claiming otherwise is racists rationalizing their own racism and gaslighting anyone who speaks up about it.
These narratives represent attempts by power abusers to con you into believing you can wear Orwell’s Boot safely.
You can’t, and to even try makes you one of the bad people, no matter what color your skin is or what language or dialect you speak or what shape your eyes are.
Don’t be seduced by these bias-pandering theories. They’ll just keep you stuck in the same cycles of bigotry and conflict until the species ceases to exist at all.
