Dear white folks…
I often read and hear white people reacting defensively with regard to people of color speaking about their experiences within Eurocentric environments, and in referencing a generalized view of experiencing ‘white people’ as a social (and global) phenomenon. I see white authors and commentators venting their frustrations at being ‘lumped in’ with themes of white supremacy, or being identified as benefiting from white privilage. I read through the push-back and the denials of what is being told to them (by many, many people of color) — that it cannot possibly be accurate, or a fair representation. I hear claims of reverse racism, of bigotry, of well-you-are-doing-it-too-so-you-are-no-better-and-I-don’t-have-to-accept-what-you-are-saying… I hear the complaints loud and clear. White folks do not like to be judged by the color of their skin, or associated with the behavior of others within their racial and cultural group.
I’ll let the fucking irony of that ring into eternity…
You know, if you listen closely enough there is a whispered response that returns from the void… do… the… work… do… the… work…
White folks seemingly don’t consider themselves part of an overt-racial grouping — that is something that is either espoused by white-power type people (in an attempt to laud themselves above others), or it is something that pertains to other people, people of color. Race is something that has color or concepts of isolation and marginalization associated with it… being white is… well it is just ‘normal’. There is white, and then there is non-white.
That is a relatively
normal perspective for a predominately white Eurocentric system, I have commented elsewhere that in Japan being part of the dominant racial and cultural group is the norm. This is quite easy to understand. For some reason though the system (read the system of white privilege) bucks when invited to change. This is quite easy to understand — the system wishes to retain the structures of power and those vestiges are deeply rooted in racism.
White folks should not be threatened by an invitation to hear the experience of other groups, nor should they feel ‘put-upon’ by exhaustingly polite requests to assist in addressing the inherent and structural imbalances that exist within Eurocentric systems. I say ‘exhaustingly polite requests’ because even a simpleton’s understanding of race-history will adequately provide insight into how fucking ballistic white folks would be if the tables were turned. People of color deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for their collective efforts to manage the collective and ongoing shit given to them by systems that sustain white privilege.
People of color spend every day holding themselves together in a multitude of spaces that are afflicted by microagressions and overt discrimination, one that is endemic and pervasive. People of color spend every day living within a system that is geared to favor white folks over every other group.
That is not my fault, nor is it likely your fault, but being that we white folks are the primary beneficiaries and shareholders of this system it is our responsibility to become aware of it. It is our responsibility to examine it.People of color are talking to us white folk because we sit at the head of this system, we are being petitioned to help dismantle it — we are being asked to hear with humanity, because it is the inherent lack of humanity that perpetuated and sustained racist systems of power that oppress and harm people of color.
Do the work…
It might be useful when coming across a sentence that you find triggering (as a white person) to expand that statement out into your environment.
– for example: the statement ‘all white people do x / or all white people are x’
This likely triggers a response in you that you causes you to view it as implausible, giving rise to dismissals and minimization — but people of color are not saying literally all white folks, they are saying there are too many direct and indirect instances to name individually for each transgression experienced across their life-course.
White people (as a homogenous dominant cultural group) are complicit and responsible for the racism and systematic oppression that people of color face. It exists, we all know that it exists, and we all know that it is interwoven into our society. It is predominantly white folks (as the dominant cultural group) who are voting for policies and co-signing the status-quo… You think it isn’t? I petition you to re-frame anything that a person of color has said about white folks (that has caused you to prickle up) and ask yourself ‘how many white people do I know of who fit this description’ (self included). Try it.
Off the top of my head I can think of at least 6 white people who I know or have known in my life who have acted with a racist mindset and made excuses of youth or time-period or limited understanding. That is 6 people who are presently available to my conscious mind who immediately fit the bill — that isn’t including strangers I have experienced, famous people, or people in power etc. We can then extrapolate that across the population and gain vital insight into how the experience held by people of color, with regards to white prejudice, is justifiably wary and suspicious… because that is a consistent experience for people of color.
If you are a white person who cannot think of a person or experience that relates to this topic then chances are you are living so deeply inside your privilege that you are oblivious, indifferent, ignorant or a revisionist.
Now, I am not saying that all white folks are collectively engaged in racist acts on a daily basis — but ‘we’ do not need to be card carrying klan members to perpetuate or benefit from active racism and oppression toward people of color. Look to voter suppression, incarceration figures, police shootings, employment, wellness, life expectancy, housing etc. It is a systemic reality of our Eurocentric model. Waking up to that reality is the primary step to opening one’s eyes to how racism, bias, bigotry and oppression is readily-available to people of color on a daily basis.
