A Response to "I, Racist"

A Response to “I,Racist,” by John Metta.

Let me first preface this by telling you that I am a Taiwanese Asian-American. I say this now, because it will save you the trouble of having  to find my name, and then guess (which won’t be hard) if I am a minority, which one, and “how much” (maybe my mother was white). It’s important to know my race, so you can judge how seriously to take my article on race – I’m a minority, but I’m not black, so that makes me partially, but definitely not fully, qualified to speak.

Will a story of how I’ve been discriminated against help? I’ll make it quick.

I go to a predominantly white college (this is because we don’t offer special scholarships or special treatment for minorities, and thus, are less enticing than the larger institutions who do). One time, while comparing scores on a bio exam with a white friend, he said, “Yeah, but of course you got a good score. You’re Asian.” He meant it as a compliment, so I never told him how upsetting it was to have my hours and hours of studying invalidated by the coincidence of my race.

Good enough for you? Good.  So with that in mind, here are an Asian’s (my name, age, and educational level probably aren’t that important) thoughts on this article.

Mr. Metta seems to define “racism” as systematic oppression by a group, as opposed to the (entirely white) tendency to define it as some aspect of an individual person, and yet his attacks get rather personal.

“And White people, every single one of you, are complicit in this racism because you benefit directly from it.”

"Millions of Black lives are valued less than a single White person's hurt feelings."

Why, then, is he being inconsistent in his language, attacking white people as single people, since the whole point is to address a system, and since he himself becomes annoyed that white people are responding to the accusation as innocent individuals rather than a guilty group?

The reason for this is, I think, the impossibility of addressing systematic oppression as a system. The only way to change a system is to change the individuals who run it, and, as such, Mr. Metta’s attack on an entire group, insisting that white people are wrong to take it as individuals and must shoulder the collective guilt and subsequent responsibility of a group, will be responded to, perfectly logically, the way that his aunt responded to his sister.

To Mr. Metta’s white aunt, his sister’s “suggestion that ‘people in The North are racist’ is an attack on her as a racist.”  He claims that that’s a wrong-headed way of going about things, but I’m happy to inform him that his aunt has a perfectly good head screwed on perfectly well. She is a member of the so-called “people in The North.” Thus, according to Mr. Metta’s sister, she is necessarily a racist. She probably wishes people would stop making generalized statements about her based on where she comes from and what color she is.

Oh wait.

That’s racism.

And no amount of saying “I’m black, you can’t call me racist” is going to change that. In fact, even that statement in quotations is racist.

Racism is organizing people into categories by race, and then acting as though characteristics other than their skin tone are true for the entire category (“he’s Asian – of course he’s good at math”). Claiming that it is the system’s fault that a black person thinks about black people as a group is no excuse to continue to think that way.  If it truly is the system’s fault, and black people are blameless, then white people like Mr. Metta’s aunt should also have their white guilt revoked. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of the racist system that they grew up in. And yet Mr. Metta is calling for all white people to take responsibility for (tacitly or openly) supporting a system of oppression. He might call on black people, starting with himself, to do the same.

I’ve read 1984. I’ve read up on the Nazis, Communist China, and North Korea. I am a firm believer in the power of language to shape the mind. And it is the language of “I’m black, you’re white, he’s Asian, she’s Native-American” that continues to perpetuate the problem of race as a dividing line between people. Language creates distinction, creates separation. You want to be proud of the racial or regional collective you are a part of? You want to wear a kilt or a cowboy hat or spray-tan yourself orange, go right ahead. But you have to remember that you don’t just carry your country’s or your people’s pride. You carry everything.

In a 2005 interview with Mike Wallace, Morgan Freeman said he doesn’t want a Black History Month.

Wallace responded, “How are we going to get rid of racism and...”

Freeman cut him off with “Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman.”

I’m not saying that black people should disavow their identities as black people. But complaining as a collective about being judged as a collective is still going to get you seen as a collective. “I was hurt by your racist statement unfairly applied to me” is different from “your racist statement is offensive to black people everywhere; how dare you define us blacks as _______.”

Taking a look at Mr. Metta’s “racist system,” then, we find that his definition of his aunt’s participation in it is that she is “upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.” Only one of the three things he mentioned is directly linked to race. The other two are things mostly determined by wealth and job opportunities, some of which may be determined by the racist mindsets of the individuals in charge of distributing wealth and job opportunities. Racial profiling, too, is a product of such mindsets – any laws actively encouraging it should and are being torn down nationwide.

We find that most of his other descriptions of his racist system are not really about systems, but about conditions and crimes, of which being black is secondary, tertiary, or not even really a factor. Mr. Metta would do well to remember that correlation does not equal causation. Higher black populations in poor neighborhoods, shoddierschools, and prisons does not actually mean that somehow being black in Americamakes you poorer, less likely to get an education, or more likely to commitcrime. He even goes so far as to say, “‘better schools’ exclusively means ‘whiter schools,’” which ignores the thousands of factors that go into what makes a good school, some of which may be linked to race, but none of which predetermine anything. I don’t see men’s rights activists (okay, I don’t see them at all, because feminists won’t allow it, but that’s a different issue) screaming against the fact that nine out of every ten incarcerated people in the United States are male. Why? Because they’re not in jail because they were male, or black, or what have you. They’re in jail because they’re criminals.

