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Growing up black in America: here's my story of everyday racism

As a middle-class, light-skinned black man I am ‘better’ by American standards but there is no amount of assimilation that can shield you from racism in the US

I am a black man who has grown up in the United States. I know what it is like to feel the sting of discrimination. As a middle-class, light-skinned black man I also know that many others suffered (and continue to suffer) a lot worse than me. I grew up around a lot of white people. In elementary school, I remember being told that I was one of the “good ones” – not like the “bad ones” I was meant to understand; I was different.

I remember the way this kind of backhanded compliment stung me, but it took me a long time to understand why it hurt. In truth, though, the comment rings true. I am “good” by America’s standards, or at least “better”: my skin is light, most of the time I dress like a middle-class professional and my manner of speech betrays a large degree of assimilation in the white American mainstream (for example, I use phrases like “manner of speech”).

But as many others have learned, there is no amount of assimilation that can shield you from racism in this country. Throughout my life, something – the kink of my hair or my “attitude” – would mark me as inferior, worthy of ridicule, humiliation or ostracism. In elementary school I got the distinct impression that teachers didn’t like me. I got in trouble a lot, and one teacher actually wrote on my report card that I was “amoral”. In third grade, I had my first black teacher and the whole dynamic changed. Mrs Brooks decided it was OK if I squirmed in my chair. She taught us about discrimination and injustice and taught us to recite and interpret poetry from the black arts movement. (Thank you, Mrs Brooks!)

As I got older, I observed that my mother saw racism around every corner. She assumed that I would be the object of discrimination in school and maintained an intense, vigilant determination to protect me from it. She monitored everything about my treatment in school, ready to leap at the slightest slight. Sometimes I thought she went too far. I wasn’t chosen to give a speech to my middle school’s assembly, and so she inquired as to why I wasn’t chosen, and she insisted that I be given a shot. So, thanks to my mother raising a fuss I had to give a speech to my entire middle school. (Thank you, mom!)

In high school I started wondering, as teenagers do, how people go about finding romantic partners. From what I could tell in movies and television shows – my principal sources of information – you had to be a rich and white to be worthy of love. I was neither, so I was worried. Like many young black people, I internalized the idea that I would have be twice as good to get half as much respect. Much to my dismay, my blackness seemed to be the salient thing about me. One of my classmates had a gift for inventing creative ways to make fun of my kinky hair, and he got enough people laughing to send me home in tears for a good part of my freshman and sophomore years of high school.

One year, one of the few black students at my high school found a noose hanging in his locker one day. The culprit – a white student – was quickly discovered, and all he had to do to get out of trouble was issue a lame apology. I thought his punishment should have been more severe. I convinced my best friend to wear black armbands in school to protest. This act earned me no greater respect, and actually greater ridicule. Several of our teachers thought it was funny and even prompted our classmates to laugh at our expense: “Look at Jones,” one teacher said, “starting a revolution.” (Thank you, Mr I forget-your-name!)

Looking back, I realize that, apart from my black armband episode, my survival strategy was to make myself as non-threatening as possible. I became so well-practiced in the art of not offending racist white people that I ceased to become outraged by them, at least when they affected me directly. I knew how to enter a store, to make eye contact with someone who worked there, to smile and say hello as if to say: “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to steal anything.” Somehow – I suppose from being followed in stores frequently – I learned not to carry books into a bookstore, not to walk through a store with bags that were not sealed or zippered shut, and so on.

Now that I’m older, with a graying beard and significantly less hair on my head, I probably don’t need to keep up this routine, as I’m probably the cause of less suspicion, but the habit has stayed with me. While shopping, I still assume that I am suspect. I am a middle-aged man, and yet I still habitually enter the grocery store, the book store, the clothing store, etc looking for the first opportunity to reassure the employees that I’m not going to be a problem.

At some point, I figured out (at least, intellectually) that it doesn’t matter how “good” I am – my fate is bound up with all of those who are “bad”. There was a moment in my adulthood when I decided that the present order is intolerable and a new world is both possible and necessary. In the grand scheme of things, my experiences of everyday racism are not that important. I am neither the most privileged nor most oppressed. I know that there are people of all stripes who are trying to survive on this planet with fewer resources than I have.

I am consistently inspired by the words of the early 20th-century socialist Eugene V Debs (a white guy!) who famously told a judge, after being convicted of sedition: “Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

I am also inspired by the words of Malcolm X, who summarized the goals of the black movement as: “Human rights! Respect as human beings! That’s what American black masses want. That’s the true problem. The black masses want to not be shrunk from as though they are plague-ridden. They want not to be walled up in slums, in the ghettoes, like animals. They want to live in an open, free society where they can walk with their heads up, like men and women!”

Eugene Debs and Malcolm X are very different men from very different social contexts, and yet in my mind they are congruent.

Growing up in this country, my experience with everyday racism, although unique to my class and complexion, has nevertheless given me some access to the “second sight” that is a crucial part of black people’s gift to the world. To paraphrase WEB Du Bois, I believe that black history has a message for humanity. That message, to paraphrase activist Alicia Garza, is that the kind of equality black people need to be free is the kind of equality that will make everyone else free.

I write this as a black person who also knows the white American world. There is ignorance and prejudice there, but there is also pain, suffering and struggle. I am grateful to my parents and teachers who helped me to notice and name racism and discrimination. They have helped me to understand my personal experience and, just as importantly, to see beyond it. I have become convinced that black liberation is bound up with true human liberation. Look at me, with any luck, starting a revolution.

Brian Jones is an educator and activist in New York. He is the associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

• Everyday racism in America
• Race in education

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Everyday racism in America: Being black means constantly rendering yourself unthreatening to white people

When I was 15 years old, my sister and I went on a trip to Europe. We went on scholarship because my mother didn’t have the money to pay the full fare for the two of us, which ran into the thousands of dollars. (My kids have since done similar teen academic programs, and they’re amazing.) On that trip were about a half-dozen of us from various public schools in Denver — two guys that I can remember (it was a long time ago) and three or four girls including my sister and me — plus around 15 girls from an exclusive private girls’ school.

While I can no longer remember most of the kids’ names and only vaguely recall their faces, I do remember one of the boys, Moises. He stood out in the group for some of the reasons my sister, June, and I did; we were the only African-Americans on the trip and Moises was the only Latino. He was tall for his age and big, a bear of a boy with deep brown skin and close cropped, jet-black hair.

Though brief, the moment was indicative of exactly the kind of everyday racism that remains a reality for minorities across America.

Moises fit into our little public school group just fine. He was funny, and he laughed easily at our dumb jokes (OK, mostly mine). But what stood out most to me was the first interaction between Moises and one of our trip advisers, an older woman with the approximate personality of Mrs. Lovey Howell from “Gilligan’s Island.” Though brief, the moment was nonetheless indicative of exactly the kind of everyday racism that remains a reality for minorities across America.

During orientation, “Mrs. Howell” was talking to a group of us with Moises standing nearby. Beaming, she remarked on how glad she was that the traveling group was so “diverse,” and that Moises was able to come along on scholarship — as if those of us on scholarship wanted it announced and pointed out. And she said of Moises: “He’s so grateful.”

My sister and I shot each other a look. “So grateful?” We couldn’t believe someone would make such a remark, or think it was a compliment. In order to get the scholarship, Moises had had to do what we’d done: write an essay explaining why the trip would be important to him. He’d earned that trip. We all had. And so even though the comment wasn’t about us, it burned. In part this was because we were embarrassed for Moises, and in part because we knew that it could have been about us.

If you’re black or brown in America and you’re lucky, it’s these small acts that stay with you, like a residual cough after a cold. It’s the clerk who persistently follows you through the store, as if you couldn’t possibly be simply browsing (even as your sister’s kleptomaniac, albeit white, former friend walked among store shelves unmolested.) It’s the college recruiter who sits just across from you for a half hour at the Village Inn, lifting her eyes at every young white girl who walks in the door, while you set a mental timer to see how long it will take her to ask if you are the student she’s looking for.

