10 Signs Of The Least Racist Person In The Room

Adrienne Gibbs
Momentum
Published in
3 min readOct 23, 2020

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Photo: Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

I learned a lot from the most recent presidential debate, but my largest takeaway by far was how to identify the least racist person in the room. Because, you know, being “least racist” is preferable to — I don’t know — being a raging racist or a little bit racist or just structurally racist as opposed to set-Black-Wallstreet-in-Tulsa-on-fire-and-kill-everyone-Black type of racist. Then there’s old Jim Crow racist or maybe don’t give Black folks affordable mortgage loans racist. Or the plain old “Black-kids-aren’t-smart” type of racist who then decides to miseducate the Black children in the classroom.

There’s so many types and layers and examples of racism it’s truly very hard for this Black woman to determine which kind is actually the least of it. How does one rank the horrors of racism? Maybe it’s better to be the kind of racist who only spits at Black people as opposed to being the kind of racist who hires Black women with three degrees into a job where they are more qualified than their White, male supervisor.

Whew. There’s so much racism it’s hard to even squeeze the descriptions into short sentences.

Least racist.

The fact that someone fixes their mouth to state their acceptance of a wee little bit of racism means that the same person is part and parcel of America’s greatest and…

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Adrienne Gibbs
Momentum

Director of Content @Medium. Award-winning journalist. Featured in a Beyoncé reel. Before now? EBONY, Netflix, Sun-Times, Miami Herald, Boston Globe.