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You have probably recently come up against some ideas calling themselves "anti-racism." Nearly everybody has. Not only will you have encountered them, it's likely that they also will have taken the liberty of essentially telling you whether or not you are racist — and, more likely, why you probably are. One thing you will have noticed about these approaches to "anti-racism" is that they explicitly tell us that there is no such thing as being "not racist" or even "less racist." This is patently absurd, but because these ideas have gathered so much widespread support and adoption in recent months and years, we are now offering this essay as a guide to explain to readers how they can, in fact, be not-racist, which we also argue they should want to be and should be expected to be.

As it stands, this guide is very long. This is because we want to be very thorough and provide the clearest understanding of the relevant issues as possible while giving actionable steps you can take to become not-racist, if needed, and to be confident that you are not racist. Because this guide is so long, it will be broken into two parts. First, immediately following this introduction, a short summary of the major points of the longer essay, and then, following that, a considerable elaboration on each of these points that goes into tremendous detail and offers practical advice.


What Is "Anti-Racism"?

This opening section sets the stage for the need for a guide on being not racist, in light of the current specious belief that one must choose between being "anti-racist" (on very particular terms) or accept being "racist" by default. Understanding this context is necessary to understand both why a guide like this is necessary and how the current choice about racism is false, which is necessary to understand in order to reject it and genuinely be not-racist. Thus, here, we provide a brief overview of the two major approaches to "anti-racism" that are prevalent today, that of "critical whiteness educator" Robin DiAngelo and that of critical historian Ibram X. Kendi. In particular, we outline how both of these Theorists, though different in approach, falsely dichotomize the world into "racists" and "anti-racists," each in their own ways. Both deny any possibility of being not racist, which we reject and encourage you to reject as well.

1. Get to Know Yourself

If you want to be not-racist, you have to spend time getting to know yourself first. It's possible that you're racist and realize it, that you're racist and don't realize it, that you're not racist and don't realize it, or that you're not racist and realize it but want to be more confident in this fact about yourself. To be confidently not-racist, you need to know where you stand and check in with yourself against the backdrop of a clear understanding of racism. This means you need to know whether or not you're putting actionable social significance into racial categories that results in prejudice, discrimination, or racial superiority or inferiority. Getting to know yourself in light of this clear understanding of racism is a first necessary step to being confidently not-racist. Take time to ask yourself questions and to consider how you act, speak, and believe where issues of race and racism are relevant.

2. Identify Consistent Principles

Because the starting point of racism is best understood as the placement of illegitimate social significance into racial categories in ways with negative consequences, consistent application of universal principles of fairness and equality where race and racism are concerned is the enemy of racism. It is, however, difficult to be consistently principled without taking time to do some work to identify consistent principles. If you want to be not-racist, you need to identify consistent and universal principles that treat people fairly and honestly regardless of their race or ethnicity. Take time to consider various situations and circumstances relevant to race and racism and see what applying consistent principles in those situations would genuinely look like, then try to imagine yourself applying them that way.

We are of the mind that if you are genuinely consistently principled, you will arrive at two fundamental axioms of philosophically liberal thought, at the least. One is that all members of Homo sapiens are human beings, and thus we all share something fundamentally human in common which serves as a basis for human rights that are universal, rationally and empirically derivable, and "self-evident." Another is that every member of H. sapiens is an individual who should be judged as such in terms of his character and application of talents. That is, to be fully consistently principled, we believe that the philosophically liberal axioms of shared humanity and individualism are sure conclusions that must be elevated. As a consequence, racial prejudice and discrimination makes no sense and should be avoided. People who are not-racist will therefore treat every person as a unique individual who is a member of a human race that is universally shared by us all.

3. Now Be Consistently Principled — and Treat People as Individuals Who Share a Common Humanity

Once you know your consistent principles of universal fairness and equality, it's time to put them into action. In this step to becoming not-racist, you are going to have to combine the efforts of the previous two steps (which identify your "you are here" and your "not-racist is here" points) and start to draw the map that takes you from where you happen to be to where you want to get. This step may take practice, but it is, ultimately, the last necessary step to becoming not-racist if you have genuinely succeeded at the previous two steps. The remaining nine points are recommendations to help you improve your ability to execute these three steps to becoming and being consistently and confidently not-racist.

