Let's talk about racism and white privilege.
If there is one positive to our current set of circumstances in our country, it may be that people are talking more about insidious racism and white privilege. "White privilege" was not a phrase in my sphere before the last two years. Not that it hadn't been a part of my life, but the concept was not on my radar because, well, because I have white privilege.
What is white privilege? Simply, it's the ease with which white people move through the world and attain power. That's a simple description of a complex issue. Read What is White Privilege, Really? or this piece by Frances E. Kendall, PhD, for more insight. Or, here is a simple video demonstration in the form of a race for $100, where some people get a head start.
I've written plenty in these posts about the increased expressions of overt racism and hate, but I've been understanding more about the subtle threads of racism and white privilege that run through all of us, and my eyes are opening.
This post will be woefully inadequate, and will probably illustrate how much I have yet to learn, but I am trying. I am genuinely trying to understand more so that I can be a part of the turn of the tides that we so desperately need. Bear with me while I take you on some of my journey.
A week ago, I attended a community event with my sister resister Patti called "Coffee with a Black Guy." It is what it sounds like. It was a group of more than 100 people, mostly white, some black, some Latinx, a few Asian, enjoying pastries and coffee, having a conversation with a black guy. It was an even mix of men and women, with ages ranging from college age to aging hippies. We were all there in an earnest desire to learn more and have some difficult discussions about race.
The conversation facilitator, James Joyce III, has led occasional meetings to just have a conversation. Questions were posed, experiences were shared, desires for action were expressed. It was inspiring and motivating. Mr. Joyce noted that for growth to occur, there must always be friction, just like a seedling must use great friction to break through the seed wall and make its way up through the rough soil. Friction and discomfort. Indeed, I have been feeling some as I think about myself and these issues.
One thing that Mr. Joyce said that struck me was that that not acknowledging white privilege is "willful ignorance." I was taken aback by that phrase, as I understand "willful ignorance" to mean stupidity and an unwillingness to learn, which is not me at all. In fact I've taken pride in my ability to be introspective and willing to do the hard work of growth in many areas of my life.
But for me, yes, it is absolutely ignorance, but willful ignorance, maybe not. I grew up in a white, upper middle class town, from the beginning, I was immersed in white privilege. I didn't know it was white privilege, but I did know that the town I grew up in was an anomaly of the area. The surrounding areas are financially depressed, Hispanic and Native American rural communities. I always had the sense that the rest of the state hated us on "the hill." I always felt hesitant to acknowledge to new friends in other parts of the state that I lived in my town. I was embarrassed. Today, in thinking about it, it hit me that this was my first inkling that the reason was white privilege. I was in a bubble. I never felt that there was outright racism there. But there was privilege. Lots of it.
After high school, I moved to another wealthy lily-white town. Another comfortable, privileged bubble. I didn't see outright racism. My friends and I didn't hate others of a different skin color or culture. I was liberal; in word and deed. I believed in equality through and through. But then, I didn't have a lot of friends of different colors. Some, not a lot.
My bristle at "willful ignorance" is perhaps part of my discomfort with the friction – my cognitive dissonance about my belief that I was truly not racist vs. the part of me that has subtly embraced my white privilege. I "knew" racism was out there, but it always seemed somewhere else and, thanks to the Civil Rights Act (thinking I), was on its way out. Like the white people that Scott Woods describes below, I never had to notice racism or truly care about it, having only lived surrounded by people who look like me. White privilege.
Racism is much more insidious. From Scott Woods:
The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.
More anecdotes of my personal ignorance and my developing understanding in the last couple of years:
The deep racism within the criminal justice system has shocked me.
I was truly awakened this year to blatant racism in the criminal justice system in this country when I heard the podcast In the Dark, Season Two, which followed the Curtis Flowers case. Curtis Flowers is a black man in Mississippi who was charged with the murder of four people at a furniture store that he had recently been fired from. The District Attorney has tried this man six times. Six times! Flowers has been on death row for 22 years. Just yesterday, as I was writing this piece, I learned that the United States Supreme Court overturned his last conviction based on the fact that the jury was systemically skewed to be white. The D.A. had rejected black jurors based on race, and the podcast laid out the facts quite elegantly. The way the D.A. handled juries was shocking and maddening, but I was shocked and angry about the whole system – top to bottom – that put Flowers in jail and on trial. It was institutionalized racism that worked to finger him as a suspect, intimidate and coerce black witnesses, as well as systematically reject black jurors, resulting in six trials ending with hung juries or convictions overturned on appeal. My shock was a manifestation of my white privilege. I've never been exposed to such racism. I haven't had to think about wrongful convictions or witness intimidation or all-white juries.
