It is easy to say that race is not a problem when, for you, it never has been. Great strides have been made in American race relations since the end of the abomination that was slavery. Yet, one need look no further than the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to see that racial prejudices still influence people’s actions. 

However, it would be reductionist, and frankly unfair, to say that the problem is that the police in Ferguson are simply racists. Rather, the problem is a system of oppression that causes people subconsciously to view certain races in certain ways. The problem cannot be placed at an individual level. Michael Brown was not simply murdered by a police officer; he was also murdered by the culture in the United States that equates black with crime.

Racism in 21st century America has a new guise and new characteristics. It is far less overt than it was a century ago. It takes careful inspection and consideration to notice the systemic ways that political minorities are suppressed and segregated. It has become one of those topics that people ignore, and in so doing they come to assume erroneously that it does not exist. The issue is out of sight, and therefore out of mind.

It is now more in vogue to say that people are far more separated by class than race. There is merit in this argument, but look at how class is determined. When the modern class structure was developed, who was at the bottom and who was at the top?

If one wants to see the racial makeup of classes, one need only look at where the respective classes live. Although there has been some change recently, since the suburbanization of the 1950s, white middle- and upper-middle-class people have migrated to artificial, homogenized communities. Meanwhile, the lower-income, largely racial minority people have been left to the poverty-stricken inner cities. This is a class division, but it cannot be separated from its racial components.

One cannot help but laugh when one hears white people complaining about reverse discrimination. They proclaim that, in 20 years, whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans, and this prophecy may very well come true. 

However, if one looks at the world population, white men only make up about 2 percent. Yet it is everyone else who is called a minority. This perplexity is because the terms majority and minority do not refer simply to numbers, but rather to power. White men hold the majority of power in the U.S. and in the world.

The legacy of the West dominating the world and white men dominating the governments of the West has created a world where a small numerical minority rules over a world where, as George Orwell put it in “Animal Farm,” “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Regardless of the shifting demographics, white men will hold the majority of wealth, power and rights until the system changes drastically.

As Victor Villanueva says in his article “Blind: Talking about the New Racism,” the common tropes of color blindness and individualism serve only to conceal the racial problems in the U.S. Just as admitting one has a problem is the first step toward solving it, recognizing that racism exists and engaging in open discourse over the issue is the only way that the problem may be ameliorated.

Yet, it can seem very hard to go against the mainstream culture by taking exceptions to or pointing out instances of oppressive or discriminatory language. No one wants to think that he or she is a racist. And any attempt at redressing the everyday language of oppression would undoubtedly come across as an accusation of bigotry.

According to the sociologist Allan Johnson, “Gandhi once said that nothing we do as individuals matters, but that it’s vitally important that we do it anyway…no individual leaf on the tree matters…But collectively, the leaves are essential to the whole tree…without leaves, the tree dies. So, leaves matter and they don’t, just as we matter and we don’t.”

We cannot alone succeed in creating a cultural awareness that shifts the paradigm away from ignorance toward a cognizance that there is still systemic oppression in the U.S. But we must fight against the apathy and resignation that can all too easily end action. Even a complex problem can have a simple solution.

As NC State psychology professor Rupert Nacoste said in a TEDx talk, ending oppressive and stereotypical language may be as simple as stopping the conversation and saying to the culprit, “I’m sorry, but I am very uncomfortable with that kind of language. I find it offensive; it hurts me.”