PART I
So, it all started with this article in the Toronto Star on March 25 in which a man named Percy Whiteman [I really can't make this shit up] is suing the Canadian government for not doing any screenings for HIV on new immigrants before 2001. Why? Because he alleges that his wife (who’s originally from Thailand), who he met in the 1990s and married in 1997 while she was a stripper and a dancer at the Zanzibar, was HIV positive when she came to Canada, knew this, and infected him.
There are many ways a discussion of this could go, and some of my thoughts posted on a discussion board elsewhere include: “(can people who think that white folks who get involved with people of colour are not racist please remember this story?)” because of the anti-immigrant racism, as well as the regular run-of-the-mill racism Mr. Whiteman (…giggle…sorry) was exhibiting in his lawsuit.
It wasn’t a hugely appropriate line to pop in there, since it wasn’t the topic, but I’ve heard it* said so many times, as if it’s a “get out of racism free” card, that for a white person just having a partner (or having had on in the past) who is a POC or a FN person is enough to stamp that white person “non-racist”.
But I received a message from a regular poster, indicating his confusion at that phrase, and his non-identification with the label of “racist”. He was sincere and I was in a mellow mood. So this is what I replied to him, some identifying details changed:
The level of understanding of race and issues of race and racism on [the discussion board we both post on] tends to be very simplistic. Here’s a list of “truths” that are generally agreed on at [this discussion board] that, in my opinion, experience, and learned education, are incorrect. Why I know them to be incorrect is because I live as a mixed race person, I facilitate anti-racism and anti-oppression education at the consultant level and have done so for 12+ years, and I’ve read many works by different people of colour: academic and personal, from a wide variety of ethnic, racial and language backgrounds, as well as talked extensively with people who experience far worse racism than I ever have.
So-called “truths” about race that aren’t true:
1. If a white person thinks that racism is wrong, then that person isn’t racist.
2. People who are racist are KKK types, neo-nazis, “rednecks” (I hate that word because it’s classist) and “white trash” types (ditto)
3. If a white person is romantically involved with a person of colour and/or sexually attracted to people of colour this *automatically* makes that white person not racist. Therefore, in an argument whether something is racist, such a white person can legitimately say “My partner who is (black, asian, etc) says you are wrong” or “I’m not racist because my partner is (black, asian, etc)”
4. Everyone can be racist, including people of colour
Re #1 through #3. Being mixed race, and growing up with one white parent, and one whole side of my family who are white, I lived racism from that side of my family growing up, every day. As I grew older, read more, and talked more to mixed race people, I found this to be the norm. Perhaps subtle, but there, always there.
White folks who are lefties have a very hard time “painting themselves with a racist brush”. I understand. “Not being racist” is a very significant factor in the identity of good hearted lefty white folks. I know. My (white) mom is one of them.
I don’t know if you’ve read my other posts on systemic racism, but systemic racism is imbedded in our society. Anyone brought up here in Canada has internalized these racist values, “truths” and other parts that we just don’t think about. No matter who we’re involved with and have children with. Having internalized racist values and behaviours makes all white folks racist. This isn’t negotiable. And it isn’t a bad thing to know; it’s a *good* thing to know, because once you know it and recognize it, only then can you break it down, examine your own privilege, and fight against the system, on a small day-to-day basis, and in larger ways, like becoming an ally. This leads to societal change.
Once one understands systemic and institutional racism, one won’t ever believe #4 on the list.
* “My boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife is black/asian/latin@/Arab/Aboriginal so there’s NO WAY I can be racist!”
PART II
There seems to also be this mythology that if someone is engaged in anti-racist action, such as say, writing a book about the racism of the far-right fringes in Canada, that somehow this makes this person an “anti-racist” person. I’m saddened, but not surprised at the low-level of this analysis. This hypothetical person (who is hypothetically a fairly high-up person in the ranks of a particular major federal political party) was recently in the news for making racist remarks about Asian food. What I read was a sincere and downright naive level of shock and surprise that this man, let’s call him Wally, would be racist! “Isn’t he the finest example of anti-racism there possibly is?” “If anyone gets a stamp of non-racist aka get-out-of-racism free card, isn’t it him?”….etc.
Even if he hadn’t been caught saying those remarks I would say no, writing a book about extreme fascistic right-wing neo-nazis is not fine anti-racism. It’s pointing out the frikkin obvious and making money off it. Maybe it’s one step up from white folks who visit countries in the global south, take pictures of brown people and sell those pictures for profit back home. Maybe.
So, hypothetical dude said some classic, regular, I would even venture to say, since this is my blog, unremarkable anti-Asian racist bullshit. My bar is so low, this doesn’t surprise me. For the love of cats, if I freaked out everytime this sort of vanilla racism happened I wouldn’t have time to do anything else!
So some rhetorical questions about this hypothetical person: Has he been active in grassroots movements that are fighting racism on the ground? Even from his position, has he been working at the policy and governance level to enact changes that would benefit POC and families of colour and immigrants of colour? No? Oh, he only wrote a book about those bad bad leroy brown neo-nazis? Sorry, that ain’t no get-out-of-racism-free card, or a stamp of the non-racist. In fact, those cards don’t exist, those stamps don’t exist and we really should stop talking about them.
The problem with talking about the neo-nazis is it focusses on the individual, and again reinforces that racism is about bad behaviour and bad people. There’s no systemic analysis, nothing to indicate that the fringes are on the fringe of a larger continuum, the other end of which isn’t “non-racism” or “anti-racism” but “striving to rid ourselves and our world of racist bullshit for the rest of our lives”.
It’s the equivalent of Godwin’s rule, you know, the rule on discussion boards that if you invoke the name “Hitler” you automatically lose to argument, as hyperbole proves nothing.
Well, there you go. Hyperbole proves nothing.
