Is that Racist?

Racism isn't just about hate—it's about how we think. In this episode of American Socrates, we go beyond slogans and explore the deeper structure of racist beliefs. Drawing on philosopher Anthony Appiah’s work, we unpack the powerful distinction between extrinsic racism (racism based on false beliefs about group traits) and intrinsic racism (racism that values race in itself, regardless of evidence).

We explore how these two forms of racism show up in everyday life—from hiring decisions and political rhetoric to cultural assumptions—and how they help us better understand not just bigotry, but the moral logic behind it. You’ll also learn why calling something “racist” often leads to confusion and defensiveness—and how clearer thinking can help us move the conversation forward.

This episode is essential for anyone who wants to confront racism, not just emotionally, but intellectually.

Transcript

If there's one word in American English that can shut down a conversation instantly, that word is racist. Everything is racist now. How can I be racist? I treat everybody the same. I never owned any slaves. Why should I feel guilty? I guess I'm the wrong color to get hired these days. Maybe you said something like that yourself. Accuse someone of racism and suddenly they're on the defensive, or they stop listening entirely. And that's a problem, because if we can't even agree on what the word means, how are we supposed to talk about it, honestly? Being a racist is like having bad breath. If someone says, your breath stinks, you say, Okay, and then you go and you fix it, it should be the same here. So today, I want to slow down. No shouting, no guilt tripping, no sugar coating this either. Just a serious, working-class white person's look at the word racism. Where it comes from what it really means, and why it still matters. To do that, I want to bring up an expert, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher who wants you to think a little more clearly about race. Most racism, even the kind you've been accused of, doesn't come from hatred. It comes from bad ideas, from beliefs we've never really stopped to question. And if that's true, then the cure for racism might just be better thinking. If we're going to talk about racism, we've got to talk about race. And that means facing a hard but honest truth, that race isn't exactly real. Last week, I talked about what it meant to be a social construct. And race, like a lot of other identities that we categorize people into, is one of those. Race isn't real in the way a lot of people tend to think of it as. Now, hold on. I don't mean that race isn't talked about or that it doesn't shape people's lives or that the consequences of being a black person or Asian person or Jewish person don't really matter. Of course they do. What I mean is that race is not a biological fact of nature, as a way to divide people into, say, a subspecies, the way we divide dogs into different breeds, that just doesn't hold up under critical scrutiny. This idea that black people and white people and Asian people and so on are fundamentally different kinds of human beings is what Apaya calls racialism. It's the belief that the human race can actually be broken up into different groups, and that those groups each have some kind of shared traits, including things like maybe intelligence or temperament or moral character. It's not just unimportant characteristics, because if it was, no one would really care what anybody's race was. When we say someone is black or white or Asian, we believe that we're giving revealing information about that person, that you can come to know something about them by knowing that they're black or knowing that they're white or knowing that they're Asian. Basically, racialism says those people are just like that. It's somehow in their blood. That's the way they are. It's part of their race. That's where most racism has to begin. Because if you don't believe that races exist or you don't believe that being a member of a race says anything important about a person, then it's really hard to say that being a member of a race makes you better or worse than somebody who's not a member of that race. It's hard to be racist. It would be like saying that some people are better than others because some people are wizards, but also at the same time believing that magic isn't real and nobody can be a wizard. Racialism isn't true. And modern science backs that up. There is no gene that belongs to one race, but not to others. In fact, there's often more genetic variation within a so-called racial group than between different racial groups. So East Africans and West Africans tend to be less genetically related than East Africans are to Europeans. Race is not genetic or biological at all. I can hear some of you out there saying, That's just not true. There's at least a difference in skin color, but it's not skin color that denotes a race, is it? If I go and I get the deepest, darkest brown tan during summer, I do not, for that reason, become a black man, nor if a black man loses all of of the melanin in his skin, like Michael Jackson, does he become a white man? Apaya put it like this. Racialism is a theory pretending to be science, but the evidence just isn't there. It's kind of like saying everyone from Boston is tough and aggressive because that's just how Bostonians are. You might meet some folks from Boston who definitely fit that stereotype. But if you actually lived there, you'd find that there's also people who are quiet, soft-spoken, generous, thoughtful, creepy, shy, annoying, harmless, really every and all kinds of people. That stereotype isn't a law of nature. It's just a shortcut that people tend to use to avoid thinking deeper. And that's how racialism works. So racialism is the same kind of shortcut here. It's just with way bigger consequences than, you know, the Bostonian one. Even if you've never heard the word racialism, the