Anti-blackness is an unspoken understanding entrenched in our culture. Unthinking complicity with white supremacist logic doesn’t mitigate or excuse anti-blackness, hence why some Black liberation activists understandably scoff at the notion of unintentional racism.

Just because a white individual hasn’t unpacked and examined their allegiance to a set of racist values and behaviors doesn’t mean they’re racism isn’t racism. And just because an expression of racism isn’t perceived as “overt” or “malicious” doesn’t mean that it doesn’t decisively oppress nonwhites.

Unfortunately, America will never be shut down to deal with the ways in which it preserves white supremacy and reproduces anti-blackness throughout society. Doing that would, among other things, require dismantling and rebuilding our cultural, economic, political, legal, and educational systems. But that doesn’t mean white people can’t be part of an anti-racist movement that actively divests from anti-black racism.