It’s the waiter with the sour expression who takes so long to come to your table it would appear he doesn’t see you and your party at all, only to snap to it when a white friend arrives and joins the table. It’s the cab drivers, often brown themselves, who switch off their ready light, click their door locks and speed past you to pick up the white person on a nearby corner. It’s the job that was available until you showed up, or the apartment, or the loan. Or the “compliment” on your natural hair that’s doubles as a gentle reminder that straightening it might look more presentable.

It’s the job that was available until you showed up, or the apartment, or the loan. Or the “compliment” on your natural hair that’s doubles as a gentle reminder that straightening it might look more presentable.

If you’re unlucky, though, that residual racial cough becomes a full-body fever that won’t go away. In this case it’s the cop who pulls you over for a minor traffic violation and then stands warily outside the driver’s side door with his hand hovering over his gun. And it’s the deep ache in the pit of your stomach that starts every time you see red and blue flashing lights closing in behind you thereafter, even when you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s the time you called 911 because you heard a noise in your house but were more afraid after the police arrived — and seemed to be searching your home for weed or guns instead of for a burglar.

And if you’re really unlucky, you’ve had the cops called on you for just being in a public space where a white person thought you didn’t belong. And in the worst-case scenario, you or someone you love doesn’t walk away from that interaction alive, whether because of the police or just some random civilian armed with a gun. Just ask the parents of Trayvon Martin.

To be white in America is to assume, with total self-confidence and little afterthought, the personal ownership of public spaces. To be white in America is to have the confidence to say, without a second thought: this space, this neighborhood, this city, this county, this country is mine. Myself and those who look like me have the right to decide who can be here, and even what language can be spoken here. It doesn’t even have to be intentionally malicious. These assumptions just are. They exist inside the American body.

From the moment black and brown people were imported into this country, not as citizens but as worker bodies, transgressing these “white-owned spaces” — from rail cars to restaurants to whole parts of town — could mean humiliation or persecution or even death. It still can today. What has changed is the scale.

We don’t see death for the transgression of white spaces on the level we did in decades past. But it still happens — ask Sterling Brown or the families of Philando Castille, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling or Stephon Clark. Meanwhile, the definition of white-owned spaces keeps expanding: from the Starbucks seating area to the Yale common room to the barbecue area of a public park.

The current American president luxuriates in promoting white resentment and panic against his brown and black and Muslim citizens, while arguing that some white nationalists can still be “fine people.”

But what has also changed is that people of color and their allies no longer have to be silent. The ease of documenting the routine of white discomfort and black removal has brought our racial cough to the attention of the entire American body.

Whiteness carries with it the luxury of invisibility. The white presence is deemed benign and eternally welcome. It’s why a white man can walk into a hotel with multiple valises full of guns and attract no notice whatsoever, until he turns his hotel room into a lethal sniper's nest. In contrast, a black man carrying a cellphone in his grandmother’s backyard is deemed so threatening he is gunned down by panicked police.

In contrast, the black presence (the brown presence, too, but particularly the black presence) is rarely viewed as benign. It is by default deemed suspect. Why are you in this store? Why are you in this Starbucks? Why are you in this nice car, or this nice neighborhood? What is your criminal history, or your criminal intent? Why are you running down the street? Why are you wearing that hoodie?

Opinion The Starbucks racism video is remarkable for just how unremarkable it is to black Americans

In his book “A Colony in a Nation,” Chris Hayes describes a “nation” of white Americans who see in themselves complete individuality except in one way: They are an organic part of the national body. The “colony” is the imported other, the virus that exists inside the American body but is not of it, and it is viewed solely as a collective. The colony’s members have no individual traits. They are an amorphous menace, and the nation acts constantly to police the colony and to contain it. By depicting the colony as collectively violent, criminal and scary, it can be removed at any time — with those learned stereotypes as justification, and with the police as allies in keeping the colony under control.

Thus, being black or brown in America means living under that constant threat of removal. And yet there is really no way to render yourself unthreatening enough to prevent that 911 call. At the same time, you are expected to act grateful for being “allowed” to be here at all (see: Trump suggesting NFL players who kneel during the national anthem should "maybe" be deported ). As if we had a choice.

Being black or brown in America means living under that constant threat of removal. And yet there is really no way to render yourself unthreatening enough to prevent that 911 call.

Reversing everyday racism means somehow getting white Americans to recognize and cede this presumption of sole ownership of public spaces, and to see in each person of color an individual humanity. Thankfully, many of our fellow Americans have already embraced this ecumenical idea, as we can see from individual acts of ally-ship. Inside that now infamous Philadelphia Starbucks, for example, white patrons formed a chorus of outrage as police dragged two black men out in handcuffs for doing nothing more than sitting in a shared space.

Importantly, black and brown Americans cannot do this work for their white peers. The work of anti-racism can only take place inside each individual soul, where we all try to grow into better people. There is no national tonic or instant cure.

For more on the state of racism in America, check out the video from our special MSNBC town hall , which originally aired on May 29 at 9 p.m. ET. Join in the discussion using #EverydayRacism.

Read more from Joy Reid: The seeds of Trump's victory were sown the moment Obama won

Joy-Ann Reid is host of “The ReidOut” at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC. “The ReidOut” features one-on-one conversations with politicians and newsmakers while addressing provocative political issues both inside and outside of the beltway.

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The Everyday Impact of Racism on People of Color

July 20, 2022  • Mariah Robinson

What should every American know? This question has long been debated, discussed, and deliberated. And while answers need to come from all of us—not just a powerful few—young people have often been excluded from these conversations. An ongoing partnership between Chicago Public Schools and the Aspen Institute’s program on Citizenship and American Identity aims to change that. Together they will elevate youth perspectives, beliefs, and values as vital to our national conversation of civic purpose.

Mariah Robinson is a 12th grader at Dyett High School for the Arts and lives in the Austin neighborhood on the west side of Chicago.

When I was younger, I took a trip to Disney World for the first time. I was very excited to see all the Disney princesses and meet new people.

I quickly made friends while I was there. We played, danced, and laughed together. When I noticed that one girl wasn’t playing with me, I introduced myself and invited her to join me. I was not prepared for her answer.

“My parents told me not to play with your kind of people,” she said. I didn’t understand, so I asked if this was because I was taller than her. She turned to me and replied, “My parents told me not to talk to you brown people.”

The girl was referring to my race, though I never understood how the color of my skin could harm anyone. At 14, I didn’t know what racism was, only that my Black ancestors were enslaved based on their skin color—and therefore, the color of my skin could affect the way I was treated in US society. However, I never fully understood how the concepts of race, racism, and racial profiling would affect my life .

After that moment at Disney World, I realized hate isn’t something you are born with; it’s something that you’re taught. When we hear the word racism, we usually think of hating somebody based on the color of their skin. But racism isn’t just about interpersonal interactions or explicitly racist comments; it’s about the systemic inequalities that impact the everyday experiences of Black people and other people of color—from pay gaps to police brutality and everything in between.

Racism isn’t just about interactions or comments; it’s about the systemic inequalities that impact people of color.

Understanding the history and everyday implications of racism makes someone civically powerful because it can help you become an anti-racist —a person who opposes and promotes racial tolerance in all aspects of their life. This means learning about race and racism outside of internal group discussions, combating your prejudices, and challenging yourself to understand these issues from an anti-racist standpoint. These issues include historical events, current topics like the criminal justice system , and even the everyday experiences of people of color like the one I had at Disney World.

Talking about race and racism can guide us in creating a better society. If people understood more about race and racism, we could reach our ambitions not only for peace but also for shared understanding among people and communities. Even the simple acknowledgment that we are all equal no matter your cultural background or the color of your skin would have a significant impact.

The first step to this is challenging your own beliefs and biases. As James Baldwin once said, “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Baldwin meant that we cannot expect a change if we are not willing to stand up for what we believe. We cannot sit on the sidelines. We need to actively work to create a better and safer world, no matter your race.

