The Polite Kind Of Racism

There are two types of racism in the west: the kind that’s considered acceptable in polite liberal society, and the kind that’s widely frowned upon.

The acceptable type of racism is the kind which considers it fine and normal to drop bombs on Muslim families overseas. The kind which sees starvation sanctions as a minor issue whose pros and cons are assessed solely on the basis of whether they will be successful or unsuccessful in achieving regime change. The kind which views imperialist extraction from the global south as the natural order of the world, with centrists and progressives squabbling only about how evenly that plunder should be distributed among westerners.

The unacceptable type of racism is the kind which affects other westerners. The kind whose consequences western liberals have to see.

If a white woman calls the police on a black man minding his own business in the park, western liberals will send her viral on social media, and she will be unwelcome in polite society until the heat dies down. If a celebrity is caught on tape uttering an ethnic slur, they’ll be unpopular for a while, and will be considered a liability by sponsors and film studios. This is the wrong kind of racism.

That’s what you’re seeing whenever the western press completely ignores a dozen Palestinians getting killed by western-made munitions on the same day the entire news media focuses on some allegation of “antisemitism” with no material consequences other than some western Jews feeling emotionally upset. The former is the right kind of racism, while the latter is the wrong kind. One is seen as acceptable and normal, while the other is a horrifying abuse.

europe spent 400 years using slave labour in colonies to build their wealth, rebranded this extraction model in the 20th century and somehow their citizens still believe their social conditions is a result of some superior intellect rather than inhuman violence

— 🚶🏾‍♀️ (@chrskte) June 21, 2026

Western racism falls into two distinct categories because our entire civilization is built upon the polite kind, whereas the impolite kind is useful to the powerful only as a wedge issue to keep western populations divided against each other. Mainstream western politics is often just a culture war between one major party which embraces both the polite and impolite kinds of racism against another major party which only embraces the polite kind of racism, thereby ensuring that no political energy goes toward ending the polite kind of racism.

The polite kind of racism is much more important to the powerful in the 21st century, because it’s an absolutely foundational component to their rule rather than merely a useful tool. Without the imperialist extraction of labor and resources from the global south through extortionate means, you wouldn’t see sprawling megacorporations turning millionaires into billionaires and trillionaires who then use their wealth to manipulate western politics to promote their own agendas. Without nonstop military expansionism and the abuses of the western intelligence cartel, the managers of the western empire could not dominate our planet.

That’s why every few years westerners get to vote on whether or not to advance the impolite kind of racism in their society, while the polite kind of racism never appears on the ballot. You’re allowed to vote on whether or not your government will become more abusive to immigrants and other marginalized members of your society, but you’re never allowed to vote on whether or not war, militarism and imperialist extraction will continue. This expression of racism (or white supremacism, or xenophobia, or western supremacism, or whatever you want to call it) is considered too important to be left to the will of the electorate.

And you see this reflected in the consciousness of the western mind. Even relatively aware westerners who would place themselves on the far left of the political spectrum will often spend a lot more energy on domestic issues than the abuses of the western war machine.

This shit enrages me. They only say it's a "privileged take" because they don't view people in the global south as human beings. They'd never say it's okay to work as a hitman in the US to earn money for college if you come from a poor family. It's only fine to kill foreigners. https://t.co/ShoAiil0NS

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) June 5, 2026

Earlier this month the discourse on Left Twitter revolved around whether or not it was a “privileged take” to say that people shouldn’t serve in the US military, the argument being that many US military personnel come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I saw a lot of US progressives who furiously disparage ICE agents and American cops falling all over themselves to defend those who enlist in the US war machine, which is quantifiably far more murderous and oppressive than domestic American law enforcement.

The only way to see things this way would be to view those who live in the global south as less human than people who live in the United States. That’s the only way it could possibly make sense in your mind to see the abuses of your country’s domestic police forces as worse than the demonstrably more egregious abuses of the US war machine. You’d have to view a school full of Iranian children being blown up by the US Navy as less worthy of attention and opposition than an American being beaten by a police officer in the United States. You’d have to assume those Iranian lives don’t matter.

And those are some of the more awake members of western society. Most westerners are a lot less conscious and compassionate than that.

Westerners live in the most savage and murderous civilization on earth. We don’t feel like we are savage and murderous because we outsource most of our violence and slavery to overseas operations, but that’s what we are. We go about our lives consuming products made by wage slaves under an oppression machine that is defended through constant mass military slaughter, and then we wag our fingers at a viral video of some schizophrenic saying racist things in order to feel nice feelings about ourselves. That’s what western life is, right there.

We’ve got a lot of growing up to do. We are in need of drastic, revolutionary change, more extensive than probably most of us can imagine at this point in time. We’ve got a long, long way to go, and a whole, whole lot of wrongs we need to make right around the world.

Reading by Tim Foley:

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-polite-kind-of-racism