Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010

Racism can be unconscious, too

Matthew Eisley's March 10 editor's column, "Don't assume racism," makes the mistake of assuming that racism must be conscious and deliberate to be racism.

The most damaging racism doesn't come from the guy in the white sheet marching around downtown Raleigh with a sign, it comes from the guy who won't give you a job because he doesn't think you'll fit in, and doesn't stop to consider that the only way you're different from anyone else on the team is that your skin is darker.

It comes from the boss who tells you your natural hair isn't "work-appropriate" and insists you straighten it or risk reprimand or even losing your job. It comes from the clerk who ignores you because he assumes you can't afford anything in the shop. From the cop who follows you down Interstate 40 for 20 miles even though you're not speeding, or pulls you over a block from your home because he doesn't think someone who looks like you could live around here.

And it comes from the school board and voters who decide that one parent's convenience is more important than another child's education, and from those "supporters of neighborhood schools" who will give only lip service to their "moral obligation to support quality in all schools."

All these people would no doubt be able to come up with all kinds of ways to prove that they're not racist. They have black friends! They voted for Obama!

But that doesn't change the effects of their actions. A person doesn't have to "be a racist" to have unexamined and unconscious racist assumptions; in our society it's practically impossible to avoid having some racist assumptions.

But it's incumbent upon us not to fall back on "but I'm not a racist" to excuse the effects of those assumptions, and to look instead for ways to mitigate those effects.

Saying that the opponents of busing weren't motivated by racism doesn't actually move the conversation forward, or help anything at all.

And it certainly doesn't do anything to help the children and families who will suffer because of this decision, regardless of what they believe their motivations to have been.

Rachel Cox

Raleigh