My beloved middle-class*
white brothers and sisters,
I’ve been having hard conversations with many of you about race and racism. It’s been made harder by the fact that we often have a very different understanding of white people and our history and why we all matter to each other. Explaining what I think I know about race and whiteness in short snippets has hasn’t worked very well so I thought it might be most useful to write a letter.
Before I begin, I want
to tell you how important you are to me. You are good and lovable and I
am pleased to be in your ranks. I didn’t always feel this way but that’s a separate
letter. Suffice it to say that I do now. Because you mean so much to me,
I want to talk about why I think we are so important and why what we say and do
matters in the world.
Nemo Was a White Kid in the ‘Burbs
A lot of us are very
well-meaning white people but our relationship to racism is like a clownfish to
an anemone. Anemones are really toxic and dangerous for anyone who isn’t a
clownfish but they’re perfectly lovely for clownfish. Clownfish that grow
up in anemones and don’t interact with other types of fish have NO idea that
what surrounds them could hurt others. Just
like clownfish, you and I have such a symbiotic relationship with our
environment that we often can’t see /feel/hear the thousands of tiny little
toxic barbs embedded in our society that hurt and kill people of color.
Other fish can’t come
into the anemone but we can bring our resources out into open water. We
may face a little more danger or have to give up a few perks, but if the other
fish come into our anemone they will CERTAINLY get hurt. The ecosystem can’t
survive with only clownfish and anemones, so telling the other fish to suck it
up and keep trying to make it in a deathtrap doesn’t make a lot of sense for
any of us.
Trust Fund Babies
You and I have a really
special relationship with the major institutions of our country. Over 500 years ago, white people started
putting laws in place to make sure we (middle-class white people) got and kept
resources like land, money, housing and education. It’s like our ancestors set up a massive
trust fund that we’re all still collecting benefits from, whether we know it or
not.
Here’s just one example
of how the system has worked for my family.
In 1953, my mother’s
working class father bought a small parcel of land for $10,000 in an area of
North Dallas where cotton fields were turned into suburbs for GIs coming home to
start families. Actually, just white families.
There were restrictions put in the deeds of the land explicitly prohibiting
people of color from buying in the neighborhood.
The schools were excellent and the homes
appreciated at a very fast rate. My
mother’s family sold the property about ten years later at a profit but if
they’d held onto it, today it would be worth 60 times what they paid for
it. Now homes in the area are going for over $1 million and the schools are so
good that George Bush’s daughters went to my mother’s elementary school. In contrast, median price houses in places
people of color could have lived such as South Dallas, West Dallas, East Oak
Cliff and South Oak Cliff are currently going for $30,000 to $80,000.
The sale of another parcel of similarly
segregated (and appreciated) land paid for my father to go to a top private law
school. It also provided a down payment
on a fixer-upper my parents bought in a poor neighborhood in Washington, D.C. The
bank gave my parents a mortgage even though my father didn’t have an income and
my mother was making about $7,000 a year.
While they did much of the work on the home themselves, the capital for
the down payment and renovations came from the earlier real estate gains (white
bonus) of our ancestors. My parents sold
the DC house for two and a half times what they bought it for and continued
this pattern of buying property in areas that appreciated. My parents and their
spouses now own 5 houses, including the one I live in now (and pay WAY below
market rate rent for).
That initial advantage from the whites-only
law allowed my family to continue to buy into the “best” neighborhoods which
consequently appreciated the fastest. Those neighborhoods had the best public
schools which set us up to have a better shot at getting into top college and
graduate schools. The profits from this pattern paid for our educations at top
private institutions (and the social/professional connections that go with
them).
Sure, my family members and I have worked
hard. But we also got a ton of invisible
advantages along the way- advantages that my friends of color and their
families didn’t have equal access to. I grew up thinking racial disparities
were the result of individual failings of huge masses of people of color
instead of institutionalized racism. It
wasn’t any one person’s fault that I never knew the truth until adulthood. We teach what we were taught.
I
Love a Parade!
About the time we
started to walk, well-meaning adults began littering our path with big, stinky,
nasty piles of crap. Through
their actions, laws, words, and media, adults gave us messages about who to
trust, who to fear and how to
become a “success. Most of the time it was like walking behind a horse in a
parade that’s just clopping along, dropping steaming, stinky piles of crap
without even appearing to realize it. We were boxed in with everyone else
along the parade route, so we just had to step right in it and keep on moving.
What’s more, because all the white folks we know are smeared with this
crap/racism, we’ve just gotten used to it.
Most of us don’t even notice anymore.
Here’s what the crap I
stepped in looked like.
(Disclaimer: descriptions
of racist thoughts/actions)
1. Until I was an adult,
the only non-white adults I ever had connections with worked for our family as
a nanny, gardener, handyman, etc.
Both my parents grew up in middle-class, white families in racially-segregated Texas. They grew up without social connections to people of color and repeated the same pattern with me. As an adult, I often feel awkward and unsure of myself around peers who are people of color, including friends we consider to be family. It’s incredibly frustrating to try to learn these basic interpersonal skills as an adult and say/do dumb things to people I love deeply as I’m learning.
