Racism as a Technology (Premise)
(Trigger warning: descriptions of racial violence, dehumanization, and terrible things written in an urgent, matter of fact, and direct tone by a white person.)
Sometime in the last decade, after leading failed grassroots antiracism efforts for ten years, (somewhere between licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself) I came to the conclusion a big part of my problem was that everything I believed about race and racism were backwards and upside down.
Even with all the work and personal development I’d undertaken, I continuously found myself slipping back into my own default perspective of comfortable “colorblind” whiteness. Despite my efforts, (and an extraordinary antiracist support network) I couldn’t seem to to hold onto my antiracist perspective by myself without the active support of a community of supportive (usually of black and brown) people around me cheering me on.
And let’s face it, that model is 1.) exploitative; 2.) doesn’t scale; and 3.) gets old for black folks pretty damn quick.
What follows is a framework I created for myself to anchor myself in reality and to retrain the way I think (as a white person) about the world. The framework, isn’t perfect, (it’s not even complete) but I’ve found it invaluable for maintaining my bearings to resist a world where the technology of racism and the standards of whiteness tell me that up is down, that good is bad, and that black people dying at twice the rate of white people is natural.
I’ve since come to the conclusion that all or practically all white people have this problem as they embark (or fail to embark) on the journey of antiracism. Since it’s been useful for me, I’m sharing it the hopes that some or all of you will find it useful to persist on your antiracist journey,
Much of what I’m talking about here is old hat to black, non-white and probably other experienced white antiracists. I hope it’s clear that even though this is addressed to new white antiracists that everybody is invited to read, participate, use, share, critique or ignore this as you see fit.
I’ve focused on the version of racism and white supremacy we have in the United States: the American system and expression of racism/white supremacy, particularly as it shapes (and is shaped by) white people.
It is my sincere hope that in the future the framework could be useful to other audiences: expanded to include other forms of global racism, militarism, and applied to other forms of oppression such as sexism, religious intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, colorism, etc.
The system of racism can be understood as a technology
It’s hard for people to think about systems in the abstract, and the system of racism and white supremacy hides itself in plain sight from white people. White people, in my experience (including myself) have a hard time holding the system of racism in our minds. It’s slippery. We distract ourselves from it. We cover it up. We freak out. Everything else intrudes as more important or urgent when we try and bring our attention to it, and when we do catch a glimpse of it, the system of racism seems to large, too complex, too entrenched and too scary to think about.
This is not an accident, it’s part of the design of the system. White people keep (and carry) the system of racism with us in our blindspots, whether we are aware of it or not, and we very lash out and behave badly when we’re forced (or we force ourselves) to look at it. It makes us really tough to be around, frequently, in antiracist circles. (Robin DiAngelo’s 2011 essay “White Fragility” is an important starting point to understand this better if you haven’t read it (or her book) already: http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116)
To counter this, I’ve found it helpful, personally to treat the system of racism and white supremacy as a technology. Technology is a word that means a lot of different things in our culture, but the primary definition of technology in Merriam Webster’s dictionary is “the practical application of knowledge, especially in a particular area[1]”.
So, I don’t mean technology in the sense of computers, or code, or silicon chips, or machines. I mean a technology in the sense of systems of ideas created by white people to advance a “practical application”. Just as the system of agriculture was invented to create surplus food and wealth; the system of racism was invented for a similar purpose: to create surplus leisure and wealth for white people.
Insofar as Racism is framed as a technology, it’s important to acknowledge its NOT based on science, but on myths, lies, and misinformation. I sometimes say the system of racism is a “tricknology" designed to steal the lives, labors, lands and liberty of whomever it designates as non-white. Instead of being based on science its based on superstitions, which unfortunately is an extremely effective way to warp the reality of especially large groups of people.
Everything else in the framework, follows from this premise.
Racism (like all technologies) was invented by people (in this case, white people), intentionally, to control other (non-white) people. Racism claims to be natural, inevitable, and perpetual, because it needs people to believe that in order to persist.
That claim is a lie though, (a lie that is massively supported by propaganda, mythology, cultural narrative, and consensus.).
This is hopefully, where this premise can help you from getting it twisted. You know that technologies are neither natural, inevitable, or perpetual, therefore, neither is racism.
Technologies have a purpose. Technologies are on purpose. Racism and white supremacy are not accidents caused by ignorance, accidents or misunderstandings: they are a system, created by people to do something.
What is the technology of Racism and what was it created to do?
Racism is a ubiquitous, self perpetuating, decentralized system designed to make non-white (especially black) people accept mistreatment; and to brainwash white people into mistreating them or ignoring their mistreatment. (And no, not just those white cops and those “Karens”, but you and me too).
Through the technology of racism, white people are conditioned to be weaponized against people of color, and/or complicit in their mistreatment and oppression. Its a terrible deception, perpetrated on all of us, by all of us, upon ourselves and upon our children.
You, the reader didn’t invent racism any more than you invented facebook, or google or the metric system. But technologies like google, facebook, and the metric system wouldn’t exist for long if people didn’t use them.
Neither would racism.
I don’t mean if people don’t talk about it. This is a common trap for white folks.
For the last few generations white people have had a superstition that if we stopped talking and thinking about racism it would go away and wouldn’t exist. We called this being “colorblind” and “good” white people aspired and pretended to be that way. As it turns out being colorblind is like being a climate change denier. Being colorblind doesn’t dismantle, dissapear, or destroy racism; it obscures racism from the view of your community and emboldens the mistreatement of Black and other non-white people.
This blog is based on the premise, (or hypothesis) that dismantling structural racism, might be similar to sunsetting large, dominent technologies and technological systems. I hope to explore if there's anything we can learn from the experience and history of sunsetting technologies.
Its not meant to be a substitute for advocating for antiracist policies, taking antiracist actions, writing antiracist laws, electing antiracists, or protesting.
Its meant to inspire collaboration and conversation, and get white antiracists empowered to confront the system of systems to resist the tricknology of racism and white supremacy.
Thanks for taking part in the inquiry.