How To Show Up For Black People In America
CW: White Supremacy
They saw him. They got their guns, and got in their truck. They hunted him down. He tried to not die. They killed him. They told the police they felt threatened, and that was it. Months passed.
You felt sadness and rage at the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. It wasn’t the first time. How long is the list of names now? How many black people have you watched die for the crime of living while black?
You are a basically good person. You are against racism. You want everyone to be able to live in peace together. The violence you see against black people has grown intolerable, and you need to do something about it. What is the path forward?
The Rules
Two rules have been consistently helpful to me as I’ve struggled with racism:
Rule 1: Keep focusing on your goal: ending racial violence against black human beings. This is a sufficient goal — saying “what about other human beings” is like showing up at a breast cancer 5k and asking “what about testicular cancer?” To do this you need to understand racism — what it is and how it works, how it reproduces itself, how it kills. It is not enough to denounce it. You must understand it.
Rule 2: Acknowledge that you are not going to like what you see. You might not like some of the things you learn, and what it means for who you are, or for who you have been. You will want to put your discomfort away by stopping or looking away, but doing that comes at a cost — paid by black people. Accept the past for what it is. Move forward. Keep focusing on your goal.
“I’m Not Racist”
I used to say “I’m not racist.” I also used to make racist jokes and feel fear when a “certain kind” of black man walked by. I didn’t see this as a contradiction. In fact, if you asked me I would have told you that I was against racism. What explains this apparent contradiction?
Back then, I saw racism as violence done directly by one’s own hands or tongue. I believed it required a kind of intentionality or volition — that a racist would choose racial violence just for the sake of perpetrating it. The idea of volitional racism against black people made me sick. The KKK made me sick. I did not think I was a racist because I would not enjoy harming a black person the way a racist would. I liked MLK. I was a liberal. I voted for Obama.
I did not understand that my fear could be violent — that it could be a raindrop in the storm of fear which destroys black lives. Society attacks and destroys what it fears. Our shared fear of blackness makes blackness a crime. I thought jokes were just jokes, even if they were edgy — I did not connect them to a broader context. I was racist, and I did not understand that I was racist.
Why? Where did my fear of blackness come from? I was not born with it. Nobody is. Nothing in my personal experiences justified my fear. None of those black men on the sidewalk had ever hurt me, though I had certainly hurt them (imagine living in a world where everyone looks at you in fear, even though you’re a good kid — what does that do to someone?).
Racism is in the water. Racism is part of the fabric of America. We tell ourselves a horrible lie in school — that slavery used to be a problem, and then racism used to be a problem, but MLK happened and everyone woke up from racism as if it were a bad dream, except for a few immoral outliers and old men. We tell ourselves racism only lives on in the outliers, and that’s what explains the most egregious racist brutality we see. We accept the incredibly implausible notion that a society built on racism just…turned it off. We pretend that all it took was a stern series of sermons and a change of heart amongst the white majority. We fear being called racist, because we only associate racism with the worst racists. We’re afraid of the moral stain of being called racist. We’re afraid of being cancelled. We’re afraid of being lumped in with the KKK. This creates a catch-22: we can’t admit to racism due to the stigma of being racist, and we can’t end racism because we do not own up to it. White Guilt, unable to look in the mirror, chooses not to see that it still holds the whip. As a nation we did not confront the legacy of racism — we just chose to hide it away, and made it impolite to talk about. Out of sight, out of mind.
Racism is not a distant Southern white man with an accent and a fondness for pronouncing hard R’s. It is in the subtle thoughts and biases and fears that swirl around your head all day. It is in the news. It is in the corporate boardroom. It is on your favorite crime show. It is in the way bank loans are structured. You can see it on the lines of a map, but only if you look. It has a pernicious and addictive psychology. It was built intentionally and cleverly. It enjoys broad bipartisan support. It is half-knowingly passed from father to son by tone of voice. White Supremacy in a white settler nation is invisible by design. You were raised in it. I was raised in it. I am racist. You are racist.
