by Mona Shaw
Note: I have friends (decent white men all) who are troubled by a college course titled, "The Problem with Whiteness." They believe the title is "race-baiting" and discriminating against white people on the basis of race. This is my response.
Fred (not his real name) says he’s not
comparing apples and oranges. He insists
there is a moral and actual equivalent between a white man robbed by a
Black thinking all Black men are criminals, and a person of color thinking all
white people are racist. I.e. he says one is as bad as the other. That, frankly,
blows my mind out of the stratosphere.
First, let me point
out, there is empirical data that shows Black men are far less likely to rob
someone than white men. So, the only
reason for that assumption can be racism.
(That, and the fact that Hollywood, etc. have so prolifically portrayed
the criminal as Black and more recently middle-eastern).
On the other hand, people of
color have endured more than 400 years of abject torture, persecution, and
oppression on U.S. soil. They have
endured not just wage slavery, but actual chattel slavery, been slaughtered and
forced onto reservations, covered in Small Pox blankets, kidnapped, beaten, and
murdered to this day for simply not being white. After 250 years of chattel slavery (which
really didn’t end until 1945), they’ve been though cross-burnings, churches bombed, lynching, Jim
Crow, their children kidnapped, forced sterilization, job discrimination (which
didn’t become illegal until the 1970s), police murder and brutality, mass
incarceration, and medical experiments that would make a Nazi wince. (E.g. the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, in which Black men were intentionally
infected with syphilis to study treatment of the disease. The study was conducted without the benefit of patients'
informed consent and didn’t end until I was 21-years-old.) Even in 2015, you can be at a prayer meeting in church and have someone walk in shoot you dead just because you are Black. The reason we have Black Lives Matter is that
too damned many still don’t believe that black lives matter.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but let’s talk about the “good”
white people. Those who believe racism
is wrong, those who agree there is still white supremacy out there. (Both
assumptions leave me responding, “Duh,” by the way.)
White people who perpetuate racism aren’t only those who see
people of color as inferior or wish them ill.
White people who perpetuate racism aren’t only those who see
people of color as inferior or wish them ill.
White people who perpetuate racism aren’t only those who see
people of color as inferior or wish them ill.
(I repeated this on purpose.)
Now there have been a few white people who have put their
bodies on the line to resist the madness of racism, embarrassingly few, but
there have been some. From the early
abolitionists to the Quakers who ran the Underground Railroad, to voter
registers and marchers in the 1960s. White
people, too, have stood up and even lost their lives trying to change things. I pray every day to be more like these white
people.
But the clear majority of white people did nothing. We watched it happen and did nothing. We returned slaves to their masters, because that
was the law. We called the Freedom
Riders “trouble makers” who were hurting their cause. We put up with segregated housing and schools
and never challenged it any meaningful way.
Even most of the “non-racist” white people didn’t like Martin Luther
King, Jr. until he was murdered. He was “too
radical” and going about it the wrong way.
He hated white people. Yeah, a
lot of “good” people said that. You didn’t
see most “good” white people at anything resembling a civil rights march.
Even though the evidence is clear, many “good” people doubt
there is racism in incarceration and want more proof. (There is a ton of proof, if people care to
read it.) Few of us go to Ferguson or
Standing Rock or help others go. I can
probably count on both hands the number of people I know who’ve ever bothered
to even write their legislators about any of this.
We don’t quit our jobs when a boss says something
racist. We rarely even confront that
boss, except behind his/her back. We
laugh at racist jokes because we “don’t really mean anything by that,” and
almost never challenge those jokes. We
drive on roads, ride on trains, and walking through buildings (include the
White House) built by slaves and let that fact sink into our souls. We eat a melon picked by Latinos paid a $1.00/hour
and never give that a thought.
Only a tiny minority of us even have several people close to
us who are not white. Talking to your
co-worker or being pleasant to store clerk you see most days doesn’t
count. A close friend is someone you’re
most apt to go to the movies with, someone you celebrate holidays with, someone
who’s slept at your house and you’ve slept at theirs. Someone you know will
want to say something at your funeral.
That’s the problem with whiteness. We think we can know about racism by our “gut.” We want people of color to act as if there is
a level playing field, when there clearly is not. We say the damnedest, dumbest things like “Why
can they say the “n” word, but I can’t.” Or, "I never owned any slaves."
We feel little to no obligation to educate ourselves about
it. We can’t even seriously ask the
question, “Why do people of color see this differently?” What’s our theory about that? Is every person of color (or white people who
agree with them) only seeking attention, trying to get something for nothing,
trying to divide us, or playing victim?
Is that your theory? Because that’s
more than a little wacky. What would be
the point of any of that? Are we
projecting, perhaps?
We get pissed at people of color when they don’t teach us,
and we get pissed at them when they try.
We have the arrogance to criticize how, where, and or when the say it. We approach the issue like consumers, “Give us
a list, and let us decide what we like.”
When we do on rare occasion show up at a resistance effort, we think we
have the right to tell the affected group how to do it. And when we create movies about racism, we
always have some white savior who saves the day. “Gone with the Wind” was a patently racist
movie, some of us are surprised that Black people don’t like it, because Mammy
was so cool. Pro-tip: To the tiny degree that they have, people of
color won own their rights, white people didn’t do it for them. It's a good thing to learn this.
So, when a person of color thinks I’m racist (it does
happen), I don’t say, “How dare you?” I
say, “I don’t blame you.” or "Why wouldn't you?" Because there
more than likely was something racist in something I said or did. Of course, that would never be my
intent. With every fiber of my being I
want everything I do to resist racism not perpetuate it. But, my intentions (while I think they
matter) aren’t nearly as important as my impact. And, I’m white. I was raised in white culture and exposed to
a plethora of racism. I’m not that
special. There’s simply no reason for me
to believe that none of that affected my thinking, assumptions, or perceptions,
not to mention my lack of sensitivity about how something I may say or do
affects others. Rather than be offended, I have learned to be grateful for
having this brought to my attention.
The problem with whiteness is that white people don’t see
they’ve been spared the ravages of racism inflicted upon people of color. They refuse to see the obvious privilege in
that and take it for granted. They, outrageously, try to equate some social
slight or misunderstanding with the terror of being a person of color in American
culture. It's hard to see racism when you're white, and not seeing the problem with
whiteness is the problem with whiteness.
P.S. Jesus wasn't white. I'm pretty sure he saw the problem with whiteness.