2. When I was in second
grade, a bunch of kids started calling a kid with one black and one white
parent, “Oreo”.
I thought the other kids were really clever and I started saying it too.
Adults heard us call him that name, but they never told us it was hurtful or to
stop. I wish a responsible
adult had told me to knock it off the first time but this type of teasing was
allowed. I’d like to think the adults
didn’t know what we meant, but I find that hard to believe. I
still find “OREO!” popping into my head occasionally when I learn someone has
mixed black/white heritage. It’s really irritating.
3. When I was 15 and
learning to drive, a well-meaning relative told me to watch out for Asian
drivers and then launched into a very complicated and illogical theory about
eye shape and peripheral vision to back up their statement.
Now every time I see
someone Asian do something stupid while they’re driving, I have to fight the
voice in my brain that says my relative was right.
4. My first boss directly
ordered me to monitor African American customers in our store as a way to reduce
shoplifting.
I got my first job working at a clothing boutique. The owner left
me alone in the store on my second day with very little instruction.
After about a week, she came to me VERY angry because clothes were
missing and demanded that I stop people from shoplifting. (It’s telling
that she never assumed I may have stolen them.) She told me further
losses would come out of my $10/hour salary. When I asked her what to do,
her only advice was, “Watch out for black people. They’re always stealing things”.
Desperate, I ended up
watching black customers so aggressively that one day a woman whipped around
and cursed me out for being racist. And she was totally right.
I could go on, but you
get the point.
I’m really clear on one this
point: these adults weren’t bad people. They all thought they were being helpful by giving me the (often misguided and/or incorrect) information
and advice THEY got as they grew up (mostly from people who grew up under
segregation).
Living
Under Lock and Key
About 50 years ago, people
of color (and a few white people) put so much pressure on folks in power that a
few cogs in the machinery got taken out (Voter Rights Act and the end of legal
segregation). White people who saw this
change thought racism was over because things looked cleaner, but pulling a few
parts did not shut down the well-oiled machine that had been running for over
500 years. The infrastructure set up to
benefit us is still alive and well but so deeply embedded in the fabric of this
country that it’s nearly impossible for most of us see that we’re still
swimming in it. We are like fish that
can’t even tell we are wet.
This is probably why the
term “white privilege” angers and irritates so many of us. We can’t see
how we are getting any privilege when it feels like we are just busting our
asses each day to make a good life for ourselves. White privilege is really
hard to see and can be hard to own, because we didn’t ask for it. But we have it and it’s real.
This is how I have come
to make sense of it:
Our son goes to a preschool with an electronic gate. Each family is given a little key fob
which is held up to a magnetic panel to unlock the door. White privilege works
a lot like this. Imagine our institutions were designed with special
magnetic key pads. White people,
particularly white people with money, are born with the little key embedded in
our skin. We walk up to doors (apply for a job, try to buy a house, interact
with a police officer) and they open without us having to do anything.
Most of us have no idea we have this special key. More importantly, if we are only around other white people, we never even notice that the doors don’t open as easily for some people. Or, we may know a handful of people of color that have done that magic combination of things that earns them their own key so it appears as if there are equal opportunities to get through the door, but there aren’t.
Often we get really, really angry when we learn about this system. Some of us think that anyone who didn’t get in right away must have done something wrong. Some of us don’t want to go through the door if our friends of color can’t enter. Some of us are pissed when we learn that we didn’t have to do anything special for the door to open. Working really hard or being really smart may help us go further once we walk in, but the door opening automatically? That was the magnetic key.
I don’t
think white people need to feel guilty but I do want us to feel a sense of
stewardship for this unearned gift. Part
of that stewardship includes talking about the ways we benefit and identifying
places where we can use that privilege to create change.
Which brings me back to
the crap…
Clean
Up on Aisle “White”
If you’re like me, you’d
want someone to tell you that you have spinach in your teeth or toilet paper on
your shoe. So here goes. That crap we stepped in as kids?
It’s still on us and we’ve been tracking it ALL over the place. We
tend to fall into one of the following groups:
We think the crap is not our problem. We are convinced that racism was fixed in
the 1960’s and if people of color are still struggling, it’s their own fault.
We often say that people who talk about race are racist or complainers
who need to grow a pair and MOVE ON.
We want the smell to go away so badly, we imagine the crap magically
disappeared.
We may say things like, “I’m colorblind” or “I simply don’t see race”. Unfortunately, ignoring the continued impact
of racism on people of color won’t make it go away. Sadly, it won’t clean us up
either.
We
are dumping gallons of perfume on ourselves to disguise the smell. We might be focusing a LOT on helping people of
color and still have a really hard time being close with white people (I did
for a LONG time). We tend to be overwhelmed by our own sense of guilt and
often think we’re better than other white people who show their racism more.
We still say and do racist things all the time-our racism is just a
little harder for other white people to see.
