We Are All Racist: Matters in Black and White

Patricia Digh

By Patricia Digh

In 1979, the year that five people were killed by the KKK on a downtown street during a Klan rally in what became known as the Greensboro Massacre, a young white college student fell in love with a fellow student, a black man.

Living in Greensboro, the couple was jeered, spat at, and threatened when they walked to school. They were shunned, or worse, when they dared to eat in a restaurant or shopped for groceries together.



I
was that college student nearly 30 years ago. Those experiences led me
to a career focused on racism, other “isms,” and broader differences
often called “diversity.” A friend asked recently if I thought race
relations had improved in the ensuing three decades. My answer was
swift, short, and to the point: “No.”


While we are
more subtle and more “politically correct” about racism in this country
now, and while interracial couples are more prevalent than they were in
the late 1970s when I experienced such overt hatred, America in the
21st century is a nation still divided by race. Despite the promises of
the civil rights movement, most of us live isolated from any meaningful
contact with members of another race, which allow stereotypes and
inequities to persist.


A December 2006
CNN report notes that most Americans, white and black, see racism as a
lingering problem in the United States, and many say they know people
who are racist, according to a new poll conducted by the Opinion
Research Corporation. But few Americans of either race — about one out
of eight — consider themselves racist. And that’s the problem. Where we
can’t own our personal involvement in a racist system, we can’t help.


Says University
of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for
more than 30 years, “We’ve reached a point that racism is like a virus
that has mutated into a new form that we don’t recognize. Contemporary
racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it
gets expressed indirect and subtle ways.”


“Consciously, we
all endorse egalitarian values because that’s the American way,”
Dovidio says. “But we’ve grown up in a society where historically
blacks have not been treated equal. Racial stereotypes that are
perpetuated in the media are less favorable of blacks than whites. Our
culture has had a racist tradition embedded in it.”


He adds: “Human
beings have a natural tendency to categorize people as either ‘like
you,’ or ‘not like you.’ Cross-culturally, you find that if you
categorize somebody as in your group, you like them better than
somebody not in your group. In America, race is one of those critical
dimensions that are an automatic categorization.”


So while many
people endorse egalitarian principles and don’t believe they are
prejudiced, in fact they’re exposed to negative societal forces and
have unconscious negative feelings and beliefs, Dovidio says.


Many Americans
believe that racism is over because it is rarely overt, making it
difficult to engage in discussions that will address the problems that
clearly persist. Yet this is an issue that impacts all Americans. A
failure to address the underclass we are creating because we do not
wish to acknowledge the persistence of racism will be a disaster for a
country that in a knowledge economy will increasingly need the
contributions of every one of its citizens in order to survive and
thrive.


Several
incidents over the past decades have served as sharp reminders of
racism: the police beating of black motorist Rodney King, the shooting
death of African immigrant Amadou Diallo by police in New York, the
burning of synagogues, mosques and black churches, the dragging death
of James Byrd Jr. in Texas, the shootings at a Jewish cultural center
in Los Angeles, and discriminatory practices revealed in lawsuits
against Denny’s restaurants and the Adams Mark hotel chain, among other
corporations.


In the face of
these egregious examples, racist practices today are more subtle and
elusive than those at the height of the civil rights movement, and
threaten to undermine the significant progress made in race relations
since the 1960s.


We are all
racists. Ours is a discriminatory nature — we discriminate what is
“like me” and “not like me.” We won’t ever stop doing that. But having
that thought and acting on it are two different things. We must notice
that first thought, and work on the second.


When my oldest
daughter was in the first grade, she stopped me cold with just 16
words. “Mom,” she said as we stopped at a traffic light near Dupont
Circle in Washington, DC, where we lived. “Why do you always lock the
doors when a black man comes toward our car?” 


It’s not a story that I’m proud of — in fact,
I’m utterly ashamed of it, particularly because of my college boyfriend
— but it was an important lesson for me. My first reaction was to be
defensive. “I don’t!,” I quickly said. “No, you’re wrong, honey,” I
wanted to say. “I don’t do that. That wouldn’t be right. I train people
about racism. I have black friends. I would never do that.”


I knew she was
right. I didn’t do it all the time, but I did it enough that she
noticed. Actually, once was enough. And, truthfully, I knew that the
black men outside my auto fortress knew it too; they heard the click.
Always.


Nelson Mandela
once said: “your smallness will not save the world.” To end racism, we
must make bold strokes and be active anti-racists. We must acknowledge
our unearned privileges, accept our own racism, and own this problem
ourselves, each individual one of us.


Patricia Digh’s
first book, Global Literacies (Simon & Schuster), was named a
Fortune magazine “Best Business Book” in 2000. Her second book, The
Global Diversity Desk Reference was published by John Wiley in 2003.
She consults internationally on diversity issues and is based in
Asheville. She can be reached atpatti-at-thecircleproject.com