Bias
25 Questions to Begin a Conversation About Racism
Talking about racism is difficult. These questions may help.
Posted March 16, 2021 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Racial relations have been fraught since 1619 with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in America. In recent years, a heightened awareness around racial justice has led to discussions around matters such as inequities in nearly every aspect of society, from income and wealth to schools and health. Recently Georgetown University, which once kept itself solvent by selling slaves, has pledged to raise millions of dollars in the form of restitution to be distributed to organizations dedicated to racial justice.
Black Lives Matter brought home the outrage of Black people’s relation to law enforcement, encounters which frequently lead to everyday humiliations and can and often do turn dangerous and deadly.
The entertainment and business communities have acknowledged the ways in which people of color have been systematically excluded from positions of influence and power, while educational institutions try to deal with the lack of diversity and the inadequate and often inaccurate portrayal of racial history in the nation.
With the ongoing injustices and inequities of racial matters in mind, I’ve created a series of questions to facilitate a dialogue around numerous difficult and often ambiguous situations. Although these vignettes are presented in a binary fashion, they are meant to open the doors to discussion, insight, education, personal growth, and action. They were written as rhetorical or leading. I don’t have right answers in mind.
Most illustrations are taken from real-life situations where all that is known publicly is what has been reported by the media.
The questions are best approached with an open mind and probably work best in small, diverse groups.
The questions weren’t created to convince anyone of a correct position but rather to explore the ways in which everyone continues to be hobbled by a vicious past.
Even broaching the questions I’ve posed potentially opens me up to the charge of being a white racist. If that’s the case, I welcome a discussion where all parties are respectful of one another and where each person acknowledges that no one has all the answers and that everyone has something to learn.
There are many paths to change. This may be one of them.
Questions
1. A white person lives in a community that is more than 50% African American. Is this non-racist if the average cost of a house is $1 million-plus?
2. A white student attends an elite HBCU where tuition is about $50,000 per year. Is the student anti-racist?
3. A white student attends a college with very few Black students but joins the Black Student Union. Is he being anti-racist?
4. A person donates 10 percent of her income to charitable causes, for example, National Public Radio, Green Peace, the local food pantry, her church, Amnesty International and the Human Rights Campaign. Should she divert some of her contributions to an organization devoted exclusively to a Black cause?
5. If a white person volunteers for Latino justice, does this qualify as anti-racist?
6. If a person patronizes Chinese, Mexican, and Mediterranean restaurants, where there is rarely a Black customer, should she consider eating elsewhere?
7. A person is committed to buying locally but none of the shops are Black-owned. Should she consider traveling elsewhere to shop?
8. Is it anti-racist to read books that examine racism if the books are written by white people?
9. If a white person attends folk music concerts but not concerts by Black performers, is she being racist?
10. Is a white person who acknowledges systemic racism but believes that racism is best addressed by changing individuals’ attitudes and behavior racist?
11. If a white person’s hair is naturally curly, is it racist to wear it as an Afro or in dreads?
12. If a Black and a white candidate are running against each other and the Black candidate admires Clarence Thomas and other Black conservatives while the white candidate is a liberal (and there are no other choices), what should a white person do in this election?
13. If a white person chooses to move to a Black neighborhood knowing that this could be the beginning of gentrification, is this racist?
14. Is it racist if a white person seeks out a Black person to befriend?
15. A physician rarely sees a person of color or has professional affiliations with persons of color because she specializes in Tay-Sachs disease, which affects mainly people of Jewish ancestry. Is her practice racist?
16. In the classroom of a white teacher who supports BLM and also believes in open discussions, two white students get into a debate about Black Lives Matter vs. all lives matter. Is she racist if she doesn’t state her opinion?
17. A white student rejects her local high school, which has many Black students, to attend a public school that is dedicated to his interest in science that has very few Blacks but many Asians. Is he racist?
18. If a wealthy Black person makes indisputably demeaning and disparaging remarks to a white delivery man who responds in kind, is it racist for a white person to sympathize with the worker?
19. Is it racist or anti-racist for a lawyer to quote verbatim before the jury and public the racist language used by a defendant?
20. A woman walking alone on a deserted street sees a group of young Black men on the sidewalk and continues after crossing to the other side of the street. Does her race determine whether the action is racist?
21. Is it racist for a white returned Peace Corps Volunteer, who lived three years in Africa, to wear Kente cloth dress?
22. A podcast series is dropped because the white host once opposed the formation of a union that was widely supported by Black workers. Several of the writers and directors of the podcast are people of color who have also lost their jobs as ‘collateral damage.’ Were those who canceled the podcast anti-racist or racist?
23. After hearing Mavis Staples and other Black singers’ rendition of Stephen Foster’s "Hard Times," a white entertainer covered the song. Was she racist for doing so because much of Foster’s 19th music was written for and performed in minstrel shows, although this particular song was not?
24. Is it racist for a white person to laugh at the jokes of a Black comedian whose performance, which is before a Black audience, centers around poking fun at the foibles of Black people?
25. A series of meetings “intended to give white people a space to learn about and process their awareness of and complicity in unjust systems without harming their friends of color” is for white people only. Is the program racist?
