Somehow, racism is never really the problem here

It’s not racism.

It doesn’t matter what it is – an atrocious event, an obvious denial of basic rights, a discriminatory law, etc. – it’s not racism. Because it’s never racism.

Racism is dead and gone, at least the institutionalized kind. Sure, there might be one or two instances here or there in which some brain-dead yahoo commits a singular act of racism, but widespread racism is a thing of the past.

These are things that must be true because I have heard them repeated endlessly, mostly by Southern conservatives, as they dismiss one claim of racism after another without so much as a second thought.

Racism has been twisted into the cry of the weak or the unintelligent. It is treated as a claim that must first be met by severe doubt and distrust. And even if it is proven beyond a doubt that race was a motivating factor in some type of discrimination or harmful act, it can only be one of a number of reasons.

Otherwise, you are a “race baiter.” Or your playing of the “race card” is tired. And inevitably either Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton is mentioned.

It is not hard to figure out what’s going on. If you belittle the claims of racism long enough and loud enough, you create a situation in which those claims can be dismissed without even considering their merits.

You just have to first convince everyone it’s not racism. No matter what.

Like Freddie Gray, the black guy in Baltimore who was killed after cops, angry because Gray ran from them, tossed him around in the back of a police van and severed his spine?

You might be thinking that race played a role in his death, but nope, not according to the racism deniers. Gray got killed because he ran.

Everyone knows that the penalty for crime-plus-running is being locked in the back of a police van and tossed to death. Isn’t that right, Robert Durst and Dylann Roof?

You can toss out all of the stats and numbers you’d like, showing police in certain areas disproportionately arresting and jailing black citizens. It’s never racism.

Same thing goes for this unfortunate ordeal in Alabama over the driver license offices being closed in many predominantly black counties.

A race baiter might bring up the fact that Alabama implemented a voter ID law last year that requires a picture ID to be presented at the polls – a change that disproportionately affects minority voters. And that race baiter might further point out that these counties are some of the poorest in the state, where little Internet access exists and transportation is difficult to come by.

That person might also try to convince everyone that the ID law itself was put in place just to discourage minority voters, because it certainly wasn’t put in place to discourage fraud. In-person voter fraud occurs at a rate so low it’s almost non-existent. But for some reason our mostly white GOP lawmakers decided to focus on that tiny bit of fraud, and it just so happens that “fix” affects about 250,000 voters, mostly minorities.

But it’s not racism.

It’s just simple math, according to Alabama officials. They just shut down the offices doing the least business.

Those just happened to be mostly black.

(By the way, it’s worth noting that the head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, Spencer Collier – who had no choice in which offices to close – said the savings from those closures would amount to $1.2 million. I’ll remind everyone once again that Remington, a multi-million-dollar gun manufacturer building a plant in north Alabama, got another $2.5 million this month in straight cash. For economic incentives.)

None of this is racism, of course.

Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell seems to disagree and has asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the closures. But what does she know about it?

She only had to take her disabled father to get his voter ID card last year – a trip that required a wheelchair-accessible van, an elevator repair that took an hour and a closed registrars office.

Altogether, it took more than two hours. In a poor, working community.

But it’s not racism. Maybe we could just call this bad luck. Yeah, that’s it – bad luck.

There’s a lot of that bad luck for black citizens around Alabama, it seems.

But it's never racism.