Why Good People Do Racist Things

I have a decent radar for recognizing consciously racist, anti-Jewish, homophobic, Islamophobic and other xenophobic people. I don’t always get it right, but most of the time, I’m a good read of people.

For that reason, I’m not a big canceler.

If someone doesn’t hate others based on conscious thought, I try to give them space and grace even if I think the policies they support cause racist results. I only cancel conscious hatred and racism.

For clarity, I’m not okay with racist results. I just don’t cancel people who aren’t consciously trying to harm others.

For the person who genuinely feels that they “only judge people based on the content of their character,” I believe we must keep them in the conversation even if their views on how to confront society’s race issues don’t match the reality of racism we see in society.

Plus, authentic diversity means having many voices in our circles.

Sometimes even voices we don’t always want to hear. I’ve had many conversations with people on the opposite side of an issue where we both learned from each other. We can’t exactly ask others to hear us out if we won’t do the same.

Any of us who claims to have all the correct answers to what ails us isn’t being intellectually honest anyway.

There’s no magical racial Ivermectin to cure society of its deep wounds.

But what each one of us suffers from, Black, white, left and right, is unconscious, well-trained ideas about everything from relationships to parenting to race.

We all know that a child who endures trauma from a highly dysfunctional family will unconsciously act out in certain ways as an adult, sometimes ruining relationships and picking bad partners over and again. Not because they want to, but because the way they were trained as a child informs their unconscious mind.

Expert behavioral psychologist Susan Weinschenk, in her class Brain and Behavioral Science, states that around the year 2000, researchers within the field discovered that most of the decisions we make are unconscious. “Most” is an understatement. Up to 90% of our decision-making is unconscious.

Imagine a child who grows up watching his father hit his mother. Punch walls. Where parents are in constant shouting matches. Threats of divorce are a weekly occurrence for years on end.

None of us would be surprised if the unconscious part of that child’s brain, even as an adult, acts out in certain ways that are based on that learned insecurity. Maybe the adult becomes a yeller by unconscious nature. Or maybe they overreact to any form of criticism as if they’re being yelled at. We’ve all seen this play out with people we know.

And, while yelling and screaming are not okay, we ought to still give grace to people who aren’t purposely doing bad things, but instead are just acting out their trained inner child.

I once knew someone whose parents had abandoned her as a child. The father moved away and only saw his kids a month of the year. The mother was never around because she was too busy taking drugs. As a kid, she was left with no loving adult in her life.

Miraculously, she went on to earn a college degree and has a stable job. But in relationships, she had severe abandonment issues. Not because she consciously wanted to. In fact, she consciously didn’t want to. But her inner unhealed child was in charge. As a result, her behavior was pervasively unhealthy and destructive.

None of us would dispute this type of unconscious trajectory of someone who grew up with these ideas.

Well, the same is true with how we view and behave when it comes to race.

For any of us over 30, we were fed a steady diet of negative images of Black people. Violent Black men. Angry, loud Black women. Black criminals. Black people as entertainment. Black villains in comic books.

Black was taught as bad, while white, good. White angels. White is purity.

Even God is white.

Our heroes and role models were mostly white men. Superman. Batman. Spiderman. You know the list. None were Black.

Barbie and other dolls were exclusively thin white women for decades. Beauty was white.

All while Black women were portrayed as caretakers.

Advertising with Black people in positive roles was almost nonexistent until the last 20 years.

Movies about race or some ethnic group in conflict habitually featured white heroes saving a marginalized group: “Glory” (1989), “Dangerous Minds” (1996), “Amistad” (1997), “Finding Forrester” (2000), “The Last Samurai” (2003), “Half Nelson” (2006), “Freedom Writers” (2007), “Gran Torino” (2008), “Avatar” (2009), “The Blind Side” (2009) and “The Help” (2011).

I could go on for pages, but the negative and stereotyped portrayals of Black people along with the uses of the white savior trope, piled on top of more images of the same for generations impacted us all, like it or not.

Just like a child who regularly sees violence in the home, we were devoid of positive images of Black people, causing us to believe in the decades of stereotypes fed to us. In consequence, we also unconsciously developed behaviors that act on those negative portrayals. Not because we want to.

Today, those images are improving, but there’s still a long way to go.

The good news is that there’s a path to unwind our decades of trained bias.

Here are two ways to unravel those decades of views on race:

Education

One way is to read, take classes and listen to podcasts to educate ourselves about history, race and related issues. No doubt, it will take time to undo those millions of images pounded into us. But if we put in the educational work, we can begin to engage in racial healing for ourselves. Little by little we can unwind our racial trauma.

End Racial Distancing

The other way, not instead of but in addition to education, is to broaden our after–5:00 p.m. circles. To befriend people who are different than ourselves. To make sure our dinner tables are filled with more colors.

I’m not talking about the easy work lunches and coffees.

I’m referring to truly investing in relationships with different races and ethnicities in the most intimate parts of our lives. Our homes. Our family events. Our kids’ celebrations. Where we really get to know what makes people tick. What makes them laugh. What stresses them out.

To learn about what others actually experience rather than what we think they do or don’t experience.

These two things are part of the racial therapy we all need to heal from our childhood training on race.

Jeffrey Kass is a lawyer and award-winning author. His latest book, “Black Batwoman v. White Jesus” confronts the issue of unconscious bias head on.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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