Mean racist, kind racist, non-racist: which are you?

“Race is real, race matters, and race is the foundation of identity.” I imagine that perhaps with a tweak or two, most people would be OK with this declaration.

Many people are aware that the concept of race has no biological validity; that it’s a social construct, like gender or money, real only in that we treat them as real. So, in response to the first part of the thesis, I imagine most people would say, “Race is a social construct with very real effects.” As such, race certainly matters in myriad ways. To the third part of the statement, I’d bet that most people would say something like, “Well identity is a multi-faceted thing. Race is certainly among the factors that interact to form the foundation of one’s identity.” Notwithstanding these slight adjustments, I expect there’d be few objections to the thesis.

If I’ve guessed right about your reaction to the statement, then you share something very important and very problematic with Richard Spencer, who made the pronouncement about race at a National Policy Institute (NPI) convention in November. Spencer is the President and Director of NPI, “an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.” He is the creator of the term “Alt-Right,” a new coinage for an old ideology of white supremacism, and he has stated unabashedly that America is “a white country,” created by whites who have no need for other inferior groups.

“Don’t you dare clump me with the likes of Richard Spencer!” you might be saying now. “I’m not a racist! Yes, I think of people as member of races, but for me that’s no different than thinking of people as tall or short, or any of the many ways that people naturally vary from one another, none of them implying inherent inequality. Racists are vile people who impute hierarchical differences to the idea of race, and use that rationale to oppress.”

I do not mean to offend. I mean only to provoke the realization that we have to stop believing and acting as if we can have it both ways: adhere to the notion of race while also trying to end racism. The scourge that is the latter is inextricably contingent on the former. Despite our best efforts to eradicate racism, it reemerges like a defiant toxic weed because we fail to pull it up by its root: the notion of race that Spencer and so many treat as real, crucial, and foundational to human identity.

Years ago, I came across an insight in an essay by sociologist, Donal Muir, that perfectly articulates the flaw in how most people think about racism. Muir distinguished three types of thinkers when it comes to racism: “mean racists,” “kind racists,” and “non-racists.” Mean racists and kind racists share a belief in the thesis articulated by Spencer. Mean racist see the thesis as an imperative to menace the racial other. Kind racists wish to ignore that the very essence of the idea of race is unequal worth, and they campaign for racial equality, effectively an oxymoron. The only people who qualify as non-racist are those who defy and denounce the false predicate of race altogether.

Race is not real. Race must cease to matter. Race is not a legitimate foundation of identity.

White supremacists, white nationalist, neo-Nazis, the Alt-Right, or whatever we choose to call mean racists, are, like all humans, driven to achieve consonance between their convictions and the shape, and functioning of the world. Their motivation is rooted in the belief that race is real, race matters, and race is the foundation of identity. We’ve failed to vanquish racism because kind racists are in a perpetual argument with mean racists about whose interpretation of the false declaration is accurate. What we need to do is disabuse them (and ourselves) of the delusion that catalyzes racist belief and behavior in the first place. Luckily, we have another thesis that can and should replace the faulty one about race.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Despite the terrible truth that this declaration was hardly applied equally to every person (and with the necessary replacement of “men” with “people”), it is technically perfect, and it is perfectly incompatible with the idea of race that corrupted it before the ink had dried on our founding document.

Race is not real. Race must cease to matter. Race is not a legitimate foundation of identity.

Of course, many would fear that repudiating the concept of race would mean retreating from anti-racism and falling into dreaded colorblindness and a false sense of being post-race.

“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way” (Regents of Univ. of California v. Bakke 438 U.S. 265 (1978)). This is what most people believe is necessary and what would be lost if we ceased to regard people in terms of race. But Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s precept was only half-right–necessary, but not sufficient.

The false notion of race was prescribed to allay the hypocrisy that was the by-product of our fledgling country’s virtuous aspiration to liberty and virulent addiction to slavery. The burden of that belief plunged us into a quicksand in which we continue to flail. To escape the trap–to truly get beyond racism, we must also get beyond race as a naturalized and compulsory social convention. To truly get beyond racism, we must do two things at once: monitor abuse based on the belief in race AND repudiate race as a legitimate basis of belief and behavior.

We can do this. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to. There is no other way.

Featured Image Credit: “Fight Racism” by Metropolico.org. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr. 

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