Raising Your Voice Against Racism
Do you know that the word “racism” wasn’t commonly used until the 1930s, when the word was coined to describe Nazis’ persecution of Jewish people?**
Racism is one of the most catastrophic evils of the modern world. And yet, today the term “racism” is sometimes used in ways that divorce it from a broader history of domination. For example, when anti-DEI activists claim that affirmative action is racist, what they’re saying is that treating people differently on the basis of race is, ipso facto, racism. But is this what racism actually is?
As the saying goes, racism equals power plus prejudice (R = P + P). This definition of racism has been ubiquitous in antiracism circles for decades. The argument undergirding R = P + P is as follows: Assumptions and prejudices about white people exist but they aren’t racism. Why? Because they don’t have the systemic or institutionalized relationship to power that anti-Indigenous racism or anti-Black racism has.
There have been lots of critiques of this framework, which posits that People of the Global Majority can be prejudiced but not racist. The point of this post isn’t to debate this issue or to correctly answer the question “what is racism?” Instead, I want to pose a different question: Are we talking about racism and antiracism in ways that support the liberation of oppressed people?
Here are two of my recommended principles for making sure our conversations are advancing racial justice:
1. Racism should be understood in political not personal terms, as an issue of injustice and oppression. Focusing on racism as only or primarily an issue of individual wrongdoing limits our ability to address racism that’s unintentionally perpetuated by individuals. It also limits our ability to address the harms caused by structural or systemic racism.
2. Discussions of racism should center the perspectives of victims of racial oppression. This isn’t just a political imperative; it’s an ethical one. That’s because we can’t understand the true meaning of racial oppression unless we center the experience of racism’s historical victims, not its beneficiaries.
What do you think?? How are you raising your voice against racism?
** In his book Racism: A Short History, historian George Frederickson discusses how the word racism was first used to describe Nazi antisemitism.
Image description: A Person of the Global Majority (face blurred) is holding out their hands with palms open. One palm has the word “Stop” written on it in red letters; the word “Racism” appears on the other palm in black lettering.. Image credit: https://www.aamc.org/about-us/equity-diversity-inclusion/anti-racism-resources