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Sociologist Lamont and colleagues examined how minority group identities help sculpt how they handle discrimination

An African-American man in New York gets on an elevator with a group of white men, one of whom proceeds to tell a joke that includes blacks and monkeys. What happens next? In this case, the black man struggles to keep his composure, comments that he’s not a fan of jokes, and steps off the elevator before reaching his destination.

The response was one of hundreds logged by a team of sociologists led by Michèle Lamont , professor of sociology and African and African American studies, director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs , and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies.

The sociologists’ eight-year study examined the responses of minority groups to acts of racism, discrimination, and stigmatization in three cities: New York, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv. The results, published in a recent book, “Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel,” examine the typical responses from five minority groups against a variable that the researchers call “groupness,” a measure of collective identity strength.

The examination included interviews with blacks in New York and Rio, and with members of three groups in Israel: Palestinians, Mizrahi Jews who originated in the Middle East, and recently immigrated Ethiopian Jews. Researchers discovered that group strength was an important factor in determining people’s responses — whether they confronted discrimination head-on or not — but that other factors also played a role.

Lamont and one of her six co-authors, Graziella Moraes Silva, who received her Ph.D. at Harvard and is now at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Switzerland, sat down with the Gazette for a question-and-answer session to talk about the project and what its findings say about race relations in the United States.

GAZETTE: Your work examines the experience of blacks in New York and Rio, and of several minority groups in Tel Aviv. How does the experience of African-Americans compare with the other groups?

LAMONT: The big difference is that African-Americans have at their disposal extensive cultural tools that tell them that, in the American context, racism is wrong and that they are entitled to fair treatment. The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement has had a huge impact in empowering African-Americans to confront [instances of racism]. In Brazil, there’s far more hesitation about confronting. Also, African-Americans have a very strong identity as a group. They put their racial identity above their national identity, which is not the case in Brazil.

We’re able to show that African-Americans confront [racism] much more readily, and they feel legitimate in confronting. Ethiopian Jews, another group that we studied, are recent immigrants to Israel. They want to be assimilated, so they don’t have as confrontational a stance. Arab Palestinians are extremely excluded — they know that they are perceived as “the enemy within,” as allies to the Palestinians — and therefore they’re much more likely to confront. Their expectations about having full citizenship, about being included in Israel, are very, very low. So they’re also less likely to say they feel ignored or misunderstood because they don’t expect to be understood.

GAZETTE: So, though race relations in the U.S. may seem to be at a low point, in some ways minorities here are in a better situation than minority groups in other countries because here, at least, there are remedies?

LAMONT: The fact that they are able and willing to confront makes a huge difference. They know the quest for recognition of their value and their dignity is a legitimate claim.

Before the ’60s, certainly, making a claim on the basis of racial identity was not OK in American society. Now, universities like Harvard acknowledge diversity as a worthy goal. That’s also the case for corporations. So organizations are facing the imperative to diversify and to treat all their members with equal dignity.

Another interesting finding is, in this country, although antidiscrimination legislation has passed, it makes only a partial difference. Someone who wrote an endorsement for the book pointed that out. Despite all this legislation, the everyday experience of African-Americans is one that is painful because they constantly experience stigmatization, being misunderstood, ignored, stereotyped as slow or poorly educated, even if they’re middle class.

That raises a lot of questions about where we go from here. I think Black Lives Matter, the movements that we’ve seen over the last few years, are clearly ones for claiming recognition.

GAZETTE: How much of the current conversation and even unrest around race is an outgrowth of technology, with video evidence of blatant abuse and discrimination? How important is technology in raising awareness?

LAMONT: There’s no question that it’s not only those video recordings, but also social media.

Research shows that the leaders of the generation behind Black Lives Matter, the majority of them are young women identified with the LBGTQ movement in colleges. A lot of the gains of the movement are symbolic, not symbolic in the sense of meaningless, but symbolic in terms of redefining the terms of the discourse.

People are starting to understand the texture of daily life of African-Americans in a way that was not accessible before. One of the women who just won the MacArthur Award, Claudia Rankie, wrote a book of poetry called “Citizen,” which is all about the daily experience of African-Americans.

We [still] live in a country where [many] whites have no contact with blacks, ever. They live in neighborhoods that are entirely white. They only go to white churches. This enormous gap is being bridged by the transfer of information, but nevertheless these worlds remain apart.

GAZETTE: Let’s talk about the project itself: a lot of people involved, a lot of countries, lots of interviews, and a long time to pull together. Where did it come from, and how did you manage it?

LAMONT: Our question [was] how do different degrees of “groupness” influence how people experience and respond to racism? What are the tools that their society gives them to respond?

Racial groups’ self-consciousness varies enormously. In Brazil, national identity is more salient than it is in the U.S. for our respondents. In Israel, with Zionism, the two Jewish groups — Ethiopian Jews and Mizrahim — really tend to downplay [racism]. They say, “We are like the Russian Jews. We are going to become assimilated,” even though on a day-to-day level they may experience the father-in-law putting the Mizrahi son-in-law down because he’s viewed as being part of a vulgar group.

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So the texture of their everyday lives is characterized by a lot of exclusion, yet the Zionist dream is operating very powerfully in a way that it doesn’t operate on the Arab Palestinians.

GAZETTE: What are the lessons learned?

MORAES SILVA: There were very few systematic comparisons of how racism and discrimination were actually experienced in those societies. I think we are making a really big contribution by linking the macro-historical perspective and the role of institutions, cultural repertoires, and legal aspects with experiences, and showing how the comparison is much more complex than what’s usually assumed. The experience is very different, and they have different ways to deal with it.

The second big contribution is to think about victims of racism and discrimination as not passive, but active and dealing with the thing, interpreting it, and finding very creative ways to handle it.

GAZETTE: In the book, you talk about stigmatization and how the everyday slights are more pervasive than overt episodes of discrimination. Can you describe that everyday experience, and is it different in different countries?

LAMONT: In Brazil, the most frequent stereotype is being perceived as poor and having low education and low status. So basically everyone is presumed poor. Brazil is an extremely unequal society where the neighborhoods are much more interracial so racial groups interact with each other a lot, but nevertheless most black people are presumed to be poor.

Here, being simply insulted and disrespected is the main kind, being called the “n word,” being cut in line. Some people call these micro-aggressions. We don’t use the word because being ignored is also a big deal, and that’s not an aggression. It’s just like, “I didn’t see you. You’re so irrelevant you don’t register for me.”

What really stood out for me was the African-American in the workplace who never has an ally. He interprets a situation as racism because there’s no one ever to say, “I see things exactly the way you did. This happened, I agree with you. This guy was a jerk.”

One of the big arguments of the book is that most of the literature on racism in the U.S. is about things you can sue about. You can present CVs of people who are identical on all grounds but race, then demonstrate that discrimination has actually happened because the white person gets hired. The literature on racism in the U.S. is about not having housing, education, jobs.

This book is largely about things you cannot sue about, like no one ever backs you up at work. You cannot make a case around this, yet it really is the texture of daily life.

MORAES SILVA: One of the things that was more salient in the Brazilian interviews than in the American ones is racism as something that’s unexpected. In that sense, it’s like crime. You know that it exists, but you never expect that you’re going to be robbed. These experiences hurt, and, although you know they might happen, you’re never prepared. You can think about how you’re going to deal with it, how you’ll respond, but sometimes you just don’t have the energy. One other thing that was really frustrating for the Brazilian interviewees is the indifference of whites, that other people don’t react, so the burden of confrontation becomes that of the victim, which is really unfair.

GAZETTE: How important is uncertainty? There were groups that said to themselves, ????Well, it’s not racism, that person’s just a jerk.” How do you disentangle that?

