December 10, 2002 | Longworth Quinn, Al Dunmore and Sam Logan, past general managers and editors of The Michigan Chronicle where my article appeared, deserve recognition for their decades of service to the African-American press, which covered the civil rights movement in all its aspects long before it became an acceptable beat for "mainstream" (read: white) media.

I thank them for taking a chance on hiring a naive white kid fresh out of college who had a lot to learn and then teaching her. I am very aware of the hundreds of African-American reporters and editors in the Chronicle's history who are not represented here and who deserve this honor more than me.

In particular Betty DeRamus, now a columnist at the Detroit News and my roommate at the time the article in this anthology was written, taught me a great deal about the nuances of how racism works in America and in the world.

I thought I wasn't a racist back then. I was. I still am, a "recovering racist" who will always have to fight some of my laziness and early learning and force myself to think issues through and learn more when my first response echoes the "mainstream."

When Stokely Carmichael told all of us white Northern students working for CORE and other groups in the South in the '60s to go back home and educate white people in our own backyards, I joined a group in Detroit called People Against Racism doing just that. I thank Frank Joyce and the other members for further helping me to unlearn my racism.

In 1980 I helped to organize a group in Los Angeles called White Women Against Racism, spurred by women of color in the lesbian feminist community who told many of us that, again, our role was to educate white people in our own backyards (in this case NOW and other organizations). I credit Yolanda Retter as the group's primary inspiration and conscience.

One photocopied article by a Dr. Rita Hardiman had more influence on my thinking about racism than anything since I first read Gunnar Myrdal's massive An American Dilemma when I was in grade school in the '50s, as Detroit resegregated from white to black all around me, causing the emotional wars that I recount in my article in this anthology.

Dr. Hardiman (I've never been able to find anything more about her on the net or libraries beyond that much-photocopied flyer) described the stages of fighting racism undergone by many white people. She noted that the stages are similar for anyone unlearning any kind of prejudice, and people may go back and forth between the stages many times. (I thought of Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross's theories on the back-and-forth stages of grief people go through.)

First stage is the "active racist," the KKK types, the ones who spout their hatred and lead protests against school busing, etc.

Few people actually are ever in that stage, but they are allowed to exist by quiet support from the "passive racist," the one who may vote against a social services program in the privacy of the voting booth because of secret feelings against the people of color believed to benefit from the program.

The passive racist accepts the status quo, believes what he or she has been told, and doesn't rock the boat even when suspecting an injustice, all the while denying any personal racism. This may be the largest category of people at any given time.

Something happens, someone provides inspiration, and some people may become "active anti-racist racists." Clumsy term, but it describes well the stage of awakening when someone may well overdo it in the first flush of enthusiasm. Often, someone in this stage is obnoxious to others, both those who are being criticized for their racism and those anti-racism workers who are beyond this erratic, passionate stage. A person in this stage depends heavily on people of color to give leadership and may be what Eric Hoffer called a "true believer." I was in this stage when I wrote the article in this anthology.

Usually after a short time, even a few years, a person becomes a "passive anti-racist racist." People in this stage burn out, they experience something that undermines their simplistic way of fighting racism, they get hurt when they are not appreciated by all people of color, they give up and move on to other causes or career issues. "Old hippies" or burned-out liberals may be in this stage.

Those who still have the passion and a growing understanding of racism and the courage to let themselves feel again may move on to the "integration" stage. They begin to think for themselves and to trust their own instincts and experiences, to take responsibility for moving themselves out of their apathy, to rely less and less on people of color to do their thinking for them.

They begin to make anti-racism work a part of their daily lives, incorporating it into their job choices, their social activities, their education of their own children and other people in more palatable, more effective ways.

The final stage is "transcendency" or a similar term, in which a person begins to make the correlations between all of the isms and issues of the world, beyond just "black and white" thinking. The person sees larger forces at play, understanding how economic and political and religious and other institutional influences underlie racism.

Someone in this stage compares how various categories of people are discriminated against and the stereotypes about each category, the similarities and the differences in each kind of stereotyping, and how each affects the individual and society.

What can be learned about how racism works in looking at the stereotypes of "model minority" Asian-Americans? How do class differences affect stereotyping? What about an African-American minister the person perceives as homophobic, sexist and anti-Semitic—how does that person work to form alliances if she is also a Jewish lesbian feminist, for example?

The dynamics among oppressed groups become clear, particularly the success of horizontal hostility ("divide and conquer" as groups vie for who is the most discriminated against and fight for ever-shrinking pieces of the available pie, rather than finding allies to fight common enemies and focus on the larger picture).

Internalized racism, even in some leaders who are people of color, becomes clearer to identify and not so easy to dismiss. The person sees how discrimination he or she may have experienced because of race, sex, physical abilities, sexual orientation, fat, religion, age, nationality, class, etc., is both similar and different from racism.

Why are so many groups which are discriminated against seen as lazy, smelly, stupid, unmotivated, and immorally sexed? Who benefits from each kind of discrimination? How can each kind be fought most effectively? A lifelong commitment develops to fighting social injustice—personal, cultural and institutional.

And at any moment a person even in the final stages of incorporating this kind of broad and deep thinking about injustice might notice a sudden eruption of what he or she shamefully recognizes immediately as active racism—a spontaneous gut hatred of all Arabs and Muslims after 9-11, for example.

Such moments come less and less, and a person who has truly reached a penetrating understanding of how racism in all its forms works in this world will do the work to overcome these feelings though they may never totally disappear. The biggest danger, I have found, is slipping back into passive anti-racist racism.

I never saw any reference to Dr. Rita Hardiman's theories again after 1980, and I may have distorted her thinking in my recollections and interpretations of her work, but the ideas were so important to me that I have told them to many people over and over again through the years, sharing this analysis which makes so much sense to me. I thank everyone who has helped me in the ongoing process of unlearning my racism.

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