When you hear a racist comment or remark, it can be quick and almost automatic to want to call it out. But in these situations, using the dreaded “R” word can often turn the conversation sour, so here’s why I’m no longer calling people racist, even when they say racist things.

No one likes being called a racist

I’ll say it again: no one likes being called a racist because most of us believe we are not racist. We might say, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” because if we were to be racist, that would make us a bad person, and I am not a bad person. We have this image in our head when we think of a racist person: someone who overtly says they don’t like a certain race, people who tell non-white people to go back to their own country, or people do things like pulling their eyes to make them slanty. And us? Well we’re not racist like that, we’re good people.

This thinking that racist = bad person, therefore, non racist = good person is a good/bad dichotomy, and of course we want to see ourselves as good.

Just picture it. You’re at a friend’s gathering and you make some comment that someone then replies, “so I find that a bit racist.” Your immediate response is probably a little defensive. Me? Racist? Never! You’ll likely try and explain your intent, that you meant something else and didn’t mean to be racist. Maybe you mention how you’re definitely not a racist, or that you have many black/asian/middle eastern friends. But right here in this moment, you’re unlikely to want to understand why what you said might have racial biases behind them when your whole identity as a good person is under attack.

Robin DiAngelo says in her book White Fragility, “This defensiveness is rooted in the false but widespread belief that racial discrimination can only be intentional.” So whilst this dichotomy is really unhelpful (for more reasons we’ll get into), it’s one that is nevertheless inescapable in our society.

When your value as a good person is under threat, no meaningful conversation around race can occur, not because you don’t care about racial issues, but because the term is so loaded and carries with it these connotations that cause us to close up. Whilst there’s a lot of education to be done on what racism is, calling someone a racist is usually anything but educational and will almost never lead to the outcome both parites want, which is a better understanding of racism.

Everyone has racial prejudices

We know that our brains like putting things into categories. We like labels and we like associations - it makes it easier to understand the world around us, and it means our brain gets to work less hard to process information. And guess what? This applies to when we meet people.

Our brains are wired to make these connections to other things that are similar as soon as we see someone. Do we see someone that looks male? We’ve already got associations with that. Do they look like they’re in the 40’s? Other connotations are made in our head. Do they look Asian? Another set of unconscious assumptions are made.

Mahzarin R. Banaji talks about these “blindspots” in her book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People. She says, “Blindspots hide both discriminations and privileges, so neither the discriminators nor the targets of discrimination, neither those who do the privileging nor the privileged, are aware.”

I know you may think that you see everyone as an individual. I’m not saying the intention of this statement is bad, it is in fact very good, but in reality, our brain is taking as many shortcuts as it can to make sense of what it’s seeing, and that’s often putting various labels on everything and everyone we see.

The sooner we acknowledge that we all have implicit biases, the sooner we can realise that, just like that Avenue Q song, everyone’s a little bit racist. Therefore, calling someone a racist almost doesn’t need to be said. We should all assume we all have racial biases and work to understand these.

Racism is more than just individual opinions and actions

When we think that racism occurs just at an individual level, that it’s these specific actions that people take or these comments people make, we ignore the larger forces at play that reinforce racial norms.

Let’s take our language as an example. If we’re referring to an Asian person in Australia, we might say, the Chinese Australian, or the Sri Lankan Australian. When we want to talk about an Indigenous Australian, we might say the Aboriginal Australian. But when we want to refer to a white person in Australia, we just say, the Australian, or we might not even need to refer to the fact that they’re Australian because it’s assumed.

There are many other examples of this (what we view as a “good” leader, the categories of pornography, our standards of beauty, whose stories we care about and want to watch on screen) but the reality is that we live in a country where whiteness is the norm or the centre that everything else is measured off or qualified against.

So if we shift our view of racism from being individual thoughts, opinions and actions to a system in which we have all been socialised, it broadens our frame of reference for where racism might occur, and how to tackle it.

Reni Eddo-Lodge says in her book Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, “Colour blindness does not accept the legitimacy of structural racism or a history of white racial dominance.” Instead of trying to see all colours as equal, we should be looking at the systems and institutions around us and trying to understand how they might be perpetuating racialised ideas or ways of thinking.

So when racism is integrated into the systems and institutions around us, calling someone racist focuses on the individual and ignores all the forces that have produced these racialised views.

Conclusion

No one likes being called a racist, in the same way that no one likes being on the receiving end of racist comments. But I’ve stopped calling people racist because it only puts a wall between them and me. The conversation becomes a battle, rather than a discussion. And I’ve realised that we all have so much more to learn about racial issues; I was once far more ignorant, and I still have so much further to go with my own racialised thinking. Perhaps by discussing the systems and powers that have influenced these racial prejudices, maybe then we can better understand our own racial views and the forces that have shaped them.

References

Mahzarin R Banaji, Blindspot, https://www.amazon.com.au/Blindspot-Hidden-Biases-Good-People/dp/0345528433

Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, https://www.amazon.com.au/White-Fragility-People-About-Racism/dp/0807047414

Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, https://www.amazon.com.au/Longer-Talking-White-People-About/dp/1408870584

https://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7443979/racism-implicit-racial-bias

http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implicit-bias/

https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/social-categorization-and-stereotyping/