Is the Label of "Racist" Overused?

I’ve come to the conclusion that people overuse the word racist. Please let me explain what I mean. Racism is a complicated thing, and most people mistakenly believe that racism is simply overt hatred for a person of another race or ethnicity. That would be prejudice, and while that can certainly be seen as a symptom of racism, it goes much deeper than that. Racism is usually cultivated over time. It becomes woven in the very fabric of cultural norms. It begins with negative attitude about another group, and maybe mistreatment and discrimination. In our own history, for example, African Americans began as slaves; property. Once freed and extended citizenship, the attitudes people had about African Americans didn’t change. They still saw them as lesser Americans, and passed laws that limited their rights and ability to participate equally in our society. Over the course of centuries, that systemic treatment of African Americans became the norm. No one questioned it. If you were born white (even poor), at least you didn’t have to deal with the crap African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, or Latinos had to go through. There was a level of racial and social privilege that came with it. People of different races were kept in separate communities and separate in all social facilities. In no way was it ever equal. It was deliberate, and largely that segregation still exists today.

Here’s what changed. The Civil Rights Movement made this division and inequality a national conversation. Suddenly, people were standing up and fighting for their rights. Aside from the abolition of separate but equal conditions, this movement made outward, blatant prejudice socially unacceptable. Beforehand, it wasn’t uncommon for people to use racial slurs as part of their normal vernacular. But after the movement had finally settled down, not only could businesses no longer turn people away over skin color, it became wrong to call people by these racial slurs. But while we taught America that being racist was bad, we didn’t really define it, and we really only addressed certain aspects of it.

Racism is more commonly defined today by social scientists as a condition where one dominant racial group uses social and governmental institutions to limit the rights of people of a non-dominant racial group. For most of US history, this has been true. When people say that we’ve moved past that time, we have so in one sense, but the infrastructure is still there. We no longer call each other by those words used in the past. We may not even harbor any ill will or negative attitudes for people in the minority, but we have to realize that those systemic aspect of racism still lie beneath the surface in the form of stereotypes, segregation, and even the discounting of the lives and conditions often experienced by those who come from those minority groups.

It’s hard to see that from the perspective of a white person. We have largely experienced a different America, and it’s almost impossible to see the world through the eyes of others. That should be acknowledged. Here’s where I say the racist label is overused, and perhaps a little unfair.

One of the things white Americans are most sensitive about is being deemed a racist. That’s a powerful word; a powerful label. People get really upset when you call them a racist, or even imply that they are. I would even go as far as to say that saying, “that’s racist” may cause a person to think you’re calling them a racist. Truly, in their hearts, they believe they are not. They don’t hate people of other races or ethnicities. Perhaps they have friends in those groups. Maybe they occasionally step into that trap where they are either ignorant to something they didn’t realize about the other group, or they might mistakenly say something that plays into a stereotype or something that is insensitive. Hell, I do it from time to time. But I don’t think that makes a person racist.

People break the law all the time. I’m sure I drive faster than the speed limit at least 95% of the time. I have run red lights and driven with my seat belt unbuckled. Does that make me a criminal? I have committed crimes, but am I deserving of the label? The label changes everything. It comes with a stigma. If you were to tell someone who didn’t know me that I’m a criminal, they might assume that I rob people on a regular basis or something worse. They wouldn’t be thinking about traffic violations. I don’t even think we really view people with DWI convictions as criminals, and that’s something we take very seriously as a society. Furthermore, placing a suffix like –ist at the end of a word implies that a person is actively operating something. A motorist actively drives a car. You’re not a motorist if you’re a passenger. A racist, to me, might do more to describe someone who actively uses a prejudiced attitude and sees people of a non-dominant race as inferior. David Duke? Racist. Neo-Nazis? Racist. You’re Uncle Joe that uses the n-word every five minutes? Probably racist. I believe that most people, when they say they’re not racist, are probably being truthful. They don’t dislike another on the basis of skin color or ethnic background. They may say things, often without realizing, that are part of the remnant infrastructure of racism. They may even say or do things that are racist. But I don’t think that necessarily makes them deserving of the label of racist. Why not reserve that word for true, blatant racists? Don’t cheapen the power of that word by using it to describe anyone who says something insensitive. It corrupts the conversation about what racism is, and how to change its presence in society. 

