I won’t tell you how much flak I’ve received for my blog posts about racism and sexism in America. I want to clarify what I think racism and sexism are.

Racism is discriminating on the basis of race, whether you believe it or not

Some people think racism means you believe in discriminating on the basis of race. That’s not true. Racism is discriminating on the basis of race, whether you believe it’s proper or not. So if you treat black people differently, that’s racism.

Almost all of us are racist. I’m a racist. I participate in de facto racism. I live in a non-black neighborhood. I walk with my dog up and down many nearby streets. I only know of one black person in the neighborhood.

Also, my brain is full of ideas about blacks. I know they don’t all care about racism, but I act like they do. I’m a good person, but I come from a racist culture. When I was young, my mom worked on desegregation. I know there’s nothing intrinsically different about blacks. But I’m often informed to the contrary by our racist culture.

A racist believes a racial difference means “those humans” are different

I’m not a racist. I believe there’s nothing different about blacks, other than some superficial difference in appearance.

I often find my brain believing there’s something different about blacks. I often find myself thinking “they” have a common outlook politically, or socially, or have a heightened fear of police. At those moments, I’m being a racist. When I realize it, I back off. I let it go.

Probably most blacks have some common political outlooks. Here’s a page that says that. But there’s no “they”. There are exceptions. Most of them think these things not because they’re black, but because our society has some racial disparities. We treat blacks differently. We think of blacks differently. So most have a different experience that shapes their outlook. But as that page says, the political outlooks of blacks vary tremendously.

Most blacks are different in their skin color. I’m white, but I usually have a bit of a tan. I’m darker than a few blacks. Some have different shapes of lips. Many have kinky hair. These are facts. Thinking these facts are significant makes one a racist. The shape of lips doesn’t determine the kind of hair any more than it determines intelligence, honesty or potential.

But these things often influence our thoughts. And if we believe those thoughts, we’re racist.

I advocate being a recovering racist

I believe it’s best to be a recovering racist. Admit that you’ve imbibed our racist culture, and/or other racist cultures, and that it tends to effect you. And believe those generalizations are not true. (You don’t have to- it’s just what I recommend.)

And while this post has talked about blacks, we do it with Asians, Indians, Native Americans, Hispanics, and many others. We’re humans, not God. We’re not perfect. But we can aspire to be honest, to see that we suffer from hubris, that we become blind to our foibles.

And of course we do it with sex. But that’s more complex. I’ll address that another time.

And we do it with religions. Are Moslems different? Are Jews different? And with nationalities, with Iranians, Syrians, Koreans, Russians. Just yesterday someone suggested I probably don’t want to hire software developers from Uruguay- who ever heard of software expertise in Uruguay??? And with age, too.

Should we admit we’re racist? Obviously I think so. Should we do something about it? Add your name to our mailing list and we can decide soon.