How To Be Notracist
183 years ago, Edward Bulwer-Lytton observed that “the pen is mightier than the sword".
And anyone who doubts this needs only consider that while a decade ago, any self respective progressive would have faced the sword before saying they were racist, in the three years since Ibram X Kendi published “How To Be An Antiracist”, millions of those same people have become genuinely uncomfortable saying they’re not racist.
Instead, the options have been narrowed down to racist or its “opposite,” antiracist.
In theory, this isn’t a bad thing. After all, how many of the ~43 million Americans who consider interracial marriage to be morally wrong, would claim they aren’t racist? How many of the ~11 million Americans who wouldn’t vote for a black president under any circumstances would assure us that they have black friends? And what do the ~120 million white Americans who don’t have black friends even say to convince us they aren’t racist?
Racism is alive and well in 2022. And framing it as a nice, simple binary encourages people to at least think about where they stand. The problem is, it also encourages people to treat this nuanced issue as if it’s, ahem, black and white.
