Some racism is obvious, and some people know they are racists in their hearts. Some know they commit racist acts. A couple of encounters I had with racists years ago were with people in this category. They are like drivers who purposely speed. They know the speed limit but have decided they will not be governed by it. When caught speeding, they are typically defiant and unremorseful, sorry for getting caught but not for speeding.

But I believe some people who are racists don’t realize they hold racist beliefs. They rarely commit racist acts. When they do it is most likely to be spoken racism, not some physical act. They are like drivers who generally follow the speed limit generally but are often careless and drive had a speed that is comfortable even though they exceed the speed limit. When caught speeding they are remorseful, but may not believe they were really speeding.

I call people who don’t realize they are racists “latent racists”, and their brand of racism is “latent racism”. This is my own definition. I’m sure there’s a more formal, official term for this, but I don’t know what it is.

I like the term latent racism. I developed it from a term used in the HVAC industry that I encountered many years ago when I did structural design of buildings. The HVAC guys were talking about “latent heat”. I asked what it was, and they said it was the heat that bodies give off just as a matter of living. It had nothing to do with the sun. For designing heating systems, they could take advantage of latent heat; but for designing air conditioning they had to overcome latent heat in addition to the sun’s rays.

Latent racists don’t realize they are racists. Somewhere in the past, perhaps from parents, other relatives, or acquaintances, they saw racism modeled. They never made a conscious decision to look down on someone not of their color, but their subconscious absorption of racist examples cause them to feel that way about people of a different color. They won’t commit a racist act, other than racist statements might pop out of their mouths from time to time.

That time in North Carolina that I wrote about in a prior post was active racism, by young white men who said if whites would just band together “we can keep the blacks in their place.” Despicable. These are the type of people who carry torches in homage to Confederate statues.

But I can think of other times when I’ve encountered racism by people who don’t realize they are being racist. I want to be careful how I word this so as not to identify anyone. An older man in the church once said, in my presence, that he was organizing the neighborhood to “keep the Hispanics out” by making sure no one selling their home dropped the price to a threshold at which Hispanics would buy. This is actually a good man and, I’m sure, doesn’t see himself as racist. Keeping the racial homogeneity of the neighborhood was not, to his way of thinking, racist. He was a latent racist committing a latent racist statement in front of me. Whether he actually did what he said—organize the neighborhood—I don’t know. It wasn’t long after that I lost contact with him.

That may not be the best example of latent racism. Let me give another example, being equally vague about the circumstances and the person. This person said to me, during the 2016 presidential campaign, “Do you think Hillary will have her black people with her [at that event]?” I was shocked, for this was a godly person. I realized this person had grown up in an area where there were no people of color, had never (or almost never) lived around or even been around people of color. Obviously, with a statement like that there was racism in the person’s heart, but I don’t think the person even realized it.

Or, another example, being equally vague, of someone connected with a school district, began spouting off how the blacks won’t learn, the Hispanics won’t learn, you can’t teach them, they won’t behave, etc. etc. I got angry that time and said something and got the person to stop. This person, if you asked him/her, would say they were not racist, yet they clearly were.

I should add that, of late, I have seen an awful lot of latent racist statements on social media, people saying things they don’t realize are racist. If you confronted them they would say, “That’s not racist, I’m not a racist.” They might even say, “There is no racism.” Coming to a conclusion that there is no racism is, I believe, a sign that a person is a latent racist.

Why am I going on about this? I’ve been building up to a conclusion about how I think we should deal with racism but I felt I needed to set the stage of how I see racism. If we are going to combat it we have to understand it. How does a person become a latent racist? I think obviously by example of others, both open racists and latent racists. It’s learned by “osmosis”, not by active teaching.

So, I’m at the end of my post. And I’m pretty much at the end of setting the stage, explaining the problem. In my next post in the series, I’ll start talking about what I see are solutions to the problem. I don’t know if that will be in my next post or if I will have to take a little more time to pull it all together.