Racism Redefined
My mother was a racist. She would be the first to admit she was; she admitted so to me. But the key word here is “was.” By the time she died, in 2015, she was so far from being a racist, by definition, that no one would ever believe she once was. By the proper definition, a racist is one who believes that a person of another race is in some way, or in many ways, inferior to the race in which the racist belongs.
Mom told me that growing up in southern Illinois she feared Negroes. It wasn’t only that she feared them as an outwardly physical threat, she feared them because she was taught they were of an inferior race. To touch them, or drink from the same fountain, or even sit in a seat immediately after that seat was vacated by a Negro, meant you risked getting some kind of disease, or worse, from them.
Of course this fear was totally wrong. Mom confessed that it took many years for her to overcome these fears. But the point is, she did. She grew up. Mom would never say so, but to call her a racist after those initial years would have been an insult to her. She may not have said so, but I will – to call her a racist today would be an insult to our memory of her.
Yet, by the new definition of “racism,” that is exactly how she would be labeled. Racism is no longer defined as feeling one race is inferior to another. Not today. That old definition does not fit into the narrative of many who want to impose the strict notion that black lives matter. It is a strict notion because it is deemed racist to respond to the phrase “black lives matter” by the phrase “all lives matter.”
The new definition does not accept that racism is to be defined as the belief that someone is inferior based on race. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., recently gave us an idea of what the new definition of racism must now include when she said, “Being race-conscious is not enough. It never was. We must be anti-racists.” Racism is now to be defined as the belief that any group differences not attributed to racism is – you guessed it – racism.
Ibram Xolani Kendi, director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, claims “Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.” So it is no longer enough, as Sen. Warren proclaimed, “to be race-conscious,” now you must be anti-racist, which means to tear down these systems. “Any obstacle in the pursuit of equality of outcome must be torn down, [because it must be] assumed to be a product of discrimination.” Basic decency, then, means that we must oppose even institutions that have been considered hallmarks of freedom. Not to agree to tear down (both literally and figuratively) our former values exemplified by “these systems” means you are a racist.
Any system that ends with different outcomes that does not fit their narrative must be racist. “This means that America’s culture of rights — a culture that suggests an obligation on the part of individuals to respect the rights of others, even if they disagree — must come under fire.” If you have an opinion that does not fit into their belief system, then you are obviously a racist. Under this new definition it is no wonder, when we try to defend the greatness of America, we are all in declared a racist. This is precisely why my mother would be called a racist today.
The black lives matter movement has a diversity structure that wants to convert as many as possible to the work of “anti-racism.” While that sounds harmless, it clearly is not what most Americans understand by the term. This version of “anti-racism” doesn’t teach Americans to judge each other according to the contents of their character. Rather, the ideology stands for precisely the opposite: a rigid and simplistic account of race, in which minorities are permanent victims and whites are forever tainted by racism.