Convincing people racism is over ensures that racism persists

Evidence

Since the 1960s, segregationist theorists, like their predecessors, were all about convincing Americans that racism did not exist, knowing that antiracists would stop resisting racism, and racism would then be assured, only when Americans were convinced that the age of racism was over. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1142

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures Kendi’s key definitional move: the post-racial denial itself is the mechanism of persistence.
• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive inversion that denying racism’s existence is what guarantees its continuation — a tight, self-reinforcing cycle that reorients how one reads any claim that ‘we’re past that now.’
• XREF: connects to: The dismissal of reverse racism can silence what the marginalized are actually saying — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 61; Dog-whistle theory may be outdated because overt racial prejudice is now socially acceptable. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 26; Giving up on cross-racial dialogue is itself complicity in racism (+2 more)