Exploring Unintentional Racism:
The Case of Tim Hanks

Part III—Racist?

I was crushed. I admitted to Tim that I had assumed he didn’t come to class regularly and had trouble with his assignments because he didn’t like my class. Tim said, “Oh no! I really liked your course. It was just first on my schedule and so, if even one driver didn’t pick me up, I couldn’t get to it on time.”

I didn’t say that I’d thought Tim had no motivation and poor academic skills. In fact, at that moment, though I was too embarrassed to admit it to him, I realized how racist my assumptions were. Partly I was projective because I attributed Tim’s behavior to the things that would have caused me to behave as he had. If I didn’t get to class on time or failed to get my homework done, it would be due to my low motivation. By implicitly assuming Tim was just like me, I had dramatically misunderstood Tim’s behavior in a very racist way.

But worst of all was the realization that my attributions were simply intellectualized versions of unconscious racist stereotypes about African-Americans. I’d thought, “Tim doesn’t have the academic skills to do the work nor the drive and motivation to correct his deficiencies.” “Lack of academic skills” was my way of covering the unconscious feeling that Tim wasn’t bright enough to do college work. In essence I was saying he was lazy. If the school had consulted me on a decision to let Tim have a second try, my attributions could have ruined Tim’s chances. Luckily they didn’t ask me. If he had come in to see me during his first semester, would I have confronted him on his “low motivation”? Ironically he missed his appointments so I didn’t confront him. If I had, what effect would that have had on him and his willingness to relate to me in the future? Here I was, a “sixties liberal” and a self-convicted racist.

I wondered if my nonverbal communication gave Tim any hint of these underlying feelings. If so, did they in any way contribute to his hesitancy to communicate about his transportation problems the term before? As a clinical psychologist I would have to guess that my nonverbal signals, and those of my colleagues, probably did contribute to Tim’s uneasiness. I wondered if my fear of making a mistake with a minority person and deeper discomfort being around someone who looked so different made me more hesitant to ask why he was having trouble in my class in the first place.

What I learned was one didn’t have to be a bigoted bus driver to be part of the system of racism. All I had to do to was to make a “natural” “assumption of similarity” and give in to my “normal” fear of difference. I didn’t have to hate African-Americans or consciously discriminate against them all. All I had to be was myself, and the racism operated.

Questions

Discuss the following with the people sitting next to you and look for as many different perspectives as you can find.

1. Do you agree with the instructor’s conclusion that he is a racist? Explain your answer.
2. How is prejudice different from discrimination? For example, would you have considered the instructor racist if he had told the readmission committee about his view of Tim as lacking academic skills and the motivation to improve them? Would you consider the instructor racist if he had confronted Tim on his low motivation?
3. Find someone who disagrees with you. Write out their definition of racism and compare it with yours. Do they disagree? If so, on what dimensions? Do they agree? If so, along what dimensions?
4. How would you characterize the difference between the racism of the bus drivers and the racism of the instructor? Are both kinds equally prevalent in our society, and to what degree are they both destructive?
5. Can you think of any examples of racism in your experience? How are they similar to and different from this example? Was your experience nearer the “bus driver” end of the racism continuum or more like the instructor’s “racism”?
6. Take some time to think back and see where your attitudes toward African-Americans may have come from. Do you remember the first time you met or saw an African-American? Were your views affected at all by the television, newspapers, and movies you saw as a youngster? What were your later experiences like?

Copyright © 1999–2010 by the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science.  Please see our usage guidelines, which outline our policy concerning permissible reproduction of this work.

---