It’s been a while since I’ve heard the “I’m not racist because I’m friends with people of color,” but apparently this argument has evolved! Here I thought I hadn’t heard it because people were finally realized how absurd it was to conflate systemic racism with your personal realtionships and how exploitative to make your friends symbols of anti-racist work rather than undertaking it on your own. But apparently the weakness of this argument has not led to its extinction, but rather to its Darwinian development to “I’m not racist because I’ve dated people of color.” In true Darwinian fashion, this new model takes the strengths from its former incarnation— capitalizing on the moral authority of lived experience and reframing the terms of the discussion so it is one where the white person is the expert.
Shifting the terms of the conversation to become about your defensive guilt and discomfort is an ultimate display of privilege. If someone challenges our comments as being racist, I see it as the responsibility of us white people to check our own privilege and examine our statements. It’s not the responsibility of people of color to prove we are racist and this framework relies on a model of racism as deliberate and individual. Racism is institutional and structural and unless we’re actively interrupting this cycle of oppression, we are complicit in this system = we are racist.
Being an anti-racist ally requires proactive, deliberate action to dismantle internalized and institutional belief in the racial superiority of white people. Seeking and validating the critical feedback of people of color is crucial for imagining and creating change. Dating people of color does not bring about institutional change and using one’s personal relationships as an excuse for not examining privilege or taking on actual anti-racist work is a co-out. Using one’s personal relationships to discredit a critique a person of color furthers racist system that continually silences people of color and claims that their recognition of racism/discrimination is “crazy” or “unfounded.”
Dating people of color doesn’t make you an anti-racist. Making that argument is uncritical, exploitative, and it prevents actual conversations about change. Come on white people, let’s try to do something more productive and transformative with our privilege
