This is an embarrassing story, but I’ll tell it for two reasons. First, one of my aspirations when writing this blog is to be honest, even if that doesn’t necessarily paint me in a good light. Second, it illustrates a subtle point that many of us don’t think about much but is important to mention.
Few years ago, I wandered down to the cafeteria to get lunch like most afternoons. Our cafeteria is in a cluster of four buildings, serves hundreds of people, and has many different stations. I came down right around noon, so it was busy. As I stood in one line to get my food, my mind wandered, and I people watched. I took note of a young woman several feet in front of me on the next station; she was facing away. She was sharply dressed and had long flowing hair. For a brief moment, I thought to myself, “She’s cute. I wonder what she looks like.”
Then my mind started to wander again to my projects and the current state of the queue for my lunch. My concentration is abruptly broken by the call of my name, “Oh, hi Frank.” It was the aforementioned young woman; this was, in fact, my friend Emily.
Emily is one of my teammates in my sister team. I met her shortly after she arrived at the company and honestly up until that one moment a few minutes before, I thought of her strictly as a work sibling. We all do this; in order to protect ourselves from bad situations, we short-circuit certain parts of our brain. We can tell ourselves that Gal Gadot is attractive, but we don’t allow our minds to wander into other places that will severely complicate our lives. Do we allow ourselves to rate the hotness of our cousin? our parent? our sibling? etc.
Mentioning the above is likely not a great surprise to many of you; most of us can understand it. I am Chinese; we spoke Cantonese at home. I understand much of the culture; I just seldom practice it. Many years ago, I was reading an Asian-American magazine at work; one of my friends looked at me quizzically and made the comment, “You’re one of the least Asian people I know.” I honestly didn’t know how to respond to that, but I just tucked it away.
The really subtle assertion from the start of the post that I’d like to make is simply this. The more you get to know me, the more you’ll think of me as Frank and all the idiosyncrasies that make up my person and my character, and the less you’ll think of me as the combination of elements of which I am composed. You’ll think of me as less Chinese and more Frank. This is true about any one person you know and the better you know them the greater the degree, much like my friend said to me so many years before that I was one of the least Asian persons he knew.
Does it really matter if you don’t think of me as Chinese? It does for a couple of reasons. First, if somehow, you’ve concluded in your mind that I’m not really Chinese, not really Chinese… Well, then I can’t hope to dispel any of your preconceived notions of what Chinese people are like. I am Chinese; I am not an outlier. We can range quite widely, not all of us know martial arts, for instance. Second, you can rationalize that “I can’t be a racist; I have a Chinese friend.” Though if you stop thinking of me as really Chinese, then it doesn’t really count, does it?
I’ve been able to observe many flavors (and severities) of racism, though I imagine that there are more. This is at least the way that I compartmentalize it in my head. I think these all deserve mention because they have specific social dynamics to them. Two subtle points about bias, however… First, I talk about racism in particular, but I can easily generalize this to other forms of bias, like gender bias and LGBTQ+ bias for instance. Second, this is not a majority (read Caucasian, Christian, male, etc.) affliction, there are plenty of biases the Chinese have about ‘outsiders’, for instance.
Type 1: This will get little debate from anyone. This is the kind of racism where it’s explicit. It includes lynching and burning crosses, etc. Basically, the passion is so great that you’re looking to end their existence. The vast majority of US citizens are not like this.
Type 2: You may not necessarily look to destroy them, but you don’t want association or proximity to them. One of the prototypical examples is Archie Bunker; he was pretty vocal, but you don’t necessarily need to be vocal to qualify. You may not necessarily want to harm Hispanics per se, but you don’t want them living next door. There are probably a fair number of US citizens like this. There’s little debate from most that this is racist, especially when portrayed like Bunker.
Type 3: You have an opinion, and you realize that is biased, but you come up with a rationalization that makes it palatable. Historically, these may involve issues like integrated schools and mixed race marriages; we have abolished these. These now involve issues like gay marriage, trans rights (like serving in the military and health coverage), and gay couples adopting. What is profoundly dangerous about this type of bias is that many US citizens align with these beliefs, acknowledge that it is prejudicial, rationalize that it is ‘what is best for everyone’, and try to legislate away the right of other citizens. Let’s gloss over the entire ‘separation of church and state’ element.
Type 4: You don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with them per se, but somehow, you’re just more comfortable with something different. This may affect our choices for services like lawyers, accountants, therapists, doctors, massage therapists, etc. I get it, it’s your money, you should get what you want. Though you never know, the best massage therapist I know is a man named Giuseppe. However, there are some choices that are not yours to make, like who your daughter chooses to marry, that will definitely affect your life. You rationalize that it’s a personal thing and it’s not really prejudice, but if asked to pick among viable candidates there is definitely a trend. I think everyone suffers from this to a certain degree, but they find it unsettling to think of it as prejudice. It is; just own it. It doesn’t necessarily make you a terrible person. Though on the flip side, this does suck if you want to be an accountant and don’t fit the prototypical image of an accountant.
Type 5: You blissfully live life thinking that you have no biases even if you do. This is like the person with red/green colorblindness that is truly convinced that they’re in fact the same color. This is unconscious bias. Netflix has a show called 100 Humans where they tested an array of different theories. On this episode, they tested if people are more likely to shoot at blacks even, they they are doing nothing wrong (carrying a cell phone). They found that everyone (yes, even black people) is more likely to shoot a black person than a white person. Black police officers can still be racist against black people; being of the same race doesn’t make them immune. Another juicy unconscious bias? We are statistically less tolerant of assertive women than men in the workplace; it is the same behavior; we just find it less palatable coming from a woman (and she is more likely to be punished). I think we all suffer from unconscious bias to some degree, but we are unaware, hence the name.
I list these to illustrate that racism (and prejudice in general) is both very common and very pervasive and more importantly no one is immune to it. No one. All different flavors of it are harmful in different ways. No, they’re not all subject to mortal danger, but it points to unfairness and injustice. The labels ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, and ‘bigot’ are so emotionally charged that we find it deeply unsettling to be attached to those labels, even when they fit.
I remember watching an episode of Friends where Ross misplaces his pink shirt. He asks everyone if they have seen it, though he insists that its color is salmon. It’s pink, Ross; get over it.
The colors seafoam and chrysoprase are both shades of green. Your shirt may be one shade of green and not another, but really… it’s all green. Looking at the classifications above, you may not be a Type 1 racist, and then you proudly declare that you’re not a racist. You’re wrong; it’s all racism. Not being one type doesn’t absolve you from the label in general.
You may wonder that if we’re all racists, even if we don’t necessarily admit it, what’s the point of this discussion? The problem is that if we deny the label of ‘racist’ then we are lulled into false sense of security. We, as a country, become complacent that the problem is ‘not that bad’ or even worse, that we don’t have a problem at all.
Racism is like friction in physics. You can minimize it as much as you can, but you’ll never completely get rid of it. There are other constructs in physics (perfectly elastic or inelastic collisions, point weights, etc.) that we use to simplify a problem and build a model, but they don’t exist in the real world. Once we start solving the problem, we need to account for them.
No, we may never be able to completely eradicate racism, but we can make it smaller and smaller as we learn more. That aspiration is noble, but it can’t happen if we don’t think of ourselves as racists at least to some degree. We need to own the problem.