[This article deprecates antiracism. As such, it is a literal fact that the article inescapably promotes racism, or something akin to it. All Americans have been conditioned to recoil reflexively from any hint of the promotion of racism, and indeed there are some good reasons why this should have been so; but at present the reflex is tearing the country apart. Whatever your race, I can only ask that you read the whole article, or some significant fraction of it, before jumping to socially mandatory negative conclusions which, I suggest, are neither warranted nor helpful. Race matters. Unless you are absolutely sure that you disbelieve the proposition that race matters—in which case I cannot yet reach you, because such disbelief broadly contradicts the life experiences not only of tens of millions of Americans but very likely of your own—then you might learn something worth learning here. Our country must find a way to shift into a stance from which we can discuss race issues forthrightly. I know of no way to do this, except to start discussing the issues forthrightly. Thus this article. —HJH]
We live in an antiracist age. The age has not turned out as we had hoped. Our generation in the United States and across the broader West has conventionalized an ill conceived, trendy prejudice against sensible racism, a prejudice born in the 1960s with bright hopes and noble aims but which has in the ensuing forty years gradually, by fits and turns, rotted right through to the core. Maybe like you, I was a dutiful antiracist for decades. I am not proud to admit it. I can however report that I have finally given up the bad habit. If you can surmount the admittedly rational fear of being labeled a racist, then you can give up the habit, too.
What is a racist, really? Webster defines the racist as one who believes “that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” Let us give Webster credit: that is about as neutral, objective a definition of the word as one could ask for. Whether the word conveys any useful, practical meaning in the social context of the opening decade of the 21st century is another question, but that is not Webster’s fault. Let us accept Webster’s skillful definition without further dispute.
The trouble does not lie in the word itself. It is an honest word. The trouble lies in that the society in which we live does not presently understand the word to mean anything coherent. Fashion has so extremely overloaded the descriptive word racist with heavy negative connotation that the plain word has grown almost useless as a plain description. In place of the actual racist comes an Aryan villain of mythical proportions, a debonair white demon of incalculable power and incomparable slyness, burning crosses before churches and lynching innocent blacks in the night. Indeed, if ever a mere word could have been possessed by the Devil, the word racist has been—for once so possessed, the word racist emerges as a dazzlingly suave, clever word. Indeed so dazzled by its suave cleverness are we, that we neglect Western civilization’s death pangs for its sake.
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