what i want to say about the 'unconscious racism' of people of my race: oh, you know, it is semi-conscious racism. it's true, caucasoids are less conscious of more stuff than negroids and mongoloids, etc. it is the white man's burden; it's like there's a screen of bullshit between us and reality, and we installed it ourselves. it's sort of our job to try to punch it out. there's really a lot that has to be ignored that is hard to ignore in order to be an unconscious racist. it's actually a pretty conscious strategy to be unconscious. like, any one of us could suddenly start to become aware of it in ourselves and one another at any moment by a hundred routes, or just by listening around a little. go get yourself some george yancy.
i think it's like black folks want to give us a little break. i'm not blaming you! it's systemic (ooph i heard that just last year). this is a strategic way to try to tell us there is a problem without arousing our well-known insane defensiveness and self-righteousness. well, but is it exactly true? even if they're sort of willing to give each of us a break, maybe we shouldn't be quite so quick to give ourselves a break, or so worried about whether we ourselves are good people. or i would think the point is not to appear to yourself to be a good person, or to tell yourself all day what a really good person you are, but actually to be a good person. that might take more work, though.
or what i want to pull out: i think unconscious racism is blameworthy on an individual basis. there are plenty of resources for coming to consciousness, plenty of people right in your proximity who are trying to make you more conscious. getting to know all of it is hard or in my actual experience it seems infinite, layer after layer; after i think i've got it down, that's when it's right there. but starting is unavoidable if you're not literally comatose. white person! repeat after me! i am a racist. i am a racist. i am a racist. i come from a racist people. i'm in the middle of a centuries-long, horrifying, genocidal moral failure, perpetrated by my own people. i am the people who are doing that. doing it right now. and now i am going to do whatever i can do about that. and the first thing that i can do is know that about myself.
we will never be free without knowledge of self. we will never be good.
