Readers,
I am a “good” White woman.
I have Black friends. I don’t use racist language. I entertain the conversation of race when it comes up, but otherwise avoid the conversation entirely because I am “colorblind.” I recognize my privilege…not entirely because to fully recognize privilege I would have to fully understand oppression which I don’t, but I am otherwise aware that my privilege exists. I treat Black people the same as I treat White people (I think at least). I have attended primarily Black churches and eaten at primarily Black events and volunteered with organizations that serve impoverished primarily Black children and I have laughed with and loved and respected and celebrated Black people. I have defended Black people against other White people who have said openly racist things.
This makes me a “good” White woman.
But this does not make me a truthful White woman, nor does it make me a Black alliance.
And that is the problem.
Many of us have been passively “good” while failing to be honest, and while failing to listen to Black people when they tell us they can’t breathe. We have not talked about what whiteness means, or why we give it so much meaning that we view the problems of Black people separate from ourselves. We have (maybe) talked about Black issues, but have likely done so without talking about our own role in all dynamic forms of inequality.
We have believed our goodness is good enough.
By doing so we have not been addressing the hard truths, and these alone are what have the power to change racism within our society.
In my deepest corners…the ones I want people to know nothing about, I am a dishonest White woman with racist tendencies. In this area of my life at least. It’s a sentence I truly hate to type out.
I don’t enjoy talking about race related issues because I am constantly afraid I am going to say the wrong thing and be labelled a racist (either by a Black person or by a righteous White person), and I don’t want to be racist. By doing this, I fail to give myself the opportunity to grow. I don’t read about Black issues because Black oppression doesn’t directly affect me. Tragically and admittedly, those issues seemed completely unrelated to me. I don’t worry about oversaturation of cops in primarily Black communities or going to jail because it’s not occurring in my direct line of sight. My upbringing has always been in primarily White neighborhoods, I can count on one hand how many Black children I attended elementary school with, and my bookshelf is filled with the works of primarily White authors. I know I have privilege, but I have no idea how to move aside from my privilege to let other people experience the same even though I want them to have it and know they deserve it. I never intentionally set my life up this way. It just sort of happened, and I never questioned it.
Does this sound familiar?
This is my truth, even though I am an avid lover and advocate of people. All the light and all the dark rolled up in one trying vessel.
This is privilege.
This is racism.
This was a hard pill to swallow in the midst of 2020, a year characterized by a global pandemic, and in the midst of watching riots break out in my home country.
My own privilege and racism is something I was mildly aware of before (I have even talked about it in other blogs such as Taking a Knee), but was painfully reminded of while watching the video of George Floyd’s murder.
I don’t want to be a racist; that needs to be abundantly clear. But by sitting idly by I have helped to create an environment in which Black people are dying at the hands of cops and people feel unheard. So unheard that they are uniting and standing and protesting and rioting and looting.
To be clear, I would not participate in rioting or looting, and emphatically discourage you from choosing to do so. I do not believe that harm to others is the right way to achieve change. However, rioting and looting have historically been a very effective form of expressive action that have served as a quick method of achieving change…and some of the changes accomplished this way have been good for society.
Juxtaposed to change via rioting and looting, it is also important to keep in mind that there has been a lot of harm done to others that has been “legal” but failed to be good or right or fair or moral. History shows us that just because it is “legal” does not automatically make it right either. Some good has come from bad / “illegal” actions, and some bad has come from good/”legal” laws. It’s important to keep this in mind as you watch the flashes and bangs roll across your television.
Additionally, it is important to recognize that rioting can also be the language of those who are hurt, ignored, and whose material needs are not being met…people who may otherwise be perceived as taking advantage of the current social climate in the United States. I am extremely fortunate that all of my material needs are met, and if you are reading this blog, yours probably are too. I will further address this point later in the blog under, “restructuring funding.”
I am not justifying rioting or looting, but in order to understand what we are seeing, we must be willing to give grace to life walks other than our own.
Ultimately, I hate what I am seeing, disagree with the approach…but I do understand it as a means of expressing anger, need, and desire for change.
The need for change in our country is so prevalent that the people of other countries are even protesting George Floyd’s death. Y’all…let that sink in.
Non-American citizens, who have no say or vote over what happens in our country, citizens of other countries are protesting the violence in our country. Do you know how insane that is? People of other countries are protesting the inequality and violence and oppression of the Land of the Free.
If you are thinking in your head… “well what the fuck Taylor, how am I supposed to solve these big problems that I know nothing about?” Yeah…I get it. And we will get to that.
Confusion is the best weapon of the enemy, because confusion will have you so tired and so defeated, that you start to believe that you can’t make a difference.
This is a lie.
