Where Is Systemic Anti-Blackness Lurking In 2024?

During the past few years, discussions about racism and social inequities have swelled, especially in professional settings. The main message: Racism is bad. Lets shut it down somehow. Yet, were not seeing progress. Instead, were seeing the implementation of anti-affirmative action laws, the elimination of diversity and equity inclusion positions, and the censorship of books that critically examine racisms legacy and its insidious nature. Living in this contradictory reality sometimes makes me want to yell, Computer, end program!  

But Im a gamer, so I stay in the game. What keeps me grounded and focused is that countless individuals share the vision of a more just and safe world  a world where we learn from our collective past and use that knowledge to cultivate systems that uplift a world where cultural and systemic anti-Blackness is dismantled. 

Professor Tricia Rose is one of those touchstones who makes me feel hopeful; shes spent much of her career shedding necessary insight on how to confront pervasive issues directly. In her latest book, Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastated Black Lives and How We Break Free, which drops on March 5, she delves fearlessly into the intricate web of institutional anti-Blackness, offering vivid analysis of its impact on all of our lives. By tracing racisms insidious influence across generations and through various societal institutions, we can better understand how we can arm ourselves against it.

Ahead of her book release, I had the honor of chatting with Rose about what she feels are the most potent and pressing issues we, as Black and people of color, face today. Drawing from her extensive research, data analysis, and lived experiences, she provides powerful narratives and strategies for liberation and empowerment. In her work, she invites readers to critically engage with the systems perpetuating inequality, empowering them to become agents for change. 

What called you to write Metaracism at this particular moment in time, and what do you hope readers will take away from it?

I started this larger project on systemic racism about eight years ago when I was teaching a class, and I began to realize that there was a lot of confusion around how racism worked. [The students] thought it was all attitudes and behaviors and individual mistreatments. The idea that affirmative action was reverse racism: even the Black kids, white kids, and other ethnic groups felt that way. 

I realized they didnt understand what was happening. This is not just about individual values, beliefs, and attitudes. This process is built in such a way that you can be a neutral participant and really make a very negative contribution you can be a nonconscious participant. 

So, visuals became important to me. People do not easily see how education and all these details connected to criminal justice and high levels of punishment and policing in and out of schools they are really complicatedly interconnected over time. So, thats when I started doing research about how these connections accumulate. And I realized this was much bigger than what I thought it was. 

What actionable steps or strategies do you suggest for anyone who is empowered to dismantle deeply embedded racism?

The chapter at the end of the book focuses on what it takes to break free, and by that, Im hoping people dont think, Oh, we changed this policy; well be good, or We changed this approach to education, and itll solve it. Many of us are trapped in a paradigm, and that paradigm includes the myth that racism is not systemic. That myth that society generally works fine, minus the couple of unintended consequences or bad apples or whatever. 

But when you change your paradigm and you tell stories that show the power of the interconnections and the way they harm Black people specifically, once you start unpacking that paradigm, a new one emerges. That new one means youre asking different questions, and thats the beginning of individual and collective change. 

One part of that argument really resonated with me specifically where you say, in the book, Our individual experiences are better understood when they are systemically informed.

Im glad I said that! We are individuals. We dont want to say, Im Black, Im Latinx, Im whatever it is, and this is the only experience I can have. Many people have many constellations of disadvantages; they are not all the same. And our own individual will, intelligence, opportunity, luck can change things for us, but when we understand ourselves in the bigger picture of how things are systemically arranged, we should be more proud of how well we do and how much we contribute. We should recognize that we know more about the world we are in and what we are subjected to. It is empowering to me to know that.

How do you navigate the heaviness of discussing systemic racism while also offering hope that things can potentially change?

This is probably one of the most important difficulties that Ive faced. I think if I try to empathize by exploring and exposing this reality that, it may be temporarily despairing. But if its going to continue on, then not knowing about it is actually self-destructive and dangerous. 

Pretending its not going on because you do not want to hear the details  this really diminishes your ability to effectively organize for the kinds of changes that will help the whole world, especially for those who are brown and Black people. For everybody, really. This system is designed to make things more difficult, not for everyone at every moment, but overall. I need to know this if Im going to do well and if Im planning to protect people around me.

I think that we have muscles for dealing with human suffering the muscles it takes to deal with human suffering in terms of landslides and genocides, and the Ukraine war, children starving. The world has a lot of suffering in it. But you have to develop the muscles for responding to that in the right way. And you dont do that by running away. 

How do you, in this book, speak to non-Black readers or those who may be resistant or defensive readers in these difficult conversations?

One of the things I tried to make clear was that Black people are specifically positioned in the ways I described at length, and that doesnt mean that others are not a part of an oppressive system. But [these struggles] are not identical. 

At the heart of my moral and emotional goal, I want Black people, especially young Black people, to know what they are up against. Because they hold themselves responsible and internalize the myth of Black inferiority and failure when all of these institutions are failing them. You are not to blame singularly for this circumstance. 

To the second audience, who have bought into this idea that weve solved these problems, the ones who do not believe in racism believe that somehow society is fine: I want them to realize that if youre truly about equality, then you should be understanding that this [systemic racism] is going on every day.