WHEN RACISM DRESSES ITSELF AS NORMALITY

 WHEN RACISM DRESSES ITSELF AS NORMALITY

Racism is most easily condemned when it announces itself through hatred, insult, exclusion, or violence. But its most enduring form may be the one that no longer appears extraordinary—the racism that has learned to dress itself in the clothing of normality.

It may wear the garment of tradition.
It may speak through respectable procedures.

It may hide within professional expectations, institutional habits, neighborhood customs, or assumptions so familiar that no one thinks to question them.

It may never utter a racial slur.
Instead, it may reveal itself through unequal suspicion, unequal patience, unequal protection, unequal forgiveness, unequal opportunity for correction, and unequal belonging.

One person's mistake remains a mistake; another person's mistake becomes an identity.

One person is quietly warned before humiliation arrives; another discovers the danger only after the whole world is watching.

One person's reputation is instinctively protected; another person's reputation is treated as expendable.

One is regarded as a member of the community who has failed.
Another is made to wonder whether he ever truly belonged.

The rules may appear identical.
The paperwork may be flawless.

Everyone may sincerely insist:
“This is simply how things are done.”
And that is precisely when conscience must begin asking questions.
Equality cannot be measured only by whether the same rule was applied.

We must also ask:
Was the same humanity extended?

Was there equal patience?
Equal confidentiality?

Equal benefit of doubt?
Equal opportunity to recover?

Equal protection from unnecessary humiliation?
Equal mercy?

Equal companionship when trouble came?
For discrimination does not cease to exist merely because discriminatory language disappears. Sometimes yesterday's prejudice survives inside today's ordinary habits.

The sign may be removed while the architecture remains.
The rule may change while the instinct survives.
And eventually what history constructed begins to appear natural.

That is why normality is not proof of justice.
Slavery was once normal.
Segregation was once normal.
Racial exclusion was once normal.

Practices that later generations recognize immediately as injustice were once defended by respectable people as ordinary social arrangements.

Our generation should therefore possess enough humility to ask:
What do we presently call normal that future generations may recognize as discrimination?

Institutions are like garments. Their rules, traditions, procedures, standards, and structures exist to serve and protect human communities.

The garment exists for the body.
The body does not exist for the garment.

When the garment wounds the body, we must not sacrifice the body to preserve the garment. We must examine the garment.
And when certain bodies repeatedly carry more of the wounds, we must examine it more carefully still.

Skin has color.
But color cannot measure intelligence, character, honesty, worth, belonging, or human dignity.

The eye sees the surface.
Conscience must see farther.

The struggle against racism therefore requires more than removing hateful words. It requires examining the ordinary distribution of suspicion and mercy, exposure and protection, punishment and restoration, isolation and belonging.

For racism does not always arrive wearing the uniform of hatred.

Sometimes it wears a suit.
Sometimes an academic gown.
Sometimes a regulation.
Sometimes a tradition.
Sometimes a perfectly reasonable explanation.
And sometimes its most effective disguise is a sentence spoken without malice:

“This is normal.”

At precisely that moment, conscience must ask:

Normal for whom?
Protective of whom?
Painful to whom?
Merciful toward whom?
And who has quietly been left outside?

The eye may see the garment.
But justice must find the human being inside it.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
August 26, 2026