Here is just a few ideas I have for how we move forward:
TALK ABOUT WHITENESS
Y’all, I want you to hear me loud and clear here. Our conversation needs to start and with the meaning of whiteness, because it is the meaning we gave to whiteness which shaped the meaning we gave to blackness. It’s good and fine to talk about Black lives and Black communities and Black oppression and Black needs, but when we talk about blackness without talking about whiteness, we hold Black issues apart from the whole picture, apart from ourselves and apart from our own issues. Blackness has meaning because we gave whiteness meaning, and we therefore cannot talk about Black issues without discussing the meaning of whiteness.
This is one of the many problems with racism.
We talk about Black community issues without talking about our systemic belief that whiteness somehow made us better. And I want to be clear, maybe you don’t actively credit your skin color with superiority, but our history and current cultural passivity deserves adequate recognition. Data on Black incarceration and income and integration deserve attention.
We need to look inward and ask ourselves why whiteness ever made us feel so far removed from the issues that plague other living, breathing human beings. We need to talk about why whiteness ever made us feel like the issues of Black people are “their problem” and not our own. We need to talk about where the idea of whiteness stems from, and why we as living members of the world today are still passively willing to let the racism of our forefathers take root in new forms today. We need to talk about why our whiteness make Black issues “not our problem.” We need to talk about why we recognize the inequality but fail to challenge it.
Even I am having to ask myself these really hard questions. I am having to meet myself in a deep dark place I hate to acknowledge even exists.
It’s hard. As it should be.
Places to start this conversation:
- White Like Me by Tim Wise
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
We need to talk about why whiteness ever made us feel like the issues of Black people are “their problem” and not our own.
LISTEN TO BLACK LEADERS
Y’all, I am stoked you are reading this blog and have read this far into the content, but I want to be very clear…I am not an authority on Black equality, and I never will be. We need to elevate Black voices and we need to listen to them. I do not share in the Black community’s experience of inequality or oppression. Actually, I am part of the reason they experience it. We need to be listening to leaders in the Black community and trusting what they are saying. Don’t just trust it, but give it equal weight. Don’t decide it’s not your fight or that you can’t do anything about it – listen to them tell you what they need, learn from it, and change.
Fill your book shelves and your reading lists and your podcast que with Black thought leaders. Here are a few great places to start:
- White Fragility by Robin DiAnglo
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
TALK ABOUT RACE
I know how uncomfortable it is to talk about race, but it’s time we start digging our feet in and having the hard conversations. And I want to be very clear, talking about being “color-blind” or talking about “human race” (terms for not seeing skin color or ignoring it) instead of actual racial issues is well-intended, but fails to actually address the core social and systemic failures caused by these perspectives.
I want you to read this here first – you have permission to be wrong in these conversations. You have permission to say all the wrong things in pursuit of equality and understanding. You may say the wrong things in the conversations, and that’s okay.
Don’t you DARE let anyone make you feel unwelcomed to the conversation because you are new to the hard topic of race and don’t know how to ask the hard questions. Don’t you dare let your inquisition into this important conversation be stifled by fear of being wrong. Don’t you dare.
Speak your truth in search of deeper wisdom. Allow people to challenge your thought patterns and teach you in these conversations so that you can evolve into a better Black alliance. We are better off trying to have these conversations and getting some of what we say wrong so that we can learn, instead of simply deciding it’s too hard and let this shit keep festering within the fibers of our free nation.
But most importantly, while I encourage you to engage the hard conversations, I encourage you even more to listen to ideas that challenge your privilege, position in society, and knowledge of things that may not directly affect you.
I want you to read this here first – you have permission to be wrong in these conversations. You have permission to say all the wrong things in pursuit of equality and understanding. You may say the wrong things in the conversations, and that’s okay.
RECOGNIZE THE INSTITUTIONALIZED NATURE OF RACISM
Institutionalized racism would take years of academic work to adequately explain, so I am going to give you the super quick and dirty.
(I am aware that this overly simplifies a deeply rooted issue. This is a section recommending a dense learning opportunity rather than serve as an exhaustive history lesson.)
A good place to start in this journey is to understand the United States Constitution’s 13th Amendment, and understand how we effectively traded slavery with for-profit jails. Other readings are suggested above, but I will put emphasis on reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
We live within broken systems which have evolved from broken morals, and yet we still wonder why the system is broken. These broken morals, amongst many others has included racist ideals.
This is all daunting, I know…especially when the democrats and the republicans can’t agree on one single thing within the broken system as citizens sit idly by as the collateral damage. What can we free peons do? A lot actually.
CHANGE THE FUNDING STRUCTURE
Before you go getting all hot and bothered by this point, I am not saying get rid of police. Nor am I saying stop paying them for the important work they do in society.