Moving Forward: The Trump Presidency

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, there are a lot of emotions taking hold. Supporters are gleeful, if not perhaps a little bit shocked themselves. Some may see him as a Godsend of an alternative to the partisan establishments. Others see him as a reprieve from what they consider the loathsome Obama years.  Of course, on the left, there is sadness and horror. How could someone as pompous and disgusting be chosen as president? Can we trust him with the nuclear codes? We see the scatterplot of triumph and dismay apparent in every conversation you’ve heard since Election Day and in your social media feed. With much speculation about where America goes from here, this what I think to be a reality.

From a legal and legislative perspective, chances are that not much will change. With a Republican-controlled Congress and White House, there is a great potential for some policymaking that conservatives might champion. But with that said, I don’t think you can expect massive rollbacks in laws that exist. Obamacare comes to mind. They’ve tried to repeal it dozens of times since 2009, and it always fails. The truth is that there are millions of people that actually benefit from it despite rising premiums and whatever your racist cousin might say about it all. And these beneficiaries fall both in the liberal and conservative spectrums. At this point, only two years from midterm elections, the GOP has a vested interest in holding control over both houses for as long as possible. The last thing they need is backlash from the working class costing them conservative votes, as well as energizing Democrats in 2018. If anything, you’ll see some Republican tweaking of Obamacare, not a repeal. And maybe, just maybe, red states will now accept the Medicaid expansion money now that Obama’s cooties aren’t all over it.

I certainly don’t think you will see a lot of real backtracking on civil rights. Americans are very conscious of this—even conservatives to some degree. In the age of social media, we are all plugged in, and we are all watching. Social views are changing, and anytime there is a threat to civil rights, there is an immediate response. I don’t think the GOP wants to continue to be the party of archaic social views. They might not want to go as far as progressivism on these, but they’re not going to undo marriage equality for gay and lesbian people. Again, they don’t want Democrats energized for 2018, and they don’t want to be the prejudiced party. Plus, it’s hard to overturn Supreme Court precedence.

And that’s another element I’m not quite as worried about. There is an open seat on the Supreme Court. And as you may well know, the Senate, controlled by Republicans, has obstructed the appointment of a new justice for the last two hundred-plus days since Antonin Scalia’s death. So now, as was the plan, they will fill that seat on the bench with another conservative. But try to understand that though this will be a conservative pick, he or she will replace another conservative. Really, Scalia was one of the most conservative justices they had, and yet marriage equality was still approved. Yes, a conservative majority Supreme Court will sometimes lean right on certain decisions, but rest assured that they are still bound by the constitution, and when it comes to equal protection and civil rights, they will usually rule in favor of American equality.

That being said, I’m a white guy. Almost nothing will change for me other than not feeling aligned with many of the views of our new president. But I have no need to fear when I step into public. I won’t be met with racism and discrimination. I’m a white male raised as a Christian. So my experience with this election and the days, months, and years to follow will differ from that of gays and lesbians or Muslim Americans. And I can tell you that my friends and students who are members of minority groups are frightened. Can you imagine being a Muslim woman who wears a hijab (head scarf) for your religion, and feeling afraid enough that you can’t even carry out religious duties? Muslims, Latinos, gays, lesbians, and African Americans all tell me they’re afraid. They’re not afraid of what Donald Trump will do. They’re afraid of what his supporters will do.

