I Will Never Understand Racism, Because I’m White

More white people need to learn you can’t deny concepts you don’t understand

I think that everyone who writes anti-racism articles should be commended. However, I do get a little tired of the “clap bait” articles written by white people to explain white privilege to other white people.

Those kind of sound like an over eager grade school kid going, “See? See? I understand! I deserve praise!”

Having said that, yes, I’ve written articles on white privilege. The difference is that my title would be something like, “White people writing articles on white privilege is an example of white privilege.”

As a white person, I feel I have an obligation to fight racism. At the same time, I recognize that I have a lot to learn. I acknowledge that I’ll never learn it all. I often touch bases with Johnny Silvercloud, Allison Gaines, Marley K., and others to make sure I’m on the right track. I’m one of the oddball writers that likes being edited, particularly with anti-racism writing. I need to know if my dumb, privileged perspective is causing more harm than good.

In my more than a year of writing on Medium, I feel I’ve made progress in my understanding of many of the afflictions that plague the world. When you read other thoughtful writers, it inspires you to study something and write about it. Sometimes you see connections that either haven’t been emphasized, or have been intentionally buried.

To be clear, I’m not saying I’m seeing things nobody has ever seen before. But I do think I’ve rediscovered some things that our educational system, the media, and our corrupt political leaders have made a concerted effort to oppress. I feel it helps. You be the judge.

What perspective can a white person offer on racism?

No matter how much I try to learn about racism, I will always be white. That means I will never truly understand racism. No matter how bad it gets for me, I can always, always, always, count on the benefit of being white.

Being white is sort of like having rich parents. You might be poor and think you understand the situation of other poor people, but if you have rich parents, you simply aren’t staring into the abyss like they are.

Even if you are estranged and your parents hate you and haven’t talked to you for years, deep down you know that if things got really bad you could probably call them up and they’d bail you out. That’s a pretty sweet hole card. Even if you never use it, the fact that it exists changes your whole reality.

A truly impoverished person doesn’t have that. Not having that potential lifeline changes everything. It’s the difference between hope and hopelessness.

I can piece together an approximation

I’ve experienced a lot of things in life that make me physically sick. I’ve had people force me to do things I didn’t want to do. Those people were physically stronger and/or socially more powerful than me.

I remember what it was like to be a powerless child. I didn’t emerge from the womb six feet tall and fully muscled. I remember being a scrawny kid. I remember receiving beatings.

I’ve been accused of cheating on tests because I did better than the teachers thought I would based on my social status. I’ve been stopped by police because I wasn’t wearing the designer clothing of the frat boys.

I can piece these experiences together and get a vague notion of what racism is, but it’s always an incomplete notion because I’m white.

Case in point, all this stuff happened and I was still indifferent to racism for much of my life.

For me, the change happened when I saw how racists treated my wife and children. I’m embarrassed it took so long for the light bulb to go off.

I thought there was just a base level of injustice we all had to deal with. It turns out, my base level is a lot higher than the base level of many other groups. I recognize that in theory if not in experience. My base level of injustice is higher than the level my wife has to deal with. It’s higher than the level my children have to deal with.

That makes me sick.

Can I weaponize my privilege?

Because I’m white, I can get away with saying and doing thing that non-white anti-racism activists can’t. I’m not really sure that’s a good thing.

The scenario makes me think of the scene in The Lord of the Rings where Frodo tries to give the ring to Gandalf.

Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! — Tolkien 95, Ballantine, 1985

The point of this is that the solution is not to find a white savior to wield his strength for the benefit of all. The solution is to make everyone strong. This concept is backwards from everything we’ve been taught in our literature and our history. The concept of the hero is fundamentally flawed. We need to develop the concept of the heroic community.

We’ve got to break down everything we believe and build it back better than it ever was before.

I should reject my white privilege. My white privilege corrupts me. How do I even go about doing that?

What are my kids going to do when I am gone? My job is to transfer power to them so that they might continue the fight against racism. I have to be a conduit and a teacher, not a protector. They have to be empowered to protect themselves. They have to be armed with knowledge, strength, and weapons.

The work I’m doing

Lately I feel as though I’m on the cusp of a revelation. It takes a long time to rip away the blinders of indoctrination and realize the truth about our reality.

I can make sense of racism through the use of models. Racism is similar to being in an abusive relationship. When a child is in an abusive relationship with a parent, the child still tries to make the relationship work. Even while being abused, the child loves the abuser. It takes a long time for the child to even allow himself to recognize that the things he endured were not “mistakes” or “accidents.” The suffering he endured was intentional. The people who inflicted that suffering were evil.

Many of the tools we need to dismantle racism are hidden in the places we’ve been indoctrinated not to look.

Give yourself permission to ask certain questions that you know are prohibited.

Why do our politicians protect hate symbols and the Nazi salute under freedom of speech?

What are the consequences if the United States is an evil country?

What has the United States of America ever done for you?

What if we’re not the home of the brave?

What if we’re not the land of the free?

Racism is abuse

When you’re caught in an abusive relationship, you’re brainwashed into collaborating with your oppressor. Go and watch the Gabby Petito video. The girl is hysterical and she spends the whole time apologizing for her abuser.

The Gabby Petito case got a lot of attention because she’s white. The reality is that every day marginalized people are forced to apologize for their oppressor when they’re made to stand up and pledge allegiance to our flag. This is brainwashing 101, people are forced to endure it all the time.

There are certain questions you might pose which will get you dismissed as hysterical or unreasonable.

Not all of those questions are bad questions.

Some of my articles get buried. Some of the best articles I’ve ever written nobody gets a chance to see. I guess I must have hit too close to the mark.

I’ve learned I have to disguise what I really think to fool the A.I. and not get scrubbed from the web. They say the internet is forever. It’s not forever for the truth.

My obligations

As a white person, I’ll never fully understand racism. That means I have to be very careful when I comment on racism. However, there are other injustices that overlap the sphere of racism that I have an obligation to combat.

As a white person, I have an obligation to denounce and expose white supremacy.

As a white person, I have an obligation to study history and expose buried atrocities.

As a white person, I have an obligation to police the media and call them out when they present a story in a way that contains implicit bias.

As a white person, I have an obligation to confront other white people when they deny racism.

There’s plenty of work to be done within my sphere without ever having to encroach upon the sphere of another. That being the case, I need people to tell me if I overstep or get things wrong. Through reading the works of the authors I mentioned above, I’ve had my eyes opened. However, they’re still not open all the way.

This isn’t a fight that ends

Our whole society needs to change the way it thinks. We need to change it in the short term, and we have to keep on changing long term. This isn’t a one and done process. You don’t write one article and say it all. You’re not there. We must redefine our reality and continue to redefine it every day.

No more talk about how great we are. We’re no where near where we need to be.

When you have revelations that impact your fundamental beliefs, it changes your entire worldview. Most people are too afraid to dare to question their fundamental beliefs. That’s by design. You are controlled. You’ve been indoctrinated not to break out of your cage.

Ask yourself, whom does that system of control serve? I know this much, despite what you think, it doesn’t serve you.