A Brief Comment on "Casual Racism"

I recently had a meeting with someone who mid-lunch dropped racist tropes as easily as talking about their children. I have no interest in disclosing information about private meetings but I do have a desire to make change, even in small ways, when I see and experience prejudice.

I write here b/c in relaying this event to someone else, they indicated that my response was unusual. I imagine anyone else would've done the same thing, but in an effort to make the unusual more common place, I wanted to share.

The over-arching goal is that racism won't change until white people talk about it and that's what I'm doing here. It doesn't matter what he said; his comments reflected unfair biases without regard for context, empathy and blind to the wider reality.

Specifically, I told him three things ...

1. There is a lot of institutional racism in this country. White people may never see it, may not be aware of it, may never feel it and likely may never experience it.

I can send my kids to the cornerstore and I'm pretty confident they won't be given the side eye, they won't be looked at suspiciously, they won't be stopped-and-frisked and they won't be followed or questioned.

These experiences can be very very different for our african american friends, especially boys and men, all too violently, all too glaringly and all too recently, while they were going shopping, talking on a phone, retrieving their license, etc.

One effect of this institutional racism is what's seen on TV. I'm sure crime, drug addiction, domestic violence, sexual harassment, etc. exist across all races but they are reported on and prosecuted very differently by race.

2. There are an awful lot of successful black people in America. To say there aren't is to diminish these successes. Concurrently, anyone of any race, gender or color can fall through the cracks and margins of society.

3. The stories we tell ourselves about our family history and our background are deeply embedded in our personal identities. These stories help form identity.

Now consider how slavery deprived +4 million people directly of these histories, and their ancestors for years after. Abolition of slavery was only 150 years ago and in parts of this country, for the first 100 years after abolition, black people were still denied education and opportunities for advancement.

Now think about how easily family history comes to many of us. Charlie Munger said this about his grandfather at the recent DJCO shareholder meeting ...

"... he was a Captain in the Black Hawk Wars, and he stayed there and he bought cheap land and he was aggressive and intelligent and so forth and eventually he was the richest man in the town and owned the bank, and highly regarded, and a huge family, and a very happy life."

... his idea of who he is at +90 is supported by family lore he's heard since he was a child.

How long does it take to overcome a loss of history? Layer on institutional racism, incarceration, etc. that prolongs its effects and it seems to me that we are only beginning to dig ourselves out of this. A long overdue reclamation of history has only begun, and needs to continue.

(Incidentally re: family history, my grandfather was a police officer in Philadelphia and many of my views on race were informed by him and his empathy for the people he spent a lot of time around. I believe his experience is true for most police officers, even while they work extremely stressful jobs in a profession that like many is tarnished by the behavior of a few.)

As a kicker, over lunch I was also offered complaints about political correctness. PC is all too easy to disparage ("How many letters of the alphabet do I need to describe someone's sexuality these days?")

The reason PC exists is to show respect through language. For too long, people have been denied this respect b/c of the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, their fondness for unusual hobbies and habits, their dress, their hair, their look, their attitude, etc that might not have fit in with rigid norms.

Yeah, it seems to go overboard sometimes. But it's not there for me. It's there for people who for too long have been denied the same respect. It definitely requires a different way of thinking and speaking but at the heart, it's an effort to give space and respect to anyone of any stripe willing to reciprocate.

I cannot fathom why any mindful and healthy adult wouldn't want to participate in that effort.

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