The Continuance of Racism in America: Acknowledging Our Ways as White Folks

Our history has always included good White people who commit themselves to changing the racial division in America. My mother always admonished my father for his racist names and attitudes. Still, many others seem to follow three main trends regarding the race issue: 1) those who continue to harbor beliefs of supremacy and racism, 2) those who do not believe themselves to be racist and who also believe the racial problems in America are exaggerated, and 3) those who acknowledge that a problem exists, but who choose apathy rather than action in dealing with the issue. For many, the issue is as basic as being spiritually and emotionally able to accept the bane of one's history. Claiming the history of Santa Claus is always a more pleasing prospect than claiming the history of the devil.

A middle-aged woman whom I work with in the city abbreviates her first name to its first initial and answers to her middle name - Elizabeth. When I asked her why she did that, she told me that when she was relocating and looking for a job, she felt as if her first name - Bonita - was causing problems, presenting a barrier, lowering her chances of finding the type of opportunity she was seeking. I was startled by her revelation, and I asked her why she had made that assumption. She told me that she felt many people associated the name to a Spanish-speaking or Black ethnicity; thus, limiting her chances at success - in a quiet and subtle way, of course. Clearly, she felt that the assumptions that prospective employers placed upon her name had enough of an impact on her employment situation for her to believe that her name itself was a detriment. She stopped using her real first name. Shortly after, she found a good job.

My conversation with that woman had occurred around the same time during which actor Danny Glover raised the issue of New York City taxi drivers passing up Black patrons. As Elizabeth and I discussed the matter, she reminded me of other White people that I have encountered over the years - not wanting to see, believe in, or confront the ills of our society, even as others around them try to survive those very ills. They so adamantly cling to their denial that they willingly deny the reality of others. Elizabeth asked me if I really thought that happened, if I really believed that cab drivers weren't stopping for Black people, or if the people were just being oversensitive. She was sincere; she sincerely wanted to believe that the people were being oversensitive, unjust in their perception - not an uncommon comeback. Why do we always assume that when other people tell us about their realities they are being oversensitive, seeing or feeling things that are not present? The truth is that we simply have no reference point to how they feel or must live. We call them liars to protect ourselves, to keep ourselves in the cocoon of a world that we can handle, that we can protect only with our apathy.

As a White person, even having witnessed for over 25 years my Black partner's daily trials, I would never assume to truly understand the ramifications of living Black in our society: education, employment, ostracism, housing, injustice, and esteem. I cannot fathom the destructiveness of being judged upon first visual contact. I cannot grasp being judged only by a skin that I cannot hide, that I would not want to hide, would not think of hiding. I cannot grasp a society that would ask me to hide myself. I can in no way grasp all of the nuances of racism. I cannot grasp the reality of daily facing the expectations of stereotypes, needing always to prove my own truth and worth. Think about it.

I was raised in a small town in central Wisconsin, surrounded by wide acres, rolling farmland. I never had exposure to any people beyond Polish and German Americans in my childhood. As a child, I was given a book called Little Black Sambo. I can only guess that if I read it now I would be horrified. I was taught to call a Brazil nut a niggertoe. I will never forget the way I felt, how I blushed with my own stupidity, when I realized that I had actually been saying nigger toe. I never even actualized the words I had been saying, the words I had so nonchalantly been taught to say. But then... I was raised in a place where only White Americans existed - the beginning and the end of all meaningful matters - and no one cared to stretch beyond the borders.

I went to visit my parents once at their getaway in Texas, on the gulf. One morning I found myself up early with my father, alone. I poured him a cup of coffee, and we sat together at the table by the window open to the green grass carpet. He is a different man now - a warrior of the Parkinