Detecting Racism

Yesterday, a politicized question on my social media page triggered a predictable rain of responses. And I noticed something: no one who took the opposite position had been able to pass my “Question” about race: “Under the same historical conditions, would whites have been as damaged by slavery, and taken as long to heal?” I notice things like that, and thought I should address it this morning.

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1. The only definition of racism I use is “the belief that one group defined by race or ethnicity is superior or inferior to another on the basis of worth or capacity.” “Structural” or “institutional” racism is a sub-set of this, like “race car” or “model car” is a sub-set of “car.”
2. It is not “hating other people.” Nor is it “assuming every member of a group is defined by the characteristics of an individual.” I’ve known of Klansmen who, by those standards, aren’t racist at all. It is a useless definition, one beloved by snakes.
3. Racists hate my Question. There is, I think, no perfect balance between “yes” and “no”. People will always come down on one side or the other. But the person who says “yes, whites would have been as damaged” answer quickly. Those who believe “no, they’d have done better” are VERY slow to answer, if you can wring an answer out of them at all. They hem and haw and vomit up paragraphs of background and explanation for their positions. They bleat about Irish indentured servitude, or the fact that all cultures have had slavery, as if the issue of guilt was on the table. So frankly, the longer…