How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

by Crystal Marie Fleming

Hundreds of years after establishing a nation on colonial genocide and chattel slavery, people are kinda-sorta-maybe-possibly waking up to the sad reality that our racial politics are (still) garbage.

Why do white liberals who can’t even confront their Trump-supporting friends and family members think they can lead the “Resistance”?

With so much racial ignorance in the world, how will we ever find our way to that glorious mountaintop Martin Luther King Jr. glimpsed right before a white racist killed him?

In other words, living in a racist society

socializes us to be stupid about race.

How to Be Less Stupid About Race explores precisely how and why racial stupidity has become so terribly pervasive and examines the cesspool of silly ideas, half-truths, and ridiculous misconceptions that have thoroughly corrupted the way race and racism are represented in the classroom, pop culture, media, and politics. The key idea that I’ll come

back to again and again is that living in a racist society exposes us all to absurd and harmful ideas that, in turn, help maintain the racial status quo.

I know for sure that the very first step in challenging racism is having a clear understanding of what it actually is.

Ill-conceived campaigns like “Race Together” contribute to the misconception that “race” is a topic that requires no education whatsoever to discuss.

As a result, most of us make it through the entirety of our lives without structured opportunities to learn about racism from experts on the subject. Is it any wonder that so many

people are so damned racially ignorant?

The costs of taking a superficial approach to addressing racism are quite high—and fall squarely on the...

And, although this may be surprising, I had no fucking idea that we in the United States live in a racist (and sexist and classist) society until I was a full-grown adult. More on this later.

Part of my experience was being made to understand that I was “special” and also relatively rare—not only as a “gifted” person but also specifically as a black gifted person.