Racism always takes for granted the objective reality of race…so it is important to register their distinctness. The shorthand transforms racism, something an aggressor does, into race, something the target is, in a sleight of hand that is easy to miss.” A statement like “Black Southerners were segregated because of their skin color,” they say, is something students might find in textbooks and never blink an eye at. As Barbara Fields and Karen Fields explain in their book, that passive construction makes it seem as if segregation were completely natural, which absolves the enforcers of
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