How Can We Stop Being A Part of the Problem of Whiteness?

Being shocked suggests that the murder of black people by white police is not the norm.

The murder of George Floyd has triggered mass protests across the United States. George’s tragic and senseless death follows the murders of Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, and Ahmaud Arbery.

The protests that continue in the wake of these deaths highlight the levels of public rage at the systemic racism of the United States. In Barack Obama’s words, the protests represent: “legitimate frustration over a decades-long failure to reform police practices and the broader criminal justice system in the United States.”

This not-at-all-new and yet-somehow-still-shocking murder of black people by white people in positions of power has propelled individuals all over the world to take to the streets in solidarity and anger.

The police officer perpetrator has now been charged with second-degree murder. But this is after initially being fired. As usual with this depressing narrative, it’s too little, too late.

Social media is full of different responses to the tragedy, and some have been flagged as ‘performative allyship’. How can those of us in the white community (as if that actually exists) ensure we are being genuinely supportive?

White Fragility

Because these latest murders are just the tip of a shameful, dangerous, iceberg of racial injustice and unacknowledged white supremacy.

Robin DiAngelo defines white supremacy here:

“White supremacy is something much more pervasive and subtle than the actions of explicit white nationalists. White supremacy describes the culture we live in, a culture that positions white people and all that is associated with them (whiteness) as ideal. White supremacy is more than the idea that whites are superior to people of color; it is the deeper premise that supports this idea — the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm.” — Robin DiAngelo

In her bestselling book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism DiAngelo works to unpack the various ways in which white people are complicit with the racist structures that serve them.

She coins the term white fragility to discuss the specific ways in which white people struggle to even talk about race.

A person experiencing white fragility is likely to display “emotions such as anger, fear and guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation” she writes.

Does that sound familiar?

White Supremacy

I know why I find it hard to talk about racism. It’s because growing up in a predominantly white suburb of a small city in the Midlands, I learned to be a white supremacist.

According to the people round my way, being white and British was like winning the geographic, genetic lottery. I felt lucky to have been born here where there was enough food and opportunity. I remember as a teenager joking about how, we, as white British people, were considered superior to people of other races, from other countries.

I remember no specific incidents in which I learned these lessons. It wasn’t put into language, but something that was assumed. It was the Band Aid Christmas single and the Oxfam adverts and the heroes in action films.

Racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia were the air I breathed, an invisible smog I grew up in.

Now, as an educated white woman, increasingly privileged and aware of that privilege, I’m ashamed of this truth. I change reading lists and educate myself, but mostly I stay quiet on the subject of race. I avoid certain topics with some of my relatives.

I continue to be part of the problem.

White Denial

Black people are angry and grieving, and using their platforms to express, educate, and organize. I’m learning from writers like Rachel E. Cargle, Layla F. Saad, and Robin DiAngelo.

But why does it take a tragedy of such epic proportions for well-meaning ‘progressive’ white people like me to wake up and pay attention?

My brown and black friends have been talking about institutionalized racism for years, decades even, and each time I have felt a twinge of shame, read an article or two, maybe ordered a book online, and then slipped back into my comfortable sleep of white denial.

Why? Because I could? Because talking about race is difficult and complicated and I have been afraid of making mistakes? Because the system serves me sufficiently?

Meanwhile, in the US African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than White people.

White Moderate

In Why I Am No Longer Talking to White People About Race Reni Eddo-Lodge devotes a whole chapter to discussing the cost paid by black people to the specter of white privilege. In one powerful and frightening description, she outlines how it: “manifests itself in everyone and no one. Everyone is complicit but no one wants to take responsibility.”

Describing the various, dangerous and insidious ways it strikes she likens it to a “many-headed hydra”.

These ideas about the problems of whiteness are not new.

Eddo-Lodge is building on the ideas of Martin Luther King Jr, whose 1963 piece she quotes later in the chapter. Here is an extract:

“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

‘White moderates’ demand this ‘absence of tension’ while blocking the way to ‘a positive peace which is the presence of justice’. This false absence of tension is the white equilibrium. When we refuse to be uncomfortable we are insisting on its maintenance.

White Equilibrium

Last year Ijeoma Oluo wrote an article in the Guardian about leading workshops designed to help people learn to discuss race ‘thoughtfully and deliberately’ and how white men and women take up space, not to listen, but to challenge her and defend themselves, to attempt to control the conversation.

“Just once I want to speak to a room of white people who know they are there because they are the problem,” she writes. “Who know they are there to begin the work of seeing where they have been complicit and harmful so that they can start doing better. Because white supremacy is their construct, a construct they have benefited from, and deconstructing white supremacy is their duty.”

