Racism Without Discrimination

When you’re on the phone with someone in service who has a very thick accent which makes them difficult to understand and you get mad, does that make you racist?   When somebody cuts you off in traffic and you notice the person is Japanese, does that make you racist? When they’re...I could give so many examples.  

Here’s my take on it.  

Wikipedia:

Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.[1][2][3][4] It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different ethnicity.[2][3] Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities.[2][3][5]

The short answer is, ‘Yes.  It is racist.’  The fact that we define people (consciously or unconsciously) based on a perception and then believe certain things about them makes it racist.   I am not suggesting that there is any discrimination or antagonism.  You can be racist and not act negatively or aggressively based on your beliefs.  These are different things.  When I talk about racism, I tend to talk about thought patterns.  

Most people tend to think within a racist framework.  It doesn’t make you a bad person.  It is how the world has been designed for the last few hundred years and you are a product of your environment. Your character only comes into question if you act negatively on those thoughts or become aware of your racist thoughts and defend your right to maintain them.  In reference to the situations above, you are not a bad person because you are frustrated with the lack of being able to communicate with somebody.  You are not a bad person when you are frustrated with somebody else’s driving ability.  That inherently does not make you a bad person, it just makes you human.  However, when our brains assign fault and blame to our frustration because of ethnicity or race, then it becomes a problem.  

For example...you are talking to that person in service who you are having difficulty understanding because of their accent.  You are frustrated because you can’t get your point across and you can’t understand what it is that they are telling you to do to solve the problem. Perhaps it is not just the accent but there is also a language barrier.  

The frustration is with the lack of communication and the fact that your problem isn’t being solved.  That’s not racist.  You would have the same reaction to someone who speaks English fluently and is simply reading off the cue cards on their screen and not solving your problem.  

However, when dealing with someone with a strong accent, our brain tends to take us to a different place.  We may decide the person is stupid or can’t do their job properly.  We may even go so far as to say something like, ‘I can’t ever get proper service from you people.’  Now, our brains have gone to the racist place.   We assume that the lack of communication comes from the person’s lack of competency based solely on their accent.  That IS racist. 

It is a fine line.  And it is a difficult one to recognize.  Our brains often go there without us even recognizing it.  We all see race and ethnicities and we all make assumptions, decisions. We all base our perceptions of other people on race and that’s okay.  Once you become aware of this, you can begin to acknowledge it in your own thoughts and change it.   

But then people will argue; “I’ve always been tolerant of people of other colors.”  I never really did like that statement. Just using the word ‘tolerant’ puts you in a position of power, puts you in a position of - I am putting up with you. I may be doing that gracefully but I’m still putting up with you - which comes from a place of superiority. If you're tolerating people, you’re not compassionate, you’re not equals.  

The next time you find yourself in a situation in which you are unhappy with an obviously ethnic person, simply pay attention to your own thoughts. Would you be reacting to this exact same situation in the same way if the other person was white? I do this often in my life, and if you are being honest with yourself, it can be quite an eye opener.