It’s a serious question. I don’t want to assume or make sweeping generalizations. So I’m asking: white friends, are we talking with one another about race? About racism? And not just talking about race, are we coming together to understand and accomplish the work that is ours to do?
I ask because, overwhelmingly, I’ve seen us not. It’s rare to witness my people – white folks – partake in meaningful conversations about racism and our experiences being raced as white. What I’ve noticed is that we white people don’t sense we have a connection with race and racism. We seem especially uninterested in whiteness (more about my understanding of whiteness is here). I say this not as an absolute, but because my lived experience leads me here.
The times I have come across white people intentionally talking about these things, was in school as part of the history curriculum. It seemed, race and racism were things of the past. Public education supplied me a racial pedagogy where much of the US story of race was glossed over and missing critical pieces. This learning warned of bad white racists and advanced a story of a largely heroic and redeemed white America.
We were told America is a place of liberty and justice for all. We didn’t learn the truths of genocide and land theft. Nor of treaties full of betrayal and broken promises – how these things were worked out in order to boost whiteness. We didn’t connect with the stories of brown and black children stolen away from their families and communities so as to be forcibly assimilated to or made to slave under whiteness. We didn’t study the internment of our citizens – how those imprisoned were selected out by race, how that race was not white.
We learned that in the US we didn’t see color and everyone is equal. We weren’t given the details about how racial inferiority was supported by fake science. The study in our classroom didn’t include truths of black and brown lives destroyed as their bodies were used for medical study and experimentation. We didn’t study the Racial Integrity Act, redlining, sundown towns, Jim Crow or the Wilmington Massacre.
As for slavery, we didn’t look at how enslaved people would not be defined or held down by whiteness. We didn’t learn that it wasn’t white champions who ended slavery and that enslaved people actually freed themselves. We didn’t learn our racial history in its complexity and truth or examine the ways history informs the present.
While training to become a therapist, I was introduced to the notion that the things we don’t talk about are the very things needing to be spoken. Even as this idea saturated my studies, I didn’t explore or talk about whiteness. As I immersed myself in a graduate program – distinctive and respected for leading students in intense and ongoing self reflection – I did not feel the need to investigate the ways being white impacted me. I didn’t look at how whiteness influenced my profession or could effect my practice. I didn’t consider how whiteness participates in setting measures and norms for health and well-being.
Formal instruction and white socialization provided an effort-less, easy-to-follow narrative. My mostly white community modeled customs to help me avoid spotting whiteness and seeing myself as having any part in racial inequity. I perfected skills of denying and quashing ideas that implicated whiteness. I could easily find ways to support the made-up story that race and racism were part of the larger world around me, but not a part of my small, personal world.
I’m still uncovering the negative consequences of an education on race and racism such as mine. I’ve found that, in addition to the tangible and documented harm to others, this sort of learning hurts me too. Oppression is dehumanizing – for the ones who impose it and for those oppressed. I am linked to the oppressive history of whiteness and to the ways it continues to oppress today.
My learnings of race and racism gave me a warped view of how the world works. What I’d absorbed of race, racism and whiteness left me deficient in relationships. I can see that I am white but I can’t really talk about what it means to be white – especially with other white people. I strive and frequently fail to notice whiteness or the parts of me tied to it. I’m often not able to take into account the effects of whiteness on me, my loved ones and on our relationships. I cause harm.
I struggle to tolerate the weight of whiteness. Even as it is wrongly and overwhelmingly put upon people of color, I feel its burden as I try to love my family well. It gets in the way. In relationships with friends and family of color it’s a force bent on tearing us apart. My inexperience managing this heaviness is evident and painful. It adds needless strain.
The load of whiteness hangs over relationships with white people too. Here the pressure is about maintaining the status quo. I feel a squeeze to stay quiet so that I can maintain a sense of belonging and of safety. To keep out of mind and unspoken that we are white and that this means something. I feel pressure to do nothing and say nothing about the parts of whiteness which are wreaking havoc right in front of us, because if I do I will quickly find myself at war with the people and the culture that I know best.
If I am to live in community as I hope to – where my relationships esteem wholeness, nurture the indisputable worth of all people and promote a true and comprehensive view of inequity and power – effort is needed to undo much of what I’ve learned to embody.
For me, it’s clear there’s much to do. Identifying that I struggle to distinguish what is true and factual of racism from my feelings about racism, I need to remain open, sorting out when I’m listening too intently to my feelings. Because I’ve come to see that sticking with the racial narrative I learned sustains violence and works against human interdependence, I resist ideas and practices that suggest whiteness, as it has been, is good for anyone.
I can’t help but believe that if white people could understand how whiteness sustains racism – that we can be caught up in whiteness but it not be the whole of who we are – then we could resist it. Maybe we would work across race to create something new. Maybe we would better recognize and connect with the humanity of others. Maybe we’d be more in touch with our own humanity – better able to experience wholeness without having to fit ourselves to whiteness. Perhaps we would become antiracist.
And I can’t help but wonder what might be if my public education had instructed as to the true and unabridged history of race and racism in our country. My hope is that future generations do not need to wonder or imagine. Let’s teach the truths of our racial story. Let’s re-frame our ideas of what it means for white people to be about the work of creating equity, understanding that this work is not for the good of others, but is for the good of us too.
Whether or not the adage about therapy is true – that the thing we don’t talk about it is the thing we need to – my experience tells me that talking and thinking about race, racism and whiteness is necessary for white people like me. I’ve seen that, when we can acknowledge who and how we have been, we can remake ourselves. As a therapist and in every day life I’ve known healing and strength to arrive when we confront the things we’ve not been able to. The beauty of doing this with trusted community, healing the collective – it’s an amazing thing. I have high hopes for us.
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