If called out for unintentionally racist comments by people of color, white people are so distressed and defensive that we are unable to assimilate the feedback. The conversation is derailed before it begins.

All this works to restore white equilibrium. This equilibrium is false, and it comes at great cost to black, indigenous, and people of color. Additionally, it makes meaningful cross-racial dialogue impossible.

When well-meaning white people categorize racism as something overt and extreme, we are saying it is therefore not to do with ‘us’. (And I use ‘us’ here to listen to Oluo, and to stop pretending I am not part of this problem.) In defining racism so starkly, we eradicate nuance and divert all responsibility to a very clearly defined Elsewhere.

In another essay, ‘Forcing Blackness Through A Screen’ in The Good Immigrant, Reni Eddo-Lodge describes “whiteness as a political force and how it seeps, and strangles and silences.”

White fragility silences Black people. For different reasons, it silences White people too. As a white writer, I have been too ashamed and overwhelmed and frightened of being called out as racist to write about race.

Meanwhile, in the UK Black people die, disproportionately in police custody.

As Reni Eddo-Lodge writes: “Every voice raised against racism chips away at its power. We can’t afford to stay silent.”

White Feminism

“Dissecting political whiteness is paramount to understanding how racism operates in Britain. So often positioned as invisible, neutral, and benign, whiteness taints every interaction we’ll ever engage in.” — Reni Eddo Lodge

As a white woman I have built a life on a formalized and structural privilege I didn’t earn and rarely acknowledge. Sometimes, I catch myself wanting to keep it.

It took so long to carve this space among the men. To find my voice. To take up my own space. It was difficult at first, for me to understand that my battle was comparatively easy. To see how white privilege has helped me, like a racist guardian angel, every step of the way.

It’s my responsibility to acknowledge and understand my privilege, and to do everything I can to amplify marginalized voices. As a lecturer and writer, this responsibility extends way beyond the scope I expected. But it gives me opportunities too. And it doesn’t matter if I am uncomfortable.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said:

“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

Shallow understanding and tokenism is not enough. We have to be willing to be uncomfortable and make mistakes and take responsibility for our unconscious and conscious biases if we are going to be real allies.

“If nobody is racist,” Robin DiAngelo asked in the Guardian, Feb 2019, “why is racism still America’s biggest problem? What are white people afraid they will lose by listening? What is so threatening about humility on this topic?”

These are important questions and they deserve our time. If not now, when?

As Will Smith observed in 2016: “Racism isn’t getting worse; it’s getting filmed.”

As a white woman I have built a life on a formalized and structural privilege I didn’t earn and rarely acknowledge.

White Privilege

One aspect of my white privilege has been to opt-out of feeling the anguish of racial injustice. When my mental health gets poor, I stop reading the news as a protective measure. I didn’t even hear about George Floyd or the riots in Minneapolis until two days after they started.

My whiteness allows me to ‘practice self-care’ by avoiding traumatizing information while others are murdered for jogging.

I’ve watched the most recent news unfold in horror. And I know that I have no right to be shocked, to say, ‘I can’t believe it!’. Black people have been being murdered by police in America (and the UK) for too long.

Being shocked is a symptom of white denial. It suggests that the murder of innocent black people by police is not the norm.

White privilege has helped me, like a racist guardian angel, every step of the way.

This is a time for action. And with the ongoing pandemic, many of us find ourselves with more time to devote to the causes that need our attention.

So what can you do?

At the most basic level, recognize that no human being is superior to another, no matter what an individualistic, capitalist society might encourage you to believe.

Begin to unpack the ways in which your upbringing and education have poisoned your perspective.

Work to be more community-focused. Look for your nearest Black Lives Matter march, make a banner and show your solidarity.

Donate to George Floyd’s memorial fund or an anti-racist charity that works to improve the lives of black, indigenous, and people of color. Commit to ongoing education about racism, its history, and continued legacy.

Learn about white fragility and accept that you will make mistakes on your lifelong journey to being an ally. Listen to black, indigenous, and people of color’s voices. Think about where you put your money.

Consider how you will keep doing this work of unlearning after this moment dies down. How could you make an impact longterm? Could you mentor somebody? Could you volunteer your time?

What actions can you take to do your part in deconstructing the institutionalized racism that thrives unchecked at work, in your family, in your home?

As Rachel E. Cargle wrote: “anti-racism is not personal development for white people.”

Think of how your actions will impact the people that you are trying to serve.

Understand that intention is irrelevant. Impact is what counts. Prepare to apologize for your mistakes.

Do better.