Scott WoodsThinkers

Racism is not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It's a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is hard work, a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it.

Racism is seen by white people as conscious hate, when it is in fact a cultural disease so insidious that it does not care how you feel on a personal level because it is complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people's expense, whether whites know or like it or not.

Racism is not just manifest in hate. Privilege is another manifestation. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another, and so on. Racism is a powerful system that we're immediately born into, like being born into air: You take it in as soon as you breathe.