What Makes Someone Become Racist?

“No individual is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, solely by the virtue of his or her race or sex,”-Manny Diaz- Florida Commissioner of Education

How does someone become racist? I agree with Florida’s Commissioner of Education that nobody is born that way. Children from families with the most racist views don’t exhibit those traits early on, some having solid friendships with those they later come to hate. Racism is a state one has to arrive at. So how does that occur? I submit there’s nature, nurture, and the systemic bombardment of propaganda that instills false beliefs and shapes behavior.

Nature

“Nature refers to the hereditary factors or the genes of a child, which not only defines a child’s physical appearance but also helps in building a child’s personality traits.”-Dr. Anshu Sethi

Nature suggests certain traits are predetermined by heredity. A child might have their hair color or the shape of their eyes or nose determined by nature. Some behavioral traits might be influenced by nature; how a child sleeps, eats, or even cries could begin as nature but can be shaped by nurture later on. Nothing about nature has been determined to cause racism; racism is both learned and taught.

Nurture

“On the other hand, nurture refers to various environmental factors that impact our personality traits, our childhood experiences, how and where the child is raised, social relationships, and culture.

Various branches of psychology take a different approach towards nature and nurture. Where some believe it is predominately the nature that is responsible for shaping up a child’s behaviour, others believe it is the way a child is nurtured, which marks his behavioural characteristics. In the past, it was believed that nature was more important but recently most experts lay stress and importance on both, the nature and the nurturing ways on the behavior of a child.”-Dr. Anshu Sethi

Children can be taught racism. Some grow up in environments where they can hardly help to be racist. They hear it at the dinner table and witness it among their parents and relatives. I encounter people regularly who were raised in racist environments yet overcame those beginnings to avoid the traits that might have been passed down. Some types of racist behavior can be unlearned, which usually requires exposure to other ways of thinking and positive examples that offset the negative ones.

There’s another way to become racist. It concerns the systemic racism some forces keep saying doesn’t exist. It’s the kind of racism taught in school, heard from the pulpit, and embedded in government publications. What you believe shapes who you are, and much of what Americans are taught reinforces racism. We are trained in multiple ways that slavery wasn’t that bad. My state of Florida teaches that slavery provided an overall benefit for some as if it had a silver lining. The most heinous parts about the experience of Black people, Native Americans, Jewish people, and others have been minimized and eliminated. It’s America’s version of denying the Holocaust.

One example is the insistence that the rapid growth in the number of enslaved people in America was due to a “natural increase.” Florida schools use the variation “natural reproduction.” Unlike any other enslaved society, the US had a high and sustained natural increase in the enslaved population for over a century and a half. This came at a time when other enslaved populations experienced decreased numbers.

Florida is not alone in promoting the theory of natural reproduction or increase:

Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slavery increased through natural reproduction and the smuggling of human contraband, in spite of the desire of the Continental Congress to end the importation of slaves

I’ve been working my way through a book, Time on the Cross, which devotes several chapters to promoting natural increase and a chapter to denying that plantation owners engaged in forced breeding. Like Florida, the word rape is never mentioned. The book was reviewed in Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among others. It promoted a theme that slavery wasn’t that bad and families were rarely broken up, but that family units were encouraged. The authors did television interviews, and most importantly, the book, published in 1974, was taught in schools. Critical reviews have shown their math was bad and their conclusions worse. Yet generations have been influenced by this nonsense.

I’ve previously criticized other historians like Jenny Bourne, who promoted Natural Increase:

Or Edwin Betts, who hid information about Thomas Jefferson’s slaves being beaten at Monticello:

Evangelist preachers told their congregations that slavery and, later, Jim Crow was God’s will, as was their mistreatment. Robert Jones wrote about it in his book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. I wrote about it too.

Children and adults, Black, white, and other, can be subjected to so many falsehoods that they cannot help but draw false conclusions. A warped version of history, pushed by those with political views, only adds to the desired result. I give the newest Florida Guidelines credit for covering a comprehensive number of subjects, more than one might imagine. Where they go astray is their effort to minimize the horrors of Black history while maximizing the efforts of abolitionists and misconstruing the intent of the Constitution and leaders like Lincoln and Jefferson.

Lastly, there’s American politics and cable news. Elections have been won by demagoguing Black men (Willie Horton) and portraying Black women as welfare queens, while DeSantis currently claims Black History has no educational merit. While today it’s Fox News, the right-wing media, and social media promoting racism. It’s also your school textbook and televangelist. Where does it end?

Stopping the spread of racism requires more than charging the occasional hate crime or calling out a political opponent. We must rid ourselves of the systemic racism that provides lies we often take for granted because they’re from a supposed reliable source. We must stop Florida and other states from providing a version of history far afield from the real thing. If we allow these fake facts to exist, we are part of the cause. Give that some thought.

This story is one of 26 essays from Estranged Americans: Fallacies of Freedom, Citizenship, and Racism, available on Amazon.

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This post was previously published on AfroSapiophile.

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