An unfortunate reality in the United States is that there is a great deal of racial segregation across our states, cities, and communities. There are not a lot of spaces that manage to mix the different races, different socioeconomic status individuals, and different cultures that exist within our country. Many white people have almost exclusively white friends and social groups. Many wealthy people only engage with and interact with other similarly wealthy people. We don’t have a lot of voluntary institutions where different races come together willingly or where people of different socioeconomic status mix. I admit that this is the reality of my own life, as much as I wish it were not the case.
One consequence of this segregation is a misunderstanding of the power dynamics and direction of racism in our country. When we do not interact with people who are not like us in any deep or meaningful way, we can fail to understand the power dynamics of racism. We can fail to understand the structural and systemic factors of modern racism. In the end, this means that we misunderstand power dynamics, animosity, and the hatred that can flow between people of different races or social classes. I see this in my own life when people I know argue that black racism against whites is just as bad as any white racism against blacks. Black people who hold racist views against white people are sometimes used to excuse racist white people and in some cases they are used to turn the table and suggest that white people now face more discrimination than black people and other minorities.
What this argument seems to miss, however, is the role of power dynamics and the nature of reactionary racism. In 1993 when spending time trying to understand and write about homeless women for his book Tell Them Who I Am Elliot Liebow noted this phenomenon. In the book he writes, “It is tempting to see white racism and black racism as mirror images of one another, made of the same kind of stuff. But white hatred of blacks appeared to be a purer, self-sustaining emotion that fed on itself. Black hatred of whites appeared to be more reactive, more dependent, feeding not on itself but on white hatred.”
Liebow’s argument is ultimately I think about power. White racism against black people seemed to stem from systemic and structural factors that enabled, and possibly even promoted, the disenfranchisement of black people for the gain of white people. The racism and hatred for white people that blacks held, on the other hand, seemed to be more reactionary. That is not to say that both forms of racism are terrible and can drive people toward atrocities, but it is important to note that Liebow could detect a leading force and a reactionary force. It is important to recognize the idea of reactive racism and the inherent power structures and dynamics it represents so that we don’t fall into the false equivalence argument that racism toward white people is just as bad in this country as white racism toward others.
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