That statement isn’t meant to equate Trump supporters in general with bigots by any means. But consider this:  the KKK and the American Nazi Party both endorsed him. And I think it’s safe to say that there were a lot of actual racists and bigots that did support and vote for Trump. You can see this in his rhetoric throughout the campaign. With all the things that he has said about Mexicans or Muslims throughout his campaign, it’s quite possible that very little of that aligns with his actual beliefs. He said those things to get elected. There is no wall. Never was. A real estate developer with contractors on his speed dial has a year and a half to come up with estimates, dimensions, and plans for a wall, and right after the election, still has none of those things? It was just something that some conservatives wanted to hear. The same goes for his position on Muslims. He’s playing to the cheap seats—the people that actually believe Sharia Law is coming.

That seems relatively harmless, I know. Oh, maybe he’s not as racist or xenophobic as we thought. Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. That remains to be seen. But here’s what I do know. There are people out there who voted for him because of that rhetoric, meaning there are some people out there who hate Mexicans, Muslims, gays, and African Americans, and they voted for Trump. And since he won, perhaps they feel represented, and thus emboldened. And for the people in these minority groups, this is a terrifying thought. Again, before you shrug off this notion, please take a moment to remember that if you’re not a member of those groups, you might not understand this the way they do. You haven’t walked in those shoes.

Folks, it’s probably going to be okay. And if you don’t like the result of this election, get out there and vote next time. But please don’t perpetuate hate, regardless of your views or who you wanted in office. We are all Americans. You may feel like you took your country back or you had your country taken away from you. But this country belongs to all of us. 

It's Going to Be Alright: The Fight Over Bathrooms in America

I remember the day I finally understood gay people. I worked with a guy named Adam in the last year or so of college, and he was openly gay. I obviously knew what it was to be homosexual, and I can say with all honesty that I held no prejudice for them. But as a straight man, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how a person could be gay, and that was simply because…I’m not. It’s not that dissimilar from the idea that as a white male, I could really never understand what it’s like to experience racism as a black man, or experience sexism as a woman. Adam changed my life because he finally put it into terms that my straight mentality could understand. I remember asking him (and perhaps it was a bit forward, but he was cool with it), “so when did you realize you were gay?” I totally expected him to give me this story about suddenly realizing he had a crush on Lance Bass when he was a sophomore in high school. Up until this point, the extent of what I understood about my sexuality was rooted in my adolescent years—the time period where I took more of an active interest in girls. But he didn’t answer like that. He didn’t even answer with an answer. He answered with a question:  “When did you realize you were straight?” I was taken slightly aback by the question, and then I started thinking about it. No, really thinking about it. I realized that it was long before my hormone-driven adolescence. It was that day in the lunch line when I was in kindergarten—the day that this little dark-haired girl named Lee Anne ran up and kissed me on the cheek. I remember how excited I was, and I realized that was probably the earliest moment I could remember knowing I was straight. And then Adam said, “yeah, it was right around that age for me too.” From that moment on, I understood what it really is to be gay, straight, bi, or whatever. It is what it is, and at that point, this wasn’t so foreign, and therefore, it wasn’t at all frightening.

Fear plays the most active role in this hotly burning social issue over transgender people and what bathroom they use. Fear of the unknown. Fear of things beyond a person’s common capacity of understanding. Fear of something that challenges the status quo. Everyone wants to feel represented in society. For some people, a black man in the White House challenges their status quo. Or turning on the TV and seeing two men kiss on How to Get Away With Murder. Or calling their bank and finding that there is an option to hear the instructions in Spanish. Or seeing a Mosque being built in their community. Or seeing that there are politicians who aren’t huge fans of guns. What often scares people most is people that are different, and have the exact same Constitutional rights as the people in the majority. Sociologists would call this the classic social conflict that permeates every culture in the world—the powerful and those with less power. The powerful like to remain powerful, and that means restricting others.

