Facebook Publication Date: 8/12/2018 22:08

Let’s clarify and remember what we’ve been learning and internalizing.

Hey Racists!

Ok, wow.

When y’all like something, you really really like it. This quote for instance:

“There is this cultural idea that race is a divisive issue. I don’t agree. I don’t believe race is a divisive issue for people who are not racist.”–Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

People loved it, likes, hearts, shares. On the personal page and at Lace on Race.

Which felt really off for some reason, and made me think I needed to take a second look.

So I did. And I find that I need to clarify something, or more accurately, reiterate something I’ve repeated for awhile.

While I agree with the gist and the vibe of the quote, I disagree with the specific wording that makes for a feel good, validating, *permission giving* quote for white people. When wipipo get too warm and fuzzy of a feeling, maybe it’s due not to the overall sentiment, but to a sort of ‘get out of jail free card.

Let’s look! Yep! There it is!

It’s this part right here: “I don’t believe race is a divisive issue for people who are not racist.”

Which, as I have said consistently for years now, and what we teach and push hard at Lace on Race, makes for a cohort of exactly *zero*. There Are No People Who Are Not Racist.

Yep. I said what I said. This is what people are reading that’s lighting up their pleasure centers, and with all the respect (richly deserved) to the candidate from New York City, I disagree with the specific language for this very reason.

We are all racist. You, reading this, are racist. So is the person next to you. So is my bestie, Mr. Speck. So is my childhood friend of 40 years; so close we share DNA at this point. So are my parents. So is my third grade teacher, Mrs. Doris Thomas. So is my pedicurist. So is my pastor. So are you. So am I.

We live in a racist soup. That did not change when the race was called for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.

We cannot forget this. We do so at our peril.

We are living out the danger and the consequences of feeling that we live in a post-racial society, and that we ourselves are post racial too, and we can now shed the molting rancid coat of racism; shuck it off our bodies, because the fight is over.

Millions of white people did that very thing on Obama’s inauguration in 2009. Declared the country, and themselves, post racial, forgetting or denying the residue of the rancid coat of *racial right-now* and *still a world of white supremacy*, that was still on their bodies, invisible to them, but plainly and painfully evident to every person of color. And because they thought they had no more work to do; because they thought they had reached the goal line, Trump became possible. And the alt right rose.

We can never never never never cease our vigilance. We can never run a victory lap prematurely, as we did, and are now reaping the consequences.

You’re still racist. You are just doing the work to become less racist. You see the soup now; you can’t unsee it. You see your complicity, and are working to lessen it. You see the power imbalance and are working to dismantle it. You see the relational pain of centuries of oppression and are working to heal it, in yourselves, in your relationships and groups, and out in the larger world.

Good for you. I commend you.

You’re still racist. A recovering racist, to be sure, but a racist nonetheless.

So am I, because centuries of soup will not be drained down and pulverized in America’s garbage disposal in one or two or 10 election cycles.

The economic and social capital are still unbalanced and inequitable. Schools remain separate and unequal, and if you chose where you live based on school, you are complicit. Black women make 63 cents to the dollar, and if you haven’t confronted and unpacked that in the workplace, welp.

By now we recovering racists know to eschew the obvious and overt. Now we get to do the internal work, where the unconscious bias still can lurk, in the shadows, even as we speak right words and nod in the right places in public. Absent that internal inventory and reflection, and a courageous commitment to change not just what can be seen, but what is harbored in the heart, we are not even recovering racists. We are, at best, the social justice equivalent of ‘dry drunks’.

We see the limits of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s statement in groups and dyads online; in friendships and associations offline where, when paint is scratched and just below the dermis unexamined attitudes and behaviors emerge, resulting in flouncing and fragility, that the work we thought we did, was at best insufficient.

So we recovering racists can appreciate the spirit of the words of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, even as we know better, even as we work with all our might to make her words truer and truer by the day, in our hearts, with our internal work, and with our external praxis and ethe.

Hey recovering racists! Let’s walk together.

Let’s see how many likes and hearts and shares this one gets.

And even though I probably really activated you just now, I have the temerity to request that you contribute to the community of Lace on Race that brings provocative, original content from a singular perspective. Support the work of black women writers and thinkers. Please partner in the work, community and ethos of Lace on Race by tangibly supporting this work. Click below. Thank you.

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