xrodolfox
I think that this all depends on how we use the term "racism".
I didn't see the program, and I'm not from the UK, so my understanding of racism is perhaps quite different, even though the sentiments expressed in this thread seem familiar here in the USA. I hope I'm not gauging the context incorrectly.
In my experience, everyone is a bit racist. That includes me. That doesn't make me intractable in my racism, and it doesn't make me a bad person. It just means, as has been, said, that I'm a work in progress.
But personal racism, especially the small bits, really pale in comparison to the still present institutional racism, and legacy racism that persists. For example, in the 1950's, housing regulations were such that non-whites had to pay higher mortgages, for smaller houses, with lesser values, in worse neighborhoods with worse schools, than white folk. This was done by many institutions, but "red-lining" by banks was a huge cause (local neighborhood covenants being another). Sixty years later, most of those houses are paid off... but the results still persist, and that structural racism still persists.
As a result, two families that earned the same wages, in the same jobs (which still isn't a given), but where one was black and the other white, had quite different economic outcomes. The black family took home much less, due to higher mortgage prices. Thus, they accumulated much less wealth. When it was time to sell the house, the white family got a lot more. When the kids were going to school, the white kids had better schools with better support that gave them direct access to better colleges. The black kids could go to college, but had to fight a lot more, and were on average, less prepared to succeed than the white kids. This is due to de facto segregation in banking and housing. When it came to send the kids to college, the white family had built a much bigger nest egg.
Two generations down, it seems like a lot of the difference in the two families is all about hard work and choice. There is that illusion. However, for that black family to keep up with the white family, it would've have had to do quite a lot more, and had a lot more luck, and had to fight a lot more institutions. No doors were closed, per se, but surely the floor was sloped.
And it still is. At least here in Detroit, and in Michigan, and I'd wager, the rest of the USA. Racism is still real, and it most often isn't in the shape of an individual, but in the shape of cities, jobs, and schools, and the inertia they have as institutions.
To stamp out racism, pretending that everyone is the same seems like a reasonable approach. However, from my perspective as a non-white person living in a society that is generally favored against me, I feel that fighting racism is the opposite: acknowledging the differences, and valuing them.
I'm ambivalent about the use of the word racism to refer to individuals. I think that overusing it out of context weakens the word and the idea. There is surely a difference between someone like me, who actively works against personal bias, and someone who believes that one race is inherently more valuable than another. I sympathize with pat sommer in that.
But at the same time, I think that eschewing the reality, that I still occasionally benefit from racism, and that I reject all institutions that have racist legacies (I still use banks, after all), and that I have no unfair biases, is just not true. I have to take responsibility for who I am. So in practice, I rather acknowledge the fact that I'm certainly not a racist like those folks in the KKK (they wouldn't let a brown guy like me in it anyway), but I'm certainly no saint, even though I'm working on it. For me to eschew the term "racist" is to claim victory before the war is won. I know that leaving that open, linguistically, has allowed other to challenge me on my -ism's", and in at least three cases, has elicited positive change in my life, and in my encounters. Not rejecting outright the charge of "racist" has allowed me to listen to those claims openly, and to be a better, more honest person.
At least that's how I see it, at this moment.
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