Racelighting refers to the process whereby People of Color question their own thoughts and actions due to systematically delivered racialized messages that make them second guess their own lived experiences with
racism.
The term was developed by professors Luke Wood and Frank Harris III to represent a unique
type of
gaslighting experienced in the daily, normalized realities of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
When racelighted, People of Color may begin to question their interpretation of
reality and begin to wonder if they are being overly sensitive. Racelighting is most commonly seen when Black and other People of Color question being mistreated. The perpetrators’ passionate delivery of
innocence and claims of the
victim’s misinterpretation can be incredibly convincing.
A common example of this is when a Black student is told, with a sense of surprise, that they are “actually smart.” If this microaggression is brought to the attention of the person who said it, their most common response is to state, with extreme conviction, that the student “misunderstood,” “took their comments out of context,” or is “being too sensitive.” The level of conviction can lead to the student considering if they actually created the
problem in this interaction rather than the person who caused the infraction.
You need to tell them to stop racelighting you, it's not you, it's them!
I was just racelighted in that
meeting, I told them they were mistreating me and their response was to say that I'm taking their comments out of
context. That's not
true!
We have culture of racelighting in our organization, where we feel like we are losing our own minds and told we are misinterpreting our mistreatment.