LAMONT: In the Brazilian case, if the person doesn’t name race, it’s much harder to confront. We argue that the stronger the group, the easier it is for people to have access to a set of cultural tools that they can draw on and say, “You’re not only a jerk, this is racism.” We have many examples in Brazil where they think racism is happening, but because there’s no “n word” that’s being used, they just shut up and don’t confront. So that’s a huge difference.

A lot of what we’re looking at here are psychological phenomena. There’s a big literature on stress and coping, but our approach is very different. This concept of groupness is about tracing causal paths that don’t have to do with what’s happening between people’s ears.

If I’m African-American, I belong to a strong group because of self-identification — something psychologists look at — but also because of the meaning given to my group: the fact that we have a shared history of slavery and discrimination. Groupness also has to do with spatial and institutional segregation and homophily, social boundaries and symbolic boundaries. And those tools can all be mobilized.

It’s really an analysis of how various kinds of cultural and social resources feed into different kinds of responses, which is a very different approach to these questions from what a psychologist would do.

GAZETTE: Would it be accurate to say that the stronger the group identity, the more willing an individual is to identify a slight as based on race and to confront the issue?

LAMONT: That’s largely it, with one caveat in that we don’t think that there’s a linear relationship between strength of groupness and confronting.

Arab Palestinians are a very strong group, but they’re so alienated that they don’t even think they should have membership [in Israeli society]. They know that it’s out of sight, so therefore their response is more to turn inward. The tight relationships that they have with some Jews are mostly in the workplace. They are based on interpersonal friendship, so they don’t appeal a lot to a human rights language, because it’s irrelevant, almost, in this environment. But they’ll talk a lot about interpersonal friendship. They feel largely powerless and outside of the polity.

MORAES SILVA: Identification is part of groupness, but groupness is also about boundaries. That’s really where Brazil and the U.S. are far apart. Black Brazilians tend to have much more porous boundaries with whites than African-Americans do. It’s not that they don’t identify as blacks, it’s not that they don’t see discrimination and racism, but one of the consequences of having such a strong history of saying “We are all part of this country, and black, white, we all belong” is that you are not allowed to say you are white [or black], because that’s also considered being racist.

GAZETTE: So in Brazil, neighborhoods are more integrated, there’s more intermarriage, there’s more cross-racial friendship …

MORAES SILVA: Poor neighborhoods are more integrated, but the society is so unequal that they say that in cities like Rio you have neighborhoods with the same infrastructure as those of rich European and U.S. cities, but also other neighborhoods with conditions such as those of poor sub-Saharan Africa countries. When you look at the inequality of social and economic indicators of neighborhoods in the same city, it’s ridiculous.

GAZETTE: Just to backtrack a bit to the Arab-Palestinian experience, it almost seemed that they don’t believe the solution exists within Israel itself; the solution exists through an international agreement. In the U.S., though, black Americans know that there has to be change from within, so they’re the ones who have to do it?

LAMONT: I think what we see now [in America] is a little bit like post-Reconstruction. African-Americans could vote at some point, they could own land, but there were all these mechanisms in place that prevented them from being fully integrated.

Now we’re post-Civil Rights Movement. They have equality in principle, yet they suffer stigmatization every day. A lot of the great frustration that is heard through Black Lives Matter and the social media activity of young African-Americans is just absolutely amazing in the unrelenting claims for recognition that are being made. It is not only about denouncing police violence. I don’t think that many commentators fully understand what this is about.

A lot of this is sharing experiences as a means to gain social resilience and to objectify that this experience was racism — “Look at what happened to me” — and then having confirmation from others. Now that we define reality in the same way, let’s move forward. This solidarity in joint definition is really important. And I think it’s partly significant because it comes from a generation that lives within a shadow of reverse racism.

When they look at a place like Harvard, they know other people who are not here think it’s because they got preference. So the issue is how they behave, knowing that a number of their peers think that they benefited from reverse racism. We asked our interviewees, “What do you teach your kids about how to respond?” Their normative response is one of self-improvement: get your degree, be upwardly mobile, buy that car. But at the same time, only a quarter of them emphasize collective responses, the kind of responses that brought us the Civil Rights Movement.

I think that there is a real tension between “do not cry racism” and “pursue your degree and become a doctor” as the best proof that racists are wrong, and the knowledge that, historically, it’s collective mobilization that brought big social change through the Civil Rights Movement.

GAZETTE: So much has happened since you started this book. How have events changed the context in which the book might be understood?

MORAES SILVA: In Brazil, for example, there’s been a lot of change, and it’s still changing. We can identify trends, we can see where the indignation of Black Lives Matter is coming from. We see how people are experiencing this stigmatization day by day, every day.

GAZETTE: So there are echoes of Black Lives Matter in Brazil and perhaps in Israel?

MORAES SILVA: Definitely. The Brazilian police are much more violent than police in the U.S., and their target is basically brown and black men. So the visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement made [people say], “See all this in the U.S.? Here it’s much worse, and we don’t say anything.” Black Lives Matter gave legitimacy to certain things that were not said. What happens in the U.S. really influences Brazil, and in that case it was good. There are cases where it’s not so good.

LAMONT: Black Lives Matter made a lot of statements about Israel, saying basically the situation in Palestine is racism. So those are examples of transnational cultural repertoires where those ideas are traveling across countries, feeding off each other.

The book is also really an intervention in the study of inequality. Most of our colleagues, whose work I appreciate, study outcomes: housing, homelessness, incarceration, low infant mortality, or life expectancy. This book is more about inequality processes, such as stigmatization, which feeds into inequality. It’s about explanations. You’re trying to analyze what kinds of changes enable specific kinds of reactions and constrain others.

We’re also setting an agenda for the study of inequality in the social sciences that is different from what many economists are doing, or demographers. We are concerned with recognition, which is often overlooked as social scientists focus on distribution or production. We think that this is very important because if you [only look at one] part of inequality, you cannot understand the phenomenon in its full complexity.

GAZETTE: The book observes that we’re a long way from post-racial America and recalls that that was part of the conversation after Barack Obama was elected president. Is there a way toward post-racial America? Is it possible ever to get there?

LAMONT: One of the main theories about how to reduce interracial tension is contact theory. For it to work, the groups have to be equal, they have to engage in a common task. There are a number of conditions that are very rarely realized. But if you think about how gender relations have changed, a lot of it has been the doing of social movements, but a lot of it has been girls like me, when I was 16, telling my mother, “No, I’m not going to empty the dishwasher every day if my brother mows the lawn once a week.” These micro, everyday contestations, I think, are really crucial.

Many people who study social change emphasize the institutional structure, the legal and political [changes], the role of social movements. But the role of everyday anti-racism has been overlooked. It’s a multi-causal system, and you need to attack the problem at many levels, systematically connecting the micro, meso, and macro levels. This is the topic of a book in progress on which I am working with political scientist Paul Pierson, in collaboration with the Successful Societies program which I co-direct with Peter Hall in Harvard’s Government Department.

African-Americans who are confronting are doing things right. Through these everyday exchanges, things change. That’s also where social science research makes a difference. All this research on multiculturalism and social inclusion helps transform the discourse on race. I recently read that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been influenced by political philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka who have written a lot about broadening cultural membership. When he welcomed Syrian refugees to Canada by saying “You are home now,” he was drawing on the work of these social scientists. Our work feeds the tools that policymakers, politicians, activists, and ordinary people mobilize to think about the way forward. We do make a difference every day, in small and big ways.

MORAES SILVA: Is it possible: a post-racial state? I think it doesn’t exist so far. But I think the book points out that not to talk about race is not an option.

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The Conceptualization of Everyday Racism in Research on the Mental and Physical Health of Ethnic and Racial Groups: a Systematic Review

• Published: 01 August 2020
• Volume 8 , pages 648–660, ( 2021 )

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• Pieter-Paul Verhaeghe   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2582-6506 1  

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Research on the influence of everyday racism and discrimination on the mental and physical health of ethnic and racial groups is on the rise. Scholars use self-reported experiences of racism and discrimination scales to study the relationship between everyday racism/discrimination and health. Throughout the years, these scales have been tested for psychometric measures, validity, and reliability of the items. However, less attention is paid to how the concept of everyday racism and discrimination is defined in the first place.

