For those living in the U.S., today is a federal holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If he had lived, he would have been 93 this weekend. Initially I planned to write about Dr. King but I think he would agree that talking about the justice work we still need to do (and doing it) honors his legacy far more.
I’m white. Though I didn’t know it, my parents were poor when I was a child. Still, our white privilege led to opportunities – for homes, education and wealth – that we would not have had if we had been black or brown. It’s from this place that I’ll be writing. (My assumption is that most, if not all, of my readers are white.)
Last summer, I reread Joseph Brandt’s Understanding & Dismantling Racism. My first reading, while in seminary, was eye-opening. Brandt writes not only that racism is caused by white people but also about how it affects us negatively, with a goal that we will develop strategies to dismantle racism.
My first job out of college was teaching bands and choirs in Navajoland (on the reservation). As a beginning band of 5th and 6th graders progressed through the tunes in the rote book, we eventually came to Ten Little Indians. I’d sung it many times as a child. I had to have learned it from someone. But as I looked at the lines of music and thought about the words of the song, I felt ashamed. How could I have ever thought this was okay?
I’m going deeper than usual but I ask you to keep reading. This is important.
Do you accept that you are racist? I wish it weren’t true but choosing not to be racist doesn’t work when we’ve benefited from racism all our lives. Peggy McIntosh (no relation that I’m aware of) describes it as an invisible knapsack of privilege, received at birth, that we can’t take off.
Racism creates two prisons, one is for the people of color who are oppressed, the other is ours. This second prison is shaped by all the boundaries – cultural, institutional, residential, relational – that divide and disconnect us from everyone else. If you take the analogy further, this prison is invisible. It functions only so long as we don’t recognize it. If someone suspects, tales are spun to lull them back into complacency. How?
From the time we are infants, we take in subtle identity messages – at home, school, church, wherever. Some are good and healthy; others are not. Do you recall any of these messages – that some people are better, smarter, prettier, lazier, less sensitive, more suited for certain jobs or roles? And how are “they” portrayed? As drunks? Or people you can’t count on?
Last year, the lone black Marathon County commissioner (where I live) introduced a resolution saying that the county affirms and supports all people. After months of discussion, it was voted down! We made national headlines.
Maybe you’ve unpacked some of your baggage around racism. I hope so. But as long as systems are in place that make it easier for white people to get homes, education and jobs – which naturally means money too – as long as there are white people who don’t recognize their racism even as they use us/them language, there is work for us to do.
Whole books are written on the subject of racism. I’m not so foolish as to believe I can cover the topic here. Still, I hope I’ve persuaded you to consider your own racism and to look further at how we – well-meaning, caring people – could possibly be racist. (Peggy McIntosh’s TED Talk is a good place to start.)
I have one point left to cover.
A Facebook friend who is black recently posted that black people are taking care of their part. It’s up to white people to do ours. It wasn’t the first time I’ve read this thought.
We are all caught in the web of racism. And it’s bad for all of us – not just for brown and black people who continue to be oppressed – but for white people as well. When we accept the socialization we’ve received that we’re better or more deserving, when we benefit from the systems that elevate us unawares while diminishing others, not because of any personal merit but simply because this society was established for the benefit of white people, then we can never be our best selves. We can never be the persons that God intends us to be. We can never, without lying, say we’re not racists.
We need to dismantle this evil for all of our sakes.
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