What does “racism” mean? Part 3/5 — What does “individual racism” mean?

Racial slurs. Burning crosses. Lynchings. Signs reading “whites only”. Blackface minstrels. Racial segregation. Project “wetback”. The Trail of Tears. Jim Crow. These are some of the things which, for many Americans, come most easily to mind when they think of “racism”. They are aggressive, individual acts of discrimination and violence motivated by racial differences. Some examples of racism are simply a disregard for the well being of people of another race. Others are active hatred accompanied by disdain and discrimination. Some examples of racism aren’t negative at first glance. If, for example, you look for Jewish people when you need an accountant because you think that they make good accountants then that is an act of racism. Some would say that if an action is motivated by someone else’s race in and of itself then that action is racist. While the specifics may vary, the common theme among all of these examples is that they exist in relation to an individual person. An individual person is either having racist thoughts, doing racist actions or otherwise existing in a way that is prejudicial towards people of particular races. This “individual racism” is the primary sense in which people generally use the term “racism” and will serve as the foundation for more complex usages examined in the next two essay sections.

Two main ways in which the word is used have to do with the differences between thought and action. Is someone racist because of the beliefs they hold or because of the actions they do? If you believe that someone did something racist out of ignorance but that they aren’t racist “in their heart” then you might not think that they are really racist. Alternatively you might not think it matters what someone thinks. You don’t want to act as the “thought police” and all you care about is whether or not someone behaves in racist ways. The most clear cut examples of racism in individuals are when a person does racist things on the overtly expressed basis of racist thoughts and motives. When both aspects aren’t clearly present though, what does it mean to say that someone is “being racist”? One of my childhood memories might shed some light on this question. Let’s talk for a second about the Ku Klux Klan.

I was in the Boy Scouts for a while and on one camping trip I was sharing a tent with another scout who I’ll call Ryan (names changed for obvious reasons). After staying up light telling ghost stories around a camp fire and roasting marshmallows we were having trouble getting to sleep and conversation turned to our insecurities. We were both worried, in very different ways, about living up to who our fathers expected us to be. I was a techno-nerd theater geek. My dad was a farmer and a mechanic. That led to a mismatch of reality and expectation. Ryan and his father, on the other hand, understood each other reasonably well. There was just one basic mismatch. Ryan’s father was a member of the KKK and Ryan didn’t hate black people. He had never burned a cross in anyone’s yard or anything so direct. He didn’t have any desire to. He liked the black people he knew and had nothing against them but he wanted to make his dad proud. He figured that if his dad wanted him to he’d probably join and maybe burn a cross. He was less certain about anything beyond that.

I enjoyed Ryan’s company and I think I still would if I were still in touch with him. He was a kind and strong person who on several occasions protected me from bullies. I believe that he was telling me the truth. He wasn’t racist “in his heart”. Not even a little bit. He just cared more about making his dad proud than he did about treating his neighbors with dignity and respect. Was he a racist? Of course he was. He was willing to participate in acts of terrorist violence against black people. Joining a violent hate group and terrorizing members of a specific race is archetypal “individual racism”. The fact that he wasn’t personally motivated by hatred of black people or by any other specifically racist motive is irrelevant. He was willing to do racist things on the basis of non-racist motives.

Consider the opposite hypothetical case. Let’s imagine the same scenario where Ryan’s father was a civil rights activist who marches for racial equality. Suppose Ryan had confided in me that despite the fact that he despised black people he was going to march with his dad to make him proud. Imagine that Ryan lived his entire life that way, hating black people “in his heart” but treating them with dignity and kindness while fighting for racial equity. At first he does it for the respect of his father then later for the respect of his peers but all the while believing “in his heart” that black people are inferior. If you can ignore for a moment the implausibility of that hypothetical, ask yourself whether you think Ryan is racist in that scenario. I still find myself personally saying “kinda” but I find this fictional version of Ryan to be substantially less racist than his real life counterpart. No matter what I think abstractly about the relevance of motive, racist action is what creates the largest visceral reaction.

Racist thoughts are relevant to understanding “individual racism” but primarily because they aid in understanding why racists do racist things. Common usage of the term generally reflects that. For example, phrases like “being racist” and “racist violence” appear in books much more frequently than phrases like “racist thought” and “racist beliefs”. Even the US Supreme Court’s understanding of the term reflects that. The concept of “disparate impact” determines whether or not some action was racially discriminatory (i.e. racist) by examining whether the action had meaningfully better or worse outcomes for one racial group or another. The Jim Crow laws were declared unconstitutional not because they included inherently racist ideas but because they disenfranchised black people at a much higher rate than they disenfranchised white people.

With those distinctions drawn, we can look a bit more in depth at some specific ways in which “racism” or “racist” is used. The first and simplest might be “acting racist” or “being racist”. If someone is “acting racist” or “being racist” then that is a comment about what they are doing in the moment. The former emphasizes what they are doing and the latter emphasizes their motives but both are situated firmly in the present. Those are both very different from someone who “is a racist”. Someone who “is a racist” might not be doing or thinking anything racist right this second but based on some persistent property which they have it’s likely that they will “be racist” at some point in the near future. Whether they “are racist” because of beliefs they hold or because of habits they often engage in isn’t specified. The claim being made is that even though they might not be “acting racist” right now, as soon as they’re in a situation where race is relevant they’ll probably start “being racist”. Those are the “racist people”.

All of those usages of “racist” and “racism” are fairly universally understood among English speaking people in America. If that’s all there was to “racism” then it would clearly follow that “stopping racism” or “putting an end to racism” would involve making people stop engaging in racist behavior. In order to “stop racism” you make people stop “being racist”. Once you’ve gotten people to stop “being racist” all that’s left is people accidentally “acting racist”. This logic follows straightforwardly from the basic understanding of “individual racism”. When people declare that “racism is over” what they are saying is that “individual racism” has become rare. In summary, “individual racism” is “racism” where “racist people” are “being racist” and “stopping racism” is about changing the beliefs and behaviors of many individual “racists”. The next section will examine the question of whether it’s possible to have “racism” without “racists”.