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

by Crystal Marie Fleming

“Gaslighting” is a term for psychological manipulation in which an abuser denies that any harm is taking place, prompting the target of abuse to question reality.

If any person of color holds a position of authority or experiences any degree of success, their mere existence is taken to be evidence that systemic racism and white privilege do not exist.

First: white supremacy is, most fundamentally, a system of power designed to channel material resources to people socially defined as white. Second: white supremacy is not just neo-Nazis and white nationalism. It’s also the way our society has come to be structured, such that political, economic, and other forms of capital are predominately maintained by elite whites.

the sad truth is that most US citizens have never seriously studied history of any kind, much less racial history.

As long as everyday citizens are fed a daily mental diet of white supremacist ideology, historical ignorance, and disinformation, the overall power structure remains difficult to detect—and oppose.

As long as the endemic, systemic nature of white supremacy is successfully minimized or denied, as long as “conversations about race” are mainly about individual attitudes, prejudice, or the actions of a few extremists, then attention is drawn away from the structures and pattern of racial inequality hiding in plain sight.

From mass incarceration to sentencing laws to racial discrimination in housing and home loans, the invisibility of institutional racism is maintained by the fact that it is literally hard to see.

Unless you directly experience the injustice of living in a polluted neighborhood decimated by environmental racism, unless you’ve been racially profiled or abused by police, how could you know it’s happening—especially if such matters aren’t addressed in school?

systemic racism doesn’t need every white citizen to be personally racist in order to exist,

Becoming antiracist involves developing the historical and sociological literacy needed to decode the ongoing impact of the racial past on the present. It means becoming familiar with the typical tropes of minimization, deflection, and denial that allow racism to persist unrecognized and/or justified on a daily basis. And it means going far beyond “calling out” your racist friend or family members for their racist comments and behavior (something the vast majority of whites do not do). If we are ever to move beyond this racial order, then we will also have to dismantle the system of unearned privilege attached to being socially defined as “white.”

If being racist is about supporting a system of racist domination, then becoming antiracist is about recognizing and opposing this system.

And you must see how your own socialization, behavior, and choices are complicit with multiple systems of oppression, racism included.

White supremacy continues to persist, in part, due to the widespread temptation to only see and condemn other people’s racism—racism is always someone else’s crime.

If there is anything to learn from the Founding Fathers, it’s that we have the right to call out tyranny by its name and transform our society. But we don’t have to remain enslaved to the limited moral imaginations of those who rationalized slavery and genocide. We can dream better, more inclusive dreams and create a more just society. And even if we aren’t able to bring about all the positive change we would like to see in our lifetime, at the very least, we can begin to imagine it.

Unfortunately, white women who actively oppose white supremacy are overwhelmingly outnumbered by white women who don’t, those who are unwilling to do anything more than give lip service to equality while reaping the benefits of systemic racism, as well as overtly racist white women who are happily invested in white supremacy. Whatever the white women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s was, it was not a movement to confront or dismantle racism. And today, white women still fail, on a regular basis, to rigorously acknowledge their racism. This failure was quite obviously on display when, in 2016, 53 percent of white women voted in the presidential election for a white racist endorsed by the KKK.

Growing beyond our racial ignorance—and getting serious about disrupting white supremacy—requires developing an intersectional sensibility: awareness of interlocking systems of oppression and concern for a wide variety of marginalized groups. To put it bluntly: if you’re not thinking about race intersectionally, then you’re not thinking about race intelligently.

Being less stupid about racial politics means understanding that politicians—yes, even people of color—combine racist and antiracist ideas, mainly for the purpose of appealing to racists and their victims.

not caused a scandal for the vast majority of so-called liberals. Some say they “didn’t know” about Obama’s war crimes, his kill list of people he ordered assassinated, or the growing racial wealth gap on his watch. The same way, I suppose, that Trump supporters “don’t know” (or don’t care to know, or simply don’t care) about his racism, sexism, and lies.

In the early 1970s, Trump, his father, and their real estate company were sued by the federal government for systematically discriminating against African Americans. Undercover federal agents documented evidence of widespread bias against black prospective tenants and favoritism for whites throughout Trump’s properties. Former employees testified that they’d been instructed to restrict certain rentals to Jewish people and “executives” while they were “discouraged” from renting to African Americans.7 By 1989, Trump was taking out full-page ads in four different New York newspapers publicly calling for the execution of the Central Park Five—four African Americans and one Latino falsely accused of raping a white woman.

Trump is not some kind of alien creature that came here from outer space. His brand of crude white supremacy resonates with tens of millions of US citizens (as well as white nationalists and neo-Nazis across the globe) because his views align with many of the foundational principles upon which Western colonial expansion broadly, and the United States specifically, were established. And the issue here is not just that our nation’s founding principles were explicitly white supremacist, xenophobic, and imperialist. It’s that these principles have been actively maintained, institutionalized, and normalized for generations.29 The white supremacist in chief is a uniquely ugly and unseemly politician, but in many ways, we have always lived in Trump country.

racism is systematic and infiltrates our entire political system, and yes, voting for an overt racist and supporting his racist agenda is a racist thing to do.

But the main lesson most whites absorbed from the civil rights era wasn’t that they have a personal responsibility to fight systemic racism but, rather, that they have a responsibility to maintain a public appearance of being “nonracist” even as racism pervades their lives.

Thus, the problem, for many whites, isn’t white racism or systemic dominance; it’s a failed public performance of being nonracist. From this perspective, it becomes easier to understand why Trump’s public racism is frequently framed as shocking and abnormal, even though whites routinely express racist views and engage in discriminatory behavior behind closed doors.

White supremacist policies and practices ensure that people of color are disproportionately monitored, criminalized, policed, and incarcerated—and racist media coverage ensures that people of color are depicted in ways that justify those same policies and practices.

Millions of people go to sleep every night after being indoctrinated with police propaganda, inaccurate images of black criminality, and false portrayals of white innocence. And many of them wake up the next day proclaiming that they “don’t see race.” But we know from well-established research that the psychological consequences of being systematically exposed to racist ideas are wide-ranging.

What we need, quite desperately, is the willingness to cultivate revolutionary love, grounded in knowledge, compassion, courage, and collective action.

There are many things we all can do as individuals, organizations, and institutions to not only become more knowledgeable about systems of oppression but also to leverage our knowledge to bring about some of the positive change we’d like to see.

attaining racial literacy really is a major prerequisite to organizing for antiracist transformation,

Once you realize that a racist society inevitably socializes its citizens to absorb racist ideas and behave in a discriminatory way, then you’re less likely to be preoccupied with adjudicating whether an individual is or is not “a racist.”

the fight for racial justice is not just something that will help people of color—it’s vital for our collective well-being and maybe even for the survival of life on this planet.

The next time you hear someone claim that she “doesn’t see color,” understand that the person is really saying she doesn’t see racism. And, even better, tell the person that this is what she is saying.

And, perhaps most importantly, help ensure that children and adolescents in your sphere of influence understand that race is not just about “skin color” or “seeing race.” It’s a systemic problem that’s going to require collective mobilization to bring about enduring change—and youth have an important role to play in dismantling white supremacy.

If you’re not making powerful white people uncomforable, you’re doing antiracism wrong.

It’s not enough to talk about antiracism or reflect on our racial socialization. We have to commit to actively shifting resources to marginalized people—and not just people of color. Following in the footsteps of Combahee River Collective and Martin Luther King Jr., we have to link the struggles of the working class and poor to the exploitation of racialized minorities.