Listening to people of color is opening one’s heart to understanding how the perpetuation of structural racism is impacting the wellness of our fellow humans. It is mind blowing to think that a person could look at the history of racism and oppression toward people of color within a system like the U.S.A. and not grasp the ever-present reality of that legacy. One would have to willfully reframe reality through an darkly-impressive lens of denial to fail that test.
When a white person comes to realize they supported, enacted or benefitted from racist systems they begin to move out of that stream of experience — they still observe it, or perhaps they simply become more aware of it existing, but they never transition into actually experiencing the victims side of it. This is where bias can creep in; an odd self-protecting bias that ‘good deeds and good thoughts’ erase the damage of racism and white supremacy. I hear and read plenty of white folks who state they are not racist yet do not engage in anti-racist work. In short white folks who hold an awareness of racism as a phenomenon often fail to effectively become an ally because they believe the work begins and ends with their own thought/action/behavior. They fail to turn against the system itself because we white folks have been deeply programmed to fall in line with the lie told to us by dominant paradigms like white privilege and patriarchy.
We white folks are programmed by the microaggressions toward people of color that are put out through media and cultural systems of power. We white folks are taught complicity, largely through fear and a narrative of distrust / disgust. We white folks are scared to stand up to the systems of power, so we turn an eye away — we watch ‘our side of the street’ but fail to petition and protest for actual systemic change. We fail because it seems too hard to challenge the core of white privilege, and the system has made it that way. We are scared, because we are victims of the same power-structures. We fail because we are afraid to challenge the racism that deeply lives within our society. We are afraid we will lose what we have, because we worked for what we have, and the system wants us to feel that way.
White people are more often than not guilty of speaking as if a change of mind some-how makes the past a moot-point — slavery was so long ago, the civil rights movement was a success… This is the lie sold to us by ideas of free markets and merit based success — that the availability of something is the same as accessibility. We are beginning to understand this with housing and healthcare, but not with race. We are still afraid.
White folks sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that if we appear to have leveled the playing field for our society, and we need not look at what underpins the structures. The system isn’t out to get us, we get to vote, we get to be part of it, it isn’t against us, it is just hard to get ahead, and I have to protect what I have got…
We are afraid. We are made to be afraid, and people of color… others… make a good scapegoat.
The layers run deeply within, and we (individually and collectively) clearly have a whole lot of work to do in promoting equality and fair access. We often behave as if we have eradicated racism as an imperative to be addressed within the world because it isn’t active in our lives — as if we are somehow attending to the systemic phenomena of racism with good thoughts or good-enough deeds. As if white-washed compassion and privilege based spirituality actually does something.
I see and read a lot of white folks trying to get a good and solid pass at moving away from racism. I see a lot of white folks saying they are not racist but still voting for racist policies, or permitting casual racism in their environment, or appropriating cultures in an attempt to feign allyship. I see a lot of white people sitting on their hands, saying ‘live and let live’ and ‘well I had it tough too’… people of color don’t get that pass, they get systematic stigmatization and a consistent reference to the dominant narrative that people of color (especially black and brown bodies) are inherently less than… less civilized, less trustworthy, less in control, less human etc. People of color don’t get to play with power and privilege in the same way that white folks do because there is an active force that holds them away from the centers of systemic power… and before you tell me that America had its first black president so what am I talking about… no it didn’t.
(*)America had its first bi-racial president who chooses to identify as black, but America only saw him as a black man and kicked up against it. I am not attempting to remove or minimize President Obama’s blackness, his time in office marked a seminal moment within American history but his presidency also uncovered the deep underbelly of institutional racism that is woven through the structures and systems of power. We now live in the shit-show of the pendulum swing against progression. We now live in the existing system forcing the return of power to white privilages.
It is our duty (as those who benefit from the current paradigm) to hear the voices from people of color, to validate them and to understand how racism and privilege manifests within our own communities, not to question the validity of that experience. When we truly listen to the narratives and experiences from people of color we are invited explore them through the lens of white dominant culture where we find layers and layers of systemic bigotry and racism that may come as an uncomfortable shock to us, but are a lived experience throughout the life-course of people of color.
