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People aren’t racist because they lack education or intelligence. They’re racist because being racist makes them feel good. The solution is not education but to make racism so socially unacceptable and harshly punished that being racist makes your life fucking miserable.
That’s why it’s important to come down hard on these MAGA kids. People are always trying to give whites racists the opportunity to change and nonwhite victims the obligation of forgiving. Fuck that. Let the racists make their own opportunities for growth and redemption.
People are already disagreeing with this but when in college did you take your Don’t Be Racist class? Meeting people of other races (in college or otherwise) certainty helps, but how exactly does becoming educated make you stop being racist? Elite schools are *extremely* racist!
And “intelligence” can just make racists better able to support their beliefs with (cherry-picked or false) evidence and sophisticated arguments. Racism is about feeling, not about facts. Otherwise people wouldn’t be racist, because the facts don’t support racist beliefs.
Relatedly, the notion that racists are all poor, uneducated people is classist propaganda and the opposite of what the evidence says.
I happen to think that this reasoning is true about most of our beliefs, btw (that they’re mostly about how those beliefs make us feel rather than a cold analysis of the available evidence, which is just one factor in determining the former) but that’s beside the point.
Some people have commented that this isn’t a material approach and that I’m painting racism as individual attitudes instead of a social system, which is not at all what I’m doing. Racism works as a social system in part by training individuals to be rewarded for racist attitudes.
To be clear, I’m not saying racism exists in the first place simply because it “feels good” to be racist. This thread is about individuals’ attitudes and actions. Institutional power is the ultimate culprit, of course—but participation in power does feel good. It feels safe.
The sheer number of people who’ve responded to this relatively tame take with some pearl-clutching exclamation of “You want us to shame racists?!” is absolutely staggering. Anyone who says that really doesn’t understand what racism is. Yes, it needs to be shamed, fought, crushed.
Lmao who is this guy 
Just one more thing because I’ve gotten this comment a lot: “That only drives racism into the shadows!” Yes, and that’s good. Making it harder for racists to organize, recruit and hold power is good. This isn’t Prohibition where there’s gonna be a booming black market for Racism.
