"There's not a racist bone in my body." - Rep. Mark Meadows after exhibiting a 'black friend' to prove neither he nor President Donald Trump are racists, 7 years after declaring that he would like to send President Barack Obama, "Back to Kenya or wherever he's from."
Let us begin with this basic truth: racism is not what is in your heart, that's prejudice. Racism is participating in structures of oppression that are based on the lies of 'race'. Mistaking prejudice, one's internal thought-world and conscience, for racism (or the lack thereof) perfectly describes the madness of my experience in a place like Evergreen Park, Illinois. When I lived there as a teenager red-lining laws were still on the books effectively making it illegal to sell a home in that city to a black person. There was, as far as I can remember, no black people living in Evergreen Park. Just across the tracks outside the city, however, it was almost entirely black folks. And yet, talk to the people of Evergreen Park and curiously, not a single person was a racist. "Not a racist bone in my body."
When we white folk take the subject of racism to be our own internal feelings rather than actual people who are the object of oppressive structures in law and social interactions we are simply perpetuating racism and participating in it as more sophisticated racists.
When a person (like Rep. Mark Meadows, or like any number of the people living in Evergreen Park in the late 1980's) says, "There's not a racist bone in my body," what is revealed is not a lack of prejudice or a sophisticated analysis of racist structures and a capacity to have dismantled all of them and not participate in any of them (both of these are, frankly, impossibilities under even the slightest bit of self-examination). Instead, what is revealed is a need to exonerate one's conscience, to be seen as good. These are essentially the words of a hypocrite.
I recall a conversation I had with a professor of mine at Calvin Theological Seminary in the fall of 2000 in which I asked him why he thought 90%+ of all African American voters voted for Al Gore over George W. Bush. He answered, "Now look, there's not a racist bone in my body, but the fact is black people are just too stupid to vote in their own self interest. Let's be honest, those people shouldn't be allowed to vote until they can show the ability to think for themselves." You'd be hard pressed to find a more racist sentiment. You'd be hard pressed to find a more oppressive and racist structure than disenfranchisement of the vote based on race. Here was a professor who prided himself on the sophistication of his thought, morality and spirituality. And here was a person whose racism had absolutely held him captive and enslaved his spirit because he was willing to believe the lie that racism only had to do with his own subjective judgment about his own interior feelings. I'm sure, somewhere, at some time, he had a black friend.
A white person who is genuinely concerned about racism asks:
1. What are my internal prejudices and bigotries? How have I internalized thoughts and feelings of superiority vis a vis the lies of race, and how can I destroy such thought and feelings root and branch?
2. How have I participated in structures of racist oppression? How can I dismantle those structures?
As a white person it is essential that we center these questions if we are to make headway against the evil of racism. Living with these questions teach us that being racist is not a binary option (not an on/off switch). Racism is inherent to being white in America. It is inherent to America. The question isn't, "Am I racist?" The question for anyone who seeks moral and spiritual honesty is this: "What am I doing to dismantle racism?" Am I becoming, more and more each day, a champion of anti-racism?
