Overheard

Anti-racism Training is Making Racism Worse? Umm, no.

But let’s unpack how some white liberals do, in fact, make things worse.

I’ve heard the contention that anti-racism or diversity and inclusion trainings makes racism worse. I don’t agree. Can these kinds of trainings make people, black and white, uncomfortable for different reasons? Sure, but they don’t make racism worse.

Rather, I suggest there are anti-racism activists that contribute to making people more entrenched in their belief or bias. I won’t tiptoe around or apologize for any kind of racism. But so much depends on how the message is offered.

I have repeatedly witnessed a certain type of white liberal talking about racism in a way that is alienating and counterproductive. Sometimes they are outright demeaning. This seems to happen when you disagree with advocacy that focuses on the overt and heinous as opposed to the constant and grinding.

There’s a false sense of superiority with this kind of activism. It’s incomplete and lacks the humility to acknowledge their own failings. This attitude buries a deep hypocrisy that continues to simmer, dividing us across so many different demographic combinations.

White liberals keep picking on the south.

If there’s one thing I tire of, more than anything else, it’s liberal white folks acting as if they don’t have biases or haven’t made life choices that maintain the status quo, while continuing to slam the south and rural or less educated folks.

On more than one occasion, I’ve asked what has been impacting people of color more the last two or three generations; the threat of lynching and Jim Crow or white flight, redlining, and unfair lending practices?

I’ve argued that lack of opportunity and inability to build wealth and transfer intergenerational wealth through home ownership and strong communities of color is more impactful at this time in our nation’s history than the violence of our past. But it’s not an either/or situation. Just think about the question in relation to the choices you’ve made about where you buy a house and send your children to school.

Former Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges illustrated this conundrum well in her excellent New York Times Op Ed:

In Minneapolis, the white liberals I represented as a Council member and mayor were very supportive of summer jobs programs that benefited young people of color. I also saw them fight every proposal to fundamentally change how we provide education to those same young people. They applauded restoring funding for the rental assistance hotline. They also signed petitions and brought lawsuits against sweeping reform to zoning laws that would promote housing affordability and integration.

For those who might be geographically challenged, Minneapolis is in Minnesota, unequivocally a northern state. It doesn’t seem to matter. The ridicule will turn on you, if you point this out or ask the question I did earlier. There’s a dismissiveness of any viewpoint that does not fall in line with the narrative on race in American that depends on demonizing the south to the exclusion of examining the north.

From my perspective, this type of modern white liberal isn’t much different than the poor white sharecropper of the past; they both, rather pathetically, need someone to be better than.

If I feel that way about white liberal do-gooders, and I’m a white, mostly northern, suburban liberal who’s committed to change and acknowledging our nation’s past, imagine how someone white, conservative, rural, and southern/middle America might feel. Do you think they’d shut down?

A lot of what we’ve been trying is. not. working.

We’ve got to find a way to challenge people without turning them into “the other.” For white liberals, this might mean quit scapegoating the south, conservatives, and rural folks by using stereotypes. And it definitely means being more than a keyboard warrior.