Mr. Metta says, "Racism is a cop severing the spine of an innocent man. It is a 12 year old child being shot for playing with a toy gun in a state where it is legal to openly carry firearms."  That is not racism; that is crime. And that is punishable by U.S. law, regardless of the race of the cop, the innocent man, the twelve-year old, or the shooter. Mr. Metta claims, “People are dying because we are supporting a racist system that justifies White people killing Black people." No system in the U.S. supports that. The law is clear: killing people is wrong.

Sidebar: I have a friend at _undisclosed large university_ getting his Master’s degree in law. His professor once painted a picture in which a white cop shot a black man for a certain reason, and the ruling went in favor of the white cop. He then asked the students in attendance to raise their hand if they agreed with the ruling.  He then painted the exact same scenario, but with a black cop shooting a white man. He asked for a show of hands again. The number of raised hands changed. This should not happen.

So, in reality, Mr. Metta’s “system” is a nebulous set of prejudices held not by the actual, concrete systems within America, but by people. It encompasses any act, within or without the realm of justice, civil law, or common decency, that is perceived as racist. The only thing holding this thing together as a “system” is the common factor of PEOPLE.

And I know this is tangential, but I cannot let an attack on The Lord of the Rings go without comment. The Lord of the Rings features a predominantly white male cast because The Lord of the Rings was written with male characters (and hence is being more faithful to the original source material than the upcoming Ghostbusters film, but that’s another thing for another day), based in large part on Tolkien’s desire to create an alternate history for England and Continental Europe. It’s a fictional world, but one that is built largely upon a real (also white) one.  You want to see more black-dominated fictional worlds? Go spend your entire adult life making entire languages and cultures out of Egyptian hieroglyphs, Proto-Saharan, and Wadi El-Hol, and I can promise you someone will be interested.

If Mr. Metta really wants to throw historical accuracy (whether the history is fictional or real) out the window, I’d like to see how he responds when I cast an Indian actor as the lead in the next Martin Luther King biopic (imaginary). I’d like him also to go face the crowds of Asian-Americans who protested the casting of non-Asian actors in Avatar: The Last Airbender or in Broadway’s Miss Saigon (both real). Yes, the non-Asian actors in question were white, but if historical accuracy is really his issue, then if they were black folks in yellowface it shouldn’t matter. If it matters whether the non-Asians were black or white, I might have to call him a racist, or, at the very least, favoring his own race.

I understand he is trying to say that American movies predominantly have white people in hero roles and misrepresent black people, but we don't complain when white people aren't portrayed accurately in black comedies. We don’t complain when Bollywood films have a mostly Indian cast.

Last thing, I promise. Mr. Metta says, near the end of his “sermon” in a church, “This is why I don't like the story of the Good Samaritan.” After one gets over the massive irony of the place in which he spoke these words, one must realize the further irony of the title. The black man in this picture is not the beaten, bloodied man by the side of the road. The black man is the Good Samaritan, a member of a people group that was reviled by the Jews who passed the beaten man, reviled by the Jews to whom Christ spoke the parable. The black man is not the man looking for help, but man who goes out of his way to help someone who hates “his kind.” Yes, he is “systematically challenged in a thousand small ways.” Living in the 1^st century A.D., he’s probably systematically challenged in a thousand big ones. But he is not on the side of the road, beaten. He is on the road, helping the beaten, one man at a time. He doesn’t leave a note with the innkeeper, saying, “When the guy in the next room wakes up, make sure you tell him that the one who paid his bills was a Samaritan and that he should rethink his life and also tell all his friends what great people Samaritans are, actually.” He says, “Let me know if there are any further expenses. I’ll pay them.”

So, by way of a conclusion, if Mr. Metta is seeking systematic change, he must first appeal to the individuals who are within the system, who are “running” the system (which few, except perhaps the media, can claim to do). He needs to give us individuals, black, white, or neither, something specific with which to change the system. And that which he can give us is the power to see each other as individuals, rather than as a mass of black people who need help, or a mass of white people who need to feel guiltier about not helping. 

He is understandably frustrated about the lack of change in this country. But perhaps this is because, as he points out, Martin Luther King didn’t end racism. Ending slavery didn’t end racism. Racism is founded not upon an institution, but upon a mindset. And the only way to change a mindset is to change the individual to whom that mind belongs. Mother Teresa once said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”

So I’m going to go up to that one friend of mine, as well as any other friends who attempt to compliment me for my smart Asian genes that I’m happy they find me intelligent, but I’m hurt by the fact that they attribute intelligence not to me, but to the fact that I’m Asian. I’ll tell them I don’t like my work invalidated by my race. And I’ll hope that that makes a difference the next time they get their privileged white asses handed to them on a math test or in a basketball court.