Hands up if you’re racist!

Monday 10th October 2022

When asked, who would see themselves as a racist?

Except for attention-seekers who wear racism on their sleeve (sometimes literally), surely no one identifies as racist?

And yet, working with ID_BR and our partners globally, I see the relentless daily experience of racism affecting billions of people.

If everyone thinks they are not racist, who’s doing all the racism?

It is simplistic to say people are just lying to themselves and secretly they are deeply racist. If that was the case change would never happen, but we see changes in behaviour and attitude all the time.

A more complex answer is that racism is created and obscured by privileges.

People with more privileges are less likely to experience racism, and less likely to recognise it even when part of it.

Privileges themselves are often invisible (to those who have them), and all the more so when inherited.

Privileges insulate against the experiences felt by people without them and also against their points of view.

So people often don't understand they hold a racist perspective.

That is to say, they are a little bit racist. Some of the time. By accident.

We exclude individuals or groups not just because those other people don’t comply with our expected behaviour or attributes—but because that behaviour or attribute is dependent on having the privileges we can take for granted.

This is how racism operates at scale.

It is the systematic application of processes that enact and defend privileges with racist effects (and, possibly, intents).

People operating these systems are normalised to their racist effects by their privileges and ignore or don't see the ensuing racism. 

When these people work in government, or when they form the government, entire countries become racist–even genocides become viewed as ‘inevitable’, justified, and caused by the victims themselves.

[Making it the victim’s problem to fix is another post]

Such ‘compliance racism’ can explain how historical racism—by imperial societies, conquering states and other privileged groups—continues for centuries in the subsequent laws, rights and behaviours formed to protect and benefit those privileges.

These rules form such an integral part of society’s make-up that their persistence is individually justified in myriad ways, such as for public order, social cohesion, corporate good, or even the advancement of justice.

Unpicking this can be hard.

Even to identify 'compliance racism' creates conflict, because the people being racist don’t recognise their racism for what it is.

They feel offended and revolted by any suggestion they are racist.

How could compliance with the law and social norms be committing an injustice as great as racism?

“I’m not a racist! Some of my best friends are [insert oppressed group here].”

Asking people involved in 'compliance racism' to change their behaviour means first asking them to accept and understand how their actions are racist.

This is why at ID_BR we focus on education and corporate policy in our anti-racism work. 

Education helps people understand the racism they face, whether as victim or perpetrator, and how to combat it. 

Upskilling corporations helps them see the privileges they assume and comprehend the racist exclusions they cause and prejudices they enable.

The uplifting fact is that these interventions work. 

With a combination of shock and empathy, using facts and explanation, we see people desperate to change from 'compliance racism' to inclusion and understanding when they realise what they are doing.