The -Isms Are Individual And Systemic, And This Is Critically Important

Happy New Year! We're back; thanks for your patience. Lots of reading over here. And let's skip the resolutions and just jump in. 

Old-school thesis statement: If we white people want to help make real change for justice, we need to better understand history, better understand our country's current situation, and take meaningful action.

This week we're dealing with the second: the current situation. I'm proposing a major paradigm shift.
 

How American White People Tend to Picture Racism

Maybe the goblins look like this. Source

We have this vague image:

Racism is like an army of nasty, tiny green goblins who each, like Teen Talk Barbie, can only say about six things. There are around a million of these goblins in this country, and they live in the personal hearts of bigoted, uneducated people. Those people share their bigotry at parties with confederate flag-printed napkins, where the conversations consist entirely of the goblins' six terrible lines, like the N-word or the sentence "Mexico is so dirty," repeated ad infinitum.

Occasionally, one of the goblins somehow jumps out of that scene and into your grandma’s heart to make her say something terrible. But then it leaves, because your grandma’s heart is an otherwise green and pleasant garden with no food for goblins. A goblin jumped into Paula Deen’s heart for a few years, but it’s gone now.

Once in a blue moon (like if we catch ourselves instinctively locking the car door upon seeing a black man cross the street), we worry that a goblin may have snuck into our personal heart. This worry makes us sick, so we smile extra hard at the next person of color we see, to indicate to the goblin that, like our grandma’s, our heart is pure and sunny, and we are good people who are not racist.

We think racism is A Thing Inside An Individual, and we spend a lot of time and energy checking and rechecking: Do we have the thing? Do other people think we have the thing? How can you know?

This image of racism is not accurate or useful. 
 

A Better Way to Think About Racism (and Other -Isms)

Instead, I propose Race Forward's Levels of Racism paradigm. This is so important that we'll spend all week working it through, but Jay Smooth (!) offers an excellent overview in this short video. Start at the 1:00 mark to skip the intro.

How This Paradigm Will Change The Game, Once We Really Get It

• It takes my personal heart out of the center of the story and gives me more to do than just Working On Me and Worrying About My Grandma. (These are necessary, but not sufficient.)
• It helps our conversations with other white people, which tend to stall when someone says, "Well, I'm not racist. Do you think I'm racist?!" 
• It has implications for every -ism out there. That is, we can talk about structural sexism, institutional heterosexism...etc. THIS IS BIG, FRIENDS.

What To Do Today

• Watch the video above at least once, ideally twice.
• Explain to a friend or family member the difference between individual and systemic racism, and why it matters, just as a trial run. Choose someone sympathetic/on the same page as you, as this will be clumsy. (If you have my number, call me!) Trying to explain it will both help cement it in your brain and reveal your questions about it. 

More tomorrow!