Whites Only
Embarrassment rushes over me when I think about the times I’ve perpetrated racism. Same for the times I’ve seen or heard others do it, and didn’t speak up.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, just a few hours from Minneapolis, I was raised in a city with very few blacks. Seeing a black person was a rarity in a city whose neighborhoods were segregated by color.
I’m not proud of my previous actions. More like disgusted. I’m sharing my experiences to highlight the following: only whites have the power to lift the knee of oppression from the necks of black people.
From the time I can remember, racial epithets were the only way blacks were referred to by those in my home or community. My grandmother told me that the “n” word was just what you called them. It was normal. The worst thing you could do was marry a black person.
Negative characteristics were attributed to all blacks. They all smelled, they were all lazy, they were all thieves. My family told me that black people were dirty. If our yard or house was a mess, my mom said it looked like a bunch of n*****s lived there.
If a black family lived in your area, it was considered a bad neighborhood. A black family once moved into our white neighborhood, and my little brother befriended the little boy. One day, some money came up missing. The boy was accused of stealing it and was never allowed in the house again.
As a teenager, I’d stopped at my mom’s office to get some money on the way to the beach. A new friend of mine waited in my van while I went into my mom’s office. Before I left the parking lot, my mother rushed out of her office and caught me. Within earshot of my friend, she asked why I had a n***** with me.
At eighteen, I joined the Air Force and went to boot camp in San Antonio. It was my first exposure to a mixed crowd. Like the white racist I was, I was telling dead n***** jokes to a group of white airmen. In the middle of one of my jokes, a black female who’d been standing behind me asked, “I don’t know, what does happen to a dead n*****? Shame and humiliation flooded my senses. The realization that I’d said something reprehensible blazed through me and forever seared the moment into my brain. I am eternally grateful to the beautiful young black woman who challenged me to answer my own revolting racist joke.
After four years, I left the military and returned to Iowa. Des Moines was the same, but I was different at a fundamental level. Made aware of my awful behavior, I then had to face the endemic racism that permeated my hometown culture.
I didn’t speak up when I heard a woman tell her baby that he needed to go to sleep, or the n***ies would come get his bottle. Horror isn’t a strong enough word to describe my internal reaction to what she’d said, but I stayed quiet. In another instance, someone refused to buy a used car because a black person had previously owned it. The list goes on.
My experiences may be unique, but it’s more probable they’re not. But speaking up means the possibility of being shunned by one’s social group. Biologically, this is a terrifying concept. Fear of social rejection is a powerful motivator. Speaking up would have meant being called horrible names and jeopardizing relationships with friends or family. You didn’t question if it might happen. It would happen.
The oppressed cannot lift the knee of oppression from their necks any more than George Floyd could have escaped Derek Chauvin’s knee.
At the macrocosm, the knee of white privilege works in the same manner, only it’s invisible and moves in slow motion. Police brutality is only a symptom of the soul-sucking cancer of racism. As with any cancerous mass, the body cannot heal until the entire tumor is destroyed. The malignancy of racism is fed by what many white parents teach their kids about black America.
Police brutality has to be stopped years before a person dons a police uniform. Same for racism. If not caught early, no amount of protests, reforms, or education will help. A 2017 study shows that children may develop racial biases as early as six-months-old. White people’s cradle-to-grave privilege and prejudice are the cause of black people’s cradle-to-grave oppression.
During the recent protests, some black protesters were asked about the first time they experienced racism. The answers were gut-wrenching. But what about white people? Shouldn’t whites be asked about the first time they behaved in a racist manner? They should, but of course, they won’t. It’s a monumental question, the answer of which culminates into the knee of oppression.
I was lucky that so many years ago, a brave black woman called me out on my racist shit, and I heard the call. It affected the way I chose to raise my child. My daughter learned that we all have a right to be here, and we are all entitled to a decent life. The color of our skin doesn’t make us any better than anyone else, and something is wrong with people who believe it does.
Most others are never asked to look at their actions. Instead, they’re encouraged to act in hateful ways and taught that they’re better than others simply because they were born with white skin.
A police uniform is not magical. It cannot disappear the racism and hate planted in the fertile minds of white children. Gregory McMichael had been a law enforcement officer for more than thirty years before he chased and gunned down Ahmaud Arbery. After shooting Arbery, he called him a f******* n*******. That kind of deep racial hatred is taught from the day some children are born.
I still have to fight down my ingrained prejudices. The beasts of hate and ignorance that were sowed into my young mind still lurk in dark corners. I hate to have to admit that.
My daughter married a mixed-race man. They have faced their share of problems. My daughter has been called a n*****-lover and had other much worse things said to her over social media.
My granddaughter is just over a year old. Many years ago, if a courageous young black woman hadn’t confronted me about my racism, maybe there would be no beautiful, mixed-race grandbaby to love.
I have to accept that my actions either add to the weight or lift the knee of oppression. The responsibility is solely mine as a white American. To say that blacks are responsible for the oppression and abuse they suffer is a cruel and hateful laziness with deadly consequences. Only whites can eradicate the oppression of black Americans, and it has to be taught before a white baby leaves the crib.
