What is Racism?

By: Ace Harvest, CommonBondz contributor

When I consider what racism in America means to me, what comes to mind first are all the things that racism is not. Racism in America is not the result of a broken system—it is not merely the individual actions of bigots burning crosses, nor is it an issue of the past eradicated by the Emancipation Proclamation or March on Washington. Racism in America is not restricted to the most reductive southern communities or characterized solely by slurs and segregation. Racism is not isolated from every other injustice in this country—white supremacy is a tool used in tandem with misogyny and classism to create the divide between “us” and “them:” to exploit, disenfranchise, and oppress minorities for white benefit.

Racism in America is the result of a system functioning exactly as it was designed to function. It is the culmination of centuries of dehumanization, the deafening echos of the genesis of a nation built on the backs of enslaved people. Though many will cite our founding declarations of equality to claim that this country is free, they forget that those declarations were written by men who saw Black people as nothing but property. They forget that the Emancipation Proclamation was nothing but a strategy play to win a war—that the exploitation of Black bodies is so deeply ingrained in this nation that even their liberation functions only to benefit the white man. They forget that the justice system exists to perpetuate slavery—that the mass incarceration of Black and Brown bodies is intentional and insidious. Racism is not a scar, but an open wound, staining every community and institution in this country.