Becoming an Anti-Racist

I became interested in race when I took a class at Whitman College called Educational Equality. While it technically was not about race, the class had a major slant in this direction due to the Professor's personal preferences towards the topic. From this class I learned that becoming an anti-racist is a constant, conscious decision, meaning that in order to be anti-racist one must always be rebelling against society's inherently racist systems in thoughts, actions, and words. Like the saying, "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem", remaining static in the status quo of society's racial issues reverts you automatically to a racist. I did not believe this when I first learned about this idea. I am a nice person that strives for the acceptance of other people. How could I possibly be a racist? As the past year and a half have gone by however, I have began to realize how true this was and still is. I don't claim to be an expert on the topic, nor do I claim to be completely anti-racist, this blog is about my journey to strive for anti-racism.
A very eye-opening experience happened to me very recently that helped me to realize how racist I really was. For my Sociology 345 Race and Ethnic Groups class at University of Oregon we took a online test to find out how inherently racist we really are. Basically the quiz works be creating lists of "good" and "bad" words. Words like joy, anger... Then the quiz tests your reaction speed to see how much you associate the good or bad words with race. I was very surprised when the first time I took the test to find out I have a very strong preference for white people. When I first took this test I didn't want to believe the result, as did the rest of my class. I made excuses for myself like, "well, my roommate was distracting me and asking my questions so I couldn't focus". While this was true, this still doesn't really take away the validity of this test. The test measures your initial reaction to black and white people, almost the unconscious way you feel about either race. It measures the split-second decision you make when you see an empty seat next to a black person and one next to a white person or the accidental lingering stare at a person of Hispanic heritage. So even if my roommate was distracting me and I could not perfectly focus on the task, that may arguably be and even better measurement of my unconscious racism because it is my gut reaction and not my focused, competitive, attempt at trying to get the right answer.
After we received our first results, part of the assignment was to try and change the results and make them "better", i.e. if you had a strong preference towards white, attempt for a more neutral ground when taking the test a second time. The class discovered that this is possible with focused concentration and conscious thought about the movements of your fingers. This just drives home the point that anti-racism is a choice that everyone must make. When I was focused, my results changed dramatically to no preference at all. Hopefully, someday after continually choosing the anti-racist route, anti-racism can become an unconscious decision for myself and society. Right now though, both still need a lot of work.