Dear White Person

It’s 1996. I’m in my second year of graduate school. Professor Richard Cloward, a pioneer in American social justice, is teaching my class at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

Today’s discussion comes from a chapter in his book, Regulating The Poor, in which he posits that American society is and has always been set up to keep black people from gaining any semblance of equal footing.

The idea that the system is rigged against blacks hits a nerve in me. It runs contrary to many of my beliefs – some that I’ve been spoonfed and others that I can’t recall how I learned. What I know is that I feel morally offended by what he’s saying, which is how he finds himself on the receiving end of my rant about the 1967 Newark Racial Riots – the ones that propelled my family to flee Newark a few years before I was born for the ‘safety’ of the suburbs. Fueled with self-righteousness, I say some version of:

“Why would blacks burn down their own city? How does that help anything? I know what it’s like to be a minority. I’m a Jew. My grandparents came to this country with nothing. My mother lived in an orphanage and managed to build a life for her 3 kids. We all went to college. I’m the second one in an Ivy League school. If Jews can do it, why can’t blacks?”

I am 26-years old and I’m so dumb I don’t even know I’m dumb yet.

What I don’t understand is that my family’s departure from Newark is part of something larger – something called White Flight – a term that references the mass migration of whites from American cities into suburbs as blacks moved from the south into cities.

We were afraid of blacks. We thought they were dangerous. Aggressive. We were told our property value would plummet as they moved into our neighborhood.

I say WE despite the fact that I wasn’t born when my family did the White Flight.
I say WE because I directly benefited from growing up in my suburb with its overly-funded school district – a school district which negatively correlated to the disadvantages that befell the lives of those who were left in Newark to fend for themselves. Black people.

But mostly, I say WE because racism isn’t exclusively an interpersonal act.

It’s not something you necessarily do – not if you’re a progressive white from the Northeast.

I know enough not to use the bad words.
My face goes deadpan in response to any racist joke no matter how awkward I make the people around me feel.
I lean into difficult conversations with other whites the way I’m supposed to.

And I benefit every day of my life from the color of my skin.

This benefit happens whether or not I want it.
It’s the first thing people notice when they see me.
They see my race before my gender.
They see my race before my appearance.
They see my race before I can open my overly-educated white mouth to prove that I deserve the privilege that’s coming my way.

Dr. Cloward takes a long drag from his cigarette, undoubtedly trying to work out a response that might enlighten me without landing like he ripped a new hole into my white ass. I can feel the tension build as he exhales some smoke, makes rings with what’s left, each circle dissipating over the heads of students. Then he says something I remember this way:

“It’s unfair to compare one minority group to another. What Jewish people have gone through has been terrible, but it’s different from what black people have experienced.  And I’m only saying this because you mentioned your culture: People don’t know you’re Jewish when they meet you. You’re not identifiable on sight. And that means you’re sheltered from discrimination in a way that black people aren’t.

When you talk about what happened in Newark, you need to know that both protests and violence are predictable responses to oppression. It comes from being powerless. It’s a response to being wronged. It’s the language of the unheard, as MLK said.  To overly focus on the destruction of Newark during those riots misses the point. It was a symptom. Not the core problem.”

That conversation spawns a handful of appointments between the two of us, me sitting in his office and Cloward painstakingly listening to the rhetoric my head’s been filled with – ideas like If you work hard, you can accomplish anything, and Every American gets the same jumping off point into life, and him filling in blanks, providing me with the context I need which, over time, changes my opinions.

When I remember those days I have to fight the urge to hang my head down. I will always be humbled and grateful that Cloward mustered up the motivation to try to reach me.

Today I’m drawing on his example to fuel my motivation to reach you, my white friend.

Because believe it or not, what comes naturally to me is the assumption that I can’t reach you, I can’t change you, I can’t enlighten someone who doesn’t ask to be enlightened.

But then, I didn’t ask to be enlightened that spring day in 1996. And I was.

Mine continues to be a long and rough journey. Cloward just planted the first seed.

The next seed happens in 2014:

I am a social worker in private practice in NYC. My teacher is my client.

He’s recently begun to  connect to his own race identity and he’s been carrying around a book called The New Jim Crow for weeks. He talks about what he’s reading in sessions. He talks about white cops killing black men. That summer Michael Brown is killed by a cop which ignites what’s known today as ‘Ferguson’ and Black Lives Matter.

One day my client comes into session and says, “Darcy, I want to talk to you about race. Like, you being white and me being a black man.”

I feel prepped for this conversation. Been trained as a social worker in some of the fanciest schools in America to embrace this dialogue, to create a safe space, to own the color of my skin and explore the ways in which my race impacts his ability to use therapy the way he needs to. So I welcome it.

He tells me he feels conflicted working with me. I am a white woman and throughout history white women have been weaponized to unleash violence towards black men. White men have to protect us, he tells me, because the unspoken fear is that aggressive/hypersexual black men will rape us white women. Which is why we police them the way we do.

