One of the regrets I have about last week’s column on [Cliven Bundy, Donald Sterling and affirmative action](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/4/29/getting-away-racism-must-stop/) was that I failed to present the real problem with race in America.
I touched on how Michigan voters being able to vote down affirmative action — [in a state that is 80 percent white](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26000.html) — was the most problematic issue two weeks ago. But due to Bundy-Sterling fatigue, I really didn’t want to write last week’s column. Every major news outlet had already touched on these issues days before I wrote my column, and [Colorlines.com writer Imara Jones even wrote a similar story](http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fcolorlines.com%2Farchives%2F2014%2F04%2FCliven_Bundy_Donald_Sterling_and_Affirmative_Action.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEApGvgi-l0FYLCId1IUwG0qrhoRA), with a similar title, two days before my piece was published last Wednesday.
Blatant racism, in my opinion, is not worth words on a page.
Yes, saying you don’t want your mistress to be seen with black people is pretty racist, can’t deny that. Also, saying black people — or “the negro” — were better off as slaves is both ignorant and racist. But this is the racism that we can see, the racism that is easy to diagnose and identify.
This is the type of racism that gets news coverage and even makes white people say “[that’s racist](https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2F31.media.tumblr.com%2Ftumblr_lsdgi59y2P1qd9jvmo1_250.gif&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFRYL8IQhVzJBtHnouG9iH-Zqzwvw).” It’s the type of racist that is so blatant that we can only chalk it up to old, racist men saying old, racist things.
But racism is not that simple. In fact, racism is like sexually transmitted infections.
STIs like gonorrhea, genital or oral herpes and pubic lice are inconvenient and embarrassing, but that’s because these are infections we can see. If we see a bump on someone’s lip, we automatically assume the worst. After we see the symptoms, we never look at people with STIs the same way again.
Herpes racism is the type of racism that Bundy, Sterling, the [White Man Marchers](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/3/16/white-man-march-and-why-racism-still-thing/) and the people who’ve emailed me are guilty of. These people used the buzzwords – again, “the negro” – that made America look at them through an unflattering lens. It’s easy to call them racist because they were so overt about their view of blacks as inferior to the white race. We will never look at those people the same way again.
On the other side, there are STIs that we can’t always see. While not completely asymptomatic, HIV, AIDS, hepatitis and human papillovirus (HPV) can go unnoticed by the public because these infections aren’t necessarily seen. In a worst-case scenario, if left untreated, HIV, AIDS, hepatitis and HPV can lead to death.
HPV racism is the silent killer that we either can’t see or don’t want to admit that we can have.
As ESPN writer Bomani Jones [wrote eight years ago](http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jones/060810), Sterling was sued by the Department of Justice in 2006 for housing discrimination and eventually paid a record $2.75 million settlement for discriminating “against African-Americans, Hispanics and families with children at apartment buildings he controls in Los Angeles,” [according to a 2009 Department of Justice press release](http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/November/09-crt-1187.html). The Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates [explained last week](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/This-Town-Needs-A-Better-Class-Of-Racist/361443/) that housing discrimination has disadvantaged black people in America more than any racist rant ever could.
Bundy has refused to pay grazing fees to the federal government for 20 years. He owes the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over $1 million and has never been to jail. Bundy and his armed militia aimed automatic weapons at federal officials and the officials actually backed off from confiscating Bundy’s cattle. Keep in mind, singer Lauryn Hill [went to prison for three months for failing to file tax returns](http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/04/showbiz/lauryn-hill-released-prison/) and Charlotte, North Carolina, police [officers shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell](http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/justice/north-carolina-police-shooting/), a black man, in September while he was seeking help after a car accident. While Bundy is a racist for his offensive language, his larger crime is heavily benefitting from [white privilege](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/2/14/zimmerman-affluenza-and-white-male-privilege/).
George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn were both not convicted for shooting and killing two black teens in 2012. Neither jury found race to be a factor in either case, a sentiment shared by white America. [60 percent of white people surveyed](http://www.people-press.org/2013/07/22/big-racial-divide-over-zimmerman-verdict/) in a 2013 Pew Research Center study said race got more attention than it deserved during the Zimmerman trial; only 13 percent of black people felt the same way.
In each of these cases, because we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see race, we couldn’t identify the racism. Sterling and Bundy are old racist men that we can see; we couldn’t see the housing discrimination or white privilege as bigger issues of race. Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin as a burglar and Dunn saw Jordan Davis as a dangerous black kid with a gun, but because they didn’t call the teens “niggers” or say they hated black people, juries and the public couldn’t process these shootings as racist.
Which makes the racism you can’t see the deadliest of them all.
