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Abstract

effect that results from historical structures we inherit and sustain, consciously or not. This is white (and male) privilege at play.This is not right.I like to believe most would agree with that observation. I genuinely think that most people mean no harm and generally do nothing wrong, at least consciously. We simply follow our path and take on opportunities as they present themselves.That is not good enough.With this series of 4 articles, I intend to motivate white people to embark on their journey towards becoming an ally by sharing my limited, incomplete, inevitably flawed, and biased, yet accessible experience with hope and faith we can move towards achieving Dr. King’s dream. This starts with “why?”.Why should you and I need to do something?I learned from education and experience that racism was a social construct. It has no scientific foundation. It is an ideology that only exists because we somehow allow it. I naively thought it would just disappear, at least in Western developed countries where (almost) everyone has access to decent education, just like other once common incorrect concepts disappeared thanks to increased and broadly shared knowledge, such as the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe and the sun moves around it.Yet some outdated ideas stick and will not go away without significant effort, despite all the evidence. For a very long time, I thought that not being racist was normal and good enough. If everybody were like me, there would be no problem. The few remaining racist people would disappear sooner or later, and that would be it. I also felt like racism was not my battle to fight. There are plenty of better and more legitimate individuals to take care of extinguishing that fire by themselves.However, as José Francisco de San Martín, Latin American Liberator, said:<blockquote id="6068">“More noise occurs from a single man shouting than a hundred thousand who are quiet,”</blockquote>When the majority remains silent and does not act, it supports the status quo, and a loud minority can impose i

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ts power over society’s structure.That might be acceptable as long as the status quo fairly supports the fundamental values upon which society is built. That is however morally unacceptable when the society is structurally unfair and consistently betraying its values. Seeing the difference, when you are white, is not always obvious. We have the tendency or laziness to live with bad habits we cannot even see anymore.We need to open our eyes and our ears.We need to recognize there is a problem.Living peacefully in Northern California, in a town that is 36.9% “White alone, not Hispanic or Latino” and where the largest minority identifies as “Asian alone” with 47.6% (US Census Bureau, 2019), for a very long time I did not see the problem. I have to admit it is only when I saw the video of a White police officer murdering George Floyd that I realized there had to be something wrong in US society for such a horrible thing to happen.Yes, you might find it took me a long time to realize something obvious (and, in retrospect, I would think so), but the more important point is that it can be very hard to see what a whole environment has trained you not to perceive until it becomes too painfully wrong to ignore.This terrifying event triggered my journey towards becoming an ally. Not being a racist is not enough. Not being a racist maintains the status quo that grants law enforcement a license to behave like this White police officer, to be trained to do this with the confidence it is their duty. This will happen again and again if the quiet majority remains silent, just as it has been happening again and again until now. It is not an isolated case, and many are not caught on camera. There is a problem, it has a name: racism.We need to step up against racism, unambiguously.Once I realized I needed to do something, that I could not keep going as if racism didn’t exist or would go away on its own, the next question naturally came: what can I do? This is the subject of my <a href="https://readmedium.com/becoming-an-ally-part-2-8ce9fc8fcee">next article</a>.</article></body>

Becoming An Ally — Part 1

Why white men like me need to do something

Martin Luther King Jr. delivering the speech at the 1963 Washington D.C. Civil Rights March. By Rowland Scherman — This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 542069., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=294345

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”

We all heard those world-famous words from Martin Luther King Jr. and I like to believe most, if not all, share this dream.

I immigrated to the US twenty years ago and had to build my business network from scratch to get on the American Dream. All I brought with me was a degree in computer science, fluency in English, and white skin covering a straight male 6’3” tall body. This turns out to be a lot, and a lot more than most. It made networking easy, with little friction besides the occasional abrupt “where are you from?”

Step forward to 2019 and here is an interesting fact that illustrates the environment in which I have developed my career so far: among the 295 individuals I met professionally for the first time in that year, 241 are white (81.7%) and only 1 is black; 253 are male (85.8%) and only 42 are female (please forgive the binary simplification on the color and gender spectrum). There is not a single black woman.

Such lack of diversity obviously does not reflect the composition of our society (these 295 individuals reside in 15 different countries, mostly in North America and Western Europe), nor does it come from conscious discrimination. Instead, it reflects the networking effect that results from historical structures we inherit and sustain, consciously or not. This is white (and male) privilege at play.

This is not right.

I like to believe most would agree with that observation. I genuinely think that most people mean no harm and generally do nothing wrong, at least consciously. We simply follow our path and take on opportunities as they present themselves.

That is not good enough.

With this series of 4 articles, I intend to motivate white people to embark on their journey towards becoming an ally by sharing my limited, incomplete, inevitably flawed, and biased, yet accessible experience with hope and faith we can move towards achieving Dr. King’s dream. This starts with “why?”.

Why should you and I need to do something?

I learned from education and experience that racism was a social construct. It has no scientific foundation. It is an ideology that only exists because we somehow allow it. I naively thought it would just disappear, at least in Western developed countries where (almost) everyone has access to decent education, just like other once common incorrect concepts disappeared thanks to increased and broadly shared knowledge, such as the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe and the sun moves around it.

Yet some outdated ideas stick and will not go away without significant effort, despite all the evidence. For a very long time, I thought that not being racist was normal and good enough. If everybody were like me, there would be no problem. The few remaining racist people would disappear sooner or later, and that would be it. I also felt like racism was not my battle to fight. There are plenty of better and more legitimate individuals to take care of extinguishing that fire by themselves.

However, as José Francisco de San Martín, Latin American Liberator, said:

“More noise occurs from a single man shouting than a hundred thousand who are quiet,”

When the majority remains silent and does not act, it supports the status quo, and a loud minority can impose its power over society’s structure.

That might be acceptable as long as the status quo fairly supports the fundamental values upon which society is built. That is however morally unacceptable when the society is structurally unfair and consistently betraying its values. Seeing the difference, when you are white, is not always obvious. We have the tendency or laziness to live with bad habits we cannot even see anymore.

We need to open our eyes and our ears.

We need to recognize there is a problem.

Living peacefully in Northern California, in a town that is 36.9% “White alone, not Hispanic or Latino” and where the largest minority identifies as “Asian alone” with 47.6% (US Census Bureau, 2019), for a very long time I did not see the problem. I have to admit it is only when I saw the video of a White police officer murdering George Floyd that I realized there had to be something wrong in US society for such a horrible thing to happen.

Yes, you might find it took me a long time to realize something obvious (and, in retrospect, I would think so), but the more important point is that it can be very hard to see what a whole environment has trained you not to perceive until it becomes too painfully wrong to ignore.

This terrifying event triggered my journey towards becoming an ally. Not being a racist is not enough. Not being a racist maintains the status quo that grants law enforcement a license to behave like this White police officer, to be trained to do this with the confidence it is their duty. This will happen again and again if the quiet majority remains silent, just as it has been happening again and again until now. It is not an isolated case, and many are not caught on camera. There is a problem, it has a name: racism.

We need to step up against racism, unambiguously.

Once I realized I needed to do something, that I could not keep going as if racism didn’t exist or would go away on its own, the next question naturally came: what can I do? This is the subject of my next article.