Are You Racist?

May 24, 2013
Written by Jesse Washington - AP National Writer in
"Sticky Wicket" Questions
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"I'm not a racist, but..." illustration
Are you racist? Do you use a racial slur or tell a racist joke and then declare, when called out, that you are not racist? Photo Credit: sirpatrickofireland.wordpress.com

Are you racist? Do you use a racial slur or tell a racist joke and then declare, when called out, that you are not racist?

It's almost a cliché. First, someone talking about blacks make references to fried chicken, watermelon, monkeys, or dogs - all stereotypes used to denigrate African Americans. Someone might even use the indefensible N-word. Then, along with the inevitable apology, comes the kicker: I'm not racist.

The latest denial is from golfer Sergio Garcia. Asked a joking question about having dinner with his adversary Tiger Woods, Garcia said: "We will serve fried chicken." He later apologized for what he called a "silly remark," then added, "but in no way was the comment meant in a racist manner."

In the early 1900s, periodicals and postcards commonly displayed images of black people as grotesque, simple-minded "coons" obsessed with chicken and watermelon. From the 1920s to the 1950s, a three-restaurant chain of Coon Chicken Inns was popular around Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Portland.

Perhaps the Spanish-born Garcia was unaware that chicken stereotypes have denigrated African-Americans for at least a century. Maybe he was unaware of the attitudes buried in his subconscious mind. As the backlash increased, Garcia did apologize further, calling his remark "totally stupid and out of place."

However, by this time, he secured a place on the lengthy roll of people who offered justifications for statements widely considered offensive.

Obama buck

How does someone brush off hurtful words so easily? So if the word “racist” does not encompass people who use racial slurs, what does it include?

"I think it's human nature that if you're a racist, you don't want to admit it," says conservative radio host Mike Gallagher. "If Tiger said, 'Let's serve tacos at dinner with Garcia,' the world would go crazy. When a bigot tells a bigoted joke and they get called out on it, the pattern is, I'll say I'm sorry and maybe it will blow over."

The pattern is unmistakable, said golfer Fuzzy Zoeller, after joking that Woods shouldn't order fried chicken for the Masters champions' dinner. The comments were "misconstrued," said comedian Michael Richards, after responding to a black heckler with a lynching reference and the N-word. "I'm not a racist," said actor Mel Gibson, after claiming that Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world: "I'm not a bigot."

Unfortunately, with Barack Obama becoming America’s first black president, this phenomenon is now even more pronounced:

-Montana's chief federal judge resigned after emailing a joke in which a young Obama asks why he is black and his mother is white. The punch line involved a dog. "Although (the joke) is racist, I'm not that way, never have been," Judge Richard Cebull said.

- After drawing national attention for selling an anti-Obama bumper sticker that said "Don't Re-Nig in 2012," creator Paula Smith of Hinesville, Georgia insisted that neither she nor the sticker were racist. She called the uproar "amazing and entertaining."

- New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino sent an email labeled "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal" showing an African tribesman dancing. He responded by saying: I'm not a racist. I'm proud to have created jobs for hundreds of people of every color and ethnicity."

- Arizona radio host Barbara Espinosa said she "voted for the white guy" and called Obama a monkey. Asked if that was offensive, she replied, "I'm anything but racist."

"Stamp Out Racism" graffiti

Clay Routledge, a social psychology professor at North Dakota State University who studies the ways people defend themselves against psychological threats, said they often engage in "self-deception: They may think they're a good athlete, for example, or have an outgoing personality - or do not have racial biases. People have narratives about themselves, self-concepts, a whole host of attitudes that they want to think about themselves. A lot of times they match well, but sometimes they don't."

Other psychologists go further. They blame "implicit bias" - unconscious attitudes based the common portrayal of racial groups in the public space.

Using scientific studies that measure how quickly people associate words like "black" with "criminal," or "Asian-American" with "foreign," these researchers conclude that many people - of all backgrounds, not just white people - are unaware of their own racial biases.

Phillip Atiba Goff, a UCLA social psychology professor, says this may be what happened with Garcia: "He was trying to be funny. In the moment, especially if you're nervous and not thinking, stereotypes come to mind very quickly."

Goff emphasizes that having an unconscious bias does not mean someone is a racist - it means he or she is a human being who absorbed ubiquitous information.

So, can a person say something racist but not BE a racist? Are people who make racist statements telling the truth when they say they are not racist?

Goff says it depends on the individual - but the rush to brand people as racist obscures the bigger issue of the harm caused by their statements.

"Stop Racism, It's the Enemy of Freedom" illustration

"Let's have a conversation about why (Garcia) said it in the first place, and why these moments seem to come up so much," Goff said. "We should be able to say, 'You know what, that was one of those implicit bias moments.'"

Whatever you call them, such moments come up every day for Logan Smith, a journalist who runs the Twitter feed YesYoureRacist. He started about eight months ago, after noticing a plethora of tweets starting with "I'm not racist, but."

Some of his favorite examples: "I'm not racist but having a black president is just not smart," ''I'm not racist but black people scare me," and "I'm not racist but I can see where Hitler was coming from."

He said most of the tweets seem to come from teenagers: "They didn't grow up seeing 'coloreds only' water fountains, or civil rights marches in the papers, or apartheid on TV, and as a result, many of them simply don't understand what racism means," Smith said via email. “They think that unless they're actually lynching a black person or something, they're not racist, because they don't understand things like institutionalized racism or inferiorization, and the historical context of their statement."

When people associate black folks with chicken, the past often rushes into the present - as in a famous routine by the black comedian Dave Chappelle. "A lot of black people can relate to this. Have you ever had something happen that was so racist, that you didn't even get mad?"

He then tells a story about walking into a restaurant, contemplating his order with the counterman, and "before I even finish my sentence he says, 'The chicken!'"

"All these years I thought I liked chicken 'cause it was delicious," Chappelle said. "Turns out I'm genetically predisposed to liking chicken!"

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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Comments

On campus

Submitted by STBONF2013-03 on

This article reminds me of friends and other people on my college campus. I have a couple of friends who casually make jokes about black people in the dining hall or in the work out room. It baffles me that these things are said often.. even though they may not me meant in a serious way it is still disappointing to hear. Overall I think that as citizens it is our job to stop saying harsh things like this because you never know one day the person you talk about may hear you. YOu could affect the people around you by what you are saying. So always keep your thoughts to yourself if they are not nice!