What if you didn’t know you were a racist?

(Originally published at Airamerica.com)

What if you didn’t know you were a racist?

I’ve often wondered if there could be such a thing as subconscious racism, and how it would manifest if there were. The more I think about it and hear good, God-fearing Democrats put their racist feet in their mouths, the less I wonder about it all.

What if you are a life-long Democrat, who believes fully in all the things good liberals do: you know in your bones women should continue to have the right to choose what they do with their bodies; you believe everyone has the right in this country to affordable health care; you care about the poor, the tired and the huddled masses and even your own carbon foot print. You fancy yourself as a solid, progressive American and then one day you hear yourself say something that flies in the face of all the fundamental things you believe in, and maybe even the things around which you’ve based your life and career.

This, I fear, has happened to many white Democrats, and most recently to Senator Harry Reid. We’d all like to believe we’re not racist and when it comes down to it, and especially when we cast our vote, we aren’t. But sometimes, for some reason, it squeaks out perhaps because we’ve denied it’s reality for so long. Racism, we think, is something other people do.

Maybe it’s subconscious racism that compelled Sen. Harry Reid, in his now-infamous comments about Obama's skin color and accent, and (if Mark Halperin and John Heilemann are to be believed) to Bill Clinton when he supposedly said, “Obama would be getting our coffee.” And it seems, quite frankly, to be happening to all those conservative Democrats who seem to oppose everything our President tries to do.

It’s not that I am trying to make excuses, because maybe they really are racists, but their records show that, in many conscious ways, they simply aren’t. Toni Morrison called Bill Clinton "our first black President," and he famously appointed African-Americans to high level positions throughout his Administration. These actions, do not a racist make.

One only needs to point to Senator Harry Reid’s record on civil rights to get to the truth of his actions when it comes to race in the United States. He's consistently lauded for his policy stances on both race and social justice issues of disproportionate impact on African-Americans. And yet, by his own admission, he used racially-charged terms to describe the now-President of the United States and his standing with white voters. But his comments indicate that, though he doesn’t mean to be, somewhere, deep down, he is one kind of racist.

And so what do we do? Simply this: like Harry Reid is apparently doing now, take a good, hard look at yourself and at the privileges you enjoy by virtue of being a member of the dominant racial group in the United States. Now keep thinking about it, and when your subconscious thoughts about race, ones that perhaps make you uncomfortable, pop into your head, stop them, because if you don’t you’re a racist and so please turn in your Democratic card, because that’s not what we’re about.