The Self Delusions of Modern Racists

The complex mental gymnastics involved in retaining a racist worldview

I recently had an argument with racists online, which gave me food for thought. What I find interesting is that racist ideas are quite widespread, but almost no racist I have ever debated will actually admit to being a racist. They will admit to holding all the ideas which according to most generally accepted definitions of racism would make you a racist, but they maintain that “I am not a racist”.

So, what exactly is the definition of racism? Here is one definition given in the Oxford Dictionary:

The belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

Your typical modern-day racist will eagerly show you their favorite statistics on how black people score lower on IQ tests and are overrepresented in crime statistics or pretty much any negative statistics. They have also convinced themselves that us on the political left are living in a rejecting objective reality. They see themselves as so-called “race realists.” Except, most of us are not rejecting the studies that find blacks to score lower on IQ tests or be overrepresented in various bad statistics.