“I’m not a Racist” — the White Lie Everybody Tells Themselves

My generation grew up associating “racism” with images of snarling dogs and Alabama governors, anti-busing protesters in 70s Boston, maybe an uncle from Kentucky who cut his daughter off for marrying a black man. If you’re younger, you probably think of racism in terms of voter suppression in the south, frothy birthers denouncing Obama, or thugs like George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn lynching via firearm. If that’s the kind of racist you mean when you say you’re not a racist, you’re probably telling the truth.

Denying you’re that kind of racist is easy — you might as well be saying you love puppies. It took me a long time to see that just because I wasn’t that kind of racist didn’t mean I didn’t have to confront other kinds of racism in myself.

My father was an ultra-liberal of the Hubert Humphrey variety, and my mother came here from France as an adult with no baggage at all about race. I certainly never heard a negative word about black people growing up — rather the opposite. In fact, I remember being shocked by my Grandmother’s use of the word “colored.” Had I ever used the n-word — a thought that would never have even occurred to me — it would have been the only reason I can imagine my parents washing my mouth out with soap.