idea still gets passed around every day. Black kids don't score as well on standardized tests. Asian kids are all good at math. White people are naturally more peaceful. Jews are better with money. Whether it sounds flattering or insulting, these are all racist claims, and all of them are, in fact, false. So why does this matter? Because every form of racism, no matter how it shows up, starts with the assumption that race is real in this sort of biological and essential way. You just can't believe that one race is better than another unless you believe that race is some kind of real and inheritable quality or category in the first place. And if that foundation is made up, then all the rankings and all the stereotypes that we ultimately put on top of it, they're going to fall apart too. So before we even talk about racism, we've got to get that clearly up. Race is not a biological fact. It's a socially constructed idea, and if we don't get that straight, we're just never going to be able to make sense of any of the rest. If race isn't biologically real, how does racism keep showing up everywhere? That's where Apaya makes a really useful distinction for us. He says there are two different kinds of racism, and understanding the difference helps us figure out what we're actually dealing with here. The first kind is what he calls extrinsic racism. This one is probably what most people picture when they think of racism. It goes something like that, because those people are part of a race. They're more likely to be certain of whatever trait you believe here. It's basically a bad assumption that racial differences somehow explain moral qualities, like intelligence, work ethic, or maybe trustworthiness. Someone who is extrinsically racist might believe that black people aren't as smart as white people, and since it's better to be smart, it's better to be a white person. Or Jewish people are greedy. And since greed is a sin, Jewish people are more sinful; those are extrinsic racist beliefs because they try to tie a person's character to their race through some aspect. It's saying that this group behaves a certain way, and so you should treat all of them accordingly. If all of these people are foolish, you should treat them all foolishly. You should use simple words when you speak to them. You should talk down to them because they're not going to be able to understand things because they're whatever race. But Apaya points out, extrinsic racism is actually really easy to disprove. It falls apart the moment you run into a single counterexample. You meet one black man who is simply brilliant and just understands his subjects deeply. And suddenly the idea they're all dumb just doesn't hold up anymore. Extrinsic racism is basically just lazy thinking. It relies on patterns that don't actually exist, except in, you know, propaganda and sensationalized media. But such patterns are fragile. Just a few real world experiences blow holes in them. Nothing kills prejudice in a person like an actual experience with people who don't live up to the hype. The point here is that race is first being tied to some kind of external trait, and those traits have a moral character to them. Like being intelligent is good,, not being intelligent is bad. But then there's a pious second kind of racism, and that's intrinsic racism. And this one's a little trickier to understand. Intrinsic racism, it doesn't matter how smart or kind or hardworking you are. If you're not a member of my race, you're just less valuable as a human, period. It's not based on evidence. It's not based on behavior. It's not based on reason at all, really. This is about loyalty and identity. You could be the nicest, smartest person in the world, but if you're not the right race, intrinsic racism still sees you as less than. And vice versa, you could just be a total piece of crap, but if you are the right race, you're still valued and protected by your society. It's like saying, I protect my own and the rest just don't count. This kind of racism we see a lot in like white supremacist circles. It's not just the hoods and robes and torches kind, but everyday ideas too, like we need to protect our culture. America was built by us, for us, you know, America first. That's not about behavior. It's not about facts. There's no consideration of any sort of external trait here. That's about identity, being used as itself a moral value. Something is good or bad in and of itself. It's good to be white, it's bad to be anything that's not white, and that's it. The tricky part of dealing with someone who has adopted intrinsic racism is that it's almost impossible to argue with them because they're involved in circular reasoning. It doesn't rely on facts. It starts with the conclusion, my race is better, and then it works backwards. Apaya calls this a moral error. He says, even if racialism were true, even if races were biologically real, that still wouldn't justify treating some people as lesser just because they're different. And if racialism isn't true, which it isn't, then intrinsic racism isn't just immoral. It's completely irrational. It's like making up groups based on the width of their pinky nails, and then declaring your group to be superior to all others. When 10 seconds ago, those groups didn't even exist. Extrinsic racism is false based on the evidence. Like, it could be possible. It's rational to believe that a certain group of people might all share certain traits. But when we look at it inductively, we find that that's just not the case. There's no real scientific evidence for this. It's false by evidence. What philosophers would call inductively false. The theory could be true, but when we check, it just doesn't hold up. Intrinsic racism, on the other hand, is false through reason. It's logically false. It's deductively false. The theory itself is self-contradictory, and it breaks down as a moral argument because it's morally invalid. A's point here