So the work ahead of us is for all white people to engage in systemic change that begins with personal politics and does not give quarter or harbor to the structural inequalities that support and promote the dominant paradigm at the expense of others — we do that by reading and listening to the experiences of people who do not benefit as we do. That is where the work starts, and once you start it then the challenge is in dropping the defensiveness and in bringing other white folks into the work.
The work is in recognizing that while you cannot spend 24/7 actively engaged in dismantling systems of oppression that when at rest you are resting in a spectrum of privilege. The proof is all around you. It is of the upmost importance to never forget that reality.
— — - end
(*) I wanted to add an addition here (but preserve the original text). I have been accused of being racist in my summarization of president Obama’s identity. I would like to make it clear that I am making a reference to his own words and writing relating to his decision to identify as black, his comments on his bi-racial heritage, his commentary on what this meant to him during his youth and throughout his presidency, and the experiences he faced as the first black identifying president of the USA.
The part that reads: “ I am not attempting to remove or minimize President Obama’s blackness, his time in office marked a seminal moment within American history but his presidency also uncovered the deep underbelly of institutional racism that is woven through the structures and systems of power”.
— it might read better to remove the ‘but’ and replace it with a period, allowing the follow-on to exist as a statement alone. My intention is not trivialization of his identity, it is a comment on how the power and agency of his choice to identify as black is one that came face-to-face with the inherent racism and stratification within the U.S.. In short the system would not have permitted him to identify as anything other than black while using his blackness against him — he was criticized (through conspiracy and insult) for being black, while characterized as someone who ‘moved within whiteness’ (through language, education and prestige) with an intention of undermining white power. This was the consistent criticism against him by his opposition — that he would never be accepted, could never ‘be white’ not in heritage, thought, action or political standing. He could never be a man or president of merit. He must always be black — an anomoly within the lineage of presidents — and that blackness is seen through the lens of less-than. This is the racism that the first black president of the U.S. faced — a criticism that attempted to reduce the power and position of his office through the structural and bias that centers around white supremacy. White supremacy thrives on a dichotomy, an either or, a ‘normative’ narrative against that of ‘other’. I am not advocating for ‘color-blindness’, not at all. People of color taking pride and standing within their identity is of the upmost importance, it is their narrative to define and that action makes waves to dismantle the structures of white-supremacy. There is a catch-22 though, that racism thrives on the binary, but we must collectively push through that in order to discover what is on the other side. The challenge is in centering dialogue around race while challenging stereotypes and biases — that it doesn’t feed into scripts, rather that it re-writes them.
The presidency of Mr. Obama was a seminal moment for black America, it was a transitional moment for people of color and allies across the country (also too for the world), but it was a transactional moment for the system of white-privilege — one that was seen as a ‘power-grab’ and the system bucked against it. The twice elected black presidency of America did not level the playing field, it further exposed the underbelly of racism. The Obama presidency holds great power though, because it identifies that the narrative of possibility for people of color in the U.S. exists in more than thought, while also highlighting how deeply engrained the challenges (from white structural power) are to that narrative. The white-centric system stands at odds with the population, this was proven, twice — but structural racism persists through and past votes of the population, hence the call to continue dismantling it. Racism wasn’t eradicated when president Obama took office, and this was the point Within my piece. Racism as a power structure is dismantled by continuing to check and challenge its roots, by voting more people of color into office and by exposing discriminating policies that marginalize minority groups.
President Obama empowered himself in identifying as black, he acknowledged his bi-racial heritage, referenced his experiences, and through his own agency became the first black president of America. Had he decided to identify as white he would not have been permitted to do so by the structures of power, prejudice, racial bias, and white supremacy. That is the point. The structures of racism are so engrained in the U.S. that the complexity of his identity was used against him. The structure attempted to reduce his identity to align with the prejudice against blackness, not to see it for what it actually was — a seminal and triumphant moment in the history of a country that is deeply troubled by issues of race.
I acknowledge that how I write about this appears problematic: I am stating that his presidency was both the first black president and also the first bi-racial presidency. That appears contradictory. I don’t really know how to correct that, since I feel it is necessary to acknowledge the power of the first black president while also identifying that the structural-racism would not permit him to be anything other than black. I understand that he chooses to identify as black, I am not challenging or commenting on that — I am attempting to expose how white-supremacy in the U.S. might have loaded that choice and pushed back aghast when he took office because the asinine faux-relationship between color and character continues to be at the forefront of the racist narrative in America.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a wonderful article on his presidency, race, heritage and white-centered power in America.
Further reading: