It’s Time To Admit That You Have Internalized Racism And Move Forward.

OK!

Yesterday we learned that racism is both individual and systemic. If you haven’t read yesterday’s post yet, go and come back; we’ll wait for you. Jay Smooth’s 3.5-minute video will change your life.

Here's a self-portrait I made. Those dots are internalized racism. Someone please Prime me an artist; thx.

Here's a self-portrait I made. Those dots are internalized racism. Someone please Prime me an artist; thx.

Today we’re going to hit INTERNALIZED RACISM, the first type of individual racism. In this post, I’m talking both to us and to the white people we’ll be passing this on to, because when you’re having sticky conversations, talking points are Absolutely Key.

Here’s Race Forward’s definition of internalized racism, lightly edited for clarity:

INTERNALIZED RACISM lies within individuals. It’s comprised of our private beliefs and biases about ourselves and others based on race (these beliefs are influenced by our culture—but expressed privately, internally).


INFOMERCIAL TIME.

Friends! My life changed significantly when I learned and accepted…

  • That the –isms are everywhere, and that I had absorbed them, even when I wasn’t trying to. Even when I was trying not to.
  • That the answer to the question, “Am I racist?” is always twofold: “Yes,” and “That’s not the whole story of racism.”
  • That when we say “well, I’m not racist”—for all intents and purposes, that’s not true, and it’s not possible.
  • That we really need to spend less energy trying to prove to ourselves and others that we haven’t absorbed racism and spend more energy uprooting and replacing it.


Not Convinced? OK, Let’s Switch Gears, Then.

Lots of white people strongly resist admitting to harboring any racism because of the Goblin Paradigm (see yesterday’s post). So instead, let’s back off for a moment and consider racism’s punk analogue, sexism—particularly women’s beauty standards.

In 2017, most thoughtful progressive American people will grant the following:

  • Women are held to a range of unfair societal standards of beauty. These standards are sexist in that they set the bar of cultural acceptability far higher for women than for men. For example: if my eyebrows looked like my husband’s eyebrows, you would not find my face culturally acceptable. (You might not find my face at all, but that is neither here nor there.)
  • Individual men can internalize and perpetuate sexist standards—for example, by expecting a woman to lose weight quickly after giving birth.
  • Individual women can internalize and perpetuate sexist standards—for example, by denigrating their own or other women’s hair or clothes.
  • Cultural systems (both official and unofficial) also perpetuate sexist standards. You know the culprits: magazines, advertising, Disney princesses, the entire hair dye–industrial complex. School uniform policies that put girls in skirts and boys in pants. Workplace dress codes urging makeup for women. (Ugh.)
  • Now that our culture recognizes the harmfulness of these beauty standards, we expect and encourage individual people to be regularly interrogating and improving their personal approaches to women’s beauty. Women remind their friends that losing five more pounds won’t change their lives. Men learn to compliment their daughters’ and granddaughters’ strength and smarts, not just their pretty dresses. We apply Positive Peer Pressure to individuals who refuse to grow in these ways.
  • We don’t stop there, though, because we know that individual changes alone won’t do the trick. The marketplace is rewarding Dove’s Real Beauty and Aerie’s No Photoshop ad campaigns. Publications like Rookie and even TEEN FREAKING VOGUE are turning their gaze from prettiness to ideas. Fairer beauty standards are slowly percolating up from the grassroots and down from tastemakers.

That is, we’ve evolved to a place where we’re willing to admit that pervasive cultural sexism exists in the form of women’s beauty standards; we readily admit that we as individuals have internalized those standards to our and others’ detriment; we work alone and with loved ones to become kinder, more just, and more realistic with regard to those standards; and we demand and create changes in our societal systems.

IT. IS. THE. SAME. WITH. RACISM. Read back through that bold sentence above and replace each reference to sexism with a reference to racism.
 

The Upshot

Have you internalized at least some racism, just like you've internalized at least some cultural beauty standards?

Yes.

Does that mean that your invitation to the confederate-flag-themed party is in the mail, addressed to Unredeemable Jerk?

No.

Does it mean that you have work to do on your own beliefs and behavior?

Yes.

But can you hereby, right now, stop trying to prove to yourself and everyone else that you’re A Not-Racist Good Person?

Yes, please.

Can you, instead, devote that energy to changing your/our institutions and systems?

HELL YES.

Tell someone about this today, to help it sink in and reveal questions. And let me know how it hits you. Questions? Concerns? Extensions or applications? Comment below or email questions (at) forloveandaction (dot) com. Back later this week.

LearnMichelle Bard