I watched an episode of "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man" last week (if you haven't checked these out yet, I highly recommend - Emmanuel Acho is fantastic and I just got his book too!). This particular episode is about racism and religion, an area I really struggle with as I watch people from my religious background, one I no longer follow, support racism, be racist, refuse to denounce racism. In it a pastor (now himself embroiled in a sex scandal which is neither here nor there but I wanted to be open about that controversy) talk about racism as if it is Covid. Assume everybody has it. Listen to the experts. Alter your lives to handle it. "You could be more racist than you think." (Carl Lentz).
As I watch the Covid cases in our state rage out of control, a record number of deaths occur, and people, mostly white people, still deny its existence, refuse to alter their life, act as though nothing is wrong, this analogy nearly knocks me over. I've been accused of seeing racism in everything. Me. A white person. And to that I say, yes, racism is in everything. It makes our country go round. It makes us white people feel safe and to not have to confront how our "safety" puts others at risk. We deny racism.
I may not have Covid but I don't know for sure. I keep others safe by assuming I do. I stay home. I stay away from anyone who is at-risk. You are one of two things - you are either Covid positive or you are Covid negative. Without frequent testing, you don't know. Likewise, you are either anti-racist or you are racist. There is no test you can take to say for sure but if you can't say with impunity that you are anti-racist, you are racist.
It's okay. It is an okay thing to say and we need to be okay saying out loud that we are racist - we were raised and enculturated to be so. It's not our fault that this happened but it is our responsibility to do something about it. Even if we are being safe, we may still catch the virus. Even if we think we are not racist, we may be. What we do with that uncertainty is the difference? Do we protect others by wearing a mask and staying home? Do we protect others by confronting our own racist tendencies, calling out microaggressions from friends or family, continuing to learn and grow?
I fight my racism everyday and I fight it by being intentionally anti-racist. I fight it by recognizing my bias, by talking with others about racism, by continuing my learning, by listening to black and brown voices. Just like Covid, we don't know the long-term effects. Will I have to fight my own racism for the rest of my life? Will it ever get easier or go away? I'm not sure. But I do know that we have to be willing to acknowledge the possibility that we might have racism, just like we might have Covid, in order to alter our life, alter our mindset, alter the future. The test came back - I am racist positive and I am working on being anti-racist every day.
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