Bigot-Proof Vest: Are You Wearing Yours?
by Racialicious special correspondent Wendi Muse
The definition of racism is very broad:
rac•ism –noun
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
Yet I noticed in many of the responses to Latoya’s post “4th Generation Racist: Can You Be Anti-Racist If You’re Anti-White?” , a few comment posters focused more on the subcategory of racism listed as #2, mixed with a little bit of #1, as opposed to remembering #3. I say this because I saw many people discussing the so-called technical “inability” of people of color to actually be racist.
They are not the only ones who think this way. I see it quite often in written work, both casual and academic, by people of color and white allies. However, I am going to go out on a limb here and respectfully disagree.
People of color can most certainly be racist, and denying that sets back some of the anti-racist activism that we rely upon for change. Just because we are “of color,” I don’t believe that we are all equipped with some immunity, some bigot-proof vest, that guards us from taking in and arming ourselves with racism as a weapon against others. If we buy this, it allows us to continue to a) think of whites as the only “enemy,” people of color as the only “victims” of oppression, and b) to lie to ourselves about a fictional binary with whites on one side and people of color on the other, people of color usually being portrayed as infallible, when it couldn’t be further from the truth. It also sets us back because it places blame on one group while simultaneously deflecting from the internal problems we need to work out to achieve a greater sense of POC solidarity.
In addition, by denying that people of color can be racist, we are discounting the experiences of people for whom intra-racial hatred is a very deep-seated issue. It reminds me somewhat of the discussions of statutory rape in which the female is the perpetrator of the crime, the male the victim. Because we are not conditioned to hearing such cases of role “reversal,” because women don’t fit into our typical idea of a sexual predator, and because men are seen as the dominant sex, to think of women as perpetrators of sexual assault and/or coercion tends to throw us off, often with the press ignoring the fact that a crime was committed at all and instead focusing on some distracting factor like how “lucky” the victim was to have an older woman come onto him or how “hot” the criminal is. The rape/sex offense becomes trivialized by way of our collectively internalized gender norms and we lose sight of what really happened.
I think accounts of racism that whites may experiences from people of color and/or racism between people of color are treated in a similar way, at least if we do not consider it racism in the first place. Some argue that if we are not in the position to wield power, then we technically cannot be the carriers and perpetrators of racism. I cannot speak for all people of color, and certainly do not claim to do so in this post, but I know plenty of people, myself included, who can cite instances of racism involving other people of color, not necessarily just whites, the usual villains in accounts of race-based prejudice and discrimination.
Though this seems somewhat counter to the usual assumption that the South is “more racist” than the North, I experienced more discrimination and witnessed more instances of racism in New York City than in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, most of it intra-racial conflict, in fact. It seemed that while many of the whites I encountered may have held internal racist beliefs, they rarely acted on them in such brazen ways as the people of color who bore hatred for other groups of color (again, not a sweeping generalization here, just a recounting of my personal experiences). Examples include being spit at when walking through Chinatown with my Asian-American ex, seeing older black women glare at black male/white female interracial couples, overhearing an Eastern European woman express her disgust that an Asian man who was lost in the subway station did not speak English, and being stuck in a car with a South Asian driver who hated Hasidic Jews (so much so that he failed to yield when they were crossing the street).
It seems that as a result of our being at constant competition for the same resources, relations between people of color are made even more intense (in comparison to their relationship with whites). The scramble for the top becomes one that involves climbing over others, even if it means co-opting the racism they may have learned from whites (or, in general, West-controlled media sources . . . i.e. the purveyance of negative stereotypes of blacks by way of news reporting, tv shows, and music abroad in the same vein of negative stereotypes of Arabs here in the U.S.). But I am apprehensive to blame whites or even the West for all of these stereotypes, especially considering that some racism existed in some cultures long before contact with whites. Cases of colorism provide an excellent example. Of course, colonialism aided this desire to have lighter skin as it became synonymous with institutional power and presence, but it has origins in class stratification (darker skin = more exposure to sun by way of hard labor). If such standards are carried over into relationships with say, darker skinned peoples of the world, for example, if a person of Japanese descent held prejudice against a person of Pakistani descent based on skin color, is this not racism? What would we call it if it is not? Would we have some ready-made excuse for the hatred simply because the person exhibiting such beliefs is considered a person of color (in the United States)?
I also wonder whether or not we would be heavily relying upon Western concepts of race to even misdiagnose racism when it is right under our noses? In assuming that people of color cannot be racist (toward one another or whites), we are disregarding the varied global concepts of race. Who is “of color” in the United States may be “white” in terms of power elsewhere, as I touched on in a previous post. This being said, that individual may have never experienced oppression in his/her society of origin, and may consider him/herself to be superior to one group or another based on that very fact. Of course, this may change dramatically once the person moves to another country, city, or community, but that does not mean that he or she will all of a sudden share a sense of solidarity with the oppressed that he/she once rejected as inferior, nor does it mean that those feelings will subside due to the lowered social status.
So while this is more of a glorified comment than a real post, I just wanted to add my two cents to the discussion in a more formal manner. I look forward to reading comments that expand on both my points and the comments left on Latoya’s post as I sincerely value the element of discussion here on this site.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
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