Dear White People, Racism Has To Go. And We're Needed To Help End It.

Some of what’s included here today, namely resources and links, I’ve posted already. But I wanted to add to and share again, because getting rid of racism and us working out our part in it, is important to me. And, I pray it’s important to you too.

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

After I wrote and published last week that we, white folk, are needed to end racism and police violence in America, I learned about the death of Tyre Nichols. Tyre was another black man whose life was ended by police and the US racist structure. I’m writing about this same topic today because, just as we were needed last week, my white friends, we’re still needed now.

There are those among us who can’t see the videos or hear of more black and brown people dying, because it looks like death to us or to those most precious to us. My white friends, though our pain is real and we suffer hardship, we don’t directly share in this sort of injury. One that’s exacted by a racialized social design. The same societal arrangement that marks us as white and preserves our lives, destroys others.

We’ve talked together about Tyre, the deaths of Darryl Williams and Keenan Anderson, the men I wrote about last week, and about how racism is structural violence. I hear when you voice that you’re heartbroken. You’ve told me that you feel helpless. I see us looking for answers and yearning for wisdom that will tell us what to do. And I notice we’re overcome and uncertain about our role in all of this. Let me say this, you’re not alone and we can’t get stuck in hopelessness, uncertainty, and grief — because we’re needed.

So, my people — white people — let me call us in anew today. The fundamental troubles, that sustain racism in America, remain with us. They haven’t been eradicated and we’re needed to stamp them out.

I definitely don’t know everything about race or what it means to be white in the United States. I don’t expect you to be an expert either. And, I certainly don’t think anyone expects us, white folk, to be experts on racism. What I am certain of is that being categorized and perceived as white, isn’t meaningless.

Whiteness, a notion that, in its earliest phase, said white people are innately superior, wasn’t a virtuous invention. While whiteness has adapted to fit social change, and, though it may look different than it did at its inception, whiteness is still with us, keeping racism alive. And, in America‘s racial order, whiteness is where I’ve found my place. Alongside you, my fellow melanin deficient, light-skinned humans.

For some time, I’ve been trying to figure out my racial identity and what it means to be part of whiteness. I’ve found that my belonging to whiteness, meant I needed to quell connection and belonging to other things, things that I value, but that don’t maintain the racial hierarchy. I still don’t know how to be about whiteness, while also trying to understand racial injustice, stand for equity, and connect with common humanity. Whiteness is really good at getting in the way of my seeing and feeling the pain of fellow human beings when they don’t share my white skin.

That’s because, I was taught to ignore the anguish racism brings in the service of whiteness. Because acknowledging it would make whiteness culpable. It would reveal systemic accountability — requiring me, and my people, to answer to the problem of racism.

Whiteness is so intertwined with how the US functions that we, white folk, generally seem to believe, that to see the system as problematic, is akin to saying white people are essentially and irredeemably problematic. I’ve witnessed many of us hold to the idea that looking at our race-based social problems, will make white people feel bad about being white, so we shouldn’t do it. I’ve been told that talking about whiteness makes racism worse.

America’s recipe for race, installed with whiteness as the main ingredient, is achieving its desired end — that of maintaining racial inequity by dehumanizing and controlling black and brown people. As for us, white friends, America’s method of racialization keeps us distracted and separated. We’re told stories about how only some people and things make up the problem. But the problem is bigger — it’s pervasive and none of us, and no corner of American society, is untouched.

Please hear me — when I promote racial equity and urge white people to end racism, it isn’t an attack on us. It’s aboutidentifying a systemic problem that requires all of us to fix. My writing to us, is me calling for my people to join the work of establishing an equitable social order — one that upends the way we currently operate with race in the US. It’s about recognizing and attending to what our disbelief, questioning, and inaction around racism has done to us and what it does to people of color.

I bring all of this up because many white people I encounter believe they’re being attacked, and directly say as much. Other white folk respond as though under attack. My intention isn’t to give anyone a reason to defend themselves. I’m simply saying that we need to take racism apart because it affects all of us and it’s deadly. Please know, we, white people, aren’t the racist system, but humans caught up in it. We can reject it, our part in it, and help create something better.

Note too, that police officers, no matter their race, aren’t lone actors. They’re caught up in the same racist, broken, and life-ending social structure that we are. We’re here again considering racialized state violence, because it requires our attention. It’s impossible for us to be a part of a society, which systematically kills and disparages fellow humans, and be unmarked by that.

White friends, as I mourn the loss of Tyre, I ache for us too. I lament our continuing melee with whiteness. How it tries to, and often succeeds in, cutting us off from our humanness. That when it comes to choosing whiteness or shared humanity, we commonly choose whiteness. I can attest, adhering to whiteness has us going against our values — it’s happened to me and I’ve witnessed it with other white folk. I’ve known too how whiteness fosters numbness to racialized pain.

So, I’m asking, my dear white people, can we feel the sorrow of Tyre’s mom? Can we imagine what it might be to know our loved one, as they were beaten just blocks from our home, with their last words, called out to us? What if it was our family member or dear one that pleaded for the safety and comfort of us, as they were battered by police? Can we see our white selves or someone we love in her place, with her pain? What justice, healing, or action might we need to see in response?

This week, just like last, I’m longing for us to come together and believe that this is real — that we’re all stuck in a deadly, racist system, and that we, white folk, are needed to help take it apart. We can do and be more for our fellow humans. We can do and be more for ourselves.