All white people are racists...or "white fragility" ??

[Ben Davis]

No one is actually saying you're born racist because you're born white. No one is saying it's "your fault" you were born white. Yes, that would be racist, and only a small number of very dense people think that's the issue, usually out of an excess of zeal in trying to defend "their community" (defined by skin/ethnicity) against the "oppressors". The truth is much more nuanced, but no less real, and focusing on our individual attitudes toward people of color, congratulating ourselves when we manage to not hate someone because they have a tan may in fact make us the racists we'd hate to think we were.

This unexamined white privilege may may you a racist if, by your deeds or omissions, you are contributing to a problem by ignoring when people who are being systematically oppressed (and we have not only their anecdotal testimonies to this effect, but good statistical data that shows a great many problems with being nonwhite in America) try to tell us--practically screaming it--that it is happening. As someone above said, you don't have to hold negative opinions of other races, or be screaming Klan slogans, to be racist or at least contributing to the problem of racial inequality in this country.

You should not feel guilty for your skin color. No one should. Anyone who tells you this is about "feeling guilty" is part of the problem. The issue is, for all people of all colors who are of good conscience and want to fix what is clearly an issue in this country (unless we want to go the route of ignoring the people who're being oppressed or pretending they're making it up...for the past 50+ years), that it is incumbent on those in the majority, who enjoy the privileges inherent in that majority social position, to examine that privilege and seek to right what is wrong. It includes things you may not even realize you are saying, or tones you may not realize you are using.

We atheists point out to the Christian majority all the time that they have this majority-privilege, which they refuse to recognize, and by which they feel they can smugly ignore our complaints because if they don't see the problem, it must not really be a problem. Or they call us whiners, or they call us liars, or they say "well I don't mind if multiple religions display their statutes, too", ignoring the problem inherent in majority privilege and actions taken in the shadow of that privilege. Race works the same way.

Oh, yeah, and you should also take people as they come, and treat them as you want to be treated. Thanks for the Pro Tip, AT.

^^^this. Why has this not got 100 kudos?!

Show me a person and I'll show you a racist. We're all wired that way, regardless of skin colour. Some simply manage to overcome those tribalist urges. That's my observation at least.

Alex, we're not 'all a little bit racist'; I, for one, am simply not wired to discriminate and where I discover institutionalised discrimination, I oppose it. I just hate the unfairness of inequality and injustice. You've made a false generalisation here. Surprised you'd think that.