is clear. Racism, in either form, isn't just ugly, it's wrong, it's morally wrong, not socially, not just politically, but logically, like ethically. So let's ask this question. If racialism is false, if extrinsic racism collapses under evidence, if intrinsic racism fails morally, why do these beliefs still hang around? Why do so many people, good people even, still hold on to their racist beliefs? Well, Apaya has an answer for that, too. He says, we need to understand the difference here between theory and ideology. A theory is a way to explain something. It's supposed to be tested. It's challengeable by new evidence. If it doesn't work, then you have to update it or throw it out and replace it. But an ideology is something else. It's a set of beliefs that explain who's in the right. And once that is in place in your mind, it doesn't want to be questioned. It doesn't want to be challenged. Because the point of an ideology is not to discover the truth. It's to protect power. So when people treat racism like a theory, like something based on facts, you can sometimes argue them out of it. But once it has moved into the realm of ideology, once it has become tied to people's people pride, to their identity, their resentment, to their sense of place in the world, that is, once you tie these beliefs to your ego, it becomes almost impossible to break away from them, because now it's not just whether something is true or false. It's about whether someone feels attacked, whether they feel right or they feel wrong. As long as they want to feel right about something, these ideas will be right. There are people out there right now making a lot of money, selling racial ideology. They are out there on podcasts, they're on YouTube. They're on cable news shows. But you just don't call it racism. They call it realism. They're being realistic. Or sometimes they call it even racial realism or telling the hard truths. But it's the same game. You make people feel like they're under attack. You tell them that they're the real victims here, and then give them a story where they're still the good guys, even when they're the ones doing the oppressing of others for their own gain. That's how racist ideas survive, not by facts, but on feeling, by offering comfort, by giving people a reason to stop thinking critically. And let me tell you, that's not just dangerous. It's insulting to people. Because if someone tells you to believe something that's been proven false and says you should believe it because it makes you feel strong or special or superior, they're not treating you like a grown-ass adult. And I don't care what your background is. be it white, black, or anything else. If you're working class like me, you've been lied to a lot your whole life in exactly this way. You've been lied to about what success means. You've been lied to about who the enemy is, who's keeping you down. You've been lied to about who really runs the world. If racism survives by turning it into ideology, then the way to fight it is by thinking for yourself. That's what this show is really about. It's a message I've said over and over and over again and will continue to repeat in future episodes. Think critically is your best salvation if you want to be a good human being. So far, we've been talking about racism as a set of beliefs, bad ideas about race and people's worth. But if you've been around these conversations before, even a little bit, you've probably heard another term thrown around. And that is systemic racism. Now, for a lot of working people, especially white folks, that phrase can feel like a slap in the face. It sounds like someone saying, Hey, you're the problem just because you're white.. It doesn't matter what you do individually or what you believe individually. Being white is the problem, which is why defenders of racism often characterize it as reverse racism. But it's not. I get what they're saying. I get where that feeling comes from, but that's not what's being said here. That's not how systemic racism actually works. Nobody, of course, wants to be blamed for stuff they did not themselves do. If you didn't own slaves, you don't want to be blamed for slavery. Fine, I get that. The complaint often goes something like this. So some white guys once a long time ago, did some bad things to black people, but that wasn't me. I didn't benefit from that. My family didn't benefit from that. So it's not my fault, whatever it is. I'm struggling too, guys. damn it. When you're struggling yourself, working long hours, you know, you're drowning in debt and someone comes along and tells you that you're privileged, man, it feels like a bad joke. But let's slow this down for a second, and instead of just reacting to that, we're going to ask a tough question. What exactly is systemic racism and how does it work? It's not about whether you personally are a bigot. It's not even about whether you've ever said something offensive or done something offensive. It's about the structure that you were born into, a structure that gives something people invisible advantages and other people invisible roadblocks. Even that way of putting it actually kind of sounds like bullshit, but it's not. But that's because it's not really the advantages that you get. It's more like there are just obstacles that you don't get. They don't exist for you because you're white. For example, can you imagine someone saying to you that you can't cut it in college because you're a white person? No, I can't imagine someone ever saying that to you. They might say that you can't cut it in college because you're poor, because you're from the sticks, but not because you're white. Whiteness is not a category that rules college out for you. Or how about a white guy can't have a job as a pharmacist because we all know white people are drug addicts and they probably only want to try and get into the pharmacies so they can steal drugs. Like, that's just not a problem that you're