The Tea on Racism
Brewing Racism
Racism is tea. Every white person carries a bag of it. Some bags are oversized, already spilling leaves before they even touch the water. Others are neatly tucked, as if sealed in virtue. But make no mistake: the leaves are always there. The question is not whether they exist but how much heat it takes to steep them. And when the water boils, even the most fragrant bag will leak.
The only way to absolve yourself of racism is not to claim you’re drinking something else. It is not to sweeten the flavor or insist you don’t taste it. It is to dump the leaves, tear open the bag, and recognize that the recipe was designed centuries ago. Because racism has never been an accident of culture. It was brewed on purpose. The first batch came from a man most people have never heard of but whose work has flavored the world ever since: Gomes Eanes de Zurara.
The Original Brew: Zurara’s Recipe for Racism
In 1453, Zurara wrote The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. The Portuguese crown had a problem: it needed to justify the theft, trafficking, and enslavement of African people. Simply saying “we want free labor and human cargo” sounded a little too much like piracy. Enter Zurara, the propaganda minister disguised as a historian.
His job was simple: sell barbarity as benevolence. So he wrote that the Portuguese were saving souls. He described kidnapping as evangelism, enslavement as an act of charity, and dehumanization as divine mandate. He was not documenting history. He was inventing excuses. He was, quite literally, bagging the first batch of tea leaves that would seep into every empire thereafter.
Zurara’s work was not fringe. It was the ideological infrastructure for the Atlantic slave trade. Once Africans were described as heathens, less than human, and in need of white intervention, the violence against them became marketable. The narrative steeped across Europe, flavoring laws, religion, and eventually the economic backbone of the modern world. Every sip of wealth produced through slavery carried Zurara’s aftertaste.
The Function of Racism: Flavoring Profit
Racism was never a misunderstanding between cultures or a regrettable accident of ignorance. It was a tool, sharp and deliberate, used to turn human beings into labor and labor into wealth. It gave plantation owners their justification, colonizers their divine right, and industrialists their workforce. Racism flavored capitalism so thoroughly that even today people try to drink the cup without noticing the leaves at the bottom.
When people insist that racism is just a matter of “bad individuals,” they ignore that its entire function was structural. It existed to legitimize theft of land, theft of bodies, and theft of labor. Strip away humanity and you gain access to resources. Dehumanization was not an error in the system. It was the system. Zurara provided the recipe. Every empire since has kept it stocked in the pantry.
Hot Water Moments: Racism Under Pressure
If racism is the tea bag, then white people’s lives provide the water. Most bags sit quietly until heat rises. Everyday life might convince some that they are “not racist.” They live in diverse cities, share spaces with people of color, maybe even raise children with partners outside their race. They believe their tea bag is somehow empty. But hot water proves them wrong.
Consider the liberal who loves diversity until a Black family moves into the neighborhood and suddenly the conversation turns to property values. Or the coworker who insists she is colorblind until an immigrant gets promoted ahead of her, at which point “language barriers” and “cultural fit” suddenly matter. Or the proud parent who celebrated Obama’s election yet breaks into a sweat when their daughter brings home a Latino boyfriend. These are hot water moments. They reveal the steeping that was always there.
The truth is that racism is rarely visible in moments of comfort. It surfaces in moments of stress, fear, or loss of advantage. Hot water brings out the leaves. And no matter how refined the bag looked on the shelf, the brew will taste the same once the pressure is applied.
Benevolent Racism and Tokens: Sweetening the Cup
Of course, not all racism announces itself with hostility. Much of it comes dressed in benevolence, the polite smile that insists on helping, guiding, or “saving” people of color while still keeping them beneath the hand that helps. This is benevolent racism, the sugar cube of white supremacy. It insists on kindness while preserving hierarchy. It assures Black people they are welcome, provided they remain grateful. It assures immigrants they are valued, provided they assimilate quietly. It assures Indigenous people their culture is respected, provided it can be turned into a Halloween costume.
Benevolent racism is perhaps more insidious than the overt kind, because it disguises itself as progress. It looks like the missionary who insists he is saving souls. It sounds like the charity campaign that frames African children as helpless props for Western pity. It hides in the liberal who proudly declares “I don’t see color,” erasing identity while pretending to erase bias. It is sugar in the cup, a sweetener that does nothing to change the fact that the leaves are still steeping.
Then there are the tokens, the stirring sticks of white society. Non-white people are welcomed into proximity, displayed as proof of tolerance, but always with the understanding that they are disposable. Corporations fill their brochures with diverse faces while sidelining those same employees when decisions are made. Politicians assemble multicultural entourages while voting for policies that gut their communities. White individuals parade their friends or spouses of color as evidence that they cannot possibly be racist, only to push those same people under the bus when power or comfort is at stake.
Tokens swirl the drink. They make it look mixed. But they are never consumed. They are tossed aside once they have served their purpose. And like benevolent racism, tokenism functions to maintain the illusion of equality while reinforcing the reality of hierarchy.
Internalized Racism: Living in the Water
If white people carry the tea bags, non-white people live in the water that has already been steeped. Internalized racism is not evidence of carrying the leaves. It is evidence of being immersed in the brew. Centuries of propaganda, law, and violence shape how communities see themselves and one another. Colorism, anti-Blackness, and assimilationist pressures are not independent creations. They are survival strategies in poisoned water.
When a Black child is punished for their natural hair, when an Asian immigrant insists on anglicizing their name, when a Latino parent tells their child not to date darker-skinned partners, these are not moments of racism by people of color. They are adaptations to water already flavored by Zurara’s recipe. Living in the cup means drinking the bitterness, whether you chose it or not.
Deconstruction: Emptying the Bag
So what does it mean to absolve yourself of racism? It is not enough to claim your bag is empty. Denial does nothing but prolong the steeping. It is not enough to add sugar, disguising the flavor with benevolence or token proximity. Sweetened oppression is still oppression. And it is not enough to stir harder, insisting that proximity equals progress. The leaves remain.
Deconstruction means tearing open the bag and dumping the contents. It means confronting the propaganda that started with Zurara and still circulates in corporate boardrooms, school curricula, and media stereotypes. It means acknowledging your hot water moments and refusing to excuse them as slips. It means recognizing that benevolence and tokenism are still racism, just brewed with better marketing. Most of all, it means understanding that this work is continual. The system keeps handing out new bags, replenishing the pantry. Dumping the tea once is not enough. You must refuse the recipe altogether.
Don’t Just Sip, Dump the Tea
Racism has always been a drink designed for white comfort. Zurara poured the first cup, and empires have been sipping ever since. Some drink it bitter, openly hostile, steeped in hatred. Others drink it sweet, with sugar and smiles, convinced they are doing good. But the recipe is the same, and the leaves are the same, and the function is the same: to dehumanize, to exploit, and to profit.
The question is not whether you have a bag. You do. The question is whether you will keep sipping politely, stirring with tokens, masking the taste with benevolence. Or whether you will dump the tea, tear open the bag, and begin the unending work of refusing the brew. Because until the leaves are gone, every cup will taste the same.
