Racism
I Only Just Realised That I’m White
Imagine my surprise
It all happened so fast. There I was, innocently enjoying my morning reads, when I came across an article in which the author imagined what it would be like to have white privilege for a day.
It only took me a moment to realise that the description fit me perfectly. For example, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been for a jog without once being eyed suspiciously. I’ve never been turned down for a job (although I’d foolishly put this down to the fact that I work hard to interview very well).
Nobody at any beach has ever asked me if I know how to swim. Elderly couples have struck up conversations with me on numerous occasions (sometimes when I’d rather they didn’t). I’ve never been refused entry to a nightclub or had an Uber driver cancel my trip when they saw me. It was so clear! I qualified for white privilege by almost every single metric in the article!
What other explanation could there be but that I’m white and simply hadn’t realised?
There have been other signs too. A couple of days ago, I was blocked by a black writer for questioning her assertion that white people are racist if their kids don’t have black friends. Or if their parents were racist (continuing to love your potentially racist parents is further proof of racism). Or if they don’t support public schools. Or if they’re not willing to die to defend the principles of the Constitution as Abolitionists did (the list goes on for, I kid you not, eleven more paragraphs. I just can’t bring myself to transcribe any more of this nonsense).
Anyway, I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but here’s what I wrote in response:
I just don’t understand how you can write things like this. Most black people can’t answer yes to all of these! If you create an impossible standard and then consider everyone who fails to live up to it a racist, you’ll believe that the world is full of racists. But I mean seriously, do you hold yourself to this standard on other issues?
Are you fighting even a tenth as hard against horrors like female genital mutilation or genocide or child soldiers as you demand white people fight for black people here? Does the fact that you’re not fighting these injustices mean that you support them? Does framing white people who aren’t “willing to die for us” as the enemy really move us forward?
Yes, saying “I have a black friend” is an asinine defence against an accusation of racism. But defining people who don’t seek out movies by black directors or whose friends don’t have enough black friends as racist, is an asinine definition of racism.
Now that I’m white, I see clearly that my problem with her definition of racism had nothing to do with how idiotic it was, and everything to do with my failure to check my privilege. I mean, it’s never even occurred to me to investigate whether my friend’s friends have black friends! It doesn’t get more racist than that. She was right to block me immediately and delete my comment instead of engaging with somebody who politely disagreed. I only wish that I could block myself.
To be honest, I’m not sure where to go from here. How should I balance my newfound white privilege against the fact that I’ve had strangers shout “ni**er” at me in the street? How can I reconcile my blatantly racist choice not to “look at a police officer in the face and say ‘Black Lives Matter’”, with the fact that I’ve sat down with actual racists on multiple occasions and done the hard work of changing their minds? What hope do I have of empathising with the suffering of people who don’t look like me when, as we all know, nothing remotely bad has ever happened to a person with white skin?
Having spent the early years of my life defining myself as a black man (before growing up and realising that I didn’t have to define myself by the colour of my skin at all), I’m ashamed to admit that I’m struggling to adapt to the revelation that I’ve been a racist, privileged white person this whole time. And yet I must.
Because the only other possibility I can think of is that these issues are far more complex and nuanced than these articles suggest. If it turns out that I’m not, in fact, white and racist, I’m forced to conclude that these are fatuous, exasperatingly simplistic takes on the issues of race and racism. I’d have to believe that the people who wrote these “articles” have no interest in thinking seriously about racism (or recognising their own), and are instead happy to mindlessly repeat the same cretinous nonsense for clicks. No doubt that’s just further evidence of how little I understand the black experience.
