Roseanne Barr’s recent appalling tweet reopened the long-standing open wound of racism in the American discourse.  That her comments weren’t criticized or rejected by the current administration should come as no surprise.  It has abetted and weaponized overt racism at several turns.  It is also unsurprising that the right has tried to frame this as an assault on free speech and a larger part of the culture war.  I think that most discerning observers possess the ability to cut through the bullshit of rhetorical equivocation to condemn the comment for the hate-filled slander that it was.  What many people, including myself, may not want to admit, however, is that there is a bit of the racist in all of us, regardless of our color or chosen creed.  And it’s our responsibility to realize where this racism comes from so that we can effectively combat it.

I’m sure that almost all of you already know this, but it’s important to state for the record that prejudices spring from societal, not genetic differences.  Before reading Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, I hadn’t realized that there were really no substantial genetic differences among the different racial categories of humans.  Sure, there are certain superficial genetic tendencies, like hair and skin color, proclivity to certain diseases, and the like.  But there is absolutely no genetic basis for arguing that one race is significantly different, and therefore inherently superior, to another.  So if you begin with this premise, it follows that any such beliefs that have developed are societal.  Now, you may say, there are clear differences between various races in America in terms of wealth, education, achievement, health, and numerous other metrics.  But the other key point, also no doubt appreciated by many of you who have studied American history, is that these societal differences have been reinforced, and in many ways actively promoted, by generational inequality enshrined and reinforced by discrimination against various minority communities in housing, education, employment, policing and sentencing, and numerous other policies.  This is not to say that only white people can be racist—far from it.  But white people have generally not suffered from the effects of systemic racism, and it is with the effects and resolution of this discrimination that we should concern ourselves.

Racism on a systemic level is undoubtedly pernicious and difficult to tackle, but I’d like to think that we can make more definitive progress on the individual level.  Malcolm Gladwell, in his pop psychology book Blink, points out that we are all immediately conditioned to notice differences.  He asserts, based on psychological research, that when we see a member of the same race, we recognize these faces as familiar and then turn our attention to specific features.  When we see someone of a different race, we identify them as foreign and bin them in a certain category: white, black, Latino, Asian, other.  When we categorize them as other, we’re more inclined to fall back on common stereotypes and then act on those often poorly-informed snap judgments: like the common trope of crossing the street when a black man is approaching you.  I don’t think I’ve done this myself.  Because that would be an overt admission that I was acting on racist preconceptions.  Which I don’t want to admit to myself.  But have I raised my guard?  Or watched my stuff more carefully in a Starbucks?  Yes.  Yes, I have.  And it’s to my shame.  And I should feel ashamed.  Because while I feel shame, those on the receiving end might feel marginalized, or hurt, or persecuted.

So what can I or you do about it?  Can we change the way we were raised or conditioned by society in the short term?  Probably not.  But I would argue that the important thing is not that we never allow these racist thoughts and impulses to enter our brains, but to recognize them for the baseless stereotypes and empty falsehoods that they are.  I don’t think (or at least I hope) that having these thoughts doesn’t make me an out-and-out racist, but acting on them would.  In fact, I also think not acting on them to fight against these misperceptions and the injustices that created them also would.  So we can use that shame to motivate us.  To compel us to better behavior, more action, more demands for equality and justice.

I would also like to think, apart from this residual shame, that I am motivated by an underlying and abiding sense of basic equality and fairness—principles, we have been taught, that are also fundamentally American.  If this belief seems at odds with the narrative of our history that I have just laid out, it is.  But here is the paradox of our American self-image: we want to desperately believe in our hearts that we truly are the land of opportunity while we hold on to ahistorical notions that our society has been fair or just for all of our people when we deep down, we know better.  And so I would hope that the desire to reconcile the belief in our society as just and egalitarian with the on-the-ground reality, along with the aforementioned sense of shame, would compel us to action.

Some people say they don’t see color.  I usually think that they’re full of shit.  But maybe they don’t. If that is in fact the case, I envy them. We teach our children to analyze difference and make assessments based on evidence.  When the evidence is that African-American or Latino men are more likely to commit crimes, it’s tempting to tailor our actions to these facts.  But this reality has been constructed by a justice system and a social system designed to preserve the interests of the elite and actively suppress people of color.  When court fees and fines are used to perpetuate an underclass, underserved by the justice system.  When drug offenses, like sentencing for crack versus sentencing for cocaine, are directly aimed at incarcerating a particular group of people.  When there are two different justice systems, two different educational systems, two different health systems, we fail those in our society who are born into a second-class caste.  And we reinforce these false narratives of difference and distinction.

I see difference, but I hope future generations won’t.  If we are able to effectively address and combat the systemic inequalities in our society, we can begin to remove the bases for these harmful stereotypes.  There will always be out-and-out racists and those who seek to sow division and discord for their own gain or to compensate for their own shortcomings.  There will always hate-filled people like Roseanne Barr.  Or the Alex Joneses or Sean Hannities of the world who seek to exploit racism for their own narrow ends.  But we also need to realize that we all have a little bit of the racist in ourselves.  And that’s a good first step toward tackling the difficult problem of fixing it.