WNBA legend Sheryl Swoopes has come under an avalanche of criticism for saying black people can't be racist. Last month, Swoopes questioned the ability of University of Iowa women's basketball player Caitlin Clark, who is white, to break the Division I scoring record. Her comments, some of which she has returned and apologized, caused a stir on social networks, where some users accused her of racism. Swoopes responded to the accusations in part commenting that black people cannot be racist, provoking even more violent reactions. But Swoopes is right. Black people cannot be racist, at least not according to the most useful definition of racism, given by a group of primarily white legislators in 1968.
This group formed in 1968 after urban black communities throughout the 1960s erupted in racial unrest, primarily over a pattern of police abuse and murder of young black men. In the summer of 1964, an uprising occurred in Harlem over the police shooting death of 15-year-old James Powell. Watts burned down in the summer of 1965 after police beat 21-year-old Marquette Frye. Two years later came the “long, hot summer of 1967,” which saw racial uprisings in more than 150 cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit.
In the early morning hours of July 23, 1967, Detroit police raided an unlicensed nightclub in a largely black area of the city. The people inside were celebrating the return of local black veterans of the Vietnam War. All of the patrons were arrested, and simmering racial tensions in Detroit exploded into a full-scale bloody battle between the police and Detroit's black community. The riots lasted five days and resulted in 43 deaths, 33 of which were black.most of whom were shot to death by police officers, but also by members of the National Guard, store owners, security guards and a US Army paratrooper.
President Lyndon B. Johnson had had enough. While the Detroit uprising was still underway, he appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, to investigate these civil unrest. Johnson tasked the commission with determining “What happened? Why it happened? What can be done to prevent this from happening again and again?“
The 11-member commission, with Illinois Governor Otto Kerner as chairman, had two black members, Edward Brooke, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, and Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP. The group came up with findings that did not please Johnson or many others. Instead of finding that outside agitators or troublemakers instigated these uprisings, the commission placed the blame squarely on white racism. “White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture that has been accumulating in our cities since the end of the World War.” the commission said. But the Kerner Commission did not stop there. He went on to offer a clear and extremely helpful definition of racism. Racism is not simple hatred or prejudice based on skin color. Racism occurred when power was added to prejudice: the power to affect someone's life physically, economically, educationally, politically, or otherwise.
Black or white, anyone can have prejudices. I may not like you because of your skin color, and that makes me prejudiced. But that doesn't automatically make me a racist unless I also have the power to impact your life because of my biases. There are few, if any, areas of American life where black people have such power. So Sheryl Swoopes was right. Black people can't be racist, but that doesn't mean they can't be prejudiced. They can.
This definition of racism opens the door to an intelligent and important conversation about the power gap between blacks and whites. One that makes a distinction between racism and prejudice. Police brutality, violence overwhelmingly between whites and blacks, is an example of physically enacted racism. Redlining, where black people cannot buy homes or receive loans in certain areas, is a form of economic racism. Preventing the teaching of black history is a form of educational racism. Making it harder for black people to vote is a form of political racism. A black woman who disparages the skills and career options of a white basketball player may be prejudiced, but that does not rise to the level of racism defined by the Kerner Commission.
If we don't talk about race in this country, all we will do is fight over it, often with deadly consequences. Today there are too many examples of racism in which violence, collective punishment and genocide are presented as alternatives to dialogue.
And if we're going to talk about race, a common starting point is necessary, and a decent definition of racism is as good as any other. By saying that black people cannot be racist, Sheryl Swoopes opened a path to the basket for a difficult but essential conversation and a path toward restorative rather than retributive justice.
Clyde W. Ford's latest book is “Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Creation of White Power and Wealth.” He is a contributing writer for Opinion.
