The R-Word

So, as Americans and those of us foreigners with morbid fascinations are aware, that loveable scamp Glenn Beck held his “restoring honor” rally in an attempt to “reclaim” the civil rights movement from those perky liberals who somehow got into their heads that Dr. King cared about things like economic equality and social justice. Now, plenty of people have picked apart this whole sordid affair a lot more eloquently than I could hope to, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why it’s patently offensive for a man who decried Obama’s healthcare plan as a reparations scheme, playing off the fears of white Republicans that their money will go to BLACK PEOPLE, to attempt to co-opt the legacy of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s most important figures on the anniversary of his most famous speech. That isn’t what I want to talk about, though.


Everyone knows that there is no shortage of denialists when it comes to racism. They’re the folks, many of them not necessarily malicious people, who believe that racism ended so many years ago when that Martin Luther King guy they kinda learned about in high school talked about having a dream and racial inequality across the western world just vanished into thin air. They’re the folks who only see racism when it’s coming out of the mouth of a guy in a white hood whose family tree is a straight line, or a guy with a shaved head who’s perpetually unemployed because most employers don’t agree with him on how kickin’ rad his swastika facial tattoos are (though they are typically rightfully outraged about this type of racism). They claim to not even see race, because well shucks, if they noticed it than that would be more racist than anything! They’re the folks who cluelessly accuse people of color of oversensitivity when they comment that the Tea Party has a bit of racist streak. They are typically white, though every now and then you have a person of color who has “made it” (either through hard work, other social privileges, or a combination of the two) and thinks that dammit, if I could do it then every other person must be able to as well!


If some of that sounds a bit harsh, I apologize, because I don’t think that most of the people in this category are bad people. They absolutely are misguided, and the denial of racism is the biggest reason that it is able to continue and grow. However, even as a person of color myself, it’s hard to hold much of a grudge against them personally when they’re buying into the depressingly common and incorrect notions about racism that are continuously repeated and held up to be correct (the colorblind one especially). That said, even if they aren’t all bad people, having a discussion with them regarding the continued existence of racism and privilege is still challenging. They’re essentially being told that their “common sense” view of race relations is entirely incorrect, and that they are privileged when many of them may feel that they have not lead a privileged life at all. So naturally, they tend to get very defensive and as anti-racists, we want to get past that.


So, if you’re someone who wants to maintain a system of white privilege, then you want to encourage white defensiveness and feed the notion that anti-racism is about attacking people for being white. So you go one step further than saying that people who complain about racism are just oversensitive; you tell people that they are the REAL racists. You take the term racist, and transform it into “the R-word”, a slur against white people. This does three things: the first is that it puts the person standing up to racism on the same level as the previously mentioned skinhead or KKK member. When you’re dealing with people who believe that this is the only form that racism takes, then you must be just as bad as them, and therefore someone worthy only being ignored at the least and scorned at the worst. Secondly, it appeals to the denialist’s sense of victimization. As I’ve mentioned, people tend to get defensive when you talk about racial privilege, either because they do not view themselves are privileged and assume that you are making light of their own hardships, or because they believe that you are suggesting they are somehow undeserving of their situation. Start telling people that the person talking to them about racism is the real racist, though, and you can add “hates you for being white” onto that list as well.


It is the third effect that is the most sinister, and it is that it silences and disempowers people of color. As a person of color, when I point out to a white person that something they have said or done is racially insensitive, ignorant, or just outright hateful, they have the choice of whether to listen to me, to dismiss me, or to declare me oversensitive. This is what white privilege is; the ability of a white person to ignore or heed the perspectives and feelings of people of color as they see fit. In spite of this, the ability to call out racism is the one way that we are able to defend ourselves if we find ourselves in a hostile environment. By turning this act of defense into an act of aggression, and turning the perpetrators of racism into victims, we are effectively vilified and silenced. Racist comments and thinking go unopposed, because to do so would make us the real racists. We cannot call it for what it is, because we must dare not use the “R-word”.


Glenn Beck’s rally was more than just metaphorically pissing on MLK’s grave, it was a celebration of this notion that anti-racists are the only true racists. It isn’t the first time this sentiment has reared its ugly head; the vilification of the NAACP during the Shirley Sherrod fiasco because of the laughter heard in her heavily edited speech also demonstrated it, and up here in the Great White North a letter to one of my city’s major newspapers decried the injustice of the “R-word” and was snarkily agreed with by the editorial board (also the inspiration for the title of this piece – guess racists can be good for something!).However, the celebration of that sentiment on such a large scale should be of great concern to anyone who’s even cared about racism in passing. If anti-racism is successfully vilified then we can expect not only to not progress when it comes to racism, but to go backwards. Let’s make sure the “R-word” is the one slur we’re willing to use.