Racism: Will We Ever Get Over It?

You might be wondering what I mean by that question. I am an African American woman, and I am asking whether we will ever move past our racial troubles. Race makes almost everyone uncomfortable, which is exactly why we need to pull it out into the open now and then. The year is 2015, and hate crimes have not gone anywhere. I sometimes imagine how the rest of the planet sees us, the country that calls itself the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. Do they shake their heads when they catch us failing to live up to the things we claim to believe? At certain low points I have thought seriously about leaving and living abroad.

My honest read is that the problem runs deeper in the parts of the country that have refused to move forward. I won't say precisely where I am, but I'll admit I live in one of those stuck places.

Usually on this site I write about personal growth: low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, the kinds of struggles people wrestle with quietly. I have put out plenty of those pieces by now. For once I'd rather set that aside and talk about something closer to the bone.

So why are we still fighting over race? Ask a room full of social scientists and you'll collect a dozen theories. My own sense is that many minorities have not made peace with the history of slavery and the civil rights era, and that old wounds keep feeding resentment toward other groups. Whatever the cause, nobody serious can pretend the problem isn't here. I'm not writing to rank the reasons or dissect the sociology. What I want to do is point toward ways a minority can work through racial pain, especially in the moment when someone says or does something that lands wrong.

A few things about racism tend to catch people off guard.

The first one: minorities can be racist too. Hold on before you get upset. For a long stretch I believed, like a lot of Black folks I grew up around, that we simply couldn't be racist. We can. We just don't label it that way to ourselves. Have you ever said that all white people are evil, or that a Black person and a white person shouldn't share a comb? My grandmother said things like that. I have heard people announce that they merely tolerate white people. I have heard the slurs tossed the other direction. You can argue it isn't racism because white Americans hold so much more of the power, but the bias is still bias. We don't see it as racist, yet there it is.

The second thing: people get nervous about what they can say around us. I have watched coworkers tiptoe when a conversation touched on ethnicity. Working alongside all kinds of people over the years, I learned to find the humor in it. Not a fake laugh to cover hurt feelings; I genuinely found it funny. Carrying a chip on your shoulder only stunts your own growth. You cannot pin every bad thing that happens to you on the idea that someone is trying to keep you down. Plenty of times, your own choices put you in the situation. Some people truly have no idea that their remarks come across as offensive, and the strength you need there is the strength to forgive the prejudice and set the victim role down.

Before you fire back at a clumsy comment, ask yourself whether the person actually means it. If they said it without grasping what the words carry, you have a chance to teach rather than attack. Educating someone who is, let's say, culturally undereducated can make them more at ease around you and around other Black people later on. That takes digging for the patience to walk them through it with some kindness.

Third, and maybe the most damaging: do not let yourself get stamped as the angry Black woman, or the angry Black man. Sometimes you swallow it, you smile when you'd rather cry, and you choose to be the bigger person with someone who seems culturally clueless. Easy to say and hard to live, I know. People track what you do and what you say. If they decide you're prickly or closed off toward other backgrounds, that label sticks, and it does about as much harm as being called a racist yourself. Picture it. Is that really the reputation you want following you around? You should be able to get along with anyone of any background, and at the same time you never owe anyone your blending in or shrinking your identity to fit.

Heather Browning, MBA, BA