I want to be very clear, I believe most police officers become officers because they want to do good for the people of their community. I think they want to protect people and contribute to increasing the quality of people’s lives. I support uniformed workers willing to run in to dangerous situations, risking their lives, when other people are running out. This is truly incredible work. I think that the officers meeting protestors with excessive force is giving all of the officers trying to create peace a really bad name, but I do not believe this should make us doubt the goodness of people in uniform.
This must however be caveated with the fact that there has been too many ‘George Floyd incidents’ for this to be excused as a situation of ‘a few bad apples.’ The long and growing list of Black people dying at the hands of cops is evidence of unaddressed racism in an institution tasked with protecting and serving. This pattern demonstrates the deeply rooted institutional problem.
For this problem, I do not yet have suggested solutions, but I am excited to research effective approaches and get back to you when I have a clearer opinion.
While funding cannot and will not solve these problems in their entirety, I do believe reallocating funds to various social services would help begin to dismantle institutionalized racism.
Money has been poured into the war on drugs at the expense of funding other social services. This has led to unequal police monitoring of low socio-economic communities primarily inhabited by Black families, leading to unequal rates of incarceration. Under the war on drugs agenda, we have effectively traded slavery for incarceration (The New Jim Crow). It’s super fucked up.
Additionally, funding the war on drugs has compromised the effectiveness of other social services which could help to better address the growing opioid crisis within our nation. Our current plan has us reacting to crime, instead of proactively addressing problems in our communities.
This creates two important dynamics for police – First, police are fighting on the frontlines of the war on drugs in often racially targeted communities. The war on drugs is an important fight to be sure, but is unequally addressed which has perpetuated systemic racism. Second, police are having to fill the gaps for underfunded services, in addition to their regular duties.
A viable alternative to explore to reduce systemic racism while addressing local crime would be to adequately fund social services such as social workers, drug rehabilitation centers, animal control, job training and subsidized housing, community management, healthcare and education, and policy research.
This is what I mean when I say, “change the funding structure.” Don’t get rid of police, but instead of hiring more police to respond to crime, fund unmet needs in society that lead to crime. We are not meeting the needs our community, and thus police are responding to situations that should not be police responsibility as if they were crime.
VOTE
Vote like racial issues matter to you. Vote for better systems. Vote for leaders who lead.
ASK FOR HELP WITH YOUR LANGUAGE
Y’all, I’ll admit that I needed extra eyes on this blog piece before it went up. I wanted to make sure that I knew how to respectfully address race in a written piece. I am not even all that new to talking about race, and I learned a lot. It is normal to not know how to respectfully address a topic you have never practiced talking about before or have limited knowledge about. None the less, it is very important to learn how to respectfully talk about race. If you need help, there is a lot of great content on Google to help get you started.
SUPPORT NAACP OR OTHER BLACK ALLIANCE ORGANIZATIONS
Here’s the deal, you alone cannot solve every world issue. If you try, you will fail miserably to honor any one of the many world problems that deserve dedicated servants. You have to take up the issue that you care most about, and do so with purpose. I care deeply about people related policy (which umbrella’s the issues of racism), but my personal focus has been geared towards tiny humans and the egregious injustices they face as sub-humans in American culture and in the global world. This is my torch. I do not have the bandwidth to take up my cause with gusto, and every other cause with equal fervor. But what I do have is time, money, and a social media platform.
I have time to attend rallies in support of Black issues.
I have time to learn about Black issues so I can be a better alliance.
I am not rich, but I have enough money to donate a couple Starbucks coffee’s worth of money to the people who have picked racial issues as the torch they carry in this lifetime, so that they can fuel the flames and do their job better.
I have a social media platform that I can use to talk about issues that matter, to link to thought provoking media, to share fundraisers, and to help promote thought leaders.
Most importantly, I have the mental and emotional fortitude to have the hard conversations over and over and over again so that I can learn how to be a better Black alliance.
I HAVE a lot. And what I know is that a person with love in their heart uses what they have to improve the lives of others.
There is likely an NAACP organization local to where you live. Check out their website.
Here is the link to help support the Seattle NAACP.
Sweet readers, I see you. You want to do right by the world, but there is so much right that must be done to undo all that is wrong, and it can be a daunting and overwhelming and discouraging task. We however, must be better than passive bystanders of the pain and inequality that is ever-present in the lives of those oppressed. We must dig our feet in and do the hard work. Change will not happen overnight, but it can start overnight.
You cannot solve every problem alone. You must pick the issue that you care most about, and fight that issue with gusto and heart. However, you are always capable of continuing to learn and grow and challenge who you were yesterday. You have the power to stand up with and for those whose existence is framed by your inaction. You have the power to stand up against who you were yesterday. You have the power to create equality. You have the power to fight for people. And today is the day we must start.
Until then, it might as well have been all of our knees on George Floyd’s neck.
Xo,
Taylor Patrice