going to face. No one's ever going to deny you a job as a pharmacist because you're white. The point here is that no one believes that people are incapable of certain things because they're white. So being white is not the problem you have if you're struggling to make money. It might be class, it might be education, it might be a thousand other things, but it's not whiteness. Maybe you've heard of this thing called a privilege walk. Here's how it works. You line up a bunch of students. They're all about the same age. They're about the same, you know, class level going to the same university. And they're side by side on the, say, 50th yard line of a football field. And then someone reads off certain statements and the statements will instruct you, depending on whether you are this thing or not, to either take a step forward or take a step back. I'm going to read some examples right now. If your parents were professionals, take a step forward. If you ever skipped a meal because of money, take a step back. If you were ever told, you should go to college, take a step forward. If you grew up around heavy drugs or crime, take a step back. If there were more than 50 books in your house growing up, take a step forward. As we read more and more of these questions, people begin to spread out. The most privileged in society begin to move to the front, and the least privileged start to move backwards. Slowly, without anybody being mean or racist here, this line starts to separate kids. Most of the time, you're going to find that black and brown kids start moving towards the back, while white and upper-class kids, mostly males, start to move towards the front. And this isn't because of anyone's cheating. It's not because anyone gets a handout, but because the system, or the way we fund schools, the way we develop our housing policies, the way we allow access to doctors, the way we can pay for medical insurance, the kinds of jobs that certain people can get, clean air, safe streets, all of that is already tilted, and that gets reflected in these questions. Defenders of racism will say, oh,, okay, but maybe that's just because they're asking loaded questions. If you ask different questions, you, of course, get different results. Like, what if we ask, what about diversity hires? Or who here has gotten a scholarship for people of color? Or I've lost job opportunities because I'm white? Maybe I should take a step back. But there's a crucial, if subtle difference in those questions, if you're really paying attention to them. All of the questions that level things out are questions about things like DEI or affirmative action. They directly address initiatives in order to stop racism from happening. That was not true of the earlier questions. Like, how many books did your parents have in the house growing up. All of the other questions didn't really mention race at all. So this kind of argument is not only not a sign of reverse racism, it actually proves that things like DEI and affirmative action are working. They're working to reduce racism.. And of course, if you're racist, that's why you're going to hate them. Okay, let me turn away from race for a second, just so I can give an example that might strike my more racially privileged listeners in a way that affects them the way race affects non-white people. Elite schools like Harvard are really hard to get into. Harvard has a 4.5% acceptance rate. The fact that you got admitted to a school is often taken as a sign that you're smarter than 95% of the other applicants. Right? Actually, probably not. And I think most of us know that. What it generally means to get accepted into Harvard is that you're more privileged than 95% of the other applicants. It's because your parents paid for top private schools. It helped you get SAT tutors. I had books read to you as a child by your stay-in, look, live at home nanny, who was able to devote time to you 24-7. Maybe you weren't able to write that kind of essay for the entrance exam that the other kids were able to write because you didn't have time in your summer to go help the indigenous poor of rural South America build homes. You had to have a summer job. All of this, then, is shaped by class, which is shaped by historical patterns, and it will keep you from getting certain opportunities. You won't be able to get the kind of jobs that the kids who go to Harvard do, and they're only getting into Harvard because of their privileges, not because they're essentially smarter than you. That's the way racism works, just like classes I'm here. The kids at Harvard are not smarter than anyone. They just get certain advantages. They're able to spend more time studying. They're able to spend more time learning. They don't have to go to work at 16. Likewise, the kids who don't get into college aren't stupid. They just don't have those advantages. So when someone gets a leg up because of a diversity policy, it's not about replacing white people. It's about recognizing that the starting line wasn't actually even. We didn't start at the same place. Some people started 1,500 feet ahead in this foot race. Now, I know that some of you were probably thinking, but what if I never had those advantages? What if I'm white and I grew up broke in a bad neighborhood, working two jobs to survive? Well, you're not wrong. You've been screwed over two. It's just that that system wasn't the system of racism. That's the system of classism. And in that capacity, classism and racism work together to keep a lot of people down. Systemic racism and economic injustice, then, aren't enemies. They're partners, helping black men and women succeed, that doesn't have to come at the cost of any white people. But of course, that is how capitalist competition tries to work. It tries to put people into these competitive categories so that if you do help anybody else out, it hurts you so that nobody helps each other so that the people in power stay in power. And