The rise of the casual racist

It happens every day, on the bus and in class, in the quips of students to their close friends. It happens in magazines and on TV shows. It happens everywhere, with increasing frequency, and no one seems to be talking about it.

I like to call it “casual racism,” and it doesn’t need addressing simply because there’s a holiday or month calling for us to do so.

I don’t know if I’ve actually witnessed more racism lately, or if I’m just more attuned to it as I mature. But in the past two or so months, I’ve seen a spike in what I've started to call “casual racism,” a term I’ve been using to encompass racist behaviors disguised as humor or cheeky, post-racial sarcasm.

These casual racists are usually white, upper-middle-class cisgendered men and women. They usually insist they’re not actually racist, or that they don’t actually mean what they say, or even that they’re “colorblind.” The things they say or do, they’ll argue, are said or done because to walk on eggshells around certain topics just because of race is “racist in its own way.” To move beyond racism, they'll tell you, we must ignore our racist past, and start fresh and equal.

For example, during break, someone I know used the phrase “CPT” when referring to people who are perpetually late to appointments.

“What does that mean?” I asked her.

“Colored people time,” she said, laughing.

Shocked, I asked her why she’d used that saying, and she said she’d heard it from some of her black friends. When I told her that didn’t make it OK for her to say, she told me I was the racist for telling her she couldn’t use certain words because she was white.  

I see the same casual racism when people on campus talk about international students of Asian heritage, loudly proclaiming Asians “can’t drive” or that they’re “all so weird.” These conversations often happen within earshot of one of the international students in question. When confronted, the perpetrators argue they’re “not serious” or “not actually racist." There's pervasive attitude that it's "all in good fun," as if that justification makes it okay.

In the most recent episode of the buzzed-about HBO show “Girls,” the main character, a white, upper-middle-class woman named Hannah, tries to tell the black man she’s dating that she doesn’t see color, and that she’s never thought about the fact that he’s black. “You’re crazy,” he tells her.

This attempt to naively act as if we live in a post-racial society is just as casually racist as my friend using the phrase “CPT.” It’s only Hannah’s white privilege that allows her any supposed blindness to race in the first place.

I see people on campus behaving like Hannah every day.

Everyone’s a little bit racist.

White people are loath to accept the fact that we are, in fact, personally responsible for almost all of society’s racial issues.

Our generation of white people seems to think we can almost magically throw off the heavy cloak of violent history passed to us by our ancestors by simply proclaiming that things are better now, that we’re not really racist anymore. This proclamation is what allows us to make these racist remarks in good faith.

But it’s not that simple, and it never will be. The atrocities our ancestors wrought in the name of race are too many to be forgotten so quickly.

As a white person, I can’t speak for people of color. But I can implore my fellow white people to admit they have privilege, to admit racism still exists, and to realize that trying to ignore it or joke about it is a manifestation of white privilege in its own way.

Whites may not be lynching people of color anymore, but the structural, institutional violence of racism is still around today, and it's just as deadly. Casually racist behaviors and remarks add nail after nail to the frame of this lingering structure of oppression, strengthening it.

We’ll never be able to make racism disappear completely.

But if we admit to ourselves that our own behaviors may be contributing to the problem, we may be able to make past hurts hurt a little less, and keep moving forward.

­— kelfritz@indiana.edu