We’ve seen this before. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s inspired a lot of other groups to directly challenge social norms. After Dr. King, hippies openly opposed the Vietnam War and promoted free love. After that, feminists began staging their own protests of inequality between men and women. Another movement in the 70s was a mass, collective “coming out” of thousands of gay and lesbian Americans, despite a society that grossly misunderstood and mischaracterized them. Harvey Milk was one of the best known organizers of this movement who fought against, among other things, a push to disallow gay people from being teachers, for fear that they might molest your kids. Because few people before this time had ever really decided to live in society as openly gay, this sudden rush of closet vacating was new and scary to the heteronormative status quo. People didn’t understand, much like I didn’t in my youth. This fear generated and then perpetuated by lawmakers and officials drove an angry movement to deny gay people of their civil rights. Today, the notion that a gay person is somehow more likely to molest a kid is preposterous. We know better. Regardless of whether or not you feel it’s morally okay or whatever, almost all of us can now agree that gay people are not, by nature, sexual predators.

We may be over the fear and outrage, for the most part, over openly gay people. People are acclimated to it. Gay people aren’t going anywhere. They aren’t hurting anyone. And they’re probably having more fun than you. But the same thing that happened to gays and lesbians in the 70s is happening to transgender people today. Just like being gay, it is a thing, and it is here. And…it has always been around. You can find evidence of it throughout history and across cultures. But it is the newest scary thing to Americans. Yesterday, it was Muslims. People freak out and then try to characterize perfectly normal people as dangerous simply because they are unknown and misunderstood. And how could you understand what transgender is? You’re not transgender. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that these folks are dangerous.

Try to think of it this way. As Adam asked me all those years ago, “when did you realize…?” A hundred years ago, Freud did some work on this. He observed that people commonly come to understand themselves as “boy” or “girl” somewhere between the ages of 3 and 6. It’s a period of time he called “identification”. Largely, these notions of boy and girl are laden with social norms, social expectations, and gender stereotypes. We even attach sexuality with the concept of gender, which is incorrect (look no further than Laverne Cox’s character on Orange is the New Black to see that a transgender woman can still be attracted to women). Either way, little kids learn early on what boy and girl is, and they identify themselves based on a combination of personal traits/feelings and social pressures. When you know what you are, you just know what you are. Ask any LGBTQ person, and they’ll likely tell you the same thing. And if a person “suddenly decides” in adulthood that they are a transgender person, it’s more likely that they always were, but only now have the courage to live as they truly are.

What’s happening today with this bathroom issue is exactly what happened to gay people in the 70s. It’s new and it’s scary, so people saddle transgender people with all these negative mischaracterizations. Let’s face it, when people are suddenly concerned with safety of people in the restroom, they’re not just worried about people who would take advantage of more accommodating policies. They’re often outright equating transgender people with sex offenders. They’re viewed as simply men dressed as women, and therefore entering the women’s bathroom is sexual offense. But the thing is, this kind of thing has been happening forever. Men have been caught mounting hidden cameras in dressing rooms, tanning beds, and bathrooms. They’ve assaulted women and even kids in public restrooms. We learn to look out for this. We inform and prepare our kids. We keep a watchful eye. If anything looks wrong, we take action. And chances are, the transgender person entering the bathroom is going to go unnoticed. They will look the part and they’ll just go to the bathroom, and then leave. That’s it. They just want to pee. If you see someone of ANY gender identity doing anything inappropriate like taking pictures, assaulting someone, or ogling your goods, you take action. It has always been this way. These acts are inappropriate regardless of whether a person is male, female, or transgender. And there has never been mass outrage. None until now. Now that it involves people who are different, therefore scary, therefore demonized.

So the way I see it, this will pass. There will be a fight. Gay and lesbian folks know this struggle all too well. Society will evolve on this. With enough time, they will come to see that, agree with it or not, trans people aren’t dangerous. They’re just people. They eat, drink, love, and poop like everyone else. And they are Americans. That means they have the same rights as anyone else, whether you like it or not. Please, can we return this non-issue to being a non-issue and get back to figuring out poverty and starvation?