Race is in the news again. A black or brown person has been treated in a certain way. And going by the Golden Rule, it’s not a way that you would want to be treated – they were thrown out of a public place, or had the authorities called on them, or were shot by an officer of the law.
The person who treated them that way was white or lighter-skinned, and people are saying that race was a factor.
You want to show that it wasn’t about race. That we shouldn’t accuse the person who did this of being prejudiced. That the officer had reason to fear, the neighbor who called the police had reason to be concerned, etc. You are giving that person the benefit of the doubt.
In doing that, you are giving the black or brown person in this story the opposite – the deficit of the doubt. You are looking for reasons why it made sense to treat them in a way that you wouldn’t want to be treated. Looking for how they might have been suspicious or threatening or disruptive. Looking for reasons why treating them badly was justified.
When you give people with lighter skin the benefit of the doubt, while giving people with darker skin the deficit of the doubt, you cannot claim that you see and treat everyone equally regardless of race.
Looking for the best in lighter-skinned people and the worst in darker-skinned people. . . that is what prejudice is.
We all have prejudices. Making assumptions and snap judgments is a habit all humans fall into. But it’s a bad habit, and one that we need to resist in ourselves. Because the habit of seeing darker-skinned people as less worthy of benefit and more worthy of deficit is the seed of racism.