No, you aren’t a racist…but,

There are many people who voted for Trump who are extremely frustrated that their vote has, in some peoples eyes, made them racists xenophobes who hate women and Muslims. Especially those conservative white evangelicals who may have worked on racial reconciliation in the past. Now they recoil at such a suggestion because they voted for Trump not because they hate black people, women, and immigrants, but because they felt betrayed by the left. They saw their jobs disappearing, their local economies were tanking, and they felt that Trump may offer them something new from Washington.

Fair enough.

I get that. I grew up in a town where the textile mills slowly shrunk until they disappeared altogether. I live in a state that, while new manufacturing is coming back, suffered as factory jobs were outsourced to the cheapest option. So on some level I get it. While such job loss never affected my immediate, nuclear family, I know people who did have to deal with it. I’m related to them.

But I’ve also spent a fair amount of time with people on the margins. I’ve studied what happens when the flames of racial tensions are stoked. I heard what they heard when Trump said to make sure that “certain people” don’t mess up the vote. My theological studies have put me in classrooms sitting next to African Americans whose experience of the world is completely different than mine. I’ve met immigrants who are undocumented, who are here simply because life in their home countries was unsurvivable. My very own wife has taught me what it is like to see the world through a woman’s eyes, noting people who make her uncomfortable that I had never seen.

My white, male eyes simply took for granted that the world was a safe, welcoming place for everyone, but I’ve learned from others that it’s simply not so. There are many people for whom a safe drive to the supermarket is not a given. Every trip out the front door of their house is dangerous. Whether they face deportation, attacks from men who believe they can touch any woman wherever they want, or the distrusting gaze of the store manager every time they enter the store to buy diapers for their child.

More than that, and maybe more important for this new world we now live in, is this: I’ve learned that the problem isn’t racist individuals. It’s racist systems. That is what so many of my fellow white folk fail to see.

Most of us white people see the problem of racism/sexism as a problem of bad people. There are racist/sexist people who do bad things. They target immigrants, African-Americans, women, or other minorities. They don the white robes and hoods and burn crosses and lynch children. They’re bad people and they can and must be stopped.

That’s true, there are extreme, overtly racist people out there. What we fail to see, and what my friends who don’t have my privilege have helped me see, is that racism isn’t just found in people. It’s found in institutions, systems, even religious institutions.

It’s the economic policies that require cheap, foreign labor on domestic soil that brings immigrants to our country but denies them legal status. We need their work, but we don’t want to give them their rights or their deserved benefits. It’s the long-term, systematic marginalization of black people, forcing them into ghettos, where there are no jobs, no healthy food, and no opportunities, and then we wonder why they have higher health issues, more crime, and no money. It’s the stacking of the cards against women who have all the experience and education necessary, just not the genitalia.

And that’s where we differ. Yes, I believe the Trump supporters who tell me they aren’t racist/sexist/xenophobic. I don’t think you are. I know you have friends who are black, and that you talk to immigrants and treat them with respect, and that you love your wife and would lay down your life for your daughters.

But what I hope I can help you see is that racism/sexism/xenophobia goes much deeper than personal choices. If that’s all it were then I can get a vote for Trump. You’re frustrated with the way economic policy has affected your community, and even though Trump has said some questionable things and has the endorsement of some questionable people, it’s those individuals who have the problem. Congress can hold him in check, and the police or whoever can make sure those racist criminals are held to account.

But, if racism/sexism/xenophobia are systemic issues, then a leader who stokes those fears and anxieties is liable to do much more damage. The systems that are supposed to control him are unable to do so because they have been programed over history to do exactly the things he says. And now he seems determined to make sure the system remains that way by appointing people like Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions to his administration.

That’s why we’re at an impasse. That’s why I know you aren’t a racist, and I understand why you voted the way you did. I’ll still oppose any policy or statement or action that causes more fear for my marginalized friends, that stokes more unreasonable hate and rage towards people who are simply trying to feed their families, or that belittles half of the US population simply because they lack a Y chromosome.

I know you aren’t a racist/sexist/xenophobe, but the system this President-Elect wants to prop up and take us back to most definitely is.