Does anything say “Donald Trump is a racist” more than Donald Trump proclaiming he’s “the least racist person ever”? Doesn’t it just make you want to shout “Oh, shut the hell up, you bloody, goddamned racist!”?

It’s the first sign that someone’s a racist — that they insist they’re not racist. That they can’t even spell “racism”.

They’re inability to spell isn’t the question. They’re inability to see how deeply, profoundly racist they are is. By the same token, it’s not up to other racists to say whether or not a racist is racist. They’re too racist to judge. And anyway, they think racism’s okay. Their judgment’s crap to begin with.

None of us can say whether or not we personally are racist. We’re too close to the subject matter to judge accurately. Other people have far better perspective on us. If they say we’re racist – maybe they see or know something we don’t.

While racism isn’t built into our genome, it is built into our culture. We pick it up as kids the same way we do other viruses and things we should never bring home. Of course, it’s likely racism is something we learned at home.

The trick is to own our own racism — especially the quiet racism we’d rather not talk about — and then work hard as we can every single day to mitigate that racism’s impact on us — and the world. Being a good person is way harder than being a bad person after all. Being rotten means you get to indulge every impulse, say every horrible thing that pops into your head. You get to hurt people with no consequence and never accept responsibility for anything you’re absolutely responsible for.

White people need to own the privilege that advantages us even if we don’t seek that advantage. Leveling the playing field won’t come without costs to some people. That sucks. It really does. But the larger picture will benefit everyone — including those who the leveling leveled.

Beauty is absolutely in the eye of the beholder. So is racism.