A young woman of color’s take on why the fight against racism has to start with owning it
I CAN’T REMEMBER A TIME IN MY THINKING life when I wasn’t aware of my own racism.
I don’t say that with shame; it’s just a fact—I’m racist, you’re racist, even babies are racist. And I suppose I’ve always felt, particularly as a person of color, that acknowledging this aspect of our very flawed human existence was the best chance to undermine its power.
That’s why it’s been so strange to hear people insisting of late that they are not not not racist. Even as I write “people,” I realize I mean all of us, but especially white folks. From President Trump to law enforcement officials, high school vandals to hipster parents—no one has a racist bone in their body, apparently. And horrors like the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas—in which authorities say a 21-yearold white gunman killed 22 people and injured dozens more after posting a manifesto that decried “race mixing” and a “Hispanic invasion”—only make the unracist more convinced: Racist shooters and extremists are the problem, not real, regular Americans who’d never dream of behaving so abhorrently.
Yet, more and more, I feel I’m drowning in racism—a kind of casual, consistent, visible and visibly mounting racism that’s all the more confounding because it won’t admit it exists.
This story is from the August 30, 2019 edition of Newsweek.
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This story is from the August 30, 2019 edition of Newsweek.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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