"Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another"
About this Quote
Racism, Iris Chang suggests, isn’t a flare-up so much as a baseline condition: a sediment layer that sits quietly until something shakes the ground. The line’s force comes from its refusal to treat prejudice as an occasional moral failure. It’s structural, ambient, “always there underneath” - a phrase that makes racism sound less like an opinion than a pressure system, waiting for a change in weather.
Chang’s real target is the story societies tell themselves during downturns. Economic crisis becomes the socially acceptable alibi for behaviors that would otherwise demand accountability. “Exploited” is doing heavy work here: it points to actors - politicians, demagogues, media ecosystems - who know how to convert anxiety into permission. Scarcity doesn’t invent bigotry, it gives it a convenient costume: protectionism, “law and order,” border panic, purity talk, scapegoating dressed up as pragmatism.
The final clause is the dagger: “hard to find out when one slides into another.” Chang isn’t merely describing overlap; she’s warning about plausible deniability. People can insist they’re responding to jobs, housing, safety - while quietly absorbing and repeating racial logics. That “slide” is how racism modernizes, laundering itself through economic language until it sounds like common sense.
As a historian attuned to mass violence and collective memory, Chang is also gesturing at pattern recognition: downturns are ignition points, not causes. The quote reads like a field note from someone who has watched societies rehearse the same disaster with different props.
Chang’s real target is the story societies tell themselves during downturns. Economic crisis becomes the socially acceptable alibi for behaviors that would otherwise demand accountability. “Exploited” is doing heavy work here: it points to actors - politicians, demagogues, media ecosystems - who know how to convert anxiety into permission. Scarcity doesn’t invent bigotry, it gives it a convenient costume: protectionism, “law and order,” border panic, purity talk, scapegoating dressed up as pragmatism.
The final clause is the dagger: “hard to find out when one slides into another.” Chang isn’t merely describing overlap; she’s warning about plausible deniability. People can insist they’re responding to jobs, housing, safety - while quietly absorbing and repeating racial logics. That “slide” is how racism modernizes, laundering itself through economic language until it sounds like common sense.
As a historian attuned to mass violence and collective memory, Chang is also gesturing at pattern recognition: downturns are ignition points, not causes. The quote reads like a field note from someone who has watched societies rehearse the same disaster with different props.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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