The most important part of this step is applying your consistent principles to treat all people as unique individuals who share a common humanity. It is immediately obvious that doing so avoids the temptation and mistake of putting actionable social significance into racial categories.

4. Understand "Racism" as a Matter of Belief and Action and Reject It

Until relatively recently, it was generally understood that racism was the result of ignorant, bad, or malicious beliefs or the implementation of institutional policy or laws that disenfranchise and discriminate against some people and not others on the basis of their race or ethnicity. Now, due to the introduction of "systemic racism" from Critical Race Theory, which claims to identify racism that occurs independently of any beliefs, speech, actions, or institutions — i.e., in mysterious ways that produce inequitable outcomes for certain races (but not others, e.g., black but not white, or black but not necessarily Asian, or African-Americans but not necessarily African immigrants) — the situation has become more complicated. It is in the domain of "systemic racism" that the argument that there is no such thing as being "not racist" seems to gain traction, and this must be rejected.

To simplify the "Critical" argument about race that concludes that being not-racist is impossible, everything to do with racism comes down to one simple choice everyone has to make. The system is assumed to be racist because outcomes are not wholly equal, and the choice is "do you accept this, including tacitly and by mistake or do you reject it by actively fighting it?" Those who take up "active anti-racism" on Critical Race Theory terms and do it essentially perfectly are "anti-racists." Everyone else is "racist." Because perfection is impossible, essentially everyone who is "anti-racist" is also "racist" at the same time on these terms. Being "not racist" is not possible because the idea of living a life that does not focus on race is deemed to be siding with "systemic racism."

Being not-racist requires rejecting this construction more or less entirely because the construction itself puts prejudicial and discriminatory social significance into the various racial categories. White people become people who must think and act in certain ways (white allies); black people become people who must think and act in certain ways (don't "act white" or be a "race traitor"); Asian people become people who must think and act in certain ways (don't be a "model minority" and recognize Asian "anti-Blackness"); and ever on across every conceivable racial category (interrogate "brown privilege" and "brown fragility") because of the way that "social forces" and "power dynamics" interact with the accidents of their births. Therefore, being not-racist means understanding and rejecting this line of thought as well as recognizing that people who engage in it are, in fact, the ones acting and believing in racist ways.

5. Defer to the Most Objective Standards

Objective in theory means in faithful correspondence with reality. Objective in practice means "maximally impartial." Objective standards, then, are the ones that remove as much partiality as possible, including partiality located in racial group membership. Obviously, racial group partiality requires putting discriminatory and/or prejudicial social significance into racial categories, so people who wish to be not-racist must resist the temptation to do this. Setting and maintaining the most objective standards possible is the easiest way to ensure racial group impartiality, so people who wish to be not-racist should prefer and defer to the least partial, i.e., most objective, standards possible in as many situations as possible.

What do objective standards look like? Objective standards in knowledge production rely upon tools like science and rationality, which are available to everyone and that take steps to minimize biases through competitive checking of each by each and applications of rigorous methodologies. In fact, they only work as advertised if they work for everyone, impartially to the accidents of their identities. Objective standards in law look like laws and legal systems that are anti-discriminatory in an identity- or race-neutral way (i.e., equality theory and neutral principles of constitutional law), adopt maximally impartial standards like reliance upon evidence and reasonable-person standards, are applied procedurally to minimize human caprice and error, and are deferred to as they are on the books at the time, as adjudicated by judges and juries held to agreed-upon and fair standards of jurisprudence and selection. Objective standards in admission or promotion rely as much as possible on objective assessments like standardized tests and as little as possible on subjective assessments like political or ideological statements. That is, the identifiable fruits of merit and character, measured as objectively as possible, are necessary standards to defer to as much as possible if one wants to be not-racist.

