‘My belief is that people prefer their own kind – same color, same nationality, same politics, same age, etc. Why is it called racism when whites prefer whites? Why is that white privilege? Blacks prefer Blacks, Democrats prefer Democrats, teenagers prefer teenagers. No name for that! Why do I reject a yellow tomato or an orange pepper? Am I alone disliking food of an unusual color? Is that prejudice?”
The preceding paragraph is quoted from a letter, referencing a recent column of mine, that was recently offered for newspaper publication and cc’d to me by a New Hampshire resident. Although I argued for its publication, editors informed me they have no intention of publishing such an inflammatory and ignorant screed.
I was disappointed. There are days when it’s both perversely comforting, and institutionally necessary, to witness unadulterated displays of racism. Racism visible through veneers of respectability, racism uncolored by jargon, racism woven into disingenuous tropes about “all people being equal.”
Tropes deliberately mis-contextualizing an aspirational Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quote from 1963, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
The sun has yet to rise on that day MLK yearned for our children to see.
Indeed, just four years later, in a speech never quoted by deniers of systemic racism, MLK declared, “…There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racism is still alive all over America. Racial injustice is still the Negro’s burden and America’s shame. And we must face the hard fact that many Americans would like to have a nation which is a democracy for white Americans but simultaneously a dictatorship over Black Americans …”
That’s an America many still confront — racism, poverty and an ongoing war on the very humanity of communities of color.
An America where some days I believe the racist porn from Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, and others, people who’re clearly enemies of human rights and democracy, more than I do hypocrites who deny the existence of systemic racism while working to deny the franchise and equal rights to communities of color and minorities.
Unfettered, they continue, “…Our country is getting better all the time. Think about Jim Crow days, and how badly the Blacks were treated in the South. Compare that with modern times … ”
Better?
Ask Black veterans who received just 60% of the GI Bill benefits that white vets received, resulting in increasing the wealth disparity gap between white and Black Americans.
Ask survivors of Tulsa, Watts, Charlottesville, Charlotte, El Paso, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis about better.
Ask Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, George Floyd, about better.
“Racism,” the letter writer offers, “is nonexistent among a large portion of successful Blacks who have become professional athletes, popular musicians, broadcasters, business leaders, and numerous other fields…”
Ask Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, John Carlos. Tommie Smith and Colin Kaepernick about non-existent racism.
Ask business leader Kamau Witherspoon, senior VP of operations at Target, about the time when police came to his home with guns drawn, having been called by a neighbor saying there was a suspicious Black guy running through his upscale neighborhood, about non-existent racism.
Ask the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition about non-existent racism. As reported by the Washington Post, the NCRC found “that Black people seeking small-business loans under coronavirus relief programs were treated less favorably than whites — even when they had stronger financial profiles.”
“Many people live happy lives among their own kind,” they continued. “So what? Why should outsiders label them? Do these outsiders want in? I recommend that outsiders should find their own kind, and not complain about others.”
I’m so thankful to have received this letter.
Racism survives both because not enough people are willing to do the hard work of confronting their own privileges and advantages, of challenging the relationships and dynamics that structure our society, and because some people, like the letter writer, are too blind to recognize its reality.
While I believe, as scholars like Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw have argued in Critical Race Theory, that systemic racism is deeply embedded into America’s institutional character and psyche, one cannot let individuals, like this letter writer, off the hook.
Racism survives because too many people would prefer to educate their children in shallowness and ignorance rather than understand that America, 400 years after the arrival of the first enslaved people to these lands, has yet to fully confront its original sins of racism and genocide of Indigenous peoples.
Racism survives because rather than doing the hard work of confronting inequities in our communities too many people, white people or non-whites seduced by their proximity to whiteness, would rather people like me simply not exist.
Racism survives because racists don’t understand it’s not about preferring their own kind. Racism is about people with power and privileges limiting the choices and opportunities of Americans lacking power and privilege.
It survives because of the institutional failure to recognize that by fully confronting our history we would be a stronger nation.
“ … why are your views so narrow?” they ask at the end. “… But since you are who you are, why are you trying to foist your views on your readers? You would be more contented (sic) to interact with your own kind, not the broad range of readers of [a New Hampshire newspaper].”
They would rather, as all racists would, prefer I submit, on bended knee, to white privilege and express gratitude for their tolerance permitting me to express my constitutionally-protected views, as long as I don’t offend them!
Today, I prefer kindred Americans, the kind who believe in equality, justice, diversity, inclusion and equity for all Americans, who believe in welcoming the sojourner, who believe in the humanity of all peoples.
Those are kindred Americans.
My own kind.
(Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. He was the 2018 Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications’ First Amendment Award winner. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com and he can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com.)