It’s time to stop pretending you’re not. Understand that you are, and that it’s not your fault. Understand that there are many shades of racist between the KKK and James Baldwin, and you fall somewhere in the middle. Racism is right here, like a parasite inside us. It is in every American. If we do not do the work of rooting it out, we will pass it on to our children. If we do not pursue the root cause, this won’t end.
I’ve avoided talking too much about the mechanics of how the racism you and I hold actually harms black people. It’s a complicated subject upon which many volumes have been written. I encourage you to seek them out. Don’t look away. There are many ways to look away, and racism continues to exist in part because we all continue to look away.
Now is a good time to go back and look at Rule 2, and then Rule 1. Good people don’t want to view themselves as bad people — it’s painful and creates cognitive dissonance. Even if I tell you that this isn’t about good and bad, it’s about harm reduction and social toxins, you’re still going to want to look away. This time, choose not to.
Acknowledge the biases and fears and feelings you have. Acknowledge the things you’ve said and thought and done that you are ashamed of. Seeing it is the first step on the path to neutralizing it. We will probably be racist until we die. But we don’t have to hurt black people. Acknowledging our racism lets us adjust for it in our actions. Most of the systemic racism in our society is perpetuated by well-meaning people who do not think they are racist.
Racism Against White People
If racism is this…thing…that grows in the very soil, and inside us, under what conditions does racism against white people exist?
I am fortunate to be friends with many compassionate, kind, intelligent, good, white people. Some of these friends do not think they are racist. While they acknowledge that racism against black people exists and is horrible, they might argue that doesn’t make it right to be racist against white people. They might argue that they don’t see race. Fundamentally, they tend to take a “race agnostic” approach to racism. A white joke is as bad as a black joke — it’s all racism, isn’t it? They would like equality for all lives.
On the surface it seems to make sense. If racism is discrimination against someone because of the color of their skin, then speech that makes a derogatory comment about someone based on their skin is racist, regardless of the color of their skin.
Racism does not work that way. Racism isn’t born the moment you say “black people are…” and it isn’t born the moment you say “white people can’t…”. Stereotypes can be hurtful, but racism isn’t hurt feelings. Discriminatory words by themselves have little power, unless they are coupled with a society that acts on them to make violence. And that is what happens in our society to black people specifically. It’s why so many black people have experienced being followed in stores as if they were criminals. It’s why many black parents have “the talk” with their kids — about surviving police encounters. It’s why black people are disproportionately dying of coronavirus — as with other health inequities, the very structure of our society channels the virus towards the marginalized. And it’s why black people get run down by men with guns who believe they have the right to question them, murder them — because in our society, the black man is already guilty.
It’s not about mean words. Racism is not a disease of linguistics. It’s about everything that’s underneath and often invisible, a machinery of violence activated by certain words or thoughts or actions. And in our current society, there is no racism against white people. Many white people suffer greatly in our society, but it’s not because of their race specifically. A homeless white man is certainly less privileged in many ways than a wealthy black man, but all else equal I’d rather be white than black from the point of view of safety. Nobody is going to shoot you because society thinks you can’t dance. But strangers will call the cops on you if society thinks you look like a criminal. You already know what happens next.
What Now?
Rule 1 and Rule 2. Keep learning. Keep reading. Read black authors. Talk to black people who have indicated that they have the emotional energy to do so, without expecting them to have all the answers. The most important thing you can do to fight racism is to decolonize yourself of it. Everything else will happen from there. You will find the courage and compassion to speak truth in white spaces. Changes in you will generate changes in the world around you, and it will grow safer for black people.
Here are some places to start:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism_b_7183710
https://gawker.com/what-black-parents-tell-their-sons-about-the-police-1624412625
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
https://www.theroot.com/here-we-go-again-buttigieg-getting-dragged-for-saying-1840747921
