Yes, I Am Subconsciously Racist.
The United States and race relationships have always had a rocky history between the two of them, especially when it comes to the relationships between white people and black people. And as a white person myself, I often feel like I should know more about this historical relationship despite my best efforts to learn every day. Don’t get me wrong- I know about the basic history of racism in the United States (like slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, Civil Rights era, the interment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, etc.), and I hear a lot about the police brutality against black people and the unfair treatments a lot of Muslims get after 9/11, but I often feel as if I don’t really know enough to truly be anti-racist.
I mean, I’m not outright racist, but I feel like I don’t really understand how nasty systemic racism can be towards people of color. Who knows? Maybe I’m not consciously racist, but my racism is probably more subconscious. I think that may be the case for a lot of white people as well. We learned the basics about racism in school, but we haven’t been affected by it- at least, not systematically.
After all, when you think of a typical American, you probably think about a white person. While white people who are not Hispanic do make up 60.1 percent of the population in the United States, that number is slowly declining. Hispanics and Latinos make up 18.5 percent, and black people make up 13.4 percent. 18.5 and 13.4 aren’t as big as 60.1, but they’re not small numbers either. Let me remind you that in 1619, twenty Africans landed in the English colony of Virginia as indentured servants (as were many white people at the time) and that by 1790, there were almost 760,000 black people in the United States, making up nearly one-fifth of the population due to many of them being shipped from Africa to the United States as slaves (thank you very much, white people of America). Hispanics and Latinos go back even further. Europeans settlers from Spain landed in St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, and the Spanish settled in New Mexico only thirty-three years later- quite a few years before the Europeans from England that we typically think about. And that’s not to mention the indigenous people living in the Americas for thousands of years!
So why do we think about white settlers before we even think about the black, indigenous, Hispanic, and Latino settlers (if we think of them at all)? I think that has to do with the way the United States’ history is usually told. Have you ever heard the quote “History is written by the victors.”? Well, that’s who white people think they are, and it shows in how our history is written. Again, slavery and the Civil Rights era have been vastly reported, but what about the rest of the history when it comes to people of color? It’s not really taught to many people- not widely, anyways. Most of the history we’re taught about is about the history of white people. Since white people make up a majority of the United States (and have been for the past few decades), they’re going to be the ones who have the most focus. It’s also that way with books, movies, TV shows, and job positions. If they’re the main characters of history, then naturally, they’ll be the main characters of our entertainment as well.
Did you know that white protagonists make up seventy-three percent of overall protagonists in Hollywood films as of 2014? That’s a good bit more than the amount of white people living in the United States, and a vast amount of them star white men as the lead. As a matter of fact, only seven percent of films had a cast that had the same amount of diversity as the country’s diversity. While white women are having more roles as the lead (forty percent in 2019 as opposed to thirty-one percent from the previous year), the representation of women of color in movies actually decreased. And that lack of representation also applies to books, TV shows, video games, and even voter turnout and campaign contributions. How could almost forty percent of the population have such little representation? Why are so many protagonists white? If the world truly is as diverse as we think it is, then why do we only focus on white cultures and stories and not the cultures and stories based on people of color?
In fact, why is the culture of white people shown more prominently in our history and everyday life than the cultures of people of color? There are different types of cultures around the world, right? Right? Unfortunately, colonialism has a lot to do with the erasure of peoples’ of color cultures and stories. We all know about Christopher Columbus’s journey to the Americas in 1492, right? And what had happened to the natives that have lived there while Columbus was on their land? Well, he’s not the first one to colonize an entire land. Many cultures and tribes have been colonizing each other since the ancient times such as Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, and Phoenicia, but the act has become incredibly popular with countries such as Portugal, Spain, England, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Germany, and even the United States in the fifteenth century and especially the nineteenth century.
While these countries colonized others in the Americas, Asia, and Africa for their resources in both the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, the European religions and cultures were also forced down onto these people. The Europeans considered their cultures to be more superior compared to those whom they were colonizing. The Europeans (and later Americans) encouraged literacy and western-styled human rights, often with the thoughts that the natives’ cultures and traditions were “barbaric” and “savage”. Better nutrition and health were also a priority for the Europeans as was the developmental gain for the “more unfortunate” countries. In fact, the Europeans considered this to be their “legal and religious obligation” to colonize these countries for their resources in order to better the natives’ lives. Despite all of this, though, the natives of these colonized countries revolted against these colonizers. But why?
Well, despite what these colonizers were “intending”, the most important thing to these people is money at the end of the day, no matter what other consequence occurs to the natives. Environmental degradation, the spread of diseases like smallpox, loss of traditions and cultures, numerous human rights violations (with the likes of slavery and loss of religious rights), economic instability creating poverty for millions, and ethnic rivalries that have the potential to lead to genocide (much like the one in Rwanda during the 1990s). But if the Europeans were trying to improve the lives of these people, why did things go so wrong? That’s because of greed- greed for money and greed for resources. It didn’t matter that the people in the colonized countries had their own cultures and traditions because to the colonizers, trade was the most important thing to them.
You can say that it’s all in the past, but all of this colonization still affects the world to this day! Have you ever noticed that lighter-colored skin is more desired than darker-colored skin? And how people of color are more likely to be in poverty than white people, especially when it comes to African countries? And how a lot of Middle Eastern countries have to deal with terrorist groups like ISIS all the time? You can thank colonialism for that. Yes, the effects of colonialism are that detrimental. Almost all of the most prosperous countries are in Europe, and most of the poorest countries are in Africa.
English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are official languages in many African countries along with other African languages such as Amharic, Igbo, Luo, Swahili, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu. Yet, how many people really know or even have heard of these African languages? Not many. Now, how many people know and have of these European languages? A lot of people; English, French, and Spanish are official languages in more than twenty countries, and it’s all thanks to colonialism. It’s like they think they’re the main characters of their own stories, and the natives (mainly people of color) are just props for some adventure or drama story.
And as the main character, you often don’t think much about the minor, side, or background characters, let alone what they’re going through. This is usually how a lot of white people are because the daily racism people of color face don’t affect them. I know it’s that way with me. Racism doesn’t affect me the way ableism does (since I am on the autism spectrum), therefore, I’m not as knowledgeable or as passionate about racism as I am about ableism. Don’t get me wrong- I think racism is a horrible thing that still affects our society to this day, and it should be fought against and eradicated. But because I’m white, I don’t really know how effective the racism experienced by people of color is on a daily basis, so I’m not the best person to explain how exactly it should be dismantled. But I do know that it has to be dismantle some day, and I think that dismantling racism
