Targets of racial violence can consciously refuse racial thinking itself

Evidence

Ricardo: I don’t like talking about race and stuff like that, I just try not to make it brainwash me, basically I don’t want to fall to their level and be racist back towards them … it’s a powerful thing you know. Because they build it into us from when we was young. But it’s something that I don’t wanna feel. I don’t think everyone is the same. Not all white people are the same. Not all black people. And being racist just creates problems. That’s why I don’t wanna fall to their level, even though sometimes it’s so powerful you can’t control the way you feel. — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 64

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A subtle distinction — refusing race itself, not just racism — as distinct from conventional anti-racism. Ricardo’s resistance to being ‘brainwashed’ by the categories that were used against him is a rich idea worth sitting with.
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 64

Related

• Refusing race can foster solidarity across differently racialised groups (similarity 0.83)
• Racialized people can practice a vernacular anti-race-ism refusing racist categories (similarity 0.81)