Racism is not a product of "ignorance." https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/amy-cooper-central-park-racist-dog-walker-trump-a9533581.html

This is a troubling blind spot of white liberalism: the idea that smart/educated people can't be racist+ that the solution to racism is individual absolution (*I* am not like that. *I* have never said the n-word in my life. *I* voted for Barack Obama) rather than systemic change.

I think it's tempting for us to believe we can just sort of delete the Confederacy app off our phone and be done. The idea that it's the whole operating system--that no part of our culture, even the good bits, is untouched by it--is too big to think about.

I would encourage any liberals popping in here with some variation of a No True Scotsman argument to maybe take a minute and reconsider.

"Who do you become when you panic?" is a pretty good measure of who you really are. That instinct she had--that she could rely on the cops *even when it was she who broke the rules*--isn't something you get over in 1 afternoon of sensitivity training. That is firmware.

Anyway, this is all to say that, even if you've got a master's degree and you've read Marx in the original German and you always recycle, if you are white, you are probably running some of that firmware. You, me, all of us. It's in the background. It doesn't care how you vote.

(As a PS, I realize none of this is new or noteworthy to people who aren't white--but the 'racism is ignorance/ignorant people are racist' was such a constant drumbeat in my childhood that it almost began to seem like you could defeat racism by maintaining a GPA of 3.6 or higher)