Ranty-rant about intent, racism, stepping on toes
So, "unintentional racism". That point where you did something or said something and a PoC says it's hurtful or clueless or just gives you a look. And gosh, you certainly weren't trying to be racist, you probably didn't think what you were saying had anything to do with race at all, and why are they suddenly dragging that into the discussion?
(In the above, "you" includes me. Here's an example.)
And most of the time when that happens, what I see is a huge discussion about whether that person meant to be racist, what the real definition of racism should be and whether that person can thereby escape being labelled racist, and often some variation on the tone argument "well, you could at least have told me politely".
The toe-stepping metaphor is often dragged out - when you step on someone's toes, you apologise, you don't start explaining how you didn't mean to step on their toes, in fact toe-stepping was the furthest thing from your mind, and why is this other person being so rude and angry about your repeated stepping on their toes and telling you to get the f*%# off the dance floor, without understanding the special snowflake reasons why you're naturally clumsy and hey! aren't they being ablist to assume you can learn to dance without stepping on toes. In fact, they need to apologise to you for not figuring out exactly how hard this is for you and telling you in the most diplomatic way about your toe-stepping.
(I have seen this recently. I'm not going to link because that person is not asking for heaps of people come tell them how utterly self-centred they're being. Also they might not agree with my paraphrase. And it may not have been about race in that instance, but I've seen the general attitude (and done it myself no doubt) about race often enough.)
So, the problem with all this "but I didn't mean it", the centrality of intent and ability (on the part of the person doing it) in white discussions of racism, is that it's utterly, permanently centred on whitey.
Let me try a more dramatic metaphor temporarily and see whether that will help anyone who doesn't get it yet.
You're driving your car and are in an accident, and you're relatively okay albeit shaken, but the pedestrian/cyclist is seriously injured, rushed off to hospital and there is some question whether they will survive.
Intent and ability are the issues that will be addressed if that person dies, and you will be charged with either murder or manslaughter. There's legal language like "diminished responsibility" and "impaired capacity". But it's all about court, which is all about the person causing the injury and determining their guilt or otherwise in causing that injury.
And when you're talking about an accident where someone is rushed off to hospital, isn't it weird to be suddenly considering what might happen in a court to the other person some months from now? Shouldn't your centre of interest be the injured person, with the ambulance staff, the journey to hospital, the medical staff trying to assess the injuries, the pain and suffering, the time the injuries will take to heal, the effect on that person's friends and family?
And do you really think any of the medical staff trying to assess the injuries give a flying f*%# whether the driver was sleep-impaired, or distracted by a mobile phone or screaming kids? If the person dies, does anyone in that hospital at that point, whether staff or family and friends, care whether the death will later be ruled murder or manslaughter? They're not differently dead. If they survive, there's no variation in surgical procedures or infection control or healing time or rehabilitation therapy or anything important or relevant about the intent of the person who caused the injury.
And how is it ever, at any point and in any way, the responsibility of the person you injured to determine whether you meant to hurt them or not, and give you polite feedback about your driving ability or lack of same? Why should they be the ones to make a determination whether your actions were due to your recklessness, or the culture you learnt to drive in, or your particular mental state at the time, or a complicated combination of factors? Why should they care, honestly?
[The car is white privilege. It makes you bigger and faster, in the sense that you can cause so much more damage to someone who isn't driving a car. And the car is useful and taken for granted and it's a huge mental step to realise that it's actually a very big responsibility to drive one, and you do need to be more careful than a non-driver, because even if an accident is entirely "their fault", they'll still suffer more injury than you. And you can't really step out of the car - it's in the culture, the way you are treated, what others see and imagine when they look at you. You can only try to drive more carefully and learn more about the vehicle.]
So when someone tells you, or hints to you, that you're being racist - is your concern following your own story through the legal system, or their story through hospital? I'm afraid I see far too many whites (and I can be one myself at times) who completely forget that there's anyone but themself involved, and that that other person may be suffering, and that their suffering is not significantly affected by whether I consciously intended to cause the suffering. And surely, that failure, that thought "but I wasn't even thinking of race, what on earth could be hurtful about what I said?" (if it doesn't lead to genuine learning about just what was hurtful), is precisely the kind of lack of empathy to genuinely different points of view and life experience, that I would have to call racism.
When you are so busy feeling hurt about being told that you're a lousy dancer because you keep stepping on toes, you're demonstrating a self-centred-ness, where you can't even imagine how the person whose toes you stepped on feels, and you assume that most everyone around you will understand and empathise with your hurt feelings more than their hurt toes, and (sadly) you're right, because your point of view is embedded in the culture and theirs isn't: that's racism.
I don't see how it could be anything else, really.
There's a bunch of complicated intersectional stuff but this is long enough as it is.
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