What does it mean to be a racist today? ✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿

Too often when you hear about racism, you often think about some mean spirited person that is ignorant about people of other races. Any free society is going to have clans men and grumpy old men but they’re a minority voice, usually sidelined to the fringes of society.

Much more problematic is institutional racism – not explicit racism – and just generally poor socialization that leads to a lack of understanding of one towards their out groups. Humans like most other animals are wired to fear the unknown and proceed with caution towards unfamiliar faces. Humans group together like characteristics, they’re predisposed to believe that one actor in a group is like all others.

Most racism is unintentional. Most has historical roots in slavery and the institutions that both grew up in that era and those that evolved from it. But also don’t dismiss the fear of the unknown. We need more race mixing, more people meeting, sharing their commonality and overcoming their fears. We need to overcome notions of evil doers and realize that all of us are poorly socialized and have ingrained fears.

Legal reform is one step to confronting racism. Handicapping the police may be required under law to force them to rethink as an institution how they treat blacks compared to others. But beyond that we need to take a serious look at our laws to see if they are fair to all or if they have unintentional bias built in.

I think the stereotype of the white supremist is just that – true racists are few and far between. But I do see institutions who have built in biases towards minorities, especially the police who most frequently focus on them. Increasing police statistics by arresting minorities isn’t just bad practice, it’s injust. We need to rethink our laws, and try to encourage more socialization and mixing in all parts of life.