*DRAFT* "Racism"

Let’s start with an easy one. Well not easy but fundamental. The terms “racism” and “racist” are thrown around so much and, for good reason, cause people to immediately go on defense. I get it. You’re not a “racist.” No one you are friends with is probably a “racist.” The issue is we are all defining racism and racist slightly differently. And the slight difference can cause a lot of issues. 

Primarily, there are different types of racism. I’ll probably write whole posts about some of them, but basically overt racism is what you might immediately think of. The active type where you explicitly mean to treat someone or think of them differently because of their race. I would assume you don’t practice this at least regularly. Of course the demonstrators and affiliates with the cause would love to end overt racism but that's not necessarily what they’re referring to. Implicit racism, institutional racism, structural racism, and systemic racism are also huge issues. It sucks because it’s not obvious and easy things that can be changed, and really hard to actually fix because it would take radical policy changes and mass education. Plus of course no one really recognizes their implicit racist tendencies unless they spent 4 years of college learning about it or something. Or at least took some sort of inequality class. But regardless it weighs on the minority populations a ton and even if they don’t experience overt racism day to day and even if you’re not a racist, it has a profound impact on their life and the continued oppression of their community. 

“stats”

Even if you don’t think the statistics are that bad, the fact that there is a difference shows that there is a bias and thats the issue. Because then when it comes to these cases that seem “one off” that end up getting filmed, the idea that the person or situation could have been treated differently had they been white is quite frankly infuriating. The police officers don’t need to be racist. The presence of racism in our society at all causes implicit bias whether we think we are racist or not. Maybe the police officer wasn’t a racist and maybe he had an asian wife but that doesn’t mean racism didn’t affect the situation.