“You’re White. You Don’t Fight.”

The scene from the 2014 movie Ride Along, where Kevin Hart delivers this line, often pops into my head. It’s one of my favorite depictions of stuff white people don’t do.

(You can watch it here: https://clip.cafe/ride-along-2014/hey-hey-youre-white-youre-white/ )

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

I mean, of course we white folks fight—I’ve seen enough punches thrown and kicks land to realize this is a joke. We have important things we stand up for, even without getting into physical altercations.

But one thing we consistently seem to struggle with is fighting against whiteness—the very idea and meaning of it and what it does to us. And since we struggle to recognize and rid ourselves of whiteness, we also have problems recognizing and ridding our families, communities, and our country of racism and other forms of oppression.

Ah, whiteness—the cornerstone of racism. Whiteness is the grand scheme dreamt up to create and sustain inequity based on skin color. And whiteness hasn’t gone anywhere.

Whiteness is how we white folks—and our melanin deficient ancestors in the U.S.— made differences in skin color consequential and keep it consequential. Essentially, whiteness is a tool created to separate people for the sake of white folks holding onto power and resources.

Without racism, we don’t need whiteness. We pale-skinned folks were only grouped together by skin color so that we could define humans in racist terms. So that white could mean better and more worthy.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we alter our skin color or hate our body’s largest organ. The physical skin we’re born with isn’t the problem. It’s the meaning that has been and continues to be ascribed to being white in the U.S. and how we allow that meaning to define us, influence how we show up, and shape our stories. It’s how this meaning has been perpetuated in our country and its impact on our daily lives.

More and more, I’m convinced that white people can’t engage meaningfully or think about ending racism until we acknowledge, confront, and start to heal from the impact of whiteness on us and our world. We may not realize it, but we are familiar with whiteness. We know it so well that it goes unnoticed—like the air we breathe—mostly unacknowledged as we go about our daily lives until something gives us a reason to notice it. Maybe this is our call to notice.

If we really want to address problems like racial inequity, racism, or racial violence, a good place to start is with what we know and what we can change—whiteness and ourselves.

For many of us white folks, not knowing how to fight racism probably doesn’t stem from a deep-seated desire to mistreat others. It’s more like we’re trapped in the ways we were taught to be white and we don’t know another way to be. We saw other white people being, believing, and interacting with race, and that’s what we learned. Whiteness is what was ingrained in us—it’s how we’re categorized and how race affects our daily lives.

Then there’s a lot of white folks who believe racism isn’t a white people problem. This is a message I’ve personally received—it was what the white folks around me growing up lived by. And, it’s a notion we find prevalent throughout U.S. culture. It makes sense that folks wouldn’t prepare for a fight they don’t think is their own.

Even when race is a big deal for us white folks, we can’t seem to fight for ourselves—for the sake of our own humanity. Like when our struggles with race make it hard to enjoy a meal, connect with others, share public spaces, or live out what we say we value. When race is impacting us in huge ways, we white folks struggle to see how racism is our fight—how fighting racism is fighting for our wholeness, well-being, and liberation.

Here’s the thing—when we don’t face what whiteness demands—when we refuse to understand its meaning in the U.S., its purpose, how it works, how it affects society and how it affects our hearts, minds, and being—we help create an environment where racism continues to survive. But I believe we can choose to reject whiteness, redefine our identities, and live like racism is our fight—because it is.

I’ve witnessed how liberation and healing can look like me and other white folks acknowledging that whiteness is cheap and its promises are hollow. I’ve seen how wholeness can come in admitting that whiteness can’t meet our deepest needs or truly keep us safe, and that it doesn’t have to. I’ve seen how freeing this sort of fight can be.

Whiteness is a concept designed to divide us from others, our values, and even our own humanity. It chips away at our souls, takes us away from our best selves, and breaks down connection. As long as it keeps working the way it always has, whiteness will keep us from reaching the unity, belonging, safety, and freedom that truly embrace our whole selves—and everyone else’s whole selves too.

When we can recognize the full humanity of every person—their dignity, their story, their worth—we open the door to a deeper kind of freedom, for all of us. I think it’s time for white people to face how whiteness holds us back—to acknowledge that whiteness doesn’t just harm others, it limits us too. It’s time for us to fight whiteness so that we can stand for justice and our own liberation too.