Racism Blog Post

“Unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt – unless they are actively antiracist – they will find themselves carried along with others.” I thought this was a really interesting point that really rang true to me. Every now and then I admit I can make a racist statement, I think everyone does this, some just don’t want to admit to it. I have a friend like this, he constantly claims that he is not racist even though I have heard him make racist statements in the past, in fact he as claimed to me that he is antiracist. He does nothing to stop racism other than saying that he is antiracist and that racism is wrong. My friend thinking that he is an antiracist is really just a passive racist getting carried along with the rest of us until he makes an active decision to stop being racist and to start running in the other direction.
There is a song from the musical Avenue Q called Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist it about how everyone makes judgments based on race, while they might not be the biggest decisions they are little decisions, like telling black jokes or Polack jokes, or how a non-monster can’t go to a monster school. I find this song to ring very true, I will be the first person to admit that I judge people the moment I see them, I take in what they wear, what they look like, and what skin color they are, this may come from growing up around Detroit and my parents told me that whenever I go downtown don’t look people in the eye, and the majority of the people that I saw on the streets were all of the same race, they looked the same, they all dressed the same, which probably shaped my opinion of what I would think whenever I ran into someone that looked like the people I saw on the streets of Detroit. I think that everyone does this, most people won’t admit that they do, but everyone judges people based on what they look like. Everyone has made some form of a racist statement at sometime in their life, weather it be a judgment at a glance or a joke about a particular group of people.


-Emily Suchyta