As a kid I thought the word polack just meant Polish people. I didn’t personally know anyone with Polish ancestry, much less anyone actually Polish. But I’d heard the term used on television and in movies (mostly set on the east coast) and, at the time, it didn’t register to me that people were using it as a slur*.
Polish people, whom I now know in the US we refer to as Poles, tend to be grouped in with the immigrant groups that came at the turn of the last century. The Poles, the Italians, the Irish- the white people who were, at the time, lumped into a lower tier of whiteness. Though now they have mostly blended into the patina of American whiteness that lower tier placement, that othering, still shows up in our culture.
This is why being racist does not make someone a bad person anymore than being antiracist makes someone a good person. Growing up in the US we grow up in a white supremacist patriarchy. One more complex than many of us realize. We think it is normal because, for us, it is. People are multifaceted. All humans have prejudices and bigotries. Too many of us never question them.
One of my favorite characters to hate is Harry Potter’s Dolores Umbridge. Dolores Umbridge reviled the Death Eaters and loathed Voldemort. Yet she is one of the most despised villains in the Harry Potter universe. Her bigotry against nonhuman magical beings twists her. Her slavish devotion to order blinds her. Dolores Umbridge is one of those people who cares more about the rules than justice.
And then there is Severus Snape. Professor Snape was an asshole. He took out his ire against a man, who admittedly deserved it, on the man’s son. A vulnerable orphan who was in his care. In our modern world Snape would probably be an incel. Yet. Yet, he also repeatedly risked his life to protect that child. Like I said, multifaceted.
For a real-life example look at recently ousted Morris Dees, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). With an endowment of over a hundred and twenty million dollars Dees approached the SPLC more as a businessman than a social justice warrior with little of the money trickling down to do the work. Worse incoming female staffers were routinely warned about his reputation for “inappropriate” behavior. Yet Morris Dees successfully argued that the Klan has agency over its individual members’ actions- a legal precedent that is used to fight the actions of hate groups in court to this day.
We embrace colorblindness, in part, because we don’t want to see people we like, people we love, as BAD PEOPLE. But we have to take the blinders off, we have to see, to change the system. We have to see in order to fight.
The fight in the US for human rights of the civil sort is often two steps forward one step back. The Klan surges to popularity anytime the country suffers economic hardship or when whites feel their position at the top of the caste system to be threatened. Meaning for too many turning to racism is the standard response to social progress.
Obama’s presidency incited an explosion in right-wing anti-government militias. The Tea Party, with their weapons at protests, were the precursor to the more blatantly white supremacist “alt-right”. And then came Trump.
A diverse coalition of Americans has been fighting fascist white supremacy for decades. Street confrontations are an important part of that fight. But other tools are also important. A big part of the current rise in white supremacy is economic and social isolation. This isolation leaves people feeling alienated and angry- and looking for a scapegoat. They want someone to blame for their pain and for too many white Americans history has provided the usual suspects: people of color and immigrants. The traditional American “others”.
Some of this is brought about by inevitable demographic changes. But more, much more, is brought about by socioeconomic decisions that prioritize the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. For example, there is absolutely no benefit to creating a society in which there are hundred billionaires. At a thousand dollars a day it would take over twenty-five hundred years, literal lifetimes, to spend just one billion dollars. Hundred billionaires should not be a thing.
The current revival of blatant white supremacy is frightening. Today’s “alt-right” shows up armed and ready to brawl. To win against them will take organization among disparate groups using a range of methodologies. Most of all, it will take time. This is a fight that continues over decades, centuries. There will always be pain and there will always be those willing to amass power by directing the anger for that pain at the most vulnerable: the poor, the outsiders, society’s lowest castes.
During last summer’s uprisings support for the Black Lives Matter movement grew rapidly. Spontaneous BLM protests amassed millions of protestors. More, they brought about pledges for change. New York opened up police disciplinary records. Multiple cities banned chokeholds. For a while it looked as though we were at a social tipping point.
Unfortunately, social media is easy and change is hard.
Many of the corporate pledges have yet to come to fruition. The new strategy of demonizing Critical Race Theory, then calling any nuanced discussion including race CRT, seems to be successful in the usual circles. Which is why the fight to be seen in our full humanity continues.
And part of the fight is acknowledging the racism of the kind, generous, wonderful people we love.
*In the US the term is an ethnic slur.