The Denial of Racism … to what end?

If you query most people of color about the persistence of racism, you will quite likely receive an affirmative and disheartening response. The daily lives of people who are “othered” in American society typically involves at least a few racial microaggressions and perhaps one overt act of race-based bias. While some people of color seem blissfully unaware of the slights and condescending glances, far more realize that it is an ever-present reality. Most White people would happily agree that the populace is no longer entangled in the bondage of racial hate and bigotry because THEY are not racist and none of their family members or friends are racist either. This denial of racism on their (individual) part may be sincere. In fact, I have 560 “friends” on Facebook and I’m near certain that none of them are racist so I don’t doubt individual sincerity when people decry the racist moniker.

Yet I do recognize that they decry from a place of privilege – a privilege that inoculates them against the virus of racism on the receiving end. They have a privilege that affords them a peak from which to bellow their admonishment of racism and its attendant consequences. They have a privilege that allows them to deny the existence of the same racism that dragged half of my ancestors away from their family and culture and language in West Africa, that enslaved them for more years than we’ve been “free,” that justified rape and torture and inhumanity simply because THEY, as individuals, are not racist.

To what end, however, do some deny racism? I assert that the denial of racism is more dangerous and socially-limiting than actual racism itself! When people deny racism, they minimize the hurt and disadvantage it causes. Their cries against injustice are watered down to “playing the race card” or being “hyper-sensitive.” The validity of their pleas for fairness, equity and recourse are damped down and create fertile ground for the development of other issues in addition to the racism they experienced. Now you have people who are marginalized further as trouble-makers, people who fear sharing their feelings about this and many other painful experiences for fear of being seen as “angry,” people who start to wonder if maybe what they experienced really was “nothing” or an over-reaction on their part. You also create people who recognize the truth of their lived experience and who are now less trusting of those who do not look like them and who do not validate their humanity.

To what end this denial? What is the goal? The denial of a thing does not mean that it is no longer real. We can all admit that at least pre-President Obama there was racism (even though now we live in a Utopian post-racial society), but we can’t really believe that President Obama’s election and re-election immediately ended racism, right? The very fabric of this nation is dyed in the blood of First Nations people and enslaved Africans. It was written into U.S. social and economic policy. Yet it all just … POOF … ended in 2008?!?!

When people deny racism it is either a passive act of cowardice or an active act of ignorance. It is either an attempt to put a verbal salve on a several-hundred year old wound that continues to weep or an attempt to escape culpability (ancestral or otherwise) in the continued dehumanization of entire populations of people. It makes driving your luxury car to your luxury house with your luxury material goods more palpable when you feel like you earned it all by yourself and not at the expense of stolen land or stolen lives.

I propose that in 2013 we start engaging like adults and admit that racism still exists because people continue to let this festering wound weep by picking at it in their homes and neighborhoods … and since 2008, in the middle of the street. Racism exists. Sad, but true. Now, let us forgo the desperate attempts at escapism and start being strategic in our efforts to combat it in the future. No more pseudo-apologetic politicians walking back their bigoted comments or doing the politically-motivated mea culpa for slavery. I have to believe that we’re beyond that space and able to engage in more constructive and less patronizing conversations about the idea that racism is a sordid and damaging social construction born of the non-biological “science” of race.

Because what does it say about an entire country of adults – many of whom are quite learned – who continue to perpetuate the fallacy of racially-based betterness when we know that race does not really exist? With such dogged determination to retain and reproduce ignorance it is not surprising that our country’s children are so academically lagging in the global marketplace. But the same intentional acts that serve to maintain a racist system which disenfranchises millions of people everyday can be undone with the same intentionality.

Until we learn to legislate love, we’ll need to engage the same political process to create policies designed to STOP marginalizing people based on nothing more than the color of their skin. We’ll need the anti-Moynihan report that says Black women who choose not to abandon their children just because the father did are not pathological, sexual deviants, but rather strong mothers who are determined to surround their families with love and direction despite many socioeconomic challenges. We need policies that do not rationalize stopping-and-frisking Black or brown men because they’re dangerous drug lords and implement policies that afford them an opportunity to make a good salary in a stable job after they’ve finished their felony marijuana possession sentence in prison.

When people deny racism it makes pinning down the purposeful, hateful acts difficult which makes solutions nearly impossible. But you cannot sanitize people’s lived experiences because it makes you uncomfortable. Stop the denial and start working toward solutions.