Based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a systematic review perusing 106 papers is conducted of studies investigating the relationship of everyday racism/discrimination and the physical and mental health of ethnic and/or racial groups. This review allows to synthesize how everyday racism is conceptualized, interpreted, and operationalized. A meta-analysis was not possible due to the heterogeneity in research designs, methodologies, and populations.

Following the original conceptualization of everyday racism, results indicate that research pays attention to the repeatability of everyday racism. However, racism was only defined in 7% of the papers and in different ways varying from individual to institutional racism. In 86% of the papers did they measure everyday racism/discrimination through the Everyday Discrimination Scale. This influenced the way in which everyday discrimination was defined taking on a more individual perspective paying less attention to the micro-macro link of everyday racism.

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Bourabain, D., Verhaeghe, PP. The Conceptualization of Everyday Racism in Research on the Mental and Physical Health of Ethnic and Racial Groups: a Systematic Review. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 8 , 648–660 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-020-00824-5

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10 keys to everyday anti-racism, the founders of a new organization, the antiracist table, suggest tools you can use to work against prejudice and inequality..

We are sisters—and the great-great-granddaughters of Caroline and Allen, who were born enslaved in the state of Alabama. As African Americans and moms to Black sons, we are heartbroken and sick about the level of anti-Blackness that permeates every aspect of American life. We feel the urgency of the moment and want to help convert this moment into a movement for meaningful change. We believe our voices matter and that we have something to share with the world as a way to offer healing to this crisis. 

Between us, we have careers in law and education, and a background in African-American Studies, nonviolent communication, meditation, right speech, and conflict resolution. With those skills, we launched the AntiRacist Table on June 20, 2020. Metaphorically and physically speaking, at the table you learn, celebrate, grieve, fight, and live in community.

We offer a 30-Day Challenge that has been intentionally curated to help you be educated; face and get past shame, anger, and blame; and develop empathy—all key elements of creating an anti-racist America. Each day participants receive a daily lesson consisting of reading, videos, podcasts, journal/reflection prompts, and mindfulness practices. Each week participants work through a subset of our core principles, which we feel are essential aspects of bringing mindful anti-racist practice into daily life.

We provide the tools to help tackle emotionality—shame, guilt, and anger—and translate the seminal works of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Dr. Robin DiAngelo , among other academic experts, into 10 core principles: education, intention, courage, individuality, humanity, anti-racist work, equality, empathy, allies, and love. These are the focus of the AntiRacist Table’s 30-Day Challenge —an invitation to do the hard work to be anti-racist.

1. Education

Kendi, a leading scholar on anti-racism, argues that the heart of racism is denial. You cannot acknowledge or change that which you deny or choose not to see. Thus, the first step toward dismantling racism is breaking through that denial, by educating oneself about the history of African Americans and the Black experience.

Seeing systemic racism is foundational work. Historical context provides an understanding of the original dehumanization of African Americans that is the foundation upon which American racism is built. It reveals the laws and policies implemented to support white supremacy, and the cultural rules and norms that created anti-Blackness.

Learning about the unconscious and automatic ways racism presents itself will help one recognize it and take steps to stop it. Challenge participants credit “learning lesser-known facts” as helping them not only see and understand, but launch them into action to fight against racism and anti-Blackness.

2. Intention

Anti-racism is a way of life. Like starting any new habit, anti-racism requires a conscious decision to pursue it as a goal and way of being. Intention brings mindful presence and awareness to what we say and what we do.

Setting the intention to have an open heart and open mind in order to be anti-racist affects how one shows up. Present-moment awareness links with our intention to pull us out of autopilot and into conscious pursuit of our goals.

Anti-Racist Resources

A collection of Greater Good pieces that explore our potential to reduce prejudice in society and in ourselves.

This opens the door to growth. As psychologist Rick Hanson explains , whatever you hold in attention has a special power to change your brain. Attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner: It illuminates what it rests upon and then sucks it into your brain—and your self. Setting the intention to pursue anti-racism will help adjust one’s life lens, and it will deactivate the trance of autopilot. This will help you tap into your internal motivation to be anti-racist.

And according to studies , being motivated internally is what will most help you to make lasting change. Affirming why you want to be anti-racist as part of your intention will remind you of your goal and help you stick to it. This is why we offer the 30-Day Challenge: It provides participants with a clarity of purpose and helps them commit to action.

Facing facts about racism, white privilege, and white supremacy is hard.

Robin DiAngelo, a sociologist and author, coined the term “white fragility” to describe “the defensive reactions so many white people have when our racial worldviews, positions, or advantages are questioned or challenged.” She continues:

For a lot of white people, just suggesting that being white has meaning will trigger a deep, defensive response. And that defensiveness serves to maintain both our comfort and our positions in a racially inequitable society from which we benefit.

Reckoning with shame, blame, guilt, and anger takes courage and vulnerability. As researcher Brené Brown says, vulnerability is when we feel uncertainty, risk, or emotional exposure. Vulnerability takes courage; it takes learning how to be brave and afraid at the exact same time. Courage allows us to be an everyday hero and to inspire collective heroism .

To be anti-racist, you have to sit with the discomfort and put courage, compassion, and vulnerability over comfort. Cultivating an anti-racist mindfulness practice is essential to doing and sustaining this work. Challenge participants say The AntiRacist Table Mindfulness Practices incorporated in the Challenge provided a space for them to face hard emotions and to find compassion.

4. Individuality

Seeing another person’s individuality means noticing the details and qualities, both positive and negative, that set them apart from the group. But mental shortcuts that psychologists call heuristics “can lead us to make potentially damaging assumptions about other people,” as Zaid Jilani writes in Greater Good . “Racial stereotyping, for instance, comes from the belief that membership in a racial group defines someone on a range of characteristics, including their behavior.”

To be anti-racist, it’s critical to understand and recognize that Black people have historically been assigned a negative group identity, being labeled lazy, irresponsible, dangerous, and angry. Realizing that these stereotypes can prevent us from seeing Black people as individuals is an important awareness because, according to research , when we view people who are “not like us” in terms of their own individual tastes and preferences, we feel less threatened by them.

5. Humanity

Supporting humanity means rehumanizing African Americans.

As philosopher Michelle Maiese argues , the process of dehumanization demonizes “the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment.” The result is a framing of “good versus evil.”

According to Maiese, “dehumanization might be mitigated or reversed through humanization efforts, the development of empathy, the establishment of personal relationships between conflicting parties, and the pursuit of common goals.”

Just as denial is the heart of racism, so seeing humanity in others is at the heart of anti-racism. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” wrote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

6. Anti-racist work

In this context, “anti-racist” is a verb, defined by the action one is taking. An anti-racist is “one who is supporting an anti-racist policy through their actions or expressing an anti-racist idea,” writes Ibram X. Kendi. 

To be anti-racist, one must actively work to create anti-racist policies. One must engage the world seeing all racial groups as equals and intentionally promote equity. Anti-racists support policies that reduce racial inequity, such as:

• Reparations to address the wealth gap between Black families and white created by slavery, Jim Crow segregation, anti-Black practices such as redlining, and other discriminatory public policies in criminal justice and education that have withheld opportunities to build wealth from Black people that have been afforded to whites.
• Educating Americans about systemic racism and racist policies and the need to dismantle them.
• Holding police with records of excessive force accountable.

7. Equality

“Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing,” writes Kendi. One must hold all groups of people—a color, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, age, and any combination of those—as equal. To champion equality is to fight for equity. It is to understand that corrective action is needed to create equity.

