Boston University professor creates guide to dealing with racism ‘deniers’

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Racial “Myopia”: A Reluctance to Perceive Racism Accurately

A Boston University social work professor has created a “racism denial response guide” to help so-called racially enlightened people challenge their less refined peers.

For Phillipe Copeland, statements such as “I don’t see race”, “You’re just playing the race card” and “They were just a person of their time” are all examples of denial of the racism.

“Racism denial involves obscuring the reality of racism or minimizing its importance,” Copeland writes in The Emancipator. “The denial of racism is a political strategy. Its supporters know that they profit from racism and want to perpetuate it. They try to convince people that racism is no longer a problem or that it is not important enough to need attention.

Copeland says denial of racism “comes in many forms,” such as:

— “Rebuttal”. Holocaust deniers want to see proof that racism is the fundamental factor behind “certain situations” and then go on to dispute any evidence provided.

— “Minimize”. This attempts to portray (racist) incidents as isolated issues or to “suggest that these incidents are exaggerated”.

— “Revise history”. For Copeland, to point out that many/most people in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries saw slavery as a normal facet of society (that the evolution of civilization is a natural phenomenon) is a “review”.

— “Myopia”. Defined as “a reluctance to perceive racism accurately”. If you think racism played little or no role in some results, you are racially myopic.

MORE: Boston University professor: Ownership is racist

Interestingly, one of the ‘response strategies’ under the ‘Minimize’ category is to ‘explain that progress is worth celebrating but should not lead to complacency’. Yet one strategy under “Revise History” reads: “Explain that the historical period people lived in is no excuse for racism and that anti-racists were ‘people of their time.’

In other words, progress is a good thing, but we should expect our centuries-old ancestors to have had the same values ​​and mores that we hold today.

Resist #RacismDenial pic.twitter.com/xSa1vjGoZM

Philippe Copeland (@PTheeEducator) January 11, 2023

Copeland is “Faculty Lead for Education and Training” for the Ibrahim Kendi Center for Anti-Racist Research and founder of the Anti-Racist Learning Lab. According to his faculty page, the professor’s “specialties” include “theories of justice [and] racial justice”, “#BlackLivesMatter” and “abolition of mass incarceration”. His “personal mission” is to “achieve a world without racism”.

In this article from @the_emancipator, Boston University @PTheeEducator breaks down eight forms of racist denial, which “involve obscuring the reality of racism or downplaying its significance”.https://t.co/C0r4eAzR2M pic.twitter .com/r33MHzUnR7

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) January 13, 2023

MORE: Boston University School of Law creates nation’s first chair of critical race theory

h/t at La Nouvelle Garde

IMAGES: Boston University screenshot; Emancipator/Twitter screenshot

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