We
are smearing the crap on everyone else. We don’t want to be alone with our funk. We tend to say and
do overtly racist things. That, obviously, just sucks for everyone,
although I have to say I don’t think this group is better or worse than any of
the others. This group just shows the racism more.
We
smelled something foul and decided to start the clean up. We know we didn’t intentionally step in crap,
but we are committed to stop spreading it around by working to get ourselves
and other white people cleaned up. It’s
not always pretty but it doesn’t have to be gruesome.
A.F.G.O.
Is Not a Four Letter Word
When I realize I have
just unknowingly said or done something racist to a person of color, I
don’t get paralyzed with guilt. I know the situation is not hopeless just because
I had a racist thought. It’s simply another reminder that negative messages about
people of color are in my brain without my consent. What I *can* do is identify
these thoughts and not act on them.
My experience is that racist thoughts are running through the brains of white people all the time without us even realizing it. One morning as I drove to work, I saw an African American man stop on his bicycle and pour something into an opaque container. My first thought was “he’s pouring alcohol into a different container so he can hide it.” Mind you, it was 7:45 in the morning.
My experience is that racist thoughts are running through the brains of white people all the time without us even realizing it. One morning as I drove to work, I saw an African American man stop on his bicycle and pour something into an opaque container. My first thought was “he’s pouring alcohol into a different container so he can hide it.” Mind you, it was 7:45 in the morning.
I’ll Tell You What I Want (What I Really, Really Want)
My response wasn’t
guilt. It was more like: “Huh.
Look at that. There’s another one of those annoying thoughts.
AFGO! (Another Freaking Growth Opportunity). I will try to remember
this as I’m interacting with people of color today so I can try not to be an
accidental jerk.”
I don’t want us to walk around
on eggshells, hyper vigilant about saying or doing the wrong thing all the
time. I want us try to assess whether our
judgments about people of color are true or just the tickertape of crap-filled movies
and jokes and “advice” we all have.
I want us to stop going
silent about racism and start talking to each other about the crap. I want us to practice seeing racism
and use that information to be less jerky. I want us to remember the special key and be
mindful about what we do when the doors open. I’m not saying you
shouldn’t go through those doors. We just need to pay attention to how we make
use of our easy access (like this).
It was scary for me to
start noticing how many racist things are said and done to people of color. It was disorienting and uncomfortable to consider
most of what I learned about race and my role as a white person is an illusion.
It’s awkward to notice the unearned benefits and try to figure out what to do
with them. But there is a cost to white
people not actively taking on racism as our issue.
Most middle class white
folks want strong communities, a strong public education system and a strong
economy. We will never get those things while the old system is still running.
Study after study shows that crime, poor performing schools, overcrowded
prisons, a lack of qualified workers and so many other challenges in our
society are driven by the institutional and individual effects of racism. If
you think ending racism is just an issue for bleeding-heart pinko liberals,
think about what kind of community you want for yourself and your children.
People of color are not inherently
more criminal or less intelligent or less healthy than white people. People of color are not the problem. Five
hundred years of systematically denying non-whites equal access to resources (education,
jobs, loans, good places to live, and healthcare) is the problem. If we want society to be more stable, we need
to take things back to the studs. We
need to peel away layer after layer of denial and replace laws, policies and
attitudes with something new. Until we
do that, I think the world we want for our children and their children will not
be possible.
I want middle class
white people to take on ending racism as OUR issue. By not understanding the
history, by not recognizing our privilege, and by not challenging white people
and systems to do better, we hold this whole thing in place.
I realize this call to
action may fall on a lot of deaf ears. You probably have a laundry list
of things that feel more relevant and important. The best thing I can offer in
such a case is a request from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Make a career of
humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make
a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer
world to live in." -Martin Luther King, Jr.
I want middle class white
people to talk about this stuff, with kindness and passion and honesty and love.
I want us to commit to making greater persons of each other. Maybe this wasn’t the most romantic love
letter you’ve ever read, but I want to make a greater nation with you.
If you’re feeling
defensive or angry or overjoyed or like I’m a total moron, I’d love to hear why
so we can have a dialogue. If you’re
feeling numb or don’t think this issue is relevant to you, I’d love to hear
about that too. Comment, email me, or talk
to another white person if you don’t feel comfortable doing it with me. Please just start talking about racism with
other white people. It’s the only way it
is ever going to end.
With all my love,
Jaime Jenett
jaimejenett@gmail.com
Where to learn more:
- Great explaination of how disparities develop: http://www.cahealthadvocates.org/_pdf/news/2007/Levels-Of-Racism.pdf (skip to the 2nd page to “Levels of Racism: A Gardners Tale”) or watch this: http://vimeo.com/11939747.)
- White Privilege: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html)
- “Why don’t whites have black friends?” http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/opinion/colby-black-friends/index.html
- www.timwise.org
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*I’m not ignoring poor and working class white folks. I am
intentionally talking to middle-class (and owning class) white folks because I
was raised with those particular sets of patterns and can speak out of that
experience.
