Welcome to Whiteness Wednesdays. One of the constant lies White people tell ourselves is that racism is a dying legacy of the past, and that we’re just about to move past it altogether. This mindset is justified by any number of informative tidbits to prove that assumption, some more true than others.
I’ve heard many times in private among White people that the discussions and accusations and assumptions about racism do far more to perpetuate it than anything else: this notion of “Why can’t They just get over it? Do we need to keep talking about it and bringing it up? We all learned about that stuff in school. Slavery isn’t here anymore, we have equality, we even had a Black president! How long do we have to keep hearing about racism as an excuse?”
While the above is not literally a single verbatim quote from a single person, it is a collection of verbatim quotes from various White people I have spoken with, firsthand, about race relations. One of them married to a Black person and with children.
Black people will probably not be surprised in the slightest to hear that any Black celebrity who has ever said a bad thing about their own skinfolk while not scaring White people is apt to be quoted at some point as proof. Thankfully, Bill Cosby no longer gets trotted out as an example or source of quotes about race relations anymore, but there’s no shortage to replace him (especially if people aren’t too picky about checking to see if said Black celebrity actually said it).
This narrative isn’t new, not by a long shot. In fact, the term “post-racial” in this context seems to date back to the early 1970s or late 1960s, just after the nation was dealing with the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act and was in the midst of reckoning with the White resentment backlash. This New York Times article is cited as an example of the earliest usage.
You might assume that it was resentful, embittered conservatives (Dixiecrats mostly) eager to foist this notion onto us, but the truth is right-wing pro-bigotry Whites have always preferred “the status quo is just fine!” as their self-delusion of choice. No, this was the territory of the other powerful preserving force of institutional racism: the Well-Meaning White Ally.
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