Why are we racist?
This is a question for all of us. When I first learned about racism, I heard it as an identifier. That boy was called a racist by another boy. Now when I had heard the word, I was confused. Did you just call him races? Someone explained it to me. “A racist is a person that makes fun of other people because they are different.” Well, I thought that wasn’t very nice. Racists are bad then. My mom told me not to be mean. Then again, maybe things were just easy for me and I had no need to be mean. I was a spoiled child and my mother went to great measures to keep me pure and cherubic. In fact, I rather christianized myself because I took pride in being a good kid. But this isn’t about me. Let’s talk about the racists. So back to the kid that called the other kid a racist. Looking back to that time, I realized something peculiar. Strangely, I didn’t learn about the word racism until I had heard the word racist being used on numerous occasions. Sure, kids were fond of labelling other kids with new, unfamiliar words. But why didn’t the word racist come before the word racism? There can be several explanations. Maybe this occurred because it was easier for kids (5th graders) to see the embodiment of a supposed racist (that was more likely an unfiltered kid), and to just identify this person as being that. Or maybe the word racism was too conceptual for young kids, right? They don’t have time to deal with ideas and the intangibles, they need to see an actual racist. Or maybe, what I just said is a terrible way of stating how it is for all kids based on my experience. Well, that’s true. Not all kids are going to hear the word racist before racism. And how does someone remember? Why is this even important?
Well, for the sake of my argument, maybe it’s because we, as in everybody, are already racists. Somehow, in whatever shape or form, we possess a bit of racism, which in this case would be some form of prejudice towards other people because of the color of their skin or something they did, or better yet, just feeling different when seeing a person of a different race for the first time. It’s easy to attribute certain things that someone does to the color of the person’s skin, or simply generalizing what can be understood. However, maybe some people can’t recall ever being racist, or maybe some people have always loved everyone without a drop of prejudice, and that might be true. But maybe that’s only true because, like me, you had no reason to be racist because you weren’t threatened. You work to be pure and all-loving, but really, you’ve never felt lost, or angry, or negative. Well then, that’s just the thing. Maybe if you’ve never been a racist, you’ve already put on security blankets that keep you from being racist. However, that doesn’t mean that you’re not a racist deep within, when you’re stripped down to your core. Because when things aren’t going so well and you don’t understand the situation, will you be racist then? Maybe. There’s also a connection between understanding what’s going on for you to exclude racism or not. Basically, perhaps the unknown and the negativity contributes to racism. Take my example, for instance, as a model for truth. If the word racist comes before the word racism, my theory is, perhaps we are the embodiment of racism, and so we are first racists, and then once we learn and understand that we can extract our racist element from within and turn it into an idea, we are out of the unknown and we have a choice. We can either show off this idea and follow it, or we can cover it up and use what society has taught us to avoid showing our racist selves. So when I think about what I’ve just written, we are racist because we are in the unknown or agitated, and we’re not racist when we don’t feel threatened or if we know everything.
Works Cited
Google Images.