{"id":706,"date":"2013-01-14T13:59:25","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T18:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=706"},"modified":"2013-01-14T14:05:15","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T19:05:15","slug":"706","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2013\/01\/706.html","title":{"rendered":"Institutional Racism: If You Are White, You Are Racist"},"content":{"rendered":"

The view that \u201cracism\u201d is limited to the prejudices of individuals and\/or the discriminatory policies of the government dies hard.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Those who have thought longest and hardest on the evil of racism\u2014the \u201cexperts\u201d\u2014have been telling us for quite some time that racism contaminates the very institutions <\/em>or \u201cstructures\u201d of Western civilization.\u00a0 The philosopher Richard Wasserstrom is a case in point. <\/span><\/p>\n

While \u201cinstitutional racism\u201d is more \u201csubtle\u201d and \u201cunintentional\u201d than more covert or traditional expressions of racism, Wasserstrom tells us, it is also the most intractable for this reason.\u00a0 In fact, institutional racism pervades our very concepts<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cQuite often,\u201d Wasserstrom explains, \u201cwithout realizing it,\u201d our concepts \u201ctake for granted certain objectionable aspects of racist ideology without our being aware of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Take for example the concept of \u201ca common humanity,\u201d a concept that supplies the philosophical backbone of such related concepts as the rule of law, equality before the law, the dignity of persons, and the ideal of \u201ccolor blindness.\u201d\u00a0 Though treated by most people as an antidote<\/em> to racism, the concept of a common humanity reinforces<\/em> racism.\u00a0 Moreover, it makes it that much more difficult to defeat the latter. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As the political scientist Iris Marion Young informs us, in spite of posing as \u201cneutral and universal,\u201d the concept of a common humanity is a \u201cculturally and experientially specific\u201d instrument by which whites, and white men particularly, \u201cstructure privilege and oppression.\u201d\u00a0 That is, \u201ccultural imperialism\u201d continues courtesy of the ideal of a common humanity.\u00a0 Young writes: \u201cBlindness to difference [color-blindness] perpetuates cultural imperialism by allowing norms expressing the point of view and experience of privileged groups [whites] to appear neutral and universal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The verdict is inescapable: white people are incorrigibly racist.\u00a0 How can matters be otherwise when the very ideas that whites use to combat <\/em>racism are themselves racist?<\/span><\/p>\n

If racism really is embodied in our institutions, our modes of perceiving our world, then it is as ubiquitous as is the air we breathe.\u00a0 It is omnipresent.\u00a0 And if it is omnipresent, then there is no place to which we can turn to evade it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Whites are incorrigibly racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

The great philosopher David Hume observed that the more general and abstract an idea is, the more plausible it is.\u00a0 When we spell it out concretely the idea of institutional racism, there is no getting around the following. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If you are a white, you are a racist.\u00a0 So too are your children racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since I am white, I am a racist, as is my three year-old son. <\/span><\/p>\n

The 20 children gunned down in Newtown, Connecticut last month, are racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabbie Giffords is a racist. <\/span><\/p>\n

The four Americans murdered during the latest attack on an American embassy in Libya are racist. <\/span><\/p>\n

Abraham Lincoln, Joe Biden, FDR, Glenn Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, George Washington, Dick Clark, Andy Griffith, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, Sean Penn, Audie Murphy, and the mostly white firefighters who rushed into the World Trade Center towers on 9\/11 to rescue strangers are all racist. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chris Mathews, Ed Shultz, St. Francis of Assisi, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Moore, and Rachel Maddow are racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most saintly of whites no less than the most evil, the most committed anti-racists no less than the most virulent neo-Nazi skinheads and Klan members, are alike racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Wasserstrom and Iris Marion Young, both white, are racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those white editors who would refuse to publish this article for fear of being portrayed as racist are as racist as those who have no such fears.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are still other implications of the claim that racism is \u201cinstitutional.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If even the most seemingly innocuous, anti-racist of the concepts in which whites routinely trade are mired in racism, then the concept that racism is immoral<\/em> is also racist!\u00a0 The thought that everyone deserves to be treated equally regardless of their race is a racist thought, for it is a thought rooted in that of a common humanity, a thought that was conspicuously absent from the Earth until men of European decent fought hard for it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Translation: in advocating on behalf of measures that benefit, or ostensibly benefit, racial minorities\u2014the abolition of slavery and Jim Crow, say, and \u201caffirmative action\u201d\u2014non-whites prove just how \u201cculturally imperialistic\u201d\u2014how racist\u2014they remain.<\/span><\/p>\n

If institutional racism is a reality, then every single white person is a racist.\u00a0 And if we want to overcome racism, then the only way to do so is by \u201cfundamentally transforming\u201d\u2014i.e. repealing and replacing\u2014Western civilization. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The view that \u201cracism\u201d is limited to the prejudices of individuals and\/or the discriminatory policies of the government dies hard.\u00a0 Those who have thought longest and hardest on the evil of racism\u2014the \u201cexperts\u201d\u2014have been telling us for quite some time that racism contaminates the very institutions or \u201cstructures\u201d of Western civilization.\u00a0 The philosopher Richard Wasserstrom…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nInstitutional Racism: If You Are White, You Are Racist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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