Talk of racial reform
sticks in the craw of many white Americans. These whites’
conceptions of racism now view anti-white bias as a bigger societal
problem than anti-black bias. Whites believe that they have replaced
blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination in
contemporary America, according to a study from researchers at Tufts
University's School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School
(2011).
Samuel Sommers and Michael
I. Norton, co-authors of the study conclude …
"These data are
the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress
has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now
believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality – at their
expense.”
(Samuel
Sommers and Michael I. Norton. "Whites See Racism as a Zero-sum
Game that They Are Now Losing." Perspectives on Psychological
Science. May 2011.)
The usage of “reverse
racism” and “reverse discrimination” arose in direct response
to affirmative and race-based policies in the 1970s. Reverse racism –
or any race-conscious policy – became a common grievance that
helped shape a certain post-civil-rights-movement view of America
where black people were the favored children of the state and
deserving white people were cast aside.
Some studies even claim
that white belief in reverse racism has steadily increased since the
civil-rights movement and, in their view, has become the dominant
racial bias
in America. This trend parallels the rise of Donald Trump, as a 2016
HuffPost/YouGov poll found that Trump voters think anti-white
discrimination is a much more prevalent problem than is
discrimination against any minority group. In that poll, forty-five
percent of Trump voters think white people in the U.S. face a lot of
discrimination. Just 22 percent, however, think that black Americans
face a lot of discrimination, and just 19 percent say the same of
Jews and Latinos.
The evidence is clear: a
substantial number of whites don’t welcome social progress – they
actually respond by seeing themselves as victims of discrimination.
While whites currently comprise the majority of the U.S. population,
recent census projections suggest that within the next several
decades, whites will become a numerical minority.
Research posits that when
whites are alerted to this trend, they are more likely to fear being
discriminated against …
“Indeed, in nearly
every important domain of American life, including health, education,
criminal justice, and wealth, substantial racial disparities
(favoring Whites) continue to persist and discrimination has been
found to contribute to these gaps. The present findings reveal the
underlying psychological processes through which the growing racial
diversity of the nation may unwittingly make it increasingly
difficult to address these troubling disparities and cultivate a
nation that is both diverse and just.”
(MA Craig and JA
Richeson. Information about the US racial demographic shift triggers
concerns about anti-White discrimination among the prospective White
“minority.”
PLoS ONE 12(9). 2017.)
Systemic racism is less
about violence or burning crosses. Systemic racism refers to
how ideas of white superiority are captured in everyday thinking at a
systems level: taking in the big picture of how society operates,
rather than looking at one-on-one interactions.
Sociologist Eduardo
Bonilla-Silva has said: "The main problem nowadays is not the
folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits." The
reality is that systemic racism persists in our schools, offices,
court system, police departments, and elsewhere. It must be noted
that greater attention to bias against whites (and less to bias
against racial minorities) only exacerbates social inequality.
“Reverse racism is a
cogent description of affirmative action only if one considers the
cancer of racism to be morally and medically indistinguishable from
the therapy we apply to it.”
– Stanley
Fish, American literary theorist and legal scholar,
Blacks' feelings of anger
and fear are justified as so many whites just don't “get”
systemic racism in America. Robin J. DiAngelo – American academic,
lecturer, and author (a white liberal, by the way) – says there is
a “white fragility,” a discomfort and defensiveness on the part
of a white person when confronted by information about racial
inequality and injustice.
DiAngelo encounters a lot
of “certitude from white people (about racism) – they insist
‘Well, it’s not me’ or say ‘I’m doing my best, what do you
want from me?’ ”
DiAngelo says this
fragility leads to white people “weaponizing [their] hurt feelings”
and being indignant and defensive when confronted with racial
inequality and injustice. This creates a climate where the suggestion
or accusation of racism causes more outrage among white people than
the racism itself. She asks …
“And if nobody is
racist, why is racism still America’s biggest problem? What are
white people afraid they will lose by listening? What is so
threatening about humility on this topic? We have to stop thinking
about racism simply as someone who says the N-word … in the white
western colonial context … white people hold institutional power.”
(Robin
DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard
for
White People to Talk About Racism. 2018.)
In her more than twenty
years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops
for American companies, DiAngelo has noticed that “white people are
sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism.” DiAngelo
explains …
“Like waves on sand,
their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they
'were taught to treat everyone the same,' that they are
'color-blind,' that they 'don’t care if you are pink, purple, or
polka-dotted.' They will point to friends and family members of
color, a history of civil-rights activism, or a more 'salient' issue,
such as class or gender. They will shout and bluster. They will cry.”
To DiAngelo, the largely
segregated American society insulates whites from racial discomfort,
so that they fall to pieces at the first application of stress –
for instance, when someone suggests that “flesh-toned” may not be
an appropriate name for a beige crayon. Unused to unpleasantness
(racial hierarchies tell white people that they are entitled to peace
and deference), they lack the “racial stamina” to engage in
difficult conversations. This leads them to respond to “racial
triggers” with “emotions such as anger, fear and guilt and
behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the
stress-inducing situation.”
Racism uses prejudice to
reproduce a systematic disadvantage of power based on race. And,
let's face it white America, combating one’s inner voices of racial
prejudice is a life’s work, not merely color-blind lip service.
White supremacy is still infusing itself – often subtly and
invisibly – through media and culture and politics. What is the
white complicity? Perhaps the answer to that question should be
addressed in the context of why it is so difficult for white people
to talk about racism.
“When
you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it's easy to
start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label 'racist' should
be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of
discrimination.”
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