Shaun King
wrote a diary about yet another study that suggests the deep, embedded nature of racial bias in America. That piece by King focuses on a report from Mother Jones, which is itself a report on a study done by the University of Illinois. At UI, they found that "people" were quicker to shoot black targets than white targets.
The response was, and continues to be, one gigantic distraction from the important points made by King in his writing. Specifically, a number of presumably white Kossacks seized upon King's choice of title: "Scientific study confirms what we already knew, white people prefer to shoot black people."
Let's be clear - the discussions that followed in that diary were pedantic and designed to deflect from the uncomfortable truths of the study. Readers accused King of not understanding how science works, of utilizing "click bait" tactics, and of being intentionally inflammatory. Perhaps most interesting were the Kossacks who believed that King had wrongly lumped all white people in together.
Readers seemed to take issue with the idea that white people "prefer" to shoot black people. They also took issue with King because the Illinois study seems to cover shooters of all races. Why wasn't this mentioned, readers pleaded.
Fragile white feelings were hurt. Many demanded things from King. Change the title! Clarify the science! Quit writing about that which you don't know! Treat white people as individuals!
These complaints are annoying, and the subsequent derailment of that important diary is emblematic of one of the problems with today's American discourse. That is, in even those discussions about situations in which black people and their bodies are being killed and crushed, we have to make unnecessary allowances for white people's feelings. Let's not be too honest or else we might just make white people uncomfortable. We must add all sorts of disclaimers, including those that should be implied, lest we suggest that white liberal Internet hero himself is a contributor to the perpetuation of institutional racism in America.
This is the part of this diary where white Kossacks, and white liberals of all stripes, need to accept some important truths. We could have had a discussion about these truths in King's diary, had it not been derailed.
That is - you are not immune to the implicit biases that help the perpetuation of white supremacy in America. I say you in the most collective sense possible. I say it in a way that includes me and every single one of you.
The bigger point of King's diary, and the point that needs to be made about racism in America, is that it doesn't just exist in those corners of America like my hometown, where really bad racists talk about hanging n-words in trees and less bad racists say that they're not going to restaurants because those restaurants are "getting darker." Racism is not limited to those far-reaches of right-wingers that we like to write about here. Rather, it's such a strong societal tide that it informs the thoughts and actions of many more people than we're willing to admit.
The people involved in the Illinois study were asked to make split second determinations of "shoot" or "don't shoot" after being shown targets of different colors. These are not situations in which people sit around and consider the arguments for or against black value in America. Rather, they're emblematic of the inherent biases that the participants carry around with them on a daily basis. Whether we want to admit it or not, these biases are almost universal.
I'm a white male, aged 29, who grew up in the Deep South. My family tree includes some quantity of overt racists, some quantity of passive racists, and another quantity of people who'd probably tell you that they've moved past all of that stuff. I grew up in a town that had effective segregation in its schools until around 1995. It's one of the poorest counties in America, and one where race relations are something less than good, even today.
I've also been to law school. I've worked in public defense, marched with #BlackLivesMatter activists, and been mentored by a host of black men in my youth and now into my adulthood. I've read black voices from the past and present, and written at length about the various ways in which black people get screwed in the criminal justice system. I've called to the carpet my own high school, which was a segregation academy founded in 1966 to give white people a place to send their kids post-Brown. I've called out Clemson, my alma mater, for the way in which it celebrates white supremacy through the naming of its buildings.
Simply put, I'm the kind of person who has worked hard to make myself acutely aware of race in America in ways that I hope are productive. And here's the rub - even with that intentionality in my life, I am still not immune to the environmental biases that might as well have been injected into my psyche and DNA. When I'm out and about at night and I see a group of black kids coming my way, I might get a little uneasy. I feel some danger. My subconscious tells me that those black kids might do me harm.
Then I engage my brain, I think of all of the reasons why I just had those feelings, and I think about all of the reasons why my reasons were wrong. I remind myself that black people aren't any more dangerous or criminal than the average white kid, and that I've just done something patently unfair to those kids. I think about all of the lies that I was told about black people by influential people when I was young, and how the media tries to reinforce those stereotypes today. I hope and even pray that by going through this intentional mental process every single time, that I will one day be free of these biases. I'm strong enough in my beliefs to admit all of that. And I'm strong enough to admit that I'm scared that despite my best efforts to re-program my subconscious, I may always harbor those "in the instant" thoughts about my black brothers and sisters.
This is how racism embeds itself into societies. It's what makes racism so prevalent and dangerous. It's not that people shoot because they "hate" black people (although this is true for some). Most often, people shoot because they're "scared" of black people, harboring unreasonable fear that's simply not justified. It's vicious and incendiary. And it's worse so when people refuse to admit it.
In the Clemson discourses about the re-naming of Tillman Hall, I've encountered many people who have suggested that Ben Tillman was an "extremist" for his time. They've suggested that his ideas were outside of the norm of his time, and that's why the building shouldn't be named after him. I implore them to throw off this wrong assumption. The truth is that Ben Tillman's ideas weren't extremist for his time. He was elected to public office multiple times on a very public platform. What's bad about Ben Tillman is not that he was an outlier. It's that he wasn't.
And in his story, I hope that people learn that perhaps the most dangerous thing about racism is not the way in which a few bad people can use it for terror and torment. But rather, that lots of people - even good, well-meaning people - can be swept up in a current and not even know that they're swept up. Racism is prone to infect our institutions not because of a few extremists, but because implicit biases are hammered into the minds of all people over an extended period of time.
Many in King's diary pointed out to him that even black people were more likely to shoot a black target than white target in the study. And of course that's true. As it turns out, black people consume the same media that white people do. They live in the same society white people do. One commenter pointed out that many black kids prefer white dolls at an early age, an indication that among all people, we hammer home the unfortunate mistruth that "white is right." All of this is just proof and support for the idea that racism and its remnants can impact us all.
It's long past time for white folks to stop derailing important discussions with overblown concern for their feelings. There may exist a cabal of white people, raised in proper environments and isolated from popular messaging, that harbor no implicit racial bias against black people. I don't know this because I don't exist in their brain in the moment that a black person passes on the street late at night. But it's my opinion that most white people are in some ways impacted by racism, and this is one of the reasons why it's been able to seep into our most cherished institutions. Rather than fighting tooth and nail to be excluded from any suggestion that "all" white people are racist, understand those times when implicit bias strikes you, replace the unconscious with your conscious understanding of what black people are, and quit being so goddamn butt-hurt all the time.