I usually work on a blog post all week, and before I started writing last Sunday, I decided to do my mental health a favor and delete the social media and news apps from my phone. On Friday, I logged in to Facebook for the first time in several days, posted my link with a little something clever, and then started to idly scroll through the feed and let my mental health relapse.
And quickly I saw that my last post was, uh…more than a little tone deaf.
I don’t think the world particularly needs my self-care advice at the moment. I had not, as they say, read the room. I wasn’t reading any rooms. I was reading Eckhart Tolle, curled up on the couch of my suburban home, enjoying the white privilege of not knowing anti-racism protests were erupting all over the United States.
Well my dear twelve followers, it’s past time to break my white silence.
I’m working my way through Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad, and something I’m coming to understand is that the title up there is problematic. For white people, saying “I’m not a racist” creates one of those dichotomies I wrote about in my last post. If the only two options are that you’re either racist or you’re not, obviously every person interested in being accepted by the rest of society is going to choose “not.”
Some dichotomies are false, though.
Remember how humans are complicated? Well, the way we interact with race, especially but not exclusively in America, is no exception. I know you don’t have a swastika tattooed on your head. I know you would never tell a racist joke or hopefully even laugh at a racist joke. Those are the very uncomplicated levels of being Not Racist, and for many of us, that’s been enough to identify as such.
We need to start talking more honestly about the complicated stuff, though, about the less visible parts of our lives that actually land us in a very fuzzy—and very uncomfortable—spot on the Likert scale of You’re Either a Racist Or You’re Not.
The thing is, fellow white people, that you and I have absorbed racism from birth, because our country is institutionally racist, just as it is institutionally patriarchal. I’m a card-carrying feminist, but I’ve still internalized toxic messages about women’s roles that I’ve had to work to undo, and will probably have to continue to work all my life to undo. I don’t like patriarchy. I think it sucks, actually. Thinking that, however, doesn’t change the fact that I’ve soaked it into the deepest parts of my psyche for the last 36 years, and that it has affected choices I’ve made and will continue to make in my life.
You don’t like racism. Neither do I! We’d all happily put buttons on our Fjällräven backpacks that say RACISM SUCKS! But again, that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve been swimming in it, and we should probably come with an advisory label from the EPA because of it. This includes me, a pretty damn liberal woman you know, who has taken lots of multicultural education classes, reads books about civil rights leaders to her kids, and based on that flimsy criteria would have blissfully bubbled in Not Racist on the white people identification Scantron a few years ago.
But that would not have been true. I’m not Not Racist. None of us are.
This does not make you or me a bad person. It makes you a person who was raised in a country that has depended on structural racism since its inception, and if you are white, a person who has benefitted, probably in ways you aren’t fully aware of, from that arrangement.
If that sounds hurtful or untrue, I would suggest, with love, doing some reading coupled with some (likely unsettling) self-examination. And then we can talk about it, as two people stumbling through this together.
This is a massive, complicated topic on which some black writers and activists and writers and activists of color have incredibly, almost unimaginably, been willing to do the introductory work for us (TO A POINT. They laid down the pavers. We have to fill in the sand, do all the other things that I don’t understand to make a path, and then walk on the damn thing. And then add more pavers, and more pavers, and explain what we’re doing to other white people who are still trampling the grass). Their voices matter a lot more than mine here, and I’m going to point you to them if you are, like me, interested in starting an ongoing, lifelong racism detox that we will never be done with.
This is a short and VERY INCOMPLETE list of resources, but they are texts I can recommend from my own reading and listening.
- Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad is eye-opening. It’s a workbook specifically for white people to unpack their internalized racism.
- The Code Switch podcast from NPR has been huge in helping me realize how race affects nearly every aspect of American life. Listen to any episode, or all of them.
- Feminism has historically been centered around the needs of white women. If you want to learn more about that (and probably feel pretty convicted as a white feminist), read Rachel Cargle’s article When Feminism is White Supremacy in Heels. She is also an important follow on Instagram @rachel.cargle
- If you’re interested in the psychology of unconscious bias (or, What do you mean I’m a racist??), listen to this Hidden Brain episode.
- This last one is by a white author, but I think that perspective makes this a very accessible introductory text for other white people. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh was the first article I ever read on this topic, in an undergraduate class, and if you’re not familiar with the term “white privilege” or if you need some concrete examples of it, start here.
