InsaneJournal

Current mood:	anxious
Current music:	Not So Soft-Ani DiFranco-Not So Soft
Entry tags:	ibarw, race

IBARW: Hi. My name is Meg and I'm racist.
One thing my previous posts for IBARW have been lacking is much emphasis on the personal. It is much much easier for me to try to engage with the ideas abstractly than it is for me to say “this is my shit, let me show it to you.” But I think that it’s important to bring the personal to the table because so much of undoing institutional racism involves undoing the individual racism of the participants in the institutions.

And so much of effective anti-racist work is learning to own your issues, to look at the problem of racism and say “this is what I need to work on” rather than “this is what I need to teach other people to work on.”

But still, it’s hard to talk about. Especially in a public forum with readers who are all over the map in their race philosophies. My racist shit is ugly and it’s deep and showing it to other people is hard. I’m going to try. We’ll see how it goes.

Hi. My name is Meg and I’m racist.


White privilege has benefited me enormously in my life. I was encouraged to achieve from a very young age. I went to private high school and private college and no one ever questioned my right to be there or implied that I was only there to meet diversity quotas.

I was part of the racial diversity club in high school and went to meetings about increasing diversity in college. In both of those groups I was seen as “one of the good ones” the white folks who want to make things better damnit. People rarely questioned my right to be there or my own level of racism despite the fact that at several points I said or did things that I now find cringe worthy.

I have an enormous amount of institutional access. I worked in the police department for a year. I have done street outreach in neighborhoods that are predominantly inhabited by PoC. No one questioned my right to do either of those things. I’m in social services and when I go work in “underserved communities” (read: communities of color) I’m viewed as a good person who is going to help those less fortunate. Very few people question whether I should be there or whether I know what is best for those communities.

If I choose to do so, I can put away thoughts of race and racism. I did for years. I was aware that racism existed and that it was bad. I viewed myself as non-racist, as part of the solution and I went on to work on other social issues that I viewed as more important. I had little to know understanding of the way racism impacts other social movements and the ways that other social movements marginalize PoC.

My racist BS was largely unconscious. I was very well meaning, but by not confronting my biases I was perpetuating a truly fucked up system.

I was raised to think that there was a right way to do things, that I could figure out what it was, and that once I figured it out I had a moral obligation to get other people there as well. I was raised to see myself as superior and to see folks of color as needing my help.

And I still think that way. I’m working on it, but it’s in me. And that’s fucked up.

Speaking of fucked up:

When I see young black men on the street I get tense, particularly if it’s late at night.

I associate poverty with folks of color despite the fact that the majority of poor folks in the US are white.

My first thought when I heard that there had been several last minute interviewees for a position I applied for with an explicitly anti-racist organization was “they must be black.” (all the previous interviewees were white)

For a long time whenever someone called me on something oppressive my default response was “that’s not what I meant” instead of “I’m sorry.” That is still often my kneejerk response even though I don’t say it anymore.

My previous job used to have fairly regular conversations about racism. During some of our early conversations if white folks were doing most of the talking I used to say something about it. Something along the lines of “I’m uncomfortable with the amount of space white folks are taking up in this space.” I never considered how much pressure that put on the folks of color. I never considered how much space I was taking up when I said that.

For a long time whenever someone brought up racism I brought up sexism and homophobia. Intersectionality is important for sure, but white folks often use their oppressed identities as a “get out of racism free” card. It took me a long time before I could sit in a racism discussion and discuss race without feeling the need to play my own oppression cards.

Now that I am explicitly working on my racist shit I sometimes find myself trying to impress PoC with my anti-racism. Maybe if I can get [x] person to see how smart I am and how hard I’m working on this they will see that I’m one of the good white people.


This is not a comprehensive list of all the ways I’ve benefited from racism or of all the fucked up things I’ve ever thought or did. But this is some of them and I hope that putting them out there illustrates some of the ways that internalized racial superiority plays out in my life.