This is Not the Face of a Racist. This Is the Face of Systemic Racism
We’ve all seen the viral, hate-soaked videos — the ones shot on smartphones at supermarkets, coffeehouses, airports, retail stores. They all begin and end the same way — some sort of seemingly minor dispute or disagreement devolves into an onslaught of racist, sexist, xenophobic, ableist, or homophobic rhetoric.
We eagerly share the footage, taunting the individual in his/her “otherness” and holding them up as “what’s wrong with America.” But the insidious truth is this: they ARE America.
The encounters are spontaneous, devoid of forethought — and serve as proof that when people choose not flight but to fight, the toxic spew is an automatic expression of our ingrained social hierarchy.
In short, society dictates that being not black, or not gay, or not foreign-born is a dependable point of leverage.
When a woman in a Walmart has a disagreement with a brown-skinned woman, she chides the woman to “go back to Mexico.”
When a motorist in liberal Silicon Valley exchanges heated words with a woman of color, he castigates her as a “Cambodian n*gger.”
When a man in a Dallas Airport argues with a slender man in a pink shirt, he claims his anger has been fueled by “this f*ggot right here.”
Even in the case of House Speaker Paul Ryan, during a town hall when a retired septuagenarian challenges Ryan on Medicare and Social Security, the man is dismissed with, “I hope he’s taking his blood pressure medication,” to the delight of the crowd.
What do a fixed-income big-box-shopper, a tech employee, a Texas traveler, and a U.S. Congressman have in common? They all instinctively know, regardless of political ideology or personal conviction, that racist/homophobic/ageist slurs are the go-to argument in the toolbox.
The dynamic is alarmingly reliable: male-versus-female yields sexist insults, white-versus-black earns racist diatribes, native-versus-immigrant bears xenophobic slurs, straight-versus-gay delivers homophobic taunts — and in a sick mix-and-match of privilege, a woman of color is called a “black b*tch,” an LGBTQ Latino a “queer sp*c.” In our society, these verbal assaults are nothing more than a fixed pronouncement of who-rests-where on the food chain.
Whether these individuals themselves are racist/sexist/xenophobic/homophobic is irrelevant to this point — and that you yourself would never indulge in identity-based tirades is, likewise, not germane.
What is important is that in America, there are myriad identity-based weapons of superiority. And when we go for the quiver, society dictates which arrow to draw.