Cultivating empathy is key to rehumanizing the dehumanized. “Empathy is . . . an umbrella term that describes multiple ways people respond to one another, including sharing, thinking about, and caring about others’ feelings,” writes Jamil Zaki , director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory and author of The War for Kindness . The best way to foster empathy, suggests Zaki, is to share experiences, because that’s the “closest we come to dissolving the boundary between self and other.” It’s this empathic concern that motivates us to “improve someone else’s well-being.”

We know from studies that empathy creates connection and it breaks down the “us and them” divide so that we see outsiders as human beings.

But empathy has another benefit to anti-racists: It helps to build the ability to bounce back from shame, a critical tool in this work. Empathy increases shame resilience because it moves us toward connection, compassion, and courage—the opposite of the fear, blame, and disconnection that result from shame. Staying stuck in shame means one is not working to be anti-racist.

9. Allyship

To be an ally is to take on this struggle as if it is your own. It means that you do what is uncomfortable. You are committed to taking a risk, sharing any privilege you have to center marginalized Black and brown people. When you see something, you say something. You imagine and act as if you do not have a choice. You fight to dismantle injustice.

“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble,” wrote Congressman John Lewis just before his death. Allies get into good trouble. As one Challenge participant said, “Coming to terms with and exploring the deeply rooted systems of white supremacy within my own self and the way in which I have worked in the world are critical for me to become a true ally.”

Choosing love and healing over fear and oppression is a path of courageous vulnerability. Gratitude, joy, and an open heart are all components of love that enable one to do the work to be anti-racist and to bring anti-racism into daily life. Accepting love empowers us to do the hard work. As meditation and communication teacher Oren Jay Sofer says:

The more deeply we feel our own life, the more we experience our interconnectedness with others. This kind of love is a force for change. It bestows the courage to face the suffering in the world and the energy to act for its healing.

Barbara Fredrickson , director of Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, puts it another way: “Love draws you out of your cocoon of self-absorption to attune to others. Love allows you to really see another person, holistically, with care, concern, and compassion.”

America is at a critical moment. This is the call of our time. We must do more than put out a sign or read a book—we must come to understand our shared history and work to support our collective humanity by eradicating anti-Blackness in the many forms that it exists. You can begin right now by starting to educate yourself—and the AntiRacist Table 30-Day Challenge is one place to start.

About the Authors

Kirsten Ivey-Colson

The antiracist table.

Kirsten Ivey-Colson, JD, has an LLM in Alternative Dispute Resolution and her undergraduate degree is in African American Studies and English. She is an active meditation practitioner and a student of nonviolent communication, conflict resolution, conflict coaching, neuroscience, happiness, and well-being. She has served as a union steward, conflict coach, mediator, and leader in her son’s school’s parent of Black students affinity group. In response to the racial reckoning in June 2020, Kirsten co-founded the AntiRacist Table , with her sister, Lynn Turner. The AntiRacist Table is a multidimensional platform dedicated to bringing antiracism to daily life through education about African Americans, the Black experience, rehumanizing Black people, and motivating action.

Lynn Turner

Lynn Turner (she/her) is a native Washingtonian, wife, and mother of two children and the proud descendant of enslaved people. She is a Lead Kindergarten Teacher and an active anti-racism committee member in the school community where she teaches in Bethesda, MD. Lynn is passionate about teaching young children and supporting families, work that she has done for over ten years.  Her BA in Fine Arts is from Sweet Briar College, her MAT in Early Childhood Education is from Trinity University and she has an Early Childhood Teaching Certificate from the Sunbridge Institute. In response to the racial reckoning in June 2020, Lynn co-founded the AntiRacist Table , with her sister, Kirsten Ivey-Colson. The AntiRacist Table is a multidimensional platform dedicated to bringing antiracism to daily life through education about African Americans, the Black experience, rehumanizing Black people, and motivating action.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Racial Discrimination — The Impact of Racism on the Society

Racism in Society, Its Effects and Ways to Overcome

• Categories: Racial Discrimination

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Published: Jun 10, 2020

Words: 2796 | Pages: 6 | 14 min read

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Executive summary, the effects of racism in today’s world (essay), works cited.

• The current platform of social media has given many of the minorities their voice; they can make sure that the world can hear them and their opinions are made clear. This phenomenon is only going to rise with the rise of social media in the coming years.
• The diversity of race, culture and ethnicity that has been seen as a cause of rift and disrupt in the society in the past, will act as a catalyst for social development sooner rather than later, with the decrease in racism.
• Racist view of an individual are not inherited, they are learned. With that in mind, it is fair to assume that the coming generations will not be as critical of an individual’s race as the older generations have been.
• If people dismiss the concept of racial/ethnical evaluations and instead, evaluate an individual on one’s abilities and capabilities, the economic development will definitely have a rise.
• A lot of intra-society grievances and mishaps that are caused due to misconceptions of an ethnic group can be reduced as social interaction increases.
• As people from different ethnic backgrounds, coming from humble beginnings, discriminated throughout their careers, manage to emerge successful to the public platform, the racist train of thought is being exposed and will continue to do so. This will inspire people from any and every background, race, language, ethnicity to step forward and compete on the large scale.
• Racism and prejudice are at the root of racial profiling and that racial bias has been interweaved into the culture of most societies. However, these chains have grown much weaker as time has passed, to the point that they are in a fragile state.
• Another ray of hope that can be witnessed nowadays that people are no longer ashamed of their cultural identity. People now believe that their cultural background is in no way or form inferior to another and thus, worth defending. This will turn out to be a major factor in minimizing racism in the future.
• Because of the strong activism against racism, a new phenomenon has emerged that is color blindness, which is the complete disregard of racial characteristics in any kind of social situation.
• The world is definitely going in the right direction concerning the curse that is Racism; however, it is far too early to claim that humankind will completely rid itself of this vile malignance. PrescriptionsRacism is a curse that has plagued humanity since long. It has been responsible for multitudes of nefarious acts in the past and is causing a lot of harm even now, therefore care must be taken that this problem is brought under control as soon as possible so as not to hinder the growth of human societies. The following are some of the precautions, so to say, that will help tremendously in tackling this problem.
• The first and foremost step is to take this problem seriously both on an individual and on community level. Racism is something that can not be termed as a minor issue and dismissed. History books dictate that racism is responsible for countless deaths and will continue to claim the lives of more innocents unless it is brought under control with a firm hand. The first step to controlling it is to accept racism as a serious problem.
• Another problem is that many misconceptions or rumors that are dismissed by most people as a trivial detail are sometimes a big deal for other people, which might push them over the edge to commit a crime or some other injustice. So whenever there is an anomaly, a misconception or a misrepresentation of an individual’s, a group’s or a society’s ideas or beliefs, try to be the voice of reason rather than staying quiet about it. Decades of staying silent over crucial issues has caused us much harm and brought us to this point, staying silent now can only lead us to annihilation.
• One of most radical and effective solution to racial diversity is to turn it from something negative to something positive. Where previously, one does not talk to someone because of his or her cultural differences, now talk to them exactly because of that. If different cultures and races start taking steps, baby steps even, towards the goal of acquiring mutual respect and trust, racism can be held in check.
• On the national level, contingencies can be introduced and laws can be made that support cultural diversity and preach against anything that puts it in harm’s way. Taking such measures will make every single member of the society well aware of the scale of this problem and people will take it more seriously rather than ridiculing it.
• Finally, just as being racist was a part of the culture in the older generations, we need to make being anti-racist a part of our cultures. If our children, our youth grew up watching their elders and their role models dissing and undermining racism at every point of life, they will definitely adopt a lifestyle that will allow no racial discriminations in their life.

Methodology

Findings and results.