6. Don't Assume Racism Then Go Looking for It

One of the most common mistakes made today around the issue of race and racism is to assume racism is always present. By assuming the existence of "hidden" racism and going looking for ways to identify as it, you're more likely to find it where it isn't than not. This can result in racializing or otherwise putting social significance into racial categories in prejudicial and discriminatory ways when that is unreasonable. Being not-racist therefore starts with an assumption of innocence about racism and carefully examines both outcomes and intentions to determine if racism is the right diagnosis for a phenomenon and only concludes racism is present when a reasonable standard of evidence for the charge can be met (which may depend upon the gravity of the circumstances).

7. Reject Standpoint Epistemology

Standpoint epistemology is a fancy way of saying that the lived experience of "systemic oppression," say by being black in an allegedly anti-black or white supremacist culture, confers a special kind of insight and understanding that renders someone more (or less) credible (e.g., people who belong to "privileged" racial groups are believed to be ignorant, perhaps willfully, as part of the condition of their privilege and are therefore considered less credible). It very obviously places prejudicial and discriminatory social significance into racial categories, then, and so people who want to be not-racist must reject standpoint epistemology and other approaches to perspectivism that operate in similar fashions. Try to see people as individual agents who are capable of rationality, error, good, and evil and treat them as such, not as oracles or imbeciles due to features of their racial groups' alleged relationships to systemic power.

8. Curb Your Compassion

Compassion is a double-edged sword in many regards. On the positive side, it can motivate us to take targeted action to minimize harm, unfairness, and injustice everywhere we find them. On the negative side, it can mislead us into impulsive action that has not been carefully reasoned out and set against objective standards. Emotional reasoning can often lead us into the famous trap outlined by the following failed line of reasoning: we have to do something, and this is something! That is, compassion can lead us to make bad decisions that do not actually help — or perhaps that harm — the situation we are motivated to try to improve. Curbing our compassion is a necessary step to being not-racist because the negative side of compassion very frequently leads us to put inappropriate social significance into racial categories in the hopes of doing something about current inequities or achieving a shortcut to "racial reconciliation."

9. Learn Enough Critical Race Theory to Reject It

Critical Race Theory is a sprawling but specific approach to understanding race and racism that we assess, after much study, is occasionally insightful yet nearly always wrong about the issues that it obsessively interrogates. Indeed, Critical Race Theory very reliably gets nearly every analysis and prescription with regard to racism almost exactly backwards. In that regard, Critical Race Theory can be very useful to study not just for people who want to be "anti-racist" on its broken terms but who also want to be confidently not-racist (a status it categorically rejects). The method is simple: learn enough Critical Race Theory to understand how it would read the relevant racial dynamics and then reject that analysis almost completely. This is one of the most powerful tools we are aware of for being confidently not-racist, and it is therefore highly recommended to people who wish to undertake more advanced not-racist training.

10. Steal the Kernel of "the Work" without "Doing" It

Not everything in Critical Race Theory is garbage. In being hypersensitive to racism, Critical Race Theory can also operate as a hypersensitive racism detector that detects genuine kernels of truth about racism that might otherwise go overlooked. So long as one does not fall into the bad analysis, diagnosis, and prescriptive habits of Critical Race Theory, this can be very useful to those who wish to be not-racist and feel confident in that status. What Critical Race Theorists often call "the work" with explicit demands that you "do" it, people who wish to reject Critical Race Theory to be not-racist can examine to find those useful kernels for themselves.

For example, Critical Race Theory often bemoans a lack of self-reflection, challenging engagement, and authentic relationships where race and racism are potentially relevant. These are all things that are easy to do on responsible, rather than critical, terms. In fact, the first steps in this guide explicitly recommend self-reflection and engagement, including with a wide ideological diversity of race-relevant literature and media (see longer exposition below), and we encourage forming genuinely authentic relationships across racial lines that begin from individualism and universal humanity. That is, we recommend making race and racism minimally relevant to your friendships and other relationships rather than poisoning them by turning them into sites for activist politics. As with the common mistake often made that assumes colorblindness means completely being unaware of race and racism (i.e., "racism blindness"), the same is true with our recommended approach to relationships and engagement.