the people who want to blame you each other then fighting over who's going to get a scholarship or the kind of job that pays a living wage, why they laugh all the way to the bank. We've taken apart the word racism, not to make you feel guilty and not to score political points, but to think clearly about the issue. And what we found was this. Race, as biology, isn't real. Racism, as a belief, comes in two kinds, both of which are false. Systemic racism doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means the plane's fields aren't level. You can't build any real dignity on top of a lie. You can't build your unity by pretending other people don't matter. You can't build pride by clinging to some unearned belief. Maybe you're thinking, okay, but what the hell am I supposed to do about all this? Well, Apaya actually has something kind of surprising here. He doesn't think that most racists, even the ones saying some really wild stuff, are evil. He says that they're just working off of bad ideas. They're not full of hate. They're not really full of cruelty. They're just riddled with bad logic. And if that's true, then there's really good news for us, that racism can be reasoned with, and it can be cured through discussion, through intervention, that the suffering that they are doing isn't at the cost of, because other people are getting to lay up in this world. Racism is not some disease buried deep in our souls. It's a belief system. And like any belief system, it can be challenged, it can be questioned, it can be changed. But you have to do the challenging. You have to want to not be this bad person. You have to want to not be racist. It isn't easy, especially when those ideas are wrapped up in your identity and your pride and your pain in your nation. There's people out there making vast amounts of money, selling you these ideas, selling you hate. America has long been racist. and healing it will require both individual and systemic efforts. The pious point is this. If you're capable of reasoning, you can face hard truths and test your beliefs and come out better for it, then you don't have to stay stuck in someone else's story. Someone else's social construct. A lot of racism isn't about superiority. It's just about fear. It's about loss. It's about confusion. If you felt more secure, more cared for, the worry that other people might be getting help wouldn't sound like a bad thing, you'd be perfectly okay with it. It's the fact that you're not getting this help and someone is offering it to someone else because of their race. It's really troubling. Racism says, I don't recognize the world anymore. I feel like I'm being pushed to the back of the line. I'm scared my kids won't have a shot. Or I fear that people will do to me what white America has been doing to black people since the beginning. That's real. But blaming immigrants or DEI hires or black kids getting scholarships, that's a distraction. The real enemy is the system that holds all of us as if we were disposable. They gave working-class white people just enough status to keep them fighting their neighbors instead of their bosses. So what do we do? Well, we start thinking better. We let go of the myth that racism is natural or justified. We stop defending ideas that we're built to divide us. And we remember, you don't have to put someone else down to lift yourself up. That's not strength. That's fear. The most dangerous part of racism is that it offers a kind of false belonging, a sense of identity, of us versus them, a tribe, of meaning. Racism tells you, you're part of a family here, just because of how you were born. And for a lot of folks, especially when the world feels unstable, that message feels very welcoming. The thing is that that kind of belonging comes at a truly terrible price. Once you divide the world up into us and them, the next question always becomes, Guess who's next. Oppression and exploitation don't stop at race. They continue on. They move on to sex, to orientation, to class, to educational status. What do you think happens when your politics don't match the powers that be? When you step out of line, even slightly, ask any working-class person who's ever been looked down on by someone richer than them with the same skin color, racism isn't going to protect you. Solidarity starts with being honest. It starts with admitting what we were taught and what we believed and what we might still be carrying was ultimately wrong. This is not being politically correct. It's working together to solve common problems of oppression and exploitation. It's not about blame. We're all the bad people. This is about wanting to be better people. If this conversation made you feel uncomfortable, well, then good. If it made you angry, well, that's okay, too. You should sit with that. It's probably not because black people are getting help. It's probably because you feel like you're not. Maybe you can't even ask for help or feel that you don't deserve it or sincerely believe that you can, all by yourself, make yourself economically stable in this world. This show isn't about telling you what to think. It's about giving you the tools to think for yourself, especially about the hardest things. You deserve more than memes and slogans here. You deserve truth, and truth is always what sets us free. Thanks for tuning in to American Socrates. Your today's episode of philosophy got you thinking in new ways, make sure to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. New full episodes drop every Wednesday. If you enjoyed the show, leave a review. It helps others find us, and it means a lot. And if you know someone who could use a little more practical wisdom in their life, share this episode with them. Want more? Vis Americanrates.buzsprout.com for show notes, resources, and exclusive content. You can also follow me on Facebook, Blue Sky, or TikTok to keep the conversation going. Until next time, keep questioning everything.