If you're white, you're racist.
If you're like me and you read that or hear it, what's the first thing that goes through your mind? Anger? 'Oh fuck you...' Is it surprise? "Whoa... what the hell man?" How about defensiveness. "Not if I can help it. Not that I know of." Or maybe dismissively vague. "Well everyone is a little, right?"
There's an article in the Atlantic concerning the role of race and the current Administration. It's a long article to listen to or read (you have both options), but it's engaging and beautifully written. It's the first article in a long time that I've really felt left me understanding the deeper framework under which we're struggling in our politics and social battles today.
Let me digress...
One of the hardest things in my life has been coming to terms with how much of who I am and how I am that has nothing to do with my conscious choices. Sure, I made conscious choices along the way but the influences that powered into those decisions left the outcome pretty predictable. For every force in my life I can control there are a dozen I can't.
When I was young, I was never told that dancing was for girls or openly derided for being interested in it, but I still got plenty of messaging about what a faggot was and what made you look like one. Boys liking certain colors were laughed at or doing certain things were called pussies and fags and wimps and a host of other names. More subtle were the gentle guides towards 'boy things' by teachers and other boys as well as surprise, shock and suspicion if I peered over the line as 'girl things'. Consciously I made the choice not to dance and to play soccer and ski and swim - it wouldn't be until much later in college that I discovered how much I liked to dance. Even then, I found myself constantly feeling guilty as I made my way to ballroom class.
This is how structural pressures work. I didn't go into school thinking dancing would make me a faggot and my parents never communicated anything of the kind. But my culture did. My society did. The media and entertainment did. I was gently but firmly guided away from all things girly and towards what was appropriately masculine.
Likewise I was never told explicitly by anyone to mistrust a black man.
Like me, when our country was young, while it was told that slavery was wrong, it never really got any messaging that said racism had to go too. Built on long standing traditions, society and culture said sure, slavery's gone, but you, white man, you're better than the negro. You're more intelligent, sophisticated, capable.
This was because slavery wasn't just a law. Slavery was a culture. You had to have a lot more going on in your head than just legality in order to make another man your property. The country ripped itself to pieces over that legality, but only weakly struggled with the deep psychological justification we had to embrace to make those laws to begin with. Our families, our churches, our communities, our society, and our very understanding of human nature had to contribute in order to see slavery as the African's 'natural state' and white people as doing the right and holy thing by exerting superiority as our natural and benevolent role.
So no - many white Americans in our lifetime never consciously chose to be racist. But they are the children and heirs to a deeply racist tradition built into everything they see, eat, drink, sing, listen to and experienced through their lives. They don't consciously think about racism or about what they believe about race on a given day and if philosophically challenged they might wholeheartedly agree all people are equal - but they still got a little uncomfortable around blacks. They check the lock on their car door without thinking about it when they see one. They wonder if the black guy they're interviewing has a criminal record when the young white man they talked to in the last interview never caused the question to surface. They don't like seeing Obama in office and can't really place why. They feel encroached on when a black family moves in next door or they hear a Mexican family speaking Spanish to one another.
Like my choice not to dance as a child, the cultural message of racism is singing in their ears and pounding out a beat in their blood that they hear as clearly as I heard myself called a faggot for wanting to dance.
Nobody explicitly told me that would happen.
But I got the message loud and clear.
The opposition we saw to Obama - the personal, deep, singularly motivated desire to defeat everything he did no matter what it was or what it would achieve to the point where white men were willing to turn on their own ideas if that nigger in the oval office agreed with them and the almost unbelievable ability of Donald Trump to follow him despite claims of sexual assault, audio of him speaking about grabbing pussies, and calling his daughter a 'nice piece' just to name a very few things that would have utterly disqualified a candidate in years past -These things are not just hypocrisy. These things are the product of structural racism lashing out at the audacity of a black man to take high office in our country and disrupt that song that we've been hearing our whole lives. As revenge, white people across the country and across all economic groups rose up perhaps for different conscious reasons, but the unconscious one seems clear.
If a black man can - through exceptional gifts, talents, work, dedication and ability - manage to become president, then to balance the scales, the least competent and most flawed of rich white men can walk into that office without effort because even he surpasses the best black candidate available for that role.
The 'natural order' must be preserved.
While we talk about getting away from identity politics, this is, to a certain degree, ridiculous. Racial identity is at the very heart of our politics down to the bone. If we're going to have dialogue about living together as a nation, we have to stop hiding from a fundamental American truth: Racism is an American 'value'. The United States of America was founded on great things and great ideas, but it grew up deeply racist and that racism shaped us and guided us well past slavery. Our racism that runs far further through our history and social consciousness and is the dark shadow of values like liberty, justice, and individual freedom. Racism is a part of being American. It is central to who we are as a country. We can escape it's conscious expression and hard edges, but beating heart of that evil lies healthy and poisonous below the surface.
Like any deep psychological problem, solving it starts by admitting the problem exists.
If you're white and grew up in America, you're racist. You couldn't possibly avoid it. You've bene swimming in it your whole life. How you handle that reality and how you work to become better at seeing when it manifests and colors your view sand attitudes and behaviors? That's the question of whether you're healthy or sick, not the fact of your racism.
This political and social chaos doesn't end with Trump unless it ends with us; white people coming to terms with their legacy. The time has come to stop fighting the label and embrace the fact of it. Otherwise the chains that bound the slaves from which all this started will bind us forever.
If you're like me and you read that or hear it, what's the first thing that goes through your mind? Anger? 'Oh fuck you...' Is it surprise? "Whoa... what the hell man?" How about defensiveness. "Not if I can help it. Not that I know of." Or maybe dismissively vague. "Well everyone is a little, right?"
