To me there can be a difference between someone who is a Racist — and someone who has subconscious and unconscious preconceptions about people with a certain skin color, based on the environmental influences that have shaped their view of things since they were born.
Having preconceptions about someone with a different skin color and ethnic background than you, doesn’t necessarily equate to you being ‘A Racist’. It may more equate to you simply having certain subconscious and unconscious conditioning based on the world you were born into and the external influences you’ve been exposed to. A large part of your view of yourself and others and the world, is based on what you are exposed to – external influences – external examples.
And the reality is when you have a population with a minority that is a different skin color, like in America which is a huge country with different concentrations of ethnic groups in different areas – not everyone can have equal exposure to all skin colors and have equal relationships and personal experience with people of all colors and backgrounds. Naturally people are going to perceive other people in various ways when they haven’t had personal experience with those people. And that’s not only people of a different skin color. You might have preconceptions about people who have more money than you, who belong to a country club, or people who went to a better school than you, or people who shop at a different grocery store than you or come from a more rural area, or a more urban area. So we need to let go of this idea that just because someone has preconceptions about someone with a different skin color, that automatically means they are a racist. We all have preconceptions about many different kinds of people.
The way I would define someone who is actually “a Racist” is someone who has consciously made a decision that what makes sense to them, is that people of one skin color are superior to another, for some ideological reason and belief – where they will argue with you why they believe black people don’t deserve equality for example. This is different from for example a store clerk in an all white area who subconsciously reacts if a black person wearing a baseball cap and hoodie walks into their store. They may simply be accessing subconscious associations based on something they saw in the news or in movies, or whatever. They may not ideologically believe that white people are superior to black people – they may just be functioning within an unfortunately biased world view based on their limited relationships and exposure to black people.
So we need to I think be willing to consider the possible distinction between being a Racist — and having preconceptions conditioned from birth based on environmental and developmental influences. Because this would affect your approach with the person or group you’re dealing with in terms of educating about Equality.
It’s important to educate and support others to clear up harmful and negative preconceptions, but we have to do it within an understanding of where people are coming from, and not just jump to labeling them in an extreme way – because that might end up reinforcing certain preconceptions or uncomfortabilities they may have. I agree that people who are in fact consciously Racist – need to be made uncomfortable and challenged on their ideology. But we need to be careful not to group everyone into the ‘Racist ideology’ category when they may just be dealing with subconscious or unconscious conditioning based on their upbringing and environment.
And to a certain extent, I think that we have to accept that people are going to have preconceptions about other people – whether that’s based on skin color or something else. We’re still a long way off from a population where every single person has a well developed ability to self reflect, self evaluate, and become aware of their preconceptions, biases, and subtle ways they may discriminate against others consciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously. I mean we all discriminate against other people in various subtle ways within our thoughts and behavior without really being aware of it – based on different opinions, different religions, different styles, different economic backgrounds or political leanings, etc. We have to focus on cultivating a culture where self reflection and self honesty and self awareness, and consideration – are part of the normal vocabulary from a young age. We still mostly function automatically as the personalities that we’ve become as a result of reacting to our environment and forming unconscious interpretations and opinions about things and people. We need to accept that it’s going to take time to support ourselves and others to firstly learn how to become self aware, and secondly learn to recognize our Equality with all other people, which becomes then the starting point from which you’re able to see very easily where you have a bias, or a judgment, or some kind of negative association toward another person. And if we want others to be self aware then we need to make sure that we ourselves are practicing self awareness when it comes to our OWN perceptions and preconceptions of others, so that we can get our starting point clear before dealing with other people in matters of education about racism and equality.