On "educating" yourself about racism
18 months ago I wrote an essay series that looks at the first season of AMC's Interview with the Vampire through the lens of colonial racism. I also have a recs list of books about racism that I'm going to reblog as soon as I find it. Because the sad fact is this:
Racism is the default setting of every single non-Black person in western civilization.
Every institution in the Americas, all the laws we've passed, all the corporations that we work for, were built on the backs of Black people (and the stolen lands of indigenous people) who were kidnapped from their homes, trafficked across the Atlantic, sold for money, enslaved, beaten, raped, tortured, mutilated, and ultimately murdered to enrich white colonizers. Western civilization is steeped in racism, and sooner or later, every single non-Black person is going to get caught showing their ass. And when you do, people are going to call you out on it.
You can apologize, and you should. You can say you'll try to do better, and you should do that too. But don't expect anyone to forgive you. Nobody, and especially no Black person, is obligated to assuage your feelings of shame and guilt. It's not enough to say, "I'm sorry, I didn't know!" Because white people don't need to "learn" about racism. We need to unlearn the racism that's bred into us from birth.
Interview with the Vampire has done a great job of weaving these themes into the text of the show. Understanding and engaging with these themes are critical to understanding the characters - and I'm not only talking about Louis and Claudia. Anti-Blackness shapes the way that Lestat, Armand, Daniel, and every other character behaves, because they (and we) live in a society that has literally been built on racism. If you stubbornly refuse to engage with the text on that level, then you're really not engaging with it at all.
One of the reasons I love this show so much is that it challenges racist structures and institutions in a way that, frankly, I've never seen before on television. It uses vampirism as a metaphor for the real-world horrors of racism, colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and too many other societal ills to list. It's not just a show about vampires. It's a show about us. Paying attention to what it's telling us is just one small way in which we can start to unlearn racism.
So, if you want to do better, start by listening to what this show is trying to help you unlearn. If you don't - well, then, I really can't take you seriously as a fan.
