Addressing Whiteness
I was recently sent an article from the New Yorker entitled, How Do We Change America?, written by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an African American writer and activist. What began as her illustration of the protests and the political climate in our country, eventually gave way to a deeper look at the policies that have perpetuated the issues that protesters are banding together to address right now. Taylor concludes that we have much more to address than police brutality. It’s the tip of the iceberg. The brutal impact of COVID-19 on African Americans is just one place to start, for example.
What this article precisely identifies, but does not explicitly name, is the way our government, on both sides of the aisle, has continuously perpetuated white supremacy, doing so in a way that they tactfully branded as being in line with “American values” of “self-sufficiency” and “self-determination.” Politicians like George W. Bush, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton have all repeated the same erroneous decisions in addressing America’s race issues. No, the issue is not that protesters are looting “because they are not part of the system at all anymore. They do not share our values, and their children are growing up in a culture alien from ours, without family, without neighborhood, without church, without support.” This response from Clinton is a perfect example of the perpetuation of white supremacy. What does he mean by “our values” “our family”? He means the WHITE values, WHITE family, to which Black Americans have not been able to assimilate. And again, Biden’s statement that “the culture of welfare must be replaced with the culture of work” is coded language. The “culture of welfare” is code for Black culture, and the “culture of work” is code for white culture.
My takeaway from this article is threefold.
First, we (and by we I mean me and other white people) need to change the way we are having these conversations around race in America. What I mean by that is understanding the ways in which whiteness in America is the default, and therefore reduces discussions of race in America to one that centers around blackness and the “problems” with Black people in America. Whiteness needs to be acknowledged. Whiteness needs to be at the center of these discussions so that whiteness, and all of the ideologies of superiority that come with it, can be challenged, and deconstructed. No, this is not about what is wrong with Black people; why they are looting, why they have high rates of crime, why they rely on welfare. It’s about what is wrong with us. Why have we led ourselves to believe that we are the culture to which Black people must acclimate? Why are we continuing to invest time and money into the institutions such as the prison system or police departments that overwhelmingly punish Black people, without taking a look at ourselves and the ways in which we have failed them by defunding education, by plowing through their neighborhoods with highways, by preventing them access from healthcare, housing, jobs, food.
Second, we cannot rely on politicians who perpetuate the status quo of white supremacy. So if we certainly CANNOT rely on Joe Biden, what’s next? Once we have addressed the need to take a look at ourselves, then we need to act on a local level. We need to uplift voices of our communities so that change can be made on the ground, not in Washington DC where politicians continue to distance themselves from what is really happening in America. I saw what a difference local governance can make just last night, watching the Charlotte City Council pass a motion put forth by a city council member to defund the use of chemical weapons by CMPD. This saves Charlotte $100,000 — it’s a small win. But it’s a win nonetheless. That win was made because the city council got floods of emails and calls from Charlotte residents, and they listened.
Finally, I relied on Black activists to come to these conclusions. My first point about centering whiteness when white people talk about race issues is directly inspired by a video that Sonya Renee Taylor — an educator, writer, speaker, activist — posted about the way that white people are talking to their families about what’s going on. My second point would not have been made had it not been for Braxton Winston, the African American council member who put forth the motion that the council passed, and who was arrested just last week while participating in the protests in Charlotte.
This is to say, that as a white person, it is my job to listen and learn from the work that has been done tirelessly by Black activists. This work is not new. The Black writers, artists, musicians, mothers, fathers, teachers and leaders, have been doing this work. White people have just decided to join the conversation en masse now.
Too long, didn’t read… White people need to radically change the narrative — we need to take an honest look at ourselves. It’s not on Black people to convince us they are worthy of being listened to, invested in, cared about. It is our job to recognize the humanity in them, and to recognize the inhumanity of the culture of whiteness in America, and then to ACT. Read, listen, then call, email, donate, sign petitions.
