Member-only story
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
It’s the predictable defense for most after being accused of saying or doing something racist or, in some other way, prejudicial. As in, “It was just a joke!” Or, if not a joke, just an innocuous comment or action lacking deliberately biased motivation.
In response, many who write or speak about racism or do activist work tend to reply with an equally predictable refrain: Intent doesn’t matter, we insist. Impact is what matters. I’ve even written something to this effect myself, here:
And while I stand by the arguments in that piece, I’d like to clarify something. Because when we say intent doesn’t matter, we mean it — or at least I do — in a very specific sense. In another sense, it matters quite a bit. And confusing the two can create conflict where it need not exist, thereby turning some people off to an anti-racist analysis and eliding the difference between sociological judgment and a more personal type.
So first, what do we mean when we say that intent doesn’t matter?
The idea behind this maxim was always that injury is possible — and should be acknowledged when it occurs — regardless of what someone intended to happen. Frankly, it’s a pretty inarguable notion. A person hit by a vehicle while crossing the street could have been the victim of a driver who sought to mow them down. Alternately, they might have been hit because the driver was texting and thus negligent, though they didn’t mean to cause harm. In either case, however, injury has occurred. And no driver who ran over a pedestrian would think that saying “I didn’t mean to do it” erased the damage itself. Lack of intent might lessen their criminal and civil culpability, but it would not get them off the hook entirely, and it wouldn’t minimize the pain of the victim.
