“I notice when you’re talking to White people and you say the word ‘White’ it’s almost like you’ve stabbed them a little bit.” - Princeton Professor Chenjerai Kumanyika on NPR’s Seeing White:
I once told a family member he was a racist. Even someone standing on an airport moving walkway was still moving, I’d said. In the same way, any White person not actively opposing a system of White supremacy benefited from it.
“So you’re calling me a racist?” he’d said.
He was incredulous. Insulted.
In my experience, many White people would likewise be offended. White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo calls this a lack of ‘racial stamina’ saying: “We consider a challenge to our racial world-views as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people.”
Hence why I’d offended this person. I’d labeled him the very worst name you can call a White person, even though he strives to be both good and moral.
But he’s still a racist. And for that matter, so am I. And if you’re a White person, my guess is that so are you.
Incredulous?
Acknowledging our inner racist is fraught, in part because we’ve eschewed that label to fringe groups and ‘bad apples,’ instead of acknowledging the subconscious and unintentional ways that each of us inhabits racism. Until we, as White people, acknowledge that racism lives in here, not just ‘out there’—the ‘ist’ and not just the ‘ism’—we’ll never make headway in advancing racial equity in our country. As a well-intentioned White person, I excel at highlighting the ‘out there’ racism. Policing tactics, school funding, voter laws, ‘Karens.’ But I must first acknowledge this smog also lives in my lungs, even if I breathed it secondhand.
But perhaps you’re still balking at my accusation that we are, at a minimum, recovering racists. Renowned racial psychologist Dr. Beverly Tatum describes racism as a simple equation: Prejudice plus power. Anyone who harbors prejudice and who benefits from the current power structure—again, intentionally or unintentionally—is, like it or not, a racist. Amy Cooper offers an obvious recent example of prejudice plus power. Cooper, a white woman, called the police on a Black birdwatcher in Central Park after a dispute about leashing her dog. Prejudice informed her reaction and she used her power, leaning on a familiar trope of African American man terrorizing a White woman. But that example may feel obvious. ‘Out there.’
Looking inward requires I admit I hold prejudices, which, of course, I do. Researchers are unanimous: We all have implicit bias. Each of us holds stereotypes, which we unconsciously tap into when forming opinions. And while I am disgusted by Ms. Cooper’s actions, I must privately consider: If a Black man emerged from the brush at dawn, ourselves alone on the trail, might my own heart quicken? I’ve spent 20 years trying to detangle myself from the grips of White supremacy, but I’ve also spent four decades trained to see Black men as dangerous, in explicit and implicit ways. Prejudice, as Tatum says, “is one of the inescapable consequences of living in a racist society.” Every day I must force myself to look ‘in here’ to upend instinctual prejudices. And every day, acknowledge ways I reverted to deeply ingrained, biased narratives.
Similarly, I must acknowledge the power that comes from living inside a system built for people like me. Generational wealth helped buy our house. A private security firm, owned by the nearby predominately White university, patrols our streets. The life expectancy of my zip code averages 20 years higher than Black neighborhoods in my city. We won a literal lottery to a public charter school. In systems thinking, this is called ‘success to the successful.’ Like an investment that reaps interest, each of privilege builds upon the next, amassing more power. And similar to prejudice, my awareness of this power and privilege is not enough. I must use my social and financial capital to help amplify organizations, families and businesses of color in my community. I must elect politicians who acknowledge broken systems and seek to rebuild them.
But the first step is always admitting the problem. Until we are honest with ourselves, until each of us—whether we’re a parent or a police officer—can acknowledge the prejudices we harbor and the power each of us yields, whether we yield it knowingly or not, racial equity will be elusive. Let’s name it, so we can honestly work to solve it. I believe none of us can become the ‘anti-racists’ we may seek to be, until we first acknowledge that starting point in ourselves. Then we can begin work on our personal—and collective—recovery plans.