Racism in my brain

This is going to be another not-very-fun post for me to write.

First, let me say that I love being reminded of the ways in which humans are at essence primates. We are so very, very similar to our also-primate cousins in so many ways, and it makes me smile to notice the behaviors that are so obviously primate based: the way we touch to communicate and cement relationships, how we use grooming to comfort, the group dynamics that tell us instantly when people in a crowd are part of a family. Maybe I’m weird, but seriously, that makes me happy.

This, however, does not.

Yesterday I was driving along, and glanced over at a car next to me. There was a lovely Asian family driving and having a conversation. The shape of their faces, with the mouth just a little farther (farther from what? from mine, from a more European face, from “normal”) out from their faces, reminded me of chimpanzees. Which, not really thinking about it, reminded me that humans are primates, which made me smile.

The smile froze on my face, as I realized holy shit, that is fucking racist.

Using oneself and one’s body as the base model to which all others are compared is normal human (primate, I would argue) thinking, but becomes extremely problematical when the “I” doing the thinking is a member of a race which systematically and horrifically has dominated and oppressed all other races throughout history, so that’s a big damn problem right there. And the trope that people of color are more like animals, more animalistic, closer to animals and less evolved (again, using white as “normal” from which other races “deviate”) is one of the more pervasive, evil racist constructions, which has been used to justify the enslavement, murder, colonization, and de-humanization of millions of people. And it’s in my brain.

When really looked at, it’s obvious the construction is such bullshit, too. The very darkness of skin of people of color is, rather than being “animalistic”, a sign of more evolution away from our primate cousins: chimpanzees underneath their fur, just like white/European humans, have no need for skin pigmentation, and are therefore pale. The excessive hairiness of limb, torso, and male face of white humans is more similar to our furry relations than is the comparatively lesser hairiness of many other races. So it would be easy and at least as accurate to construct an argument that white people are the more animalistic, the less evolved, the less human; or at least (and most accurately) to see in all humans things that remind us of other animals: face here, hair there, and all of us so obviously primates in body and behavior.

But that’s not the way racism works. Whiteness has constructed itself as normal, human, most highly evolved, and all others as deviations and therefore lesser. In this framework, in which we all reside and by which my brain has been thoroughly colonized, whiteness cannot be understood as animal-like because whiteness defines what “human” is; only those who are outside of whiteness can be understood to be different from human and therefore like animals.

And it’s in my brain.

I didn’t even know about it. I had known about and hated the trope of the “savage, animalistic darkie”, scoffed at those who used it, gotten angry at examples of it along with everyone else, and I never realized it was part of my own thinking. How could it be? That’s a horrible, evil, racist thought, and I’m not racist, so I couldn’t think like that.

But I do.

As a feminist, trying to raise my white male child in a womanist/feminist, anti-racist, anti-kyriarchy manner, to come across such a blatantly racist construction in my own mind is pretty damn horrifying. It’s entirely too tempting to shove it aside, to not think about it, to deny it: and that is white privilege. White privilege means not having to think about race or to acknowledge racism when I encounter it, even (especially) in my own thinking. White privilege means I can accept that whiteness=normal, because I am white and it is human nature to think of ourselves as the norm. White privilege means everything in my culture is telling me “you are normal, you are the standard, you are the pinnacle from which all others are deviations”; white privilege means I could choose to not feel bad, to not think too hard, to not talk about it, to not admit it. I would not be directly hurt if I allowed this racism to continue; I would only be going along with the status quo and no one with power would blame me: that is white privilege.

I choose not to accept that privilege (it is white privilege that I have a choice, and I cannot do away with that privilege), and so I expose that thought, talk about it, deconstruct it, and work to do away with it from my own mind.

Now I wonder: how do I stop the thought from colonizing the Boychick’s mind? When everything in his culture is telling him whiteness, and therefore he, is the default, when his own normal egocentricism agrees, how do I combat it? I can point out the ways in which all humans look and act like the animals we are; I can talk about how his father is hairy just like other primates, and how he will eventually be as well; I can avoid the “colorblind” ideology that prohibits mention of race at all, thereby reinforcing the white-as-standard meme: but I don’t know if that will be enough.

The only thing I am certain of is that it is only possible to counter and defend against something when we know it’s there, and so I am grateful to that racist thought, in debt to that family: for without the realization that came after, I would still be coasting along, smug in my superiority, unaware I carried that ugly construct within myself.