Comments on: Moving Past Discomfort and On to Change https://contemporaryracism.org/791/moving-past-discomfort-and-on-to-change/ An academic blog about whiteness, implicit bias, and systemic racism Sun, 12 Aug 2012 01:10:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: nashkrod https://contemporaryracism.org/791/moving-past-discomfort-and-on-to-change/comment-page-1/#comment-261 Fri, 04 May 2012 04:46:24 +0000 http://www.professorwolfe.com/blog/?p=791#comment-261 I think you bring up a great point, Tory. The word “racist” is a loaded one. When we think of a racist, we think of the old fashioned overt racist who we can point out as a bad person. “Racist” has a negative connotation; it is seen as a personal attack on someone’s character. People get defensive. The task at hand is for us to provide a new definition of what it means to be racist, or maybe to expand on the old one. If we can take away the things that make racism seem so clear-cut as those clearly bad individuals and replace them with the idea that racism is an institutionalized phenomenon, maybe people will feel more comfortable talking about it. The problem is though, that there is an institutional investment in making that type of racism hard to see. Having more conversations like the ones we had in our Contemporary Racism class can definitely shed light on the other types of racism that there can be. I think that we have to remove the stigma from the word.

That being said, I wonder what steps we can take to make people comfortable talking about it from one environment to the next. You still had the same knowledge, but for some reason were hesitant. Is it only safe to admit you’re a racist in certain spaces?

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