Critical Race Theory often explicitly demands people listen to people of "minoritized" races and hear their stories on their own terms. We agree and recommend this is done universally without putting social significance into racial categories in terms of whose stories are more credible and important to be heard. Listening more and listening better are valuable exercises, as are other forms of engagement, and we have the best chance of understanding one another and transcending our differences successfully when we apply this universally and equally. The goal of being not-racist can be enhanced dramatically by examining "the work" recommended by Critical Race Theory and doing it more honestly using consistent principles.

11. Be Colorblind, Even in Your Criticism

Being colorblind was one of humanity's better ideas, but it is often misunderstood and so has been put under fire quite unfairly and to our detriment. If you want to be not-racist, then, you should first properly understand what is meant by being colorblind and then adopt it as part of your suite of consistent principles (consonant with steps 2 and 3 above).

Colorblindness is, in fact, not putting prejudicial or discriminatory social significance into racial categories. Colorblindness is not failing to see "color" (race) at all, which is absurd and impossible. Colorblindness does not need imply "racism blindness," which is a form of ignoring racism when it is genuinely occurring because of a refusal to acknowledge that even when we ourselves do not put prejudicial and discriminatory social significance into racial categories, others might be doing so. In practice, colorblindness means not making race matter where it would be prejudicial or discriminatory for it to matter, and as blindness implies "not seeing" color (this way), it should be applied consistently and in a principled fashion. We can be colorblind quite simply by doing no more than acknowledging the minimum amount of social significance in racial categories as possible in every situation and making none of it actionable, particularly in professional, educational, and legal environments.

The hardest test of colorblindness is to ask yourself if you are willing to criticize a person for their mistakes regardless of their race. If you find it easier to criticize some races than others, you are putting actionable social significance into racial categories on some level and need to review your approach to being not-racist and continue to make strides to improve. This will also apply to making racial (not racist) jokes (racist jokes are intentionally disparaging on account of one's race). If you are uncomfortable talking frankly about or to members of some racial categories and not others, including making friendly race-relevant jokes in good humor, then you are likely to be harboring some racism yourself still. Being not-racist requires examining this circumstance in a nuanced and principled way and getting over those hangups.

12. Don't Put Actionable Social Significance into Racial Categories

This last step is, of course, not a step at all but a reminder in very plain language of the one and only thing a person needs to do to be not-racist. Don't put actionable social significance into racial categories for the purposes of prejudice or discrimination, especially when beliefs of racial superiority or inferiority are likely to result for any racial group because of it. That's really it. If you're doing that, stop it. Then you're not racist.

In practice, as previously stated, this will quite reliably look a certain way. It will be consistently principled, see the universal humanity shared by all members of Homo sapiens, and judge each person as a unique individual member of that species according to his character, merit (earned application of talents), and individual personality in a way that is as colorblind as one can be in each situation. It will therefore involve having authentic relationships from person to person regardless of race in every setting without reading racism into it and then looking to find it, and it will value the most objective standards and analyses possible. It will also reject Critical Race Theory's racist doctrines, beliefs, and practices, including approaches to "anti-racism" that are rooted therein. If you are doing all of this, congratulations: you're not racist! If you aren't yet, now you know what to work for.

Close of Summary

We believe that if you understand and follow these guidelines, you can reduce, minimize, or even end your own racism and/or maintain in confidence your status as a person who is not racist. If you are short on time or just came back to this essay for a reminder, you can stop here. If you want a great deal more detail on this important issue to ensure that you can be confidently not-racist, please continue below. The headings above are linked to the various sections of the longer essay for your convenience.

Read the full guide here
Helen Pluckrose is an exile from the humanities with research interests in late medieval/early modern religious writing by and about women. She is editor-in-chief of Areo. Helen took part in the "grievance studies" probe and her book with James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody, looks at the evolution of postmodern thought in scholarship and activism.

James Lindsay is an American-born author, mathematician, and political commentator, Dr. James Lindsay has written six books spanning a range of subjects including religion, the philosophy of science and postmodern theory. He is the founder of New Discourses and currently promoting his new book How to have impossible conversations.