Essay: "Racism"

It often seems to me that it is not particularly useful to call people racist. I think it is best to call statements, decisions or actions racist, and separate that judgment from making an overall assessment of a person as “racist” or “not racist.”


The sad fact is, as Sarah Silverman sings, that everyone is a little bit racist (although some certainly more so than others). Take, for example, Mel Gibson. This is a man who has certainly said some racist things. On the other hand, he apparently gets along well, one a one-to one basis, with members of the groups he so virulently disparages. Furthermore, some of his actions (such as spending something like $40 million of his own money on a film starring Native Americans and filmed in Yucatec Maya dialogue) are not consistent with the typical actions of a racist.

I’m sure most of us have elderly relatives who we are terrified might say something atrocious in mixed company or public but get along very well, on an individual level, with members of the races that they profess to despise. Some people just have a disconnect between groups of people on an abstract level and the actual, you know, people they deal with on a day to day basis.

Calling someone a racist is also a very difficult label to shed. Remember Mr. Gibson’s elaborate apology after his drunken anti-Jewish rant. Not good enough, many cried. I remembered thinking: well okay, what is good enough then? What can he do except apologize? Does the label of racist stick with you forever, even after you retract your statements? Does one racist remark override everything else you do or say?

Better, in my opinion, to avoid making judgments about people. Hard to say what’s going on in anyone’s head or heart, unless they’re the Grand Dragon of the KKK or a card-carrying Illinois Nazi. Racism lives in all of our hearts, a little bit, in the assumptions we make when we meet someone before we start to think. Dividing people into the good “non-racists” and the bad “racists” is unhelpful because it camouflages the real problem. It leads us to believe we only need to defeat or shame a group of enemies rather than continually hold ourselves up to the highest standards.

It is much more useful, in my opinion, to point out that particular statement or action is racist. However, even this, I think, is of limited utility and not often advisable. First, if we make too many allegations of racism, we can become like the boy who cried wolf. If everyone who opposes Israel is anti-Jewish, pretty soon being called anti-Jewish is no big deal. You can already start to see this happening, I think, on university campuses, where both students and faculty will make astonishingly anti-Jewish remarks and then roll their eyes at you like you’re a speechwriter for George W. Bush if you call them on it.

But more fundamentally, if we want to argue against a position, it seems to me that determining whether that position is racist is often a red herring. For example, imagine the following conversation:

Racist: The fact that there has never been a [MINORITY] judge on the Supreme Court of Canada proves that [MINORITIES] are not good lawyers.

Non-Racist: That’s racist!

Basically, what happened in this exchange is that the racist made a flawed argument. However, the non-racist, rather than responding to the argument and pointing out its flaws, has just labelled the argument as racist, and by extension, implied that the person making the argument is a racist.

This is, of course, a perfectly understandable response on behalf of the non-racist, particularly if that individual is a member of a historically disadvantaged group. It is also, I think, an accurate statement. However, it is, in my opinion, not a particularly useful one.

Having had his or her opinion labelled as racist, the racist will probably shut up. But the racist has not learned why this opinion is wrong, and may (and probably will) continue to hold it. The racist will keep on being racist. It would have been better, I think, for the non-racist (if possible) to avoid losing his or her temper and explain why the racist’s opinion was just plain wrong, rather than attempting to characterize it as racist or non-racist.

And this leads me to my next point. Are we so sure we even know why there has never been a [MINORITY] judge on the Supreme Court of Canada? I don’t believe that the people in charge of making the appointments are racist themselves. Frankly, I think they’d love to be the first one to appoint a [MINORITY] judge to the Supreme Court of Canada, to cement their status as “non-racists.” Does that mean that the main reason that there has never been a [MINORITY] judge on the Supreme Court of Canada is that there aren’t any qualified candidates? If so, why not? Is their racism at the lower levels of judicial appointments? Are the law firms discriminating against candidates? Are the law schools? How do we fix the problem? Do we have to dig even deeper, all the way down to high school, to elementary school, to the family? Is there all this hidden racism out there? If so, how do we know it exists? How do we fight it? What do we do?

I’m not going to get into this in great detail, but you can see where I’m heading. The bottom line is that if we want to solve a problem then we have to understand what’s causing it. Calling things “racist” can be a convenient way of getting people to shut up who are pointing out facts that don’t fit in with our beliefs. It also can be an entirely accurate assessment and emotionally satisfying. But I don’t think it really gets us anywhere.

None of this means we should stop speaking out against what we perceive to be racism. We shouldn’t tolerate racist remarks, far from it. But I think it’s best to explain why those statements are wrong rather than (except in extreme circumstances) simply labelling them as racist to put the person who has said them on the defensive.

And if we aren’t able to point out what is wrong about a racist statement, then we should think long and hard about why that is, and seek to educate ourselves as best we can. Because there is something wrong about it, make no mistake. And once we know what it is, then we can do something about it.