Throughout the entire history of the United States of
America, and even before, to the very first time Europeans set foot on the
continent, its existence has been based on a simple idea: that white people are
superior to all other human beings. This notion arose from ignorance and greed and
continued because of the need to morally justify the institution of slavery. As
Bryan Stevenson puts it, we became a “slave society”: “[T]his narrative of
racial difference has done really destructive things in our society. Lots of
countries had slaves, but they were mostly societies with slaves. We became
something different, we became a slave society. We created a narrative of
racial difference to maintain slavery.” Because nothing was ever done to deal
with the narrative that allowed slavery to remain morally upright in White America,
but only with the institution of slavery itself, Stevenson continues, “I don’t
believe slavery ended in 1865, I believe
it just evolved.”[1]
Whiteness does not
exist. It was simply a social construction built to distinguish those who
were allowed full rights in the world (both in America and in Europe) from
those were not. Yes, people have different color skin, but that is only because
of the region of the world one’s ancestors lived in, not some deep-seated
difference. We are all human, and there are biologically no sub-groups of
humans. The only existing sub-groups are culturally created ones. The social
idea that is whiteness is tragic. It began under tragic circumstances, as those
who created whiteness for themselves did so to assert superiority over other humans.
Like slavery in America, whiteness has evolved, but today is no less tragic
than it was in 1776, or 1860, or 1953, or 1963.[2]
I believe that the great tragedy of whiteness today is
ignorance. Being white means being able to ignore the racial injustices that
continue, and accepting that ignorance. It means learning a whitewashed (pun
intended) version of our nation’s history taught in schools. It means living in
suburbia to avoid having to confront segregation face-to-face. It means the
re-segregation of schools so that white children can learn about the triumph
that was Brown v Board without having
to experience it. It means being able to not be consciously racist and feel “reverse
racism” from affirmative action because of a lack of knowledge of how difficult
it continues to be for non-white Americans to achieve true equality. It means believing
that free-market capitalism is completely meritocratic and therefore cannot be a
remotely racist practice, despite a historic legacy of insuring that it is. It
means believing that the American Dream is alive and well for all, despite the
fact that it was only ever intended for white people.
Not all white people are ignorant of their privilege, but
many are. Due to continued segregation, income inequality, and other injustices
that exist today as a direct result of blatantly racist policies of the past, I
believe that each white person who ignores the present inequality actively
helps to perpetuate it. While this reality is not the fault of individual white
people, it is a reality that has been intentionally created by other white
people. White people have worked extremely hard for centuries to ensure that
any white person who does not consider themselves racist but does not know the
realities of the racial climate actually perpetuates racial injustice. It is
not an accident. White people must fight their own ignorance in order to begin
to deal truthfully with the realities of the United States of America, both
past and present.
I will end on a hopeful note: perhaps change is actually
happening. In an article about a recent poll that showed a substantial drop in
the number of white Americans who believe that race relations are good in
America, author David Graham said this: “This theory—that what’s driving ...
bleak impressions about race relations is whites awakening to realities that
were always extant but had been invisible to them—suggests that the results may
actually be cause for optimism. Actively grappling with racial tensions is
crucial to solving them; ignoring them may obscure the wounds, but it won’t
heal them.”[3] If
this is the case, let us continue to become more aware. If not, let us begin.
[1] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/06/24/bryan-stevenson-on-charleston-and-our-real-problem-with-race
Ta-Nehisi Coates also refers to America as a “slave society”
and details what that means to him in this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/09/the-slave-society-defined/244581/
[2]
The founding of our nation, the eve of the Civil War, the year before Brown v Board, and the year before the
landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s, respectively.
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