• Is racism justifiable?
• Is the current trend of racism increasing in your country?
• Do you have any acquaintances or friends that belong to a different ethnical background?
• Would you ever use someone’s race against them to win an argument?
• Would you agree to work in a diverse racial environment?
• Will humankind ever rid itself of racism?
• Have you ever taken any measures to abate racism?
• Racism has changed the relationship between people?
• Racial discriminations are apparent in our everyday life.
• One racial/ethnic group can be superior to another
• Racial/ethnic factors can change your perception of a person.
• Racial diversity can cause problems in one’s society.
• Racial or Ethnical conflict should be in cooperated into the laws of one’s society.
• Are you satisfied with the way different ethnic groups are treated in your society?
• ABC News. (2021). The legacy of racism in America. https://abcnews.go.com/US/legacy-racism-america/story?id=77223885
• British Broadcasting Corporation. (2021). Racism: What is it? https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/53498245
• Chetty, R., Hendren, N., & Jones, M. R. (2020). Racism and the American economy. Harvard University.
• Gibson, K. L., & Oberg, K. (2019). What does racism look like today? National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/04/what-does-racism-look-like-today-feature/
• Hughey, M. W. (2021). White supremacy. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Sociology.
• Jones, M. T., & Janson, C. (2020). Racism and health: Evidence and needed research. Annual Review of Public Health, 41, 1-16.
• Krieger, N. (2019). Discrimination and racial inequities in health : A commentary and a research agenda. American Journal of Public Health, 109(S1), S82-S85.
• Kteily, N., Bruneau, E., Waytz, A., & Cotterill, S. (2021). The psychology of racism: A review of theory and research. Annual Review of Psychology, 72, 479-514.
• Schmitt, M. T., Branscombe, N. R., Postmes, T., & Garcia, A. (2014). The consequences of perceived discrimination for psychological well-being: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 140(4), 921-948.
• Williams, D. R., & Mohammed, S. A. (2013). Racism and health I: Pathways and scientific evidence. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(8), 1152-1173.

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Explainer: what is casual racism?

Senior Research Officer, Western Sydney University

Research Fellow in Racism, Diversity and Intercultural Relations, Deakin University

Disclosure statement

Jacqueline Nelson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jessica Walton receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Deakin University and Western Sydney University provide funding as members of The Conversation AU.

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There is nothing casual about racism.

But the term “casual racism” has emerged over the last couple of years in media coverage reporting on more extreme forms of interpersonal racism, such as racist slang and racist diatribes on public transport. These incidents occur on a seemingly “casual” or unexpected basis.

While the media focus on these more obvious experiences of racism, in reality racism occurs everyday in both blatant and subtle forms.

Subtle forms of racism often go unnoticed (except for the person feeling the impact of them) and therefore, unaddressed. This racism can include speech and behaviours that treat cultural differences – such as forms of dress, cultural practices, physical features or accents – as problematic, manifesting in disapproving glances, exclusionary body language, and marginalising people’s experiences as invalid.

Subtle forms of racism refer to what researchers have called “ everyday racism ” since the early 1990s. Everyday racism is so commonplace that it’s often normalised and infused into daily conversations through jokes and stereotypes or through unconscious body gestures and expressions.

The Challenging Racism Project (which the first co-author of this article is a contributor to) has documented Australians’ experiences of racism since 2001. Our research shows the most commonly reported experiences of racism are interpersonal – that is, interactions between people that maintain and reproduce racial inequality. Racist talk, including name-calling and insults, is also widespread, particularly for Indigenous Australians and Australians from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Referring to these types of experiences of racism as “casual” diminishes their importance. “Casual” suggests “irregular”, which is inaccurate and also implies we need not take this type of racism too seriously. Therefore, we prefer not to use the term and instead draw attention to the persistence and prevalence of everyday forms of interpersonal racism.

The power of everyday racism is in its cumulative effect – the ongoing experience of marginalisation and repression can be a heavy burden with future incidents triggering memories of past experiences.

How racism can affect our health

Racism has a range of harmful effects on those targeted, including limiting access to employment, health services and education and reduced workplace productivity. Racism has been linked to mental and physical health problems, particularly depression and anxiety, something the recent Beyond Blue campaign highlights (below).

Our research demonstrates that racism can make people feel that they don’t belong in Australia, even if they were born here or their ancestors have lived in Australia for millennia.

A comment, joke or action doesn’t need to be intentionally hurtful for it to be racism. But understanding this requires us to evaluate words or behaviours by their outcomes, rather than just their intention .

The above Beyond Blue campaign effectively demonstrates this. Avoiding the seat next to an Aboriginal man on the bus could be hurtful, even if it was not intended to be. Imagine how this man might often face similar scenarios on his commute to and from work. Repeated experiences of avoidance accumulate to create stress and discomfort, even mental illness.

Acknowledging racism as a problem, and something worth addressing, is important. As part of our research , we talked to people involved in anti-racism in Australia and identified four types of denial of racism.

Denial included outright dismissal that racism exists, claims that there is no racism in this area, and arguments that racism is a thing of the past. Most importantly for this discussion there were “deflections from the mainstream”. People who “deflected” racism believed that there are a small number of people who are “racists”, but they are quite separate from the rest of us.

A focus on staunch racists shifts our attention towards obvious, sometimes violent forms of racism, and away from subtler everyday racism. We need to recognise and address both.

How to challenge racism

The lion’s share of racism happens in our day-to-day interactions. Yet we also negotiate cultural difference in a productive, or even mundane, way each day.

The act of challenging racism as we see it happening on an everyday basis is important – it demonstrates that any form of racism is socially unacceptable. It also supports the person being targeted and shows other bystanders that you do not condone what is happening.

Over time, if enough people challenge these everyday forms of injustice, we can build awareness and begin to change social norms. In fact, according to the 2001-2008 Challenging Racism surveys , 84% of Australians already think there is racism in Australia and we need to do something to address it.

But it is not always easy to know what to say or do when it happens, or how to respond in ways that will not escalate the situation. Some actions you can take, that do not involve directly confronting the perpetrator, include recording the incident on paper or video, talking to other bystanders to gain support, offering support to the target afterwards or calling the police.

You can also talk to family and friends about what happened and keep the conversation going. Regardless of intent or awareness, racism continues to have damaging effects, both for the people experiencing it and the just society that we all want to live in.

If you’ve experienced race-based discrimination, you can report it to the Australian Human Rights Commission on 1300 656 419. If you’re a child or young person and want to talk to someone for free, call Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

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John McWhorter

On broadway, ‘centering’ antiracism is delightful.

By John McWhorter

Opinion Writer

My 12-year-old daughter practically had to drag me into the musical “Six,” currently raging on Broadway, in which Henry VIII’s six wives all have their say about what happened to them. I wanted to see “Kimberly Akimbo.” I’m afraid I have lost touch with modern pop, and from a distance the whole “Six” premise sounded kind of unpromising to me (a singing Anne of Cleves?).

But after 15 minutes I was already itching to give it a standing ovation. Each wife comes out, in her way, as a proud, self-directed figure. For one, I love that my daughters will get this slice of history from the point of view (even if stylized) of the women, and even more that the women are cast as people of color(s), fostering a view of them as humans rather than racial types. In this, the whole show is a kind of lesson in antiracism, regardless of whether a viewer is consciously aware of it. In that way, it is a quintessentially modern work of musical theater. My daughters can sit through “A Man for All Seasons” some other time.

Beyond the lessons “Six” teaches, the performers manage some of the deftest work on Broadway I’ve ever seen. All six sing, act and move during almost the whole show at top-rate levels — I don’t even know how they remember all they have to do during the hour and a half — and the score does its job and then some: Every song in “Six” pops even if the genre isn’t your everyday soundscape.

So, “Six” can change your lens in an antiracist (and antisexist) way — while also turning you on to art, wonder, curiosity and excitement.

And this got me thinking about how much less vibrant, or even constructive, the antiracist mission feels at universities. Remember when, in 2020, the new idea was for them to “center” antiracism as their focal mission? One may have thought this was more trend than game plan, but it remains very much entrenched nationwide. According to the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative law firm, first-year law students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison just this semester were required to attend a “ re-orientation ,” learning that explained that white people have a “fear of people of color and what would happen if they gained ‘control’” and will never be free of “racist conditioning.” A University of Notre Dame “inclusive teaching” resource from last year notes that “anti-racist teaching is important because it positions both instructors and students as agents of change towards a more just society,” emphasis theirs, with the implication that this mission has unquestionable primacy in a moral society. Statements that antiracism (and battling differentials in power more generally) are central to university departments’ missions are now almost common coin. I just participated in a discussion of antiracism as universities’ central focus at the University of Texas at Austin and am regularly asked to do so elsewhere.

