This is an essay I have been meaning to write for a long time. It is also one that I have avoided writing, possibly for fear of the criticism I know I’ll receive, but mostly due to the difficulty of facing unsavory truths about myself. But the act of white supremacist domestic terrorism that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia yesterday – followed by the US president’s lukewarm condemnation of “violence on many sides” and failure to hold the perpetrators to account – are finally making me sit down, meet the blank page, and try to formulate answers to questions that have been brewing in me for years.

But before I begin to untangle any answers, I must admit a shameful truth: as eager as I am to condemn racism, I myself am a racist.

Before I go any further, allow me to state clearly that a racist is not what I want to be. Just as people who attend AA meetings do not want to be alcoholics, I yearn to be cured of my racism. And I am active in seeking this cure – by reading history from perspectives other than that of the victors, by listening to the stories of my diverse groups of students, by working with political organizations that seek to create a society where all people are given a fair chance.

And yet, I am still a racist. And, at the risk of offending many, I dare to say that if you, the reader of this article, are a US American of European descent, it is overwhelmingly probable that you are as well.

I can imagine your reaction on reading these words: anger, defensiveness, or perhaps dismissive eye-rolling at what might seem an empty, attention-seeking mea culpa from yet another white liberal. Please understand that I am not trying to accuse or criticize anyone. Instead, I am simply calling for us to recognize the bitter truth underlying our American identity for what it is. For me, this recognition must begin with a look at myself.

Like all children everywhere, I was not born a racist. But, unfortunately, I started becoming one within just a few years – if not months – of entering this world.

I became a racist by being raised in a family, church and school where nearly everyone was white. While I did have some encounters with non-white people (much to her credit, my mother made a point of putting six-year-old me into an urban summer day camp where I could at least recognize the existence of people who did not look like me), I was led to see them as somehow different, other, “not-like-us.”

I became a racist when, at age four, I heard the “n-word” for the first time – from my grandmother, who was complaining about how “those people” had “ruined” the neighborhood where she grew up (Buffalo’s Broadway Fillmore neighborhood, that is). “What did you say?” I asked her, and she looked away, embarrassed. My mother awkwardly told me to go out and play.

I became a racist when, again and again through my preteen years, I listened to fearful white suburbanites – relatives, family friends, hairdressers, grocery store clerks – going on and on about how “that neighborhood has changed so much” and “I would never go there.” (And yet, somehow they managed to descend on that same neighborhood every year at Easter time in a fit of nostalgia, only to go back to condemning it once the hams and chocolate rabbits have been eagerly gobbled up).

I became a racist when I attended a prestigious private high school where over 95% of the students and all of the teachers were white. It was a high-achieving school with a rigorous entrance exam and the clear expectation that all of us were college-bound. In this way, I learned that white was the primary color of academic achievement, social mobility and future professional success.

I do not mean to denigrate my family or my education. On the whole, my family members – including the grandmother I cited above – are compassionate, generous people who lead their lives based on a deep-seated sense of right and wrong. My teachers were dedicated, incisive people whose example ultimately inspired me to become a teacher myself. In high school history classes I learned about the history of European colonization and the havoc it caused in the world; I studied white settlers’ genocide of Native Americans during the nineteenth century; I was forced to acknowledge the fact of slavery. I also read the words of great African-American leaders like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.

In American literature classes I read Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston alongside F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. In religion classes (my entire pre-college education was Catholic) I learned a version of theology that emphasizes the call to work for peace through justice, to build up God’s kingdom on earth. But was this enough to counteract all the other messages I was getting – from the media, from my own circle of acquaintances in the suburb where I lived, and unfortunately, sometimes from my nearest and dearest?

Unfortunately, it was not. In college, I was given the chance to take the Implicit Association Test – a psychological assessment that seeks to expose the biased attitudes that most of us hide, even from ourselves. Taken on a computer, it works by flashing words at subjects – words like “love,” “inspiration,” “hate,” and “fear” – and subjects are asked to mark these words as positive or negative. In between the words, images of faces are shown. Alas, like many participants, I made mistakes taking this test – I was much more likely to click the “negative” key after seeing a black face, even if the associated word was a positive one.

Along with this implicit bias lay a large amount of ignorance. I did not know about blackface – a staple of late nineteenth and early-to-mid-twentieth century theatre – until I was twenty-six and a graduate student at a Canadian university, when I happened to meet a professor who studies it as his main research area. I had heard about the history of lynchings, but I had no idea how common they were – or that they continued into the 1960’s – until two years ago, when I was preparing to teach Ralph Ellison’s grisly realistic story “A Party Down at the Square” to my own students.

Do my implicit attitudes and lack of knowledge make me a bad person? I don’t think so. Is guilt the appropriate response? Again, I don’t think so. As contemporary Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues in her acclaimed novel Americanah, most African-Americans do not want European-Americans to feel guilty. Instead, they are simply asking us to accept the truth that race-based inequality is deeply woven into the very fabric of our society.

So many times, when I have gotten into discussions on race and racism, either in person or online, I encounter defensiveness on the part of my fellow European Americans – a quick eagerness to distance ourselves from racism, to say “I’m not like that,” to point out that non-whites can be bigoted too. I would argue that this “white fragility” is one of the main forces perpetuating the stark injustice in our society today. Because while any human being can be bigoted, racism as it exists in the 21st century United States is overwhelmingly a structural issue.

