Is this racism? What is it?

I was in a rush this morning, waiting for the underground train. A lady came up to me and asked me for directions. I looked at my map and told her "take the black line", which is the correct route. She said: "what!?", as if she was angry or didn't understand. Although it's called the... show more I was in a rush this morning, waiting for the underground train. A lady came up to me and asked me for directions. I looked at my map and told her "take the black line", which is the correct route. She said: "what!?", as if she was angry or didn't understand. Although it's called the Northern Line, I called it the black line because I can't often remember the names of things when I'm in a rush.

Afterwards, I thought: "Oh God, it sounds like I was drawing attention to the fact she is black" (the lady happened to be black African), and maybe her surprised response was because of that. But all I was doing was describing the subway line colour, which is black (compared to blue or red). I started to worry that perhaps my subconscious mind had pushed this of my mouth, and I felt sick with myself.

I get severe paranoia that my evil subconscious is controlling me.

Now, all this sounds silly but in the UK we live in a culture that has developed an atmosphere of "politically correctness", which I think is a positive adaptation to the legacy of colonialism and the growth of multiculturalism. It's a cultural manifestation, a self-correction of wrongdoing and racism. Additionally, the contents of an individual's thoughts are a function of a culture, the semiotic and normative system in which one grows up that structures the contents of the mind and relationships.

The human subject finds themselves interpolated in this network of meaning. I venture that this subjectivity is not "neutral", a stance that is independent of all thought and meaning - we are embedded within it - this populates the unconscious, and it's a political unconscious if you like, it holds within it the residues of the past, the suffering the pain and cruelty.

Now the "logic" of political correctness as as follows: the individual makes a conscious effort to reject discriminatory evaluations of others that are based on prejudices that were present previously in that society. Intrinsic to this logic: it depends on the prejudiced thought being already present in awareness for its rejection to happen (otherwise it's not political correctness). [the rejection presupposes awareness of the thought]

In my beliefs, racism has no place. But there is this compensatory aspect that happens whereby I worry that (as a white British person) I might ever express a prejudice. By the logic of the self-fulfilling prophesy I end up somehow producing a "symptom" of this worry, which belies my desire to suppress it.

Either my mind (the product of cultural transference) produced this word out of its programmed cultural "database" of reactions, or by my own self-fulfilling prophesy it emerged. Or, I'm just thinking too much about this, and it was all just a coincidence, and I constant look for ways to beat myself up.

I don't want to be sullied by attitudes that I don't identify with, but I'm worried that unconsciously I'm determined by cultural influences. I want to be a clear consciousness, yet sometimes I come out with stuff that makes me sick with myself. It's not me, it's a replication of my step-father, my family, people I see. I don't want it in my head. I feel like a puppet. I want to be just me.

I "feel" I am a bad person, a homophobe, a racist, a closet homosexual, a misogynist, a callous bastard, a paedophile, a pervert. But I'm not a bad person, all my concrete actions and beliefs prove that I'm none of these. What is this part of me that wants to condemn me? Why do I do this to myself?

Destroy the above arguments, please.

Am I being crazy?
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