Here’s where I admit I’m accidentally racist, but I tone it down by creating a new word. I’ll also share the blame by noting that everyone – black, white, yellow, green – has racist tendencies. We can’t separate our lives from how we were raised, and when it comes to equality, we’re all, in the words of my Women’s Studies professor (one of two men in class), the “walking wounded.”

I work with words, and “racist” covers too much territory. “I have cancer” could mean a small mole or a death sentence, but we use cancer to describe both.

Nice people shut down if called a racist, but the goal is to keep the conversation going. Call someone a racist and you might as well say asshole. It insults people who think they’re not racist, even if they’re wrong, and they dig heels into sand. We move beyond bigotry only if we can talk about it openly.

First new word: Race-ish
“Race-ish” describes behavior rather than people, and it follows the parental advice to “condemn the action, not the child.” Race-ish behavior might indicate the owner’s underlying racism, but maybe not. Race-ish behavior, once identified, could lead to “Damn, I’m sorry, I never thought about it that way before,” or the less desirable, “I didn’t mean anything by it – you’re too sensitive.”

Second new word: Hardcore racist
A hardcore racist is a white man who will put a pointy sheet on his head and burn front-yard crosses, or a black man who hates every white because they all want to keep the black man down. Hardcore racists freely admit their beliefs.

Third new word, which is really just a tighter definition: Racist
Racist works for people who can’t see their own biases but also refuse to look deeper, including people who truly don’t realize their general attitude is racist. This group includes people who might change their attitude if they can be coerced into looking below the surface.

This subset shuts down if you call them racist, but they might keep talking if you point to a single behavior. Unlike hardcore racists, some of their minds haven’t completely closed. Identifying their race-ish behavior could turn them into hardcore racists, but there’s a chance it will push them into the preferable not-trying-to-be-racist transition stage: the walking wounded.

I want to believe that at least one person on earth has absolutely no race-ish behaviors – that a truly pure heart exists somewhere. But I doubt it.

Examples of race-ish behavior, mainly my own

• In my hometown, we have a handful of blocks whites once described as “the black section.” The reason we have a black section is racist: The federal government and local homeowners once made skin color a contract issue, and deed restrictions legally divided neighborhoods. (I know – right?) I’m still not sure what black people call the black section. For many, it’s probably just “home.”

When driving through town even today, the word “black section” pops into my mind when I hit certain blocks. I don’t know why, it just does. That’s race-ish. And because I’m a product of my years, it’s hard to stop. Thoughts pop into my brain uninvited all the time.

• I grew up with cowboys and Indians, but I started to understand the white-versus-Native American atrocities reading books like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and watching films like Little Big Man and Billy Jack. I get it. As a race, they’re not even from India. But I can’t shake “Indians” out of my head, and “Native American” sounds forced. The word “Indian” just pops up; and when it does, I don’t feel bigoted or hateful – but it’s race-ish.

• In my teens I discovered a “faggot” is handful of sticks, a word used commonly in the United Kingdom. I laughed and still laugh when the gay-versus-a-bundle-of-sticks thought pops up. (Though I also snicker when someone mentions “B.J.’s” wholesale club.) My faggot laugh is race-ish – or gay-ish – though I think the term race-ish can be used as a descriptor of innocent bigoted things, even if gay isn’t a race.

• I sold a Florida travel agency in 1996 to an American Jew whose biggest client was an Israeli firm. She complained about “the Israeli Jews” and explained their arrogant faults in detail. Her talk was bigoted but aimed at her own minority. How could I dislike a Jew for bigoted talk about Jews? I didn’t know what to think. Still don’t.

• Kelly Osbourne took flak for criticizing Donald Trump’s view of Mexicans but ended it with “If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet?” That’s race-ish, but I live in Orlando, and this thought popped into my head: A lot of our hotel workers are Hispanic. Is it racist for that thought to pop up? Deep down, is Osbourne racist? We can’t know from one comment, though I suspect she’s not. She certainly did something race-ish, but then we all do.

I can – we all should – question the values we grew up with.

My father once told me Bactine was the best thing for wounds, and I unquestionably believed it for years, even after antibiotic ointments came out and I started using them. It just stuck, and until I stumbled on a competing rational thought, the Bactine-as-a-god idea adhered to my brain. Many race-ish thoughts work the same way.

The solution: Admit we all have race-ish behaviors and start to identify them. Talk amongst ourselves. Make loving fun of stupid, outdated ideas; and if someone says you just did something race-ish, kick off a mini bout of self-analysis. We can move forward together if we back it down a notch, point out our mutual race-ish behavior and corral the true hardcore racists.

To quote a line from Avenue Q: “Bigotry has never been exclusively white.”

Social justice is a journey of discovery for the walking wounded. If we collectively and individually admit we have wounds, we’ve taken the first step toward recovery.

 

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