Thankfully, violent events like the Charlottesville white supremacist rally and subsequent attack do not enjoy widespread acceptance; while the president’s response many have been lukewarm, the outraged reaction to his tepidity has been swift and pointed. However, there are many other instances of racism that on the whole we accept every day – like the segregation of our cities, the disproportionate amount of African-Americans in our prison system, and the racialized disparities in our public school system.

Looking at these structural injustices, it is all too easy for a European-American to evade or flat-out deny responsibility, to blame inequality on those who suffer most from it. But the fact is, the playing field is not level. As much as I’d like to think that I reached my current social status by my own merit, the truth is that I came into the world with a deck stacked in my favor. None of us have any power over the hand that we are dealt. But, those of us who’ve received particularly good hands hold a certain amount of power to step back and reshuffle – or perhaps, even better still, to try to change the rules of the game so that it will no longer be zero-sum. But it is hard to even begin to do this when so many of us are unwilling to critically examine the hand we were dealt, to recognize that our advantages have come at the expense of others.

It is hard to accept the truth that, just by virtue of being born into the dominant class of a society that is inherently racist, I became a racist. However, not unlike a twelve-step program attendee, I strive every day to remain in recovery – with full knowledge that the process will take a lifetime. By listening to those whom our unjust systems have hurt, by standing with them in their struggles for freedom, peace and justice, I can strive to unlearn the tacit assumptions I’ve been taught. Today, in the wake of this extreme act of hatred, I would ask all of you – particularly those of you determined to see a strong, flourishing Broadway Fillmore area – to engage in a similar process of self-examination and a critical “unlearning” of all those false assumptions that have been inculcated into us from birth. The very future of our local communities, nation and world depends on it.


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5 thoughts on “How I Became a Racist

  1. I too share your struggles. I was born and raised in Buffalo. My father was an Italian Immigrant and my mother first generation Polish. The main theme for them while growing up was to find a culture or race that was at least below us. We were pretty poor , but my father was always employed and my mom worked before it was acceptable for mothers to work. I moved to South Florida shortly after getting married and it was there that I learned how deep my racism lived within me. This is not all bad, I learned diversity in culture, cooking and friendships. Yet my demons like yours still rise up and take over until my conscious mind can wrap around my well hidden feelings. We moved to North Carolina 8 years ago and so far this place of extreme beauty has also caused me to re-evaluate myself and come to grips with European Americans who differ so much, sometimes I can find no connection.. I could go on , but I just wanted to connect on a visceral level. Since I will always remain a work in progress

  2. Well written and insightful but from your points you are far from being a racist. If you were given a slice of pie and someone asked you for a piece I’m betting that you would give it to them but be resentful of the fact that they asked. Racism that we experienced on the east side was, to me, that type of resentment. I got mine, now you want something I have.

    My Mother-in-Law came from Germany after the war. Her family was matched out of the part of Poland that was annexed by Germany. So she lived her life as a German. Her Polish was pretty good, her German better. When she came to Buffalo with her husband she easily found a job at Trico – Polish and German women resented her for that. She took a slice of their pie.

    Every ethnic group resents the one that followed it. For Black America it was worse because of the fact that they never came to America of their own fruition. The US Constitution stated “other Persons” counted as three-fifths of a person. It also stated that slavery could not be banned until 1808 and to boot the government could profit from transactions! So keeping Black America down was institutionalized, now hard to remove. We were more “effective” with Native populations – we stuck them in scrub earth – keeping them out of mainstream American life.

    I think what we feel – that resentment – is a part of what makes us human – for good or bad. Is it an outcome of “original sin”? Most of us strive to be the best we can. If you pick a topic, any topic, you’ll find folks all along a bell shaped curve. The best of the best become beacons for the rest of us. The left tail-end, well you’ll find them seeking out other hatemongers because of some misguided thinking or groupthink, or because they are just plain evil. The plump middle is where most reside wanting to be better people and listening to our better angels.

    My experience was similar within the family but I never bought into it nor promoted it. Did I ever say the “n-word” – yes. But not to a person’s face, nor out of spite, or to degrade anyone. I was a kid being a dumb kid and I regretted it immediately afterwards.

    Regarding exposure to “blackface” – well mine was in the 5th grade when Sister Angeles thought it appropropriate to put on a play for Fr. Joseph’s Feast Day. That year, while all other classes were doing: The rites of spring or some choral numbers, Sr. Angeles’ masterpiece was: “The Life and Times of Stephen Collins Foster” Where the only white character was SCF. Ronny Friend had that honor. The rest of us wore blackface, wigs, and tuxes, and sang SCF minstrel numbers – not only to Fr. Joseph but a 2nd show at Villa Maria Infirmary for aged Sisters. Two performances in blackface. The kicker was she locked the cold cream in the classroom and told us to all walk home in character. I’ve done my penance for my sins at an early age.

  3. I keep sharing this as much as possible when the situations seem right.
    As I read this, I felt the story had been taken right from my own mind.
    I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to put these memories to text.
    Hopefully it sheds enlightenment on a shadowed subject.

  4. It is 2021 and this article is still as relevant as when it was first written.
    I have continued to share it in hopes that people come to their a-ha moments and choose to change.

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