Type the term “race baiter” or “race baiting” into a Twitter or Facebook search. You’ll find hundreds of these:
In every discussion in which race is the subject (and sometimes even when it was never intended to be), the term “race baiter” will be thrown at anyone who doesn’t agree that racism is over and we live in a post-racial society. The shooting deaths of nine people of color in South Carolina was a hate crime? Race baiter! Believe racism is still an issue that we need to discuss? Race baiting! You’re an activist that focuses on civil rights? Race baiter, race baiter, race baiter!
According to Merriam-Webster, the term “race baiting” is defined as:
?“[T]he unfair use of statements about race to try to influence the actions or attitudes of a particular group of people.”
The term assumes, then, that in the subject being discussed, race was not an issue and racism is being called out when it did not exist, except that isn’t what most of the uses of that term really are in the above discussions from the Internet. We need to stop misusing the term… or just stop using it at all.
Recognizing that racism exists and wanting it to end is not race baiting. It’s being aware of what’s happening in the world. Shutting down any discussion of what racism is, how it affects people of color,?and solutions for ending systemic racism?in our country?keeps us in a perpetual state of denial and inequality.
For instance, when I say that studies have shown that drug use is actually more prevalent among white folks and yet, although people of color make up only 13 percent of the population, they make up?more than half the people imprisoned for drug felonies, that’s not race baiting. It’s a fact, and clearly race is a factor.
When our president discusses the shootings in Charleston and says that we are not “cured of racism,” he isn’t being a race baiter. It’s fairly clear that race is a factor when a shooter believes that he must kill because people of color are “taking over our country.”
There are two crystal clear ways to determine when someone is definitely not race baiting. Was race a factor in the incident or issue they’re discussing? That isn’t race baiting.
Are they talking about solutions to end racism? That, especially, isn’t race baiting. As one writer so eloquently wrote:
“I’m not sure what kind of Racist is interested in Ending Racism.
“It’s as silly of a premise as calling people race baiters for pointing racism out? as if that’s a bad thing to do.
“Oh what would happen if we all took that approach; and pointed it out whenever it ?really? pops up; not during the imaginary times when it’s convenient for those that do not want to do anything about it?”
