I am a racist, and so are you

I wake up on a huge ferryboat somewhere in the Gibraltar straight. The sea is rough. The boat is rocking up and down like a particularly lazy whale. Through the walls of a nearby toilet I hear a seasick Senegalese truck driver vomiting his soul out. My body, too, is ridding itself of a toxin — I feel the last bits of racism evaporating through my skin and into the atmosphere. For now.

I spent the last few days in Tangier, Morocco. The city is a mix of European and Arab heritage that happens to be in Africa. This visit was a touristy, old times sake one — I enjoyed the company of old friends, the Mediterranean vistas, the coffee houses and the food. I took the unavoidable seven-passenger cab from the port (a trusty Mercedes 200D, older than I am) and chatted about world politics with the passengers, in Spanish, French, English and a bit of sign language too.

I first set foot on the African continent as a teenager, volunteering during the civil war in Sierra Leone. It was a stupid thing to do, in hindsight — I didn’t end up contributing much, and I could have ended up getting killed on more than one occasion. But I somehow made it through unscathed and a bit wiser.

Over the years, due to the nature of my work, I have been to more than a hundred countries and seen all one can hope to, from breathtaking sites to heartbreaking natural disasters, to outright war zones where people around me were dying “like flies,” as they say. You would think that this would have made me a man of the world, who can land anywhere and hit the ground running, speaking the local language, understanding the culture and achieving immersion instantly. Sadly, this is rarely the case. In most situations, when about to ship myself to a distant land I still have that fear of the “other” under my skin. I am White, non-religious, liberal. By “other” I mean cultures that are heavily religious, traditional and non-White.

This was the case on this trip as well. The people of Morocco are just about the same as anywhere else in the world. Still, as my boat was pulling into Tangier the other day, I felt a bit twitchy. It’s the third world. Poverty, corruption, touts and a dialect I don’t speak — Maghreb Arabic. It took about 15 minutes for the sense of discomfort to disappear; it usually takes that little. One conversation, one smile, one familiar sight, and I’m “in.” But the trepidation is always there in the beginning when I go to Asia or Africa, yet not when I go to Greece or Sweden, countries where I’ve never lived and whose language I don’t speak either. This is unconscious racism. Yes, after all these years and with all this experience, I am still a racist.

In Western societies racism has become something of a taboo. I will use the example of the United States, because I know that context the best, having lived there for a very long time. In the US, racism is supposed to be something that we’ve left behind, paid our dues, and are now moving on, all color blind and united and all, with equal opportunities for everyone in a free society. This is very far from the the situation on the ground. Cops still predominately target, and judges jail, black people. Educational, housing and job opportunities for Blacks are narrower. The African American population is habitually underrepresented in government.

Many other Western countries are no different. Just look at the panic caused by the recent influx of Syrian refugees into Europe. The only greater fear than having them come is of being perceived as racist by admitting that we don’t want them essentially because they are Muslim and brown(ish). This schizophrenic position (we are scared shitless yet we pretend to be open minded and willing to help victims), coupled with political cowardice, results in the deadlock we are living right now.

I don’t think I’ll ever be perfectly non-racist. When I see a black person I will always have the stereotype on my mind. Negative: they are more likely to have been in jail, less educated and poor. Positive: they are more likely to have worked harder to succeed then their white counterparts, facing prejudice ever day of their lives; they are more likely to understand rhythm, adore ML King, etc. The same goes for Indians, Asians and all other ethnic groups that I am familiar with. Sadly, the first few miliseconds, the very first impulse, will always be a laughable caricature.

Instead of pretending not to be racist, then, what I train myself is this: condition my mind to react by bringing back the images of the hundreds and thousands of people of that culture or skin color that I have known and who were far away from the stereotype, just good people. That allows me to start dropping the prejudice and begin appreciating the person for their idiosyncrasies: verbal skills, body language, dress, etc. If I can do this in the space of a few seconds then it’s ok to be racist, I feel. At any rate, it is honest. It becomes just another prejudice to overcome, like assuming Russians drink vodka or all Swiss people can ski.

Truly non-racist people are very few, and I have met but a handful in my time. They are those genuinely good warriors of light with an open heart, often to their own detriment and bodily harm. They typically act out of firm, sometimes religious, convictions, often in sharp contrast to the chaos that surrounds them. At times they are to be admired, other times they are just fools.

Apart from that fraction of a percent, show me a person who says they are perfectly color-blind and I’ll show you a liar. We are all prejudiced and we are all racist in a way. Denying this leaves us open to all sorts of manipulation and shuts the door for discussion. As lamentable as the incidents of everyday racism (say using racial slurs) are, they are way less harmful than the systemic, white-collar racism that keeps Blacks away from opportunities to improve their condition; we can’t start talking about these if we pretend that all is great, and that racism is just something a handful of bigots out there say and do.

The true measure of open-mindedness isn’t in avoiding racism, or pretending that it doesn’t exist. It is instead in recognizing it quickly in ourselves and others, and taking constant remedial action to rid ourselves of it. This takes work, unfortunately. The upshot is that, if we agree to do this work, a few decades down the road it might no longer be necessary.