The Good/Bad Binary

"But I am friends with people of color and my parents raised me to believe everyone is equal and I don't tell racist Jokes, I even have a cousin who is black!" Please respond

"All people hold prejudices, especially across racial lines in a society deeply divided by race" We can have all of those things that you described, but "I am still affected by the forces of racism as a member of a society in which racism is the bedrock. I will still be seen as white, treated as white and experience life as a white person. My identity, personality, interests, and investments were developed from a white perspective. I will have a white worldview and a white frame of reference. In a society in which race clearly matters, our race profoundly shapes us. If we want to challenge this construct, we must make an honest accounting of how it is manifesting in our own lives and in the society around us." -Robin Diangelo

With this paradigm what does it now infer about being called a racist?

"It is a deep moral blow-a kind of character assassination" which now requires all energy to be used to defend ones character/deflecting the charge, instead of "reflecting on ones behavior"

The good/bad binary does what to the average white persons relationship with racism?

"It makes it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand- much less interrupt- racism."

Omowale Akintunde's full paragraph

"Racism is a systemic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every vestige of our reality. For most whites, however, racism is like murder: the concept exists, but someone has to commit it in order of it to happen. This limited view of such a multilayered syndrome cultivates the sinister nature of racism and, in fact, perpetuates racist phenomena rather than eradicates them." -Omowale Akintunde

What adaptation was needed for the good/bad binary to be formed?

"racism first needed to be reduced to simple, isolated, and extreme acts of prejudice. These acts must be intentional, malicious, and based on conscious dislike of someone because of race."

How did the good/bad binary form?

"white northerners saw the violence black people- including women and children- endured during the civil rights movement and they were appalled." This view of southern whites, by northern whites as bad racist people, allowed the North and Northerners to be known as good "non-racist" people. But did not address the real injustices, allowing the good bad binary to skew the reality of racism.

What is a definition of the good/bad binary?

A concept created after the civil rights movement where a good person is mutually exclusive with a non racist person. Where a racist person is limited to only bad people: typically ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced, mean-spirited, old and southern folks.

Describe the racism and murder analogy from Omowale Akintunde.

Folks think of racism like murder, "the concept exists, but someone has to commit it in order for it to happen" -Omowale Akintunde

If we can not discuss these dynamics or see ourselves within them...

we cannot stop participating in racism.