Excerpt from White Anti-Racist Activism: A Personal Roadmap by Jennifer R. Holladay, M.S. (Crandall, Dostie & Douglass Books, Inc., 2000)

Racism is a doctrine or teaching, without scientific support, that does three things. First, it claims to find racial differences in things like character and intelligence. Second, racism asserts the superiority of one race over another or others. Finally, it seeks to maintain that dominance through a complex system of beliefs, behaviors, use of language and policies. Racism ranges from the individual to the institutional level and reflects and enforces a pervasive view, in white-dominated U.S. culture that people of color are inferior to whites.

Racist beliefs include things like “White people are smarter than people of color,” or “White people make better teachers.”

Racism can manifest itself in terms of individual behavior through hate crimes, or in institutional behavior through employment discrimination. Racism might manifest in individual language through the use of slurs, or in institutional policy through a school’s selection of Eurocentric textbooks.

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 One thing we have grown accustomed to and are tired of hearing is white people who do and say blatantly racist things and then spew out the words: “I’m not a racist!” or “My best friend is black.” Or even “I’m sorry,” when you know you shouldn’t have done ‘that’ or said it in the first place. Those back-handed broke-back latent apologies are old and tired. If you even thought it, you meant it.

Racism is so deeply embedded and ingrained in American society and in the western nations that Black people have become rightfully hyper-sensitized to something that white people think of as just “another walk in the society parks.”

Here are at least six ways good white people, so they say they are, support racism without even realizing it. I’m sure you can think of more.

1) White privilege.

Everyone knows that white people get certain “perks” in society that people of color may never get to enjoy. It is never anything they actually earned, but by advantage of their skin color alone. Whether they realize it or not, these kinds of “social bumps upward” shape the way people interact with one another.

If a Black person has to so much as go into a grocery store to look for “their” products in the Ethnic Section, this is a mostly overlooked covert detail that says “Your skin color is not something we concern ourselves with. You’ll have to use the flesh-colored band-aids made for white-skinned people.”

It seems like a petty detail, but it has tremendous impact as to who America sees as “the” mainstream market to which the rest of us must concede and comply.

There are higher arches and sub-arches of this white privilege tale that are far worse than the marketing “perks.”

Check your privilege card at the door.

2) Supporting white privilege by saying “It’s not my fault” or “privilege is natural.”

Those words tell a tale all of their own. Denial and defensiveness about what is doesn’t make this go away, and it doesn’t lessen the sting felt by those who are traumatized nearly every day because of a white-privileged society.

No, it’s not YOUR fault – that is a defense that simply has no weight in this discussion. And, privilege is not natural. It’s about as unnatural as it gets, but the argument on that one is that if one race comes down, another will replace it. Race privilege will not go away no matter which side it is tossed to, some say.

In a true natural world, the system or power-that-be are not based on a person’s skin color in ways that cause them to become reactionary just to feel “equalized.”

If it’s not “your” fault, then don’t blame Blacks who act like the animals they were designed to be.

3) Using other ethnic inequities as an excuse to bypass racism; or justifying white privilege by tossing it back to history.

The “Indians” went through this, or the “jewish” people went through that, the Irish people were indentured slaves in America, too, blah blah blah.

These excuses do not mitigate the losses, harm and damage that are historical with Black people the world over, but they are also the kinds of excuses that cause these issues to fester like a gaping open wound with salt poured in them.

There simply is no other race or ethnicity in the world who has gone through the trauma of being “Black” and also have not been rightfully compensated for the harm and damage that was done, and have to watch those who were enriched and empowered “lord it over” them as ‘superior just because’.

The forty acres and a mule theory got cut off in the midst of translation and to this day, many Black families around America remain impoverished not only because of the damage and harm that was done in the past, but the damage that continues to this very day that was never made whole.

Throwing other ethnicities in the pool as an excuse to purge and get away with justifying racism against Black people is not a logical option, not unless you really are a racist. And the “hit and run” apologies aren’t cutting it, either.

4) Supporting the historical ideologies of “Mighty Whitey” as the “savior of all mankind.“

Hate to pop the “white man as hero” bubble, Superman, Batman, Iron Man, Captain America, Terminator, all y’all … but white-skinned gun-toters and progenitors of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) who manufacture other-worldly stories about the true benefits of socialist imperialism can no more save the world than can a real-life Black and colored street gang on 54th & 7th in Newark, New Jersey.

The media pictures may look big, bold, bright and shiny, and have a high gloss and sheen to them, but beneath all the BS is a race of human beings all stuck in this hellhole of a universe together, like it or not.

When the “cosmos” does finally align, white folks are just as dead as the rest of us.

Long story short, you may unwittingly support racism by supporting the portrayal of whites as the conquering redeemers of the world and say “It’s just a movie!”, but this imagery does nothing more than support another format of white supremacy in ways that come off the screen and tries to interject itself into the “real” world.

The larger-than-life actors and on-screen glam make whites think they are bigger and more fearsome than they really are.

5) Not supporting equality.

There is a turn-around to supporting something fair and equitable, and there is that hidden background noise called “not being supportive.”

Racism can be pulled out in undercover ways that say nothing at all and totally withdraw from the conversation. To sit and watch someone being subjected to racist activity and not speak out on it, or ignore it as if it never happened or say “it’s got nothing to do with me” is truth at its sincerest.

However, when someone can see it and deny it, or look the other way or walk away…that’s the same thing as supporting it. I believe it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”

A person who enjoys white privilege may understand that it has no personal impact on him, and it doesn’t; but silence is silent agreement.

Dr. King also said and I quote “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

6) The use of civil rights icons and historical figures in education to symbolize racial equality and somehow ‘prove’ that you are not a racist.

Memorizing rote history about Black people who have stepped into the antiquities in Black America does not qualify you as a judge to speak to other Blacks in America on whether or not they know as much as you do.

“Don’t call me a racist! I marched with Dr. King!” is about as politically viable as someone who says “Don’t call me a bigot! I lived on reservations with Indians!”

People who even say the words “white privilege” are racist live in a separate reality all of their own making.

This issue goes much deeper than denial, it becomes highly condescending to tell Black people that they should “live up to” and vie for standards set by Black social icons who did not volunteer for the movement, but were thrust into the middle of it by a set of circumstances that they couldn’t have gotten out of by just saying “The hell with Black people. I’m going home to take care of my wife and children.”

There was a local white pastor who took a bunch of Black teens in Harlem to see the Will Smith movie about Chris Gardner, a Black man once homeless in the streets who ended up becoming a Wall Street millionaire. [Hint: “The Pursuit of Happyness.”]

He told them “If you work hard, you can achieve this, also,” thus negating the very fact that before any of those young Black men set foot toward a job like that, they will be judged on skin color alone. Even worse, he did not take into account that ‘those kinds of jobs’ don’t have enough of them available to employ all of those young Black men in that price range.

Typically, “those jobs” are set-asides for the white and privileged. as mentioned above.

If those types of jobs are available to even ONE LONE BLACK MAN, a “Chris Gardner” archetype would end up being a token symbol of some dreamed-up ‘diversity’, not a real cornerstone or page-turner for other young Black men.