There's an article in the Atlantic concerning the role of race and the current Administration. It's a long article to listen to or read (you have both options), but it's engaging and beautifully written. It's the first article in a long time that I've really felt left me understanding the deeper framework under which we're struggling in our politics and social battles today.
Let me digress...
One of the hardest things in my life has been coming to terms with how much of who I am and how I am that has nothing to do with my conscious choices. Sure, I made conscious choices along the way but the influences that powered into those decisions left the outcome pretty predictable. For every force in my life I can control there are a dozen I can't.
When I was young, I was never told that dancing was for girls or openly derided for being interested in it, but I still got plenty of messaging about what a faggot was and what made you look like one. Boys liking certain colors were laughed at or doing certain things were called pussies and fags and wimps and a host of other names. More subtle were the gentle guides towards 'boy things' by teachers and other boys as well as surprise, shock and suspicion if I peered over the line as 'girl things'. Consciously I made the choice not to dance and to play soccer and ski and swim - it wouldn't be until much later in college that I discovered how much I liked to dance. Even then, I found myself constantly feeling guilty as I made my way to ballroom class.
This is how structural pressures work. I didn't go into school thinking dancing would make me a faggot and my parents never communicated anything of the kind. But my culture did. My society did. The media and entertainment did. I was gently but firmly guided away from all things girly and towards what was appropriately masculine.
Likewise I was never told explicitly by anyone to mistrust a black man.
Like me, when our country was young, while it was told that slavery was wrong, it never really got any messaging that said racism had to go too. Built on long standing traditions, society and culture said sure, slavery's gone, but you, white man, you're better than the negro. You're more intelligent, sophisticated, capable.
This was because slavery wasn't just a law. Slavery was a culture. You had to have a lot more going on in your head than just legality in order to make another man your property. The country ripped itself to pieces over that legality, but only weakly struggled with the deep psychological justification we had to embrace to make those laws to begin with. Our families, our churches, our communities, our society, and our very understanding of human nature had to contribute in order to see slavery as the African's 'natural state' and white people as doing the right and holy thing by exerting superiority as our natural and benevolent role.
- In 1865, slavery ended.
- Jim Crow laws would start in roughly 1890 and go well into the 1960's.
- The KKK would reach the height of it's power in the 1920's.
- In the 1940's we had a 'chief eugenicist' in the federal government justifying racism.
- In the 1970's, Nixon would champion the Southern Strategy later confirmed as structural racist appeal to American whites to form a voting bloc.
So no - many white Americans in our lifetime never consciously chose to be racist. But they are the children and heirs to a deeply racist tradition built into everything they see, eat, drink, sing, listen to and experienced through their lives. They don't consciously think about racism or about what they believe about race on a given day and if philosophically challenged they might wholeheartedly agree all people are equal - but they still got a little uncomfortable around blacks. They check the lock on their car door without thinking about it when they see one. They wonder if the black guy they're interviewing has a criminal record when the young white man they talked to in the last interview never caused the question to surface. They don't like seeing Obama in office and can't really place why. They feel encroached on when a black family moves in next door or they hear a Mexican family speaking Spanish to one another.
Like my choice not to dance as a child, the cultural message of racism is singing in their ears and pounding out a beat in their blood that they hear as clearly as I heard myself called a faggot for wanting to dance.
Nobody explicitly told me that would happen.
But I got the message loud and clear.
The opposition we saw to Obama - the personal, deep, singularly motivated desire to defeat everything he did no matter what it was or what it would achieve to the point where white men were willing to turn on their own ideas if that nigger in the oval office agreed with them and the almost unbelievable ability of Donald Trump to follow him despite claims of sexual assault, audio of him speaking about grabbing pussies, and calling his daughter a 'nice piece' just to name a very few things that would have utterly disqualified a candidate in years past -These things are not just hypocrisy. These things are the product of structural racism lashing out at the audacity of a black man to take high office in our country and disrupt that song that we've been hearing our whole lives. As revenge, white people across the country and across all economic groups rose up perhaps for different conscious reasons, but the unconscious one seems clear.
If a black man can - through exceptional gifts, talents, work, dedication and ability - manage to become president, then to balance the scales, the least competent and most flawed of rich white men can walk into that office without effort because even he surpasses the best black candidate available for that role.
The 'natural order' must be preserved.
While we talk about getting away from identity politics, this is, to a certain degree, ridiculous. Racial identity is at the very heart of our politics down to the bone. If we're going to have dialogue about living together as a nation, we have to stop hiding from a fundamental American truth: Racism is an American 'value'. The United States of America was founded on great things and great ideas, but it grew up deeply racist and that racism shaped us and guided us well past slavery. Our racism that runs far further through our history and social consciousness and is the dark shadow of values like liberty, justice, and individual freedom. Racism is a part of being American. It is central to who we are as a country. We can escape it's conscious expression and hard edges, but beating heart of that evil lies healthy and poisonous below the surface.
Like any deep psychological problem, solving it starts by admitting the problem exists.
If you're white and grew up in America, you're racist. You couldn't possibly avoid it. You've bene swimming in it your whole life. How you handle that reality and how you work to become better at seeing when it manifests and colors your view sand attitudes and behaviors? That's the question of whether you're healthy or sick, not the fact of your racism.
This political and social chaos doesn't end with Trump unless it ends with us; white people coming to terms with their legacy. The time has come to stop fighting the label and embrace the fact of it. Otherwise the chains that bound the slaves from which all this started will bind us forever.
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