His words leave my throat dry. I don’t know what to say. His brown eyes are kind as they hold mine. He is not trying to provoke me or push me away. He’s trying to reach me. To test the fabric of our relationship. Can it handle the wear and tear of race in the room?

< p class=”” style=”white-space:pre-wrap;”>I am equal parts horrified and confused by what he’s said. I have never heard anything like this before. It sets my head reeling and once that starts I’m soon nose deep reading The New Jim Crow so I can understand wtf he’s talking about.

This book finds a little opening inside me that it wedges into and each chapter cracks me open wider until I’m reading it for the second time and starting every conversation with, “Dude, do you have any idea how fucked up this country is towards African Americans?”

That was the beginning of this leg of my journey towards understanding how racism in America, which is called structural racism, impacts everything I do and everything YOU DO, my white friend.

Racism isn’t about what you do or what I personally do. It’s steeped into every fiber of our culture. You can’t be American and not be the beneficiary of racism if you’re white.  You weren’t born in a bubble. Or sheltered from the media. You’re not outside the grip of politics. Family. Friends. A town or city. A region. Every aspect of society has race baked into it. And as a white person, it has shaped your worldview and it has informed how you’ve been treated throughout your life.

Racism is not limited to intentional acts committed by individuals who consciously dislike or feel superior to people of color. And it’s this myth that fuels ongoing racism, because most racism doesn’t look that way.

We’ve been taught that racism is bad. <- This is true.
The problem is that we’ve also been taught that good people aren’t racist, which is why white people rail against any admission that they’re racist.
Because if good people aren’t racist, who would own it?

I am personally anti-racist. But I absolutely benefit from the racist society I live in, whether I like it or not.

RACISM IS RELATED TO:

• Social and institutional power.

• Constructs of American society.

• Empowered Groups. They are the only ones who can be racist.

People who are NOT in power can’t be racist. They can be douchebags, but they’re not racist. This is why there is no such thing as reverse racism. Because whites are empowered. Not people of color.

RACISM ISN’T LIMITED TO:

• A Person’s behavior.

• A Person’s Intent.

• A Person’s Motivation.

Because we live in a racist society, your race informs every outcome in your life.

It predicts how likely your mother was to have survived your birth.
Where you live.
Whether you own a home.
The kind of education you had, 0-12.
Whether you graduated high school.
Whether you went on to college.
The amount of violence you were exposed to growing up.
The likelihood that you were ever arrested.
The likelihood that you survived an arrest.
The likelihood that if you were arrested and survived it, you were convicted.
The likelihood that you spent time in prison.
Who your friends are.
Who your partner is or will be.
What career you’re in.
The amount of money you earn.
How healthy you are.
How long you’ll live.

The kind of racism I’m talking about isn’t stuff you do. It’s a system that’s set up so tightly that things happen automatically without us even realizing it.  It’s the things you’re taught without even knowing you’re being taught. Belief systems like people should be able to do it themselves, strong people don’t rely on others or government handouts. It’s the shame that’s pelted into us for not being 100% independent, which of course none of us are, but it sets us up to judge others who aren’t – and we do it for life.

The kind of racism I’m talking about goes to the way your brain works. It’s about teachings you were never directly taught but somehow learned.

When you describe someone’s physical appearance to a friend or a family member, you only mention their race if the person you’re describing isn’t white, right? Right. Because you don’t have to describe a white person’s race, because we’re the default. Any other race, however, is a deviation, which is why you mention their race. That you do this is a racist act. It doesn’t make you a dick. It makes you an American human being.

And by the way, no one ever taught you that.

There was never a class in school where they said, Now kids, the default of a human being is a white person. Because they didn’t have to. That’s how pervasive racism is. We don’t even have to be taught this stuff.

Question: When we talk about women getting the right to vote, what era pops into your head? Women’s Suffrage? The 1920’s?

BLACK WOMEN ONLY GOT THE RIGHT TO VOTE IN THE 1960’s. 40 years later. Four fucking years before I was born. And despite what you may think, I’m not old!

UNTIL ALL WOMEN WERE GIVEN THE RIGHT TO VOTE, WOMEN WEREN’T GIVEN THE RIGHT TO VOTE. But that’s now how we were taught in school, was it?

Here Professor Cloward would tell me to simmer down – tell me that my anger will distract from the point – to which I’d say YOU TOLD ME THAT PEOPLE’S RESPONSE TO INSANITY SHOULDN’T DISTRACT FROM THE INSANITY ITSELF!

Where am I going with this?

I am trying to tell you that I struggle too. My journey has been painfully imperfect. In 1996 I was in the top graduate school of social work in the country telling a famous activist that black people don’t have it any worse than Jews. It’s unlikely that you’ve ever said anything dumber in your life. If I can wake up, you can wake up.

We have to collectively wake the fuck up, people.

We thought we had our hands full with the pandemic – but apparently we are still  able to kill people of color.

This has to stop now.

Please buy and read the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. She’s a white lady who knows more about race and racism than any white person I know. I think it’s easier to hear how little we know about race when it’s a white person telling us.

That’s all for now. Thank you for listening to my attempt to make a difference.