Racism Stains the Colors of America’s Red, White, and Blue

I’m white and finally learning about racism in America

As a white person I hope you are experiencing increased cognitive dissonance from the extent of racism in America. That trembling, rumbling uncomfortable feeling where two or more contradictions arise from your belly and into your head. You can’t avoid the violence lurking from racism. You can’t figure it out and it is opposite to what you’ve been taught and what you think you believe.

“Cognitive dissonance is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.” ~ Oxford Dictionary

Yet you know, deep, deep, deep down inside, the truths you once held about justice and fairness — are wrong and racism is too alive and well.

Maybe your understandings happened years ago or just recently nevertheless, you are witnessing a slew of injustices so loud, and bold and horrible you can’t close your eyes. Everywhere you turn, you are seeing a steady stream of racism — it’s the shadow side of America.

You can no longer sleep because the truth won’t let you. You might even spontaneously start to cry because everything you thought was real — isn’t. What you keep discovering is how racial discrimination has been happening for centuries.

You are so shaken, and if you are like me, you need to learn more. The movies and documentaries may astonish and unhinge you. The books you read are nothing like you’ve read before. Sometimes you shake your head — this can’t be! But you know it is. The strands of our white DNA are wrapped around so many lies to hide the truths.

• You slowly start to understand how the KKK doesn’t always wear a hood.
• How profoundly embedded racism is in our schools, housing, prisons.
• How reverse racism isn’t possible.
• How white superiority has wickedly dehumanized and marginalized an entire race and spectrum of color, people, ideas, and intelligences for white gain.

As you learn, your awareness is enhanced, and it starts to cut through the white lies by slowly understanding the violence of Jim Crow’s laws and the extensive history of white’s lynching Blacks.

You are deeply pained to read about a 14-year-old boy, Emmett Till falsely accused of flirting with a white woman and subsequently tortured and murdered by a gang of white men.

You start to question everything you didn’t learn and start to see everything that you did learn as sugar-coated and predominately white-sided.

Like me, racism starts to leak out of your pores and you begin to scream:

“Racism needs to end! But first, I need to start with myself and admit, because I am white, I am a racist.”

While on this self-discovery, you might become consumed and even zealous and your white friends and family might say, “What’s gotten into you? Who are you? Stop it! Go back to normal.”

This is your new normal. You are outgrowing the white lies you’ve been spoon-fed before you were even born. You are cutting off the flames of deception and adding real truths to entire Black history sections missing in your education.

You are learning you are not the superior race. You are just white and all of your white privilege is unearned!

What’s happening is you are starting to create ripples with your white friends and are growing the cognitive dissonance abyss to the core of something huge. This is a reality check and the clocks are ticking loudly both inside and outside of your head because more and more of your white family and friends are noticing and are being challenged too. Some will want to learn and some won’t. Some of your friends and family will pull away and ignore you, put you down, and change the subject. Some will hate you. Keep going forward.

The roar for justice is intense. This is good.

This America, we speak of so fondly — with her apple pie and vanilla ice cream — isn’t the land of the free. America isn’t the land of equality and outrageously all lives don’t matter.

Dishonesty and racism are the colors of America’s red, white, and blue. And People of Color have been saying this for centuries.

Just think, for example, how ruthlessly systemic racism is disguised by a technical term called redlining. Which is a modern form of perpetuating segregation that streamlines and continues to force People of Color from better schools therefore lesser higher-paying jobs in the future, and increases the probability of prison.

So, when you are watching the news, reading an article, and it makes you uncomfortable because of your whiteness, stay with that uncomfortableness and see what you can change in yourself and your attitudes on racism.

See what you can do differently. For instance, follow and support Black activist, writers, poets, and buy from their businesses. Watch, learn and listen. Step back from the limelight because the time is now for Black people to be heard and respected.

Let’s replace prejudice with equality and elevate diversity as our democracy. Let’s take a knee together and finally we will all breathe the truth.

Carolyn Riker, MA, LMHC, is a licensed psychotherapist and author of three books of poetry and prose. Her latest is My Dear, Love Hasn’t Forgotten You. If you’d like, follow her on Facebook at Carolyn Riker, MA, LMHC or Instagram.

Resources:

The History of Redlining by Beatrix Lockwood

‘Black communities have been robbed’: Will reparations for black Americans finally get real consideration? by Meera Jagannathan

What’s the Matter With “All Lives Matter” by David Bedrick J.D., Dipl. PW

29 Movies, Shows, and Documentaries to Watch to Educate Yourself on Racial Injustice

How to Be an Activist as a Sensitive Person by April Snow, LMFT

The Untold: What White People Can Do with Privilege! by Ruth King

Anti-Racism For Kids 101: Starting To Talk About Race and Starting To Talk About Race With Kids by Raising Luminaries