For Whites Only

I remembered this morning, in disturbing detail, listening to a group of white college students, in 1970, singing “Colored Spade” from the musical “Hair” at the top of their lungs and giggling because it gave them permission to say racist epithets. 

I know white people are more racist than they’re willing to admit.  I know this because I’m white.  You see, when I’m in the room with only white people, they say things about Black people that they wouldn’t say if Black people were in the room.

I’ve never been in a group that was strictly white and when the subject of race came up that someone did not say something derogatory about Black people.  The least racist was, “I don’t feel sorry for them because…”

I’ve heard the jokes, the derogatory names, and the contrived reasons “Black people get what they deserve.”  I’ve listened ad nauseam to the too-quick assumptions that if a Black person was hurt that they “undoubtedly did something to bring that harm on themselves.”

I’ve heard the “nacho cheese” joke, the “Polack marrying the nigger” joke, the “impotent” joke, and witnessed countless Amos and Andy style impersonations.  When I objected,  I’ve been told, far more often than not, that I had no sense of humor—“It’s only a joke.”

I remember being cautioned as a child for holding coins in my mouth because “a nigger might have touched that.”

I heard a woman object to a Black woman in a Zest commercial who said “I don’t use soap, and I bet I’m cleaner than you.”  That white woman said, “There’s no way that nigger is cleaner than me.”

I heard a relative tell me to stare at an interracial couple in the car behind us, “They deserve to be stared at!”

I heard a preacher’s wife tell me interracial relationships were “sick.”  I heard an esteemed Christian elder in my church say the week after Martin Luther King was murdered, “That nigger got a better funeral than Christ.”

I heard a relative at the planning of my grandmother’s funeral ask about my bi-racial cousins, “Are the nigger babies going to be there too?”

I remember a sister giggling when she left a family gathering and announcing how she was “heading to Angular Street (Burlington’s Black neighborhood) to do some coon hunting.” 

I remember hearing endless griping about how Black people kept wages low, because “those niggers will work for anything.”

I remember hearing a man say, the morning after Obama was elected, "That nigger isn't my president."  He said that loudly at the breakfast buffet at the motel where I was staying.

Some of my memories are from the past.  (What memories aren’t from the past?)  But it hasn’t changed so much, not really. 

There is a sign now in my city’s buses that lists the rule “Don’t use the “n” word,” because, well, it’s been a problem.

Just like week, a pizza delivery person told me she didn’t like that Black people had been hired. “I’m not racist,” she said, “I’m just not comfortable around Black people.”

I’ll repeat what I said to her.

I grew up poor and working class, so I know that my people have been brainwashed by rich white people to believe that the Black man who’ll steal their job is their enemy.  I know how enduring the endless class epithets of poor people being stupid, lazy, and worthless, leads some to believe that “at least” they’re better than someone out there.

I’m more patient with the racism among poor and working class people because of this.  (Also, I’m related to some of these people.)  I try to be gentler because I need for them to see we share a common enemy: the wealthy class who pits us against one another to control us and keep us all subservient to them.  I try to tell them, “It’s wrong!  It’s bloody, deadly, ridiculously, masochistically wrong.  And until we get that piece (and more), our lives will never improve.  Ever.”

It’s also true, that many poor and working class people agree with me.  In nearly every situation of racism in an underclass gathering, one of them will have my back if I object.  Things can get pretty lively after that, but when I’m with more than five poor white people, I’m rarely alone.

That’s how poor and working class people are different.  I’ve never been a group of only affluent white people when I wasn’t alone in objecting.  Everyone else remained silent.  Oh, later, some would agree with me.  Some would pat me on the back for “speaking up.”  Just as many, though, would reprimand me for “making people feel uncomfortable.

One of more mendacious memes spread willy-nilly in our culture is when a “racist” is portrayed as a “hick” in a hard hat.  Poor people don’t have that kind of power.  They can be as ignorant as licking a frozen pipe, but they are not the Master.  The masters of racism sit in board rooms in $2000-dollar designer suit.  That’s the image that should be in those memes.

It’s not simply that I’ve seen racism no less among affluent white people.  It is, however, more threatening and dangerous.  These white people have power to hire, fire, and set policy.

Their racism has no oppressive circumstance.  They’re just aggrandizing another privilege in their already too privileged lives.  They seek to buttress their sense of social superiority.

I watched a university faculty member become indignant and offended (“I can’t be racist.  I married a woman from the Middle East!”) because a Black student objected to being told by that professor, “Buckwheat say ‘O-tay!’” every time he answered a question correctly in class.

I heard faculty endlessly claim that the reason there weren’t Black people on university faculty was because “they’re just not as good.”

I had a white, male, singer in a university opera--in spitting anger--accuse me of “kissing the ass of that Black bitch” because he thought I gave an African American singer more attention than I gave him.

There was never a single faculty search during the 17 years I worked at the University of Iowa School of Music that I didn’t hear some white, male, faculty member gripe, “Affirmative Action is going to make us hire some Black or Puerto Rican lesbian.”  

I remember--40 years after MLK’s death--listening to a professional white woman explain to me the “difference between African Americans and niggers.”

Regardless of class, I have seen and continue to see racism so often in groups of white people that I’ve even wondered—though I know this is not true—if Black people know just how bad racism is.

The best evidence of our reluctance to look at racism may be illustrated by how perturbed white people can get when others want to talk about racism.  When something is really healed, it doesn’t bother people to talk about it.  It’s not talking about racism that separates people of a different race.  It’s when we refuse to talk, or discourage talking about it, that leaves us keeping each other at least at an arm’s length.  We white people might want to be more interested in learning if our words, thoughts, and actions exacerbate racism than our hurt feelings that someone might think we’re racist. 

I’ve done this.  Yeah, it really stings when someone thinks I’m racist.  But I lived through it, and I became a better person by listening.  It’s not about me, and it’s not about you.  We’ll never be the experts on when something is racist or not.  We’re white.  If you’re against racism, and I believe most white people at least want to be.  Let’s acknowledge the racism still present in our culture.  Let’s work together to end the cruel and bloody legacy of slavery and all of its tropes.

There is not a single epithet in the song “Colored Spade” that I’ve not heard come from a white person’s lips with derogatory intention from every white socio-economic class, and I still do.

So, please don’t try to tell me that racism isn’t so bad in the United States.  I know better.  I’m white.