Good White People,
In a pandemic minded world continually discussing tests, vaccines, and viral infection, here’s something to consider about race.
We white people often say “I am not a racist!” because we believe that “a racist” is an individual who is committed to causing harm to black and brown peoples. White hooded KKK images come to mind. Nazis. Southern supremacists with confederate flags and itchy trigger fingers. Or even your grandmother, who was a really good person, but didn’t want your mom to date “that colored boy” – poor lady, she just didn’t know any better…right?
Ibram X. Kendi describes how white people tend to see their culture’s bad apples – elementary school shooters, supremacists, rapists, violent offenders – as individuals who have gone wrong and not as representatives of white community as a whole, while they see the traits of the black community’s “bad apples” and apply it to the group: black men are violent, black women on welfare are lazy, black neighborhoods are crime ridden and dangerous. Imagine the outrage you would feel if a black person actually believed that you were more likely to shoot up a movie theater or local elementary school because your skin was white.
If there was a test for racism, be it nasal swab or blood draw, it would come back positive for every single member of the human race. We are born into racist structures. We are all carriers.
This must sink in if we are to do the work of helping dismantle injustice.
Scott Woods writes, “It’s like being born into air, you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class.”
The first step to changing anything about this world is realizing that the society you live in is infected with racism. If it wasn’t, Minneapolis wouldn’t have been lit on fire. Bookshelves wouldn’t be lined with beautiful, crushing memoirs by talented writers who chronicle the Black life lived fully amidst continual assaults, fears, and threats. If society wasn’t steeped in racism, Black men wouldn’t have a significantly higher chance of dying at the hands of police, and “Black schools” would be fine enough for you to want your children to go there.
Writing this last example, I thought of my very young children, of sending their tiny bodies on a bus to a school in a Black neighborhood, and the thought made me shudder.
This is a racist thought. I am writing about racism, and I am having racist thoughts. Regularly I must dismantle my belief in myself as a good white person.
A thought like this is the result of being steeped in a culture that has taught me to fear Black people, has taught me a belief that they are by their genetics more violent, less likely to protect children, more likely to fail at being educated because of their limited intelligence. What do I say about myself then? I am not intentionally harmful to persons of color. But can I honestly say that I am “not a racist” as I confront my own subconscious?
What I am is a product of racist culture. As with any systemic and incurable illness, the body has good days and bad days, but the virus is always there. Racism is a sickness that we all suffer. Racism replicates virally in our government’s pro-white policies where it has been thriving for centuries. Racism hangs in the air like droplets from a cough when we whites laugh at off-color jokes, or run away from an uncomfortable encounter with an “actually racist” white person, or succumb to our fear of Black bodies.
Thinking about schoolchildren reminds me of the level of fear, on a magnitude much more intense, that those first civil rights activist parents must have felt when they sent their beautiful babies off to integrate the schools in our country. Put yourself in those parents’ shoes for a moment. Sit with it.
(from Instagram, @rubybridgesofficial)
Those parents thought racial justice was THAT IMPORTANT. They found this country’s racial inequity THAT INTOLERABLE that they sent their babies, escorted by white men with guns, into the lion’s den of white schools so their grandchildren could have all the benefits of white society, be equal to whites.
Walk that path in your imagination. What have you ever had to believe in so strongly that you considered sacrificing your children’s safety so that their children could live freely and equally? Nothing. Welcome to white privilege.
So we are all infected with racism. There is no vaccine. The extremists among us are coughing their hate filled droplets into the eyeballs of everyone they can find. But the good white people, the carriers, are doing a most insidious damage. The politicians who won’t recognize that they are a product of racist society, and then make laws that continue to perpetuate inequality. The religious leaders who know every verse about the life of Jesus but miss the point of his parables. The neighbors that don’t know what to do about racism in their community, so they lurk behind their curtains and do nothing.
If we can analogize anything from our shared experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be this: racism is a virus infecting our whole society, and we have all tested positive.
Scott Woods finishes his quote, which is pictured below: “[Racism] 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.”
Resources:
Long Read (book) – How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Short Read (blog post) – Scott Woods is a Black librarian and writer in Columbus. I first encountered the above quote on Facebook, read the full post here on Scott’s blog.
Quick History Lesson – Ruby Bridges in 64 Parishes
Listen – Brené Brown interviews Ibram X. Kendi on her Unlocking Us podcast
Meditation Practice – For a sloppy, good-enough-for-now meditation session, set a five minute timer. Sit in silence, as much silence as you can find (foam ear plugs for me!), and breathe in: “Open my eyes.” Breathe out, becoming aware of your body’s breath and any slowing down that may be happening. When you realize your mind has gone somewhere else, which mine does every 12-20 seconds, come back to breathing in – “Open my eyes.” – and breathing out. Stop when the timer rings and thank your body for breathing for you even when you’re mentally distracted. This is meditation! You may feel awesome, you may feel nothing…that’s why it’s called practice. Now spend the week looking for ways your eyes are being opened to racial injustice.
