Four Problems with the Anti-Racist Notion that All White People are Racist

Many race reductionists believe as an article of faith that all white people are racist because they were raised in a racist society. It’s an old argument, but Medium just reminded me of it by recommending Christyl Rivers’ “Scott Adams Is Racist, But, So Are You And I. We Must Face This.” Rivers says,

Yet, if you are in the Earth’s Atmosphere, a world where racism is in the very air we breathe, there is no way to not be contaminated by our present system.

There are two logical and two factual problems with that belief:

1. Its logic is circular: We are all racist because we live in a racist society because we are all racist because…
2. It assumes we cannot transcend our culture. Is everyone in the US capitalist because we live in a capitalist society? Are we all Christian because we live in a Christian society? Did the American Revolution fail because everyone was “contaminated by their present system” of monarchism? If society defines us, abolition and the civil rights movement could never have happened.
3. It ignores the findings of implicit association testing. Most people show an implicit preference for their own race, but a large minority show a preference for another race, and a small minority show no preference at all. The existence of the second and third groups contradict the notion that all white people are racist. And significantly, even the first group is not evidence for an…