I use the term “nice person racist” to describe a subtle yet still discriminatory view of non-white people by entitled whites who have very little experience working or socializing with non-white people.
The nice person racist is polite and friendly to all non-whites s/he encounters in real life but doesn’t believe in actually mixing with or living in geographic proximity. “Everyone should stay living in their own countries” says the white person who emigrated to a colonized country.
1/n
When the nice person racist is describing a conversation, the individual will be culturally profiled like “I talked with a little Indian girl about” such-and-such, unless they sound white. Then they have no qualifiers like assumed size, competence or location.
2/n
The nice person racist will even occasionally be aware of their racism. Upon learning that a certain black person was in Harvard, the nice person racist initially assumed some type of equal opportunity program got her there, and grudgingly notes that wasn’t a fair assumption.
The nice person racist would never cause direct harm to another human being but they vote for status quo politics that continue to oppress Indigenous people and minorities.
3/3