A while ago I made a Facebook post referencing segregated drinking fountains and someone commented saying… “People that talk about racism, are the racists.” I have thought about that for some time and found I could not just let it just sit there without a response…

Most often comments of this kind are designed to shut down conversation when in fact comments like this allow us to avoid the work of self-reflection. Talking about racism does not make someone racist and avoiding it does not make it go away. In fact, silence is how inequality survives. If no one names what happened or how it still echoes today, then the system never has to be examined or challenged.

“People that talk about racism, are the racists” is not a description of reality. It is a shield. It turns the act of naming an injustice into the injustice itself. That move has a long, offensive pedigree. It shows up every time a system is being challenged therefore, the messenger becomes the problem so the message can be ignored.

Racism is not created by talking about it. It was created by laws, policies, and practices that gave white people power and denied it to others. Segregation, redlining, mass incarceration, and voter suppression did not happen because people talked about them. They happened because people did not talk about them or were punished when they tried.

When I posted about segregated drinking fountains, I was not trying to shame anyone alive today. I was pointing out that this history is not distant or abstract. White-only drinking fountains were legal until 1965. The War on Drugs was launched in the 1970s and was later admitted by Nixon’s own aide to have been designed to target Black communities. In 2013, the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, which led to a wave of voter suppression laws that disproportionately affect Black voters. These things are not ancient history. They shaped our laws, neighborhoods, schools, and opportunities, and their effects did not disappear when the signs came down. They are part of the system we live in right now.

If talking about racism made someone racist, then the people who fought Jim Crow, segregation, and apartheid would be the villains of history. But they were not. They were the ones who made change possible.

What usually makes people uncomfortable is not the word “racism.” It is what that word forces us to look at. I am not accusing anyone of being a bad person. I am asking us, especially as white people, to be honest about the world we inherited and how it still works. Silence does not heal injustice. It just hides it.

As a white woman, I know I benefit from a history that was deeply unfair to others. Looking at that honestly is not an attack on white people. It is an act of responsibility.