Recipe for Making a Racist

With little effort, you too can make a racist. Makes 2 to 4 million servings (and then some, with leftovers for sharing)

(Originally published on Medium)

Ever since I was a little Black girl, I have been warmly embraced by racism. I fondly remember, as a kindergartener, sneaking into the kindergarten room next door with my other little non-Black friends on a secret mission to trade our Black baby doll with the White one (the White one was prettier, obviously).

Since then, I’m hit by nostalgia every time I turn on the news and hear of yet another innocent Black person dying just for existing. Smelling the fetid fetor of bigotry and rancid redolence of racism as it wafts through the TV screen or social media timeline into my living room always takes me back to those precious moments in my early childhood.

I thought back to my ancestors who were abducted from Africa and sold into slavery to work in the brutal sugar plantations of Jamaica. It all seemed so far away, and I longed for the manifestation of white supremacy in my own life. I soon wondered — how could I possibly fashion myself an Amy Cooper or Derek Chauvin or Dylann Roof in 2020? I took to my kitchen to figure it out.

I’m pleased to share with you this recipe on how to make a racist. It’s a tried, tested and true method passed down through the ages, and it’s super easy. I’ll show you how:

Ingredients

• 1 bottle of White tears (extra salty)
• One of each: A Becky, a Karen and a Susan
• A handful of agents of the state (e.g. police officers, district attorneys, prosecutors, mayors, etc.)
• Ignorance and willful blindness (to taste) (can substitute colour blindness if need be)
• Egg Whites
• One orange
• Cavernous cauldron of cruelty
• One heap full of hatred
• A lack of accountability
• Black bodies and/or other people of colour, shot up and chopped up finely (to taste)
• A dash of toxic masculinity and first-wave feminism

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 years of slavery.
2. Take your Black bodies. Add 2 parts white fragility to 4 parts white tears. Mix well.
3. Sear hatred into the hearts of humankind. Let steep.
4. Poach little Black children, little Indigenous children, little Jewish children and little refugee children from their doting, desperate, worried parents. Whisk them away. Separate them so as to cause irreparable, irreversible multi-generational trauma to them and their future progeny. Segregate them. Rape them. Starve them. Criminalize them. Handcuff them. Work them to the bone. Cages and fences and camps may help.
5. Baste the children with self-hatred and low self-esteem.
6. Blanch the Indigenous children. Do what you can to kill the Indian in the child. Blanch the Black children too. “The blacker the berry the sweeter the juice” is a well-known culinary myth. Teach them instead that the lighter the skin the closer to God.
7. Deep fry the nigger. Cover them in oil, hang them on a tree and set them alight in a blaze of glory. Gather your children and their children around and bask in their curdling screams. Throw the charred remnants away.
8. Bake ignorance and segregation into the school curriculum. Teach the children that slavery is Black history and that’s it. Slavery didn’t interrupt Black history — slavery is Black history. Don’t discuss the Middle Passage. Don’t talk about the advanced African civilizations that pre-existed North American ones. Should you decide to celebrate Black History Month, make sure to only quote the passages from the “I Have a Dream” speech that make you feel comfortable.
9. Muddle “equality” and “equity” and how it relates to systemic barriers and affirmative action. Make sure that non-marginalized people misunderstand and think they are being discriminated against.
10. Be sure to truss the arms and legs of the nigger so that they are easier to lynch or kneel on or chokehold or beat down.
11. Knead their Black bodies to a pulp when you do arrest them. Rodney King comes to mind. Pluck their eyes out and shoot them in the head like they did Emmett Till. Whip them into a compliant cream. Score their bodies. Perforate their skin with tiny little bullet holes. Choke-hold them like Eric Garner until you snuff their lives out.
12. Grill them until they confess to crimes which they haven’t committed. Lock them up until they die.
13. You will want to pickle your legal system (and your healthcare system) with systemic racism and inequity.
14. Soak the state in sovereign immunity and dredge in blanket impunity. Never hold accountable people in authority. Indemnify all wrong-doers and tortfeasors. Master the art of the cover-up. Never punish. Never ever discipline. Give frequent slaps on the wrist and surround them with colleagues who will protect one another. Make sure there is a heavy coating of finger-pointing and irresponsibility. Let simmer in racial tension over time.
15. Marinate your state and your state actors overnight — or over several decades for better results. Again, make sure that they are always well covered. You want your state actors and people with authority drunk with power.
16. Sweat the other Black people, people of colour, allies and advocates — especially those who dare capture police brutality with camera phones. When I say sweat, I mean really make them sweat. Threaten their jobs, their families, their homes and their lives. Call their credibility into question.
17. Pick up the Becky, Karen or Susan gingerly — with kid gloves. She likes to complain. Her favourite person is the manager and very little sets her off. Give her a phone and a comb-over with blonde highlights. Teach her that, as a taintless, pure damsel in distress, her tears can move the White man into action on her behalf. Teach her how to use her Whiteness to manipulate others. Help her know that she has the police wrapped around her entitled fingers. The police are her friends.
18. Similarly, take care when holding White fragility. It’s delicate. It does not like to be handled.
19. Use only egg Whites — and none other. No diversity, racial or otherwise. Only hire Whites. Only have Whites on your hiring panels. Only have Whites in positions of authority. Create positions of tokenism for the one or two obedient and conforming people of colour, to lend legitimacy and credibility.
20. Parboil until you hear “all lives matter.”
21. While the rising racial temperature mounts, work on developing a selective memory. Don’t teach about residential schools. In fact, say that they were not, “all that bad.” Forgetfulness and distance are your assets here.
22. Racial angst may bubble up — cover quickly with platitudes. Tell them to comply and behave and obey authority. Dole out false promises. We all know that this will not keep them from being killed or brutalized, of course, but we know that they brought whatever calamities that assail them upon themselves. Mention “black-on-black” crime.
23. Keep the racial tensions just below boiling. Lift the cover to let out steam every so often — use hashtags to remember the killing of yet another Black person or person of colour — but then tightly close the lid and continue to be distracted.
24. Discourage discussions and dialogues about race and racism by telling people that such talk is “negative” and divisive. The focus needs to be on getting along. Sing kumbayah.
25. Pluck your eyes out so that you can be colour blind. We don’t see colour. Colour does not exist because we just see people as the same. The fairest way to treat people is to not see or acknowledge any differences amongst them. We are all the same in every way. Sing kumbayah again.
26. Blend Christianity with politics — especially White evangelicalism. Hide behind the cross. Bastardize the Scriptures — especially the ones about slavery. Create a White moderate. Make them feel like what they are doing is enough. Pacify their fears. Placate them and appease them. Feed them (preferably on a silver spoon to those who already have been handed a silver platter) the puree of the lie that instead of anti-racism, being non-racist is acceptable. Make morality a political issue.
27. Pervert the writings and words of Martin Luther King Jr. by saying things like “MLK would not stand for this. Neither should we” or “MLK would be ashamed.” Ignore his whole canon of literature.
28. Put a White supremacist president in charge — someone so White that he turns orange in the sun. Make sure to choose a deplorable human being with no moral compass — someone who is willing to excuse White nationalists and who brags about grabbing women by their pussies. Bonus points if they have a history of racism, sex scandals, and birtherism.
29. Kneel on (press your whole body into) the neck of a handcuffed black body until the black body tests done (toothpick inserted comes out laced with blood).

Repeat. Repeat again. And again. And again. Ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

Leftovers don’t need to be frozen. They do well left out, left to their own devices and schemes.

And there you have it! Reserve some of the product for use later. By so doing, you should have a few racists that will last a few generations — that is, if we last that long. 😉 Live, laugh, love — enjoy!