Why White People Find It So Hard to Accept that We Are All Racist
Especially with racism hiding in plain sight
Among white people the realization that racism is a major social issue seems to have landed only quite recently. Racism has been a foundational structural feature of society for centuries, at the very least since global colonialism and the cross-Atlantic slave trade. This racism has been invisible for much of the time, as it is pushed aside by the realities of existing in our world. Yet in 2020 we have had a major shift in consciousness among millions of white people around the world. To see sizeable numbers of white people at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe has been both inspiring and kind of odd.
Where did this sudden awareness come from? It is not as if racism has suddenly become worse. Yes, George Floyd’s murder was especially graphic. But thousands of Black people have been killed in equally violent ways since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Before that time, lynching was still common in many parts of the US, and European colonial violence was rife across much of the world. And before that we still had slavery, and Europeans were invading lands around the globe with impunity. So what happened to cause this noticeable shift among white people? And perhaps more…
