White People, We Need to be Responsible for Our Own Racism by Steven Singer

Hey, White people.

We need to talk.

You may be watching all these protests and demonstrations lately and be wondering what they have to do with you.

After all, you didn’t kill George Floyd. You didn’t put up a Confederate statue. You didn’t call the police on a Black person just because he was being Black.

At least, I hope you didn’t.

But all this strife and unrest really does have a lot to do with you.
Not because of anything you did necessarily, but because of who you are – your role in society.

Now don’t get all defensive on me.

I’m not saying you should feel guilty for things that you had no control over, don’t approve of or possibly didn’t even know happened.

As James Baldwin said:

“I’m not interested in anybody’s guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason…”

That’s really the point – responsibility.

You have responsibilities just by being a White citizen of the United States. I have those same obligations.

And it’s high time we talked about exactly what those commitments are and how we can meet them.

One of those responsibilities is consciousness.

We can’t be so ignorant of racism and White supremacy anymore.

I know everyone is different and some people know more about these things than others. However, you have to admit that just being a White person, you probably don’t know nearly as much about them as any random Black person.

After all, Black folks deal with this every day. You and I, we’re just visiting.

 
And, heck, maybe we don’t know much about them.

Maybe the schools should have taught us more. Maybe movies and TV and media should have prepared us better.

But they didn’t.

So we need to remedy that ignorance.

That means reading up on the subject – reading a book like “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander or “How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi, or “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

There are also some great films like “13th” and “When They See Us” by Ava Duvernay, “Do the Right Thing” by Spike Lee or “I Am Not Your Negro” by Raoul Peck.

Now don’t get me wrong.

I’m not saying this like I know everything there is about the subject. I need to crack open some more books, watch some more movies and learn more, too.

There’s always more to learn.

The fact that so many white people found out about the Tulsa Massacre from the HBO’s series “Watchmen” proves that, as does the fact that many of us learned about Juneteenth only because President Trump suggested having one of his hate-filled MAGA rallies in Tulsa on that date.

Knowledge is power. So let’s get some.

Second, we need to understand that racism is first and foremost a system.

It is a built-in component of almost every social structure, government policy, historical narrative and media message in this country.

Think about what that means.

We don’t need racists to have racism.

The system, itself, is enough.

Let’s say we had a ray gun that could eliminate racism. You shoot people with this zap gun and POOF they’re no longer racist.

So we take the gun to space and hit everyone in the US with it. All racist attitudes immediately disappear. Not a single person in the entire country is racist.

It wouldn’t matter.

All of our systems are still racist.

The way our government works, the legal system, law enforcement, housing, the tax code, the schools – everything.

You don’t need a single racist person. The system, itself, perpetuates the ideology by treating people of color unfairly and pretending that this injustice is exactly the opposite, and – what’s worse – our unquestioning acceptance of that system makes it invisible.

That gives us another responsibility.

We have to actively change the system.

To go back to Baldwin:

“I’m an American whether I like it or not and I’ve got to take responsibility for it, though it’s not my doing. What can you do about it except accept that, and then you protest it with all your strength. I’m not responsible for Vietnam, but I had to take responsibility for it, at least to the extent of opposing my government’s role in Vietnam.”

So it is our responsibility to recognize where our systems are racist and to do everything we can to change them.

We need to fully integrate our schools, for instance. We need to reform our criminal justice system so that Black people are not arrested and convicted at higher rates than White people who commit the same crimes. We need to stop police or others from killing unarmed Black people and getting away with it. We need to stop denigrating Black people for the “crime” of having Black-sounding names.

This is the work of social justice. It requires us to get involved in organizations like Black Lives Matter, Journey for Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

It requires us to think about which policies we support and which politicians we can support at the polls.

But that’s not all.

We have one more great responsibility to meet.

We can’t just understand racism and fight systems of oppression. We have to fight the most insidious proponent of White supremacy.

And it is us.

These systems that create an unjust society also created you and me.

So to a greater or lesser degree they have shaped our minds, our conceptions, our norms, our values.

If we’re being honest, we have to admit that includes some racism.

We didn’t ask for it, but racist ideas have seeped into our consciousnesses.

And most of the time we may not even be aware they’re there.

I know I’m not.

Let me give you an example.

Several years ago my wife and I won free tickets to an opera recital. We like that sort of thing so we dressed in our finest and went to the concert hall to enjoy some culture.

The soprano was a local girl I’d never heard of (I’m sorry. I can’t remember her name), but she was wonderful. She was also Black.

And the Black community was out in force to support her. The concert hall was filled with mostly Black faces above suits and Sunday dresses.

It was the first time I could remember not being in the majority, and it made me uncomfortable.

I knew it was stupid. The other people there at the concert were no danger. No one was going to take their suit jacket off to jump a couple of White people who came to hear Puccini and Verdi.

But I felt some fear in my gut.

It wasn’t rational. I guess all those nightly news reports disproportionately megaphoning Black crime while ignoring that committed by White folks had an effect on me. I didn’t ask to be taught that fear. I didn’t want it. I recognized it as dumb and bigoted.

I couldn’t control the way I felt. But I could control the way I reacted.

I made an effort to talk with those around us and be as friendly as possible. And for their part these folks were entirely warm, cordial and inviting.

That’s what I’m talking about.

We, White people, have to take a step beyond learning about racism and acting against it. We have to do some soul searching and locate it within ourselves.

It’s probably there.

You can’t grow up in America without having it grow inside you like an alien pathogen.

We are sick with it – some people more than others – but all of us White folks are infected.

Maybe that doesn’t bother you.

It bothers me.

I don’t want it.

I don’t want these stupid ideas inside my head. And, yes, I don’t want the privileges I get just because of my pigmentation.

If I succeed in this life, let it be because I did something worthy of success. Don’t let it be just because of the lack of melanin in my skin.

Everyone deserves to be treated fairly.

Black people even more so because they are so often not treated that way.

As Baldwin said:

“We are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly.”

I bring this up not to judge you.

Brother, I’ve never met you. Sister, I don’t know you.

I’m on my own parallel journey.

There is only one person you have to be accountable to – and that is yourself.

Can you live with yourself if you have not taken these few steps?

If you believe in justice, don’t you have a responsibility to be so in all your dealings with other people?

Black people are people.

Black lives matter.

White people like us have responsibilities to our brothers and sisters of color.

Let’s meet them.