How Racism Hides Behind Regularity

When reading, "Citizen", by Claudia Rankine I was initially outraged at the encounter mentioned in her poems between a person who is hailed as educated in our society and Serena Williams. That person, Piers Morgan, is not only uneducated but an absolute piece of garbage for insisting that Serena's three second dance was a "Crip Walk" rather than a light celebration for accomplishing a feat worth a million of those tiny dances. Despite his clearly racist views, he is still thought of as a educated person worth screen time on large network tv.

Which only more concretely showed how systematically bigoted our country is. Whether or not it is a popular opinion, many whites in America hold prejudices against minorities. As I read more and more in this book I became less bothered by Morgan's awfulness, and more by the just blanket of prejudice that seemed to cover every individual from Dean of a school to a specialized therapist. While I had for a long time understood that lots of our country was built with a systematic advantage for whites, and also had lots of blatant racists, I had not realized how many people fell into a sort of middle category of bigots who don't want to be bigots, or at least want to appear as such.

From half assed apologies from people repeatedly mistaking Rankine for other black women, or lack of apologies from bosses attacking affirmative action, or a child complaining about having to sit next to a black woman on a plane, I learned how large the group of bigots who don't consider themselves bigots is.

My biggest reaction to this book is the fact that the people in this book are the ones who need to read it the most because until they understand how wrong their actions are they will continue to deny and refuse to change, which makes me strongly hope that they do in fact read this book.