And I think the persistence of this centering of antiracism at universities is kind of scary.

It may understandably seem, after these four years as well as the ones preceding, that for universities to maintain antiracism as the guiding star of their endeavors is as ordinary as steak and potatoes.

But in the spirit of John Stuart Mill advising us to revisit even assumptions that feel settled, imagine a nationwide call for all universities to “center” climate change as the singular focus of their mission. Or STEM subjects, historical awareness or civic awareness, each of these positioned as the key to serious engagement with the challenges of the future. We might imagine the university is to “center” artistic vision or skill in public expression, or even physical culture.

Note that all of these centerings would be about things most consider good, and even crucial, but the question would be why the university, as a general rule, should make any of those things the essence of what an education should consist of. Any university that did so would openly acknowledge that its choice was an unusual, and perhaps experimental, one.

One might propose that antiracism deserves pride of place as a kind of atonement for the sins of slavery and Jim Crow. But while getting beyond evils requires being aware of them, redressing past injustices — in fact, redressing just one past injustice — is not the basic mission of a university. The Scholastics of the Middle Ages “centered” education on Christianity, with the idea that education must explore or at least be ever consonant with the essences of natural law and eternal grace. Today we may view this focus as antique or unintentionally parochial. But it’s not just Christianity: We should question the idea that that any one issue, even one that feels urgent at this particular moment, must be regarded as the heart of education.

I found Bradley Cooper’s biopic of Leonard Bernstein, “Maestro,” incurious in a related way. To build an entire film around Bernstein’s being gay or bisexual — with “West Side Story,” his masterful teaching on television and even the radical politics that led to the famous Black Panthers fund-raiser in his home left out or barely perceptible — is an almost boorish reduction of a life, soul and talent. Cooper’s focus reflects neither how life felt to Bernstein (which I have heard about from friends of his) nor how he should be presented to those new to him.

Imagine if Cooper was directing “Oppenheimer” and J. Robert Oppenheimer happened to be gay, and the film had focused on how he and his wife dealt with that rather than, well, what actually made his life significant. This is what it looks like to me for universities to make antiracism their core mission. Antiracism is important, but for a whole world to revolve around it yields a distortion of what America is, and what actual humanity, be it Black or white, is or can be.

I am especially dismayed by the utter static joylessness of the endeavor. The primum mobile is glum accusation, with observations considered most important (to the extent that they lend themselves to this mission). A curiosity focused mainly on condemnation is not truly curiosity.

A long time ago at a university function, a Black scholar was telling me about his dissertation. It described how in the 19th century in one state, Black people with a certain disability were offered fewer resources than white ones with the same disability. It isn’t that such injustice should not be chronicled, but for one, it would be hard to say that what he had discovered was exactly surprising. And I couldn’t help noticing the guy’s gloom. He talked about this dissertation, the product of years’ work, in the tone one would harbor to talk about bedbugs having been discovered in his house.

But near me, another Black scholar was talking about her study of a (very white) operetta composer of roughly the same period, whose work indeed contains richnesses often overlooked. This scholar was elated, intrigued, driven — and although I was polite and made sure to hear the gloomy guy out, I couldn’t help feeling that the woman studying operetta was expanding her mind more, not to mention getting more out of life. (I should mention that her work also involved issues related to Black people.)

In the foisting of an antiracist agenda upon the life of the mind, I see increasingly constricted space for what knowledge truly is. Our universities are becoming temples of a kind of dutiful score-settling, where the motto is less something about truth in Latin than “j’accuse.” It’s a narrow, soul-crushing abbreviation of what education is supposed to be.

John McWhorter ( @JohnHMcWhorter ) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “ Nine Nasty Words : English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “ Woke Racism : How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” @ JohnHMcWhorter

Anti-Black racism addressed in new course for health-care providers

Everyday systemic biases affect the health of a diverse community, creators say.

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A family doctor who helped create an anti-Black racism course for health professionals says she hopes participants will "unlearn" long-standing discriminatory practices that contribute to inequitable care for a vulnerable group.

Dr. Onye Nnorom, co-founder of the Black Health Education Collaborative based at the University of Toronto and Halifax's Dalhousie University, said the online course , launched Thursday, addresses gaps in medical education by exploring how everyday systemic biases affect the health of a diverse community.

"Most of the time, it's not going to be a physician who actually says something directly racist, or a slur or something like that. It's simply a subtle lack of empathy, perhaps not going out of their way to provide resources. Or sometimes assumptions are made about a person or their level of education," said Nnorom, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Nnorom said families are often "hyper vigilant" about any neglect or discrimination their loved ones may face while in hospital.

"One of the things that is difficult about racism in health care is that you're not always sure if the way you're treated, or your family is being treated, because it's so subtle, is due to racism."

Black Men's Health Conference encourages conversation

Nnorom said she spent a lot of time by her father's bedside in 2015 when he had surgery for a hemorrhagic stroke related to dementia because she wanted to protect him from harm if necessary.

The six-hour, self-paced, online course was developed by the collaborative with partial funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It includes eight modules that cover topics including criminal justice, child welfare and the legacy of slavery.

Available on the collaborative's website, the voluntary course costs between $275 and $350, depending on the number of registrants, and results in a certificate.

Nnorom said the collaborative is now working with the Medical Council of Canada to include questions about Black health on future exams. All medical students must pass the exam before they can work as doctors.

"Students will have to learn about Black health for the first time," she said of the plan, adding that anti-Black racism is not part of all medical school curriculums.

It could also be a resource for medical schools, which set their own curriculums to address racism against other groups and be used as part of a continuing education component for administrators, nurses, doctors and public health officials, she said.

Harmful anti-Black misconceptions and social structures affect health in ways that could include high blood pressure and chronic diseases at an earlier age, she said.

Push to get more Black women genetic screening for cancer

"It's the stress that's put on us that is impacting our health and not our faulty genes. We know that for high blood pressure, we see higher numbers for Black people, Indigenous people, South Asian people. Are you telling me that we all have the same mutation? Or are we experiencing similar situations? If it's a situation, that's injustice, and we can do something about it," she said.

"We want health-care providers to understand it's the situation that we're living in everyday. And when we come to the hospital, it's that much worse. We are put into another situation of racism."

Discrimination entrenched

A Public Health Agency of Canada report released four years ago said discrimination against Black communities is deeply entrenched in the country's institutions, policies and practices due to European colonization in Africa and the legacy of slavery, which was legal in Canada until 1834.

Race-based data is not collected in Canada to help show the predominance of various conditions on certain groups that may be due to social determinants of health.

A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2016 found that nearly nine per cent of babies born to Black women were preterm between 2004 and 2006, compared to nearly six per cent for white women.

Nnorom said that type of data could help doctors more closely monitor the health of pregnant Black women who are also at greater risk of unemployment and housing inequity.

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OmiSoore Dryden, an expert in Black studies at Dalhousie University's faculty of medicine and a contributor to the course, said she saw several specialists for pain several years ago but some assumed she had sickle cell disease because it is more common among Black people.

However, she was eventually diagnosed with Crohn's disease. 

"It was the idea that because I wasn't white or Jewish that meant it couldn't be Crohn's, it had to be something else. This is where we see an over-reliance on race biology, or the idea that certain races, or certain people have specific types of illnesses."

Dryden said she has lived in cities including Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax, and has heard of negative experiences that other Black people have also faced there in the health-care system.

"I think all of us could come up with a number of experiences, whether it was delayed diagnoses, inappropriate levels of pain management or being denied care."

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.  

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