Season Three of Serial, also deepened my understanding of institutionalized racism. This podcast examines the criminal justice system in Cleveland, which is just one city of many U.S. cities. The stories were just outrageous and sickening. Yet the stories outlined just a few people in just one American city. Racism is absolutely rampant in our criminal justice system which I was "kinda sorta" aware of, but not truly concerned with, thanks to my white privilege. I was comfortably ignorant of it.
Another eye-opening piece is the Netflix documentary 13th which looks at the 13th Amendment and its codified re-definition of slavery in America. It's sobering and outrageous. When you are finished with it, watch the Netflix docudrama When They See Us, about the Central Park Five.
Watch and listen to these pieces. Absorb them, learn from them, get uncomfortable, get angry, and act.
I've had a couple of times when my own white privilege and ignorance confronted me in my face.
A Facebook friend who also happens to be a speech pathologist and a lover of language, posted a question about code-switching and a use of language. She pointedly posed the question to her friends of color, but I commented to the language use aspect. I was chastised, rightfully so, for asserting my white privilege in answering a question that was not directed to me. I was abashed and took it as a learning moment. Sometimes a white person needs to be quiet.
But sometimes a white person needs to stand up and say something.
Last year I visited Maui, and I had the chance to speak up but failed. Mostly because I didn't realize until after the encounter that it had been a racist rant. My daughter and I were on the road to Hana, admiring a waterfall near one of the notoriously narrow bridges on hairpin turns, when there was a traffic jam. The driver of a tour van stuck at another curve just up the road was honking frustratingly and ranting. Finally cars inched this way and that and people murmured about the frustrated van driver. When he approached the place where we were standing with several other people, he rolled down his window and *went off* on a guy just next to us, the only black person in the group viewing the waterfall. He never used the N-word, but he was foaming at the mouth and turning red, screaming for a while at the guy that he had better "move his fucking car - you're fucking parked illegally!" It was confusing to me because that man had been there before us, and how the heck could the van driver know who was the owner of the car supposedly blocking the road? Well, it was neither, as I found out. We walked out behind the man and his companion, and I realized that his car was not blocking the road. In fact, there was no car blocking the road! The black man's car was parked alongside the road, just like all the others who had stopped to enjoy the view. I realized then that the Australian driver had no basis; he simply singled out the one black person there. I felt ashamed that I hadn't spoken up. The black man himself had been calm and just said, "Keep driving, man." I wish I had recognized it and said something. Now, I am more aware and I will speak up next time.
White people, we have a responsibility to be advocates! We need to be allies.
I'm ashamed and uncomfortable admitting that it has taken fully 55 years of time on this planet to really start looking deeply and understanding more about the dangerous subtleties of racism. Am I as a white person entitled to feelings of discomfort and shame? I'm not the one who has suffered through my life. Is this "discomfort" racist in itself? Perhaps. This excellent essay from The New Yorker illustrates that I am not alone in my fretting. Many progressive white people express a "white fragility" when they are asked to face their own racism. In the end, though, emotions are neither right nor wrong. They just are. The after-effect of the emotion is what counts. Don't let your emotions keep you stuck; let them spur you toward action.
So let's act.
I've pointed here before to resources to use to combat hate, like this guide from the Southern Poverty Law Center. This is still important work, but I'm asking you to join me in digging deeper at the non-hateful threads of racism that are within each of us.
What I'm doing: reading, watching, learning, being outraged, donating, and committing to be an ally. What you can do: get uncomfortable, and also get outraged. Confront your ignorance, willful or otherwise, and acknowledge your white privilege. Recognize that "the civil rights era" wasn't 50 years ago. It's now. Join me in committing to be an ally. Have difficult conversations, be willing to stand up for things you didn't think you needed to. Just be the first.
Read this guide to find ways to combat your own racism. Talk to people of color, listen to them, challenge other white people, be willing to fix your mistakes.
When I get angry at the injustice, I donate to charities that work to help bring equality and justice, such as:
American Civil Liberties Union
Southern Poverty Law Center
Innocence Project
Fair Immigration Reform Movement
Black Lives Matter
NAACP
National Black Women's Justice Institute
(As always, please research any charity before donating money!)
And finally, because we have to laugh to keep from crying, here are Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock to give you more:
"You must be bold, brave, and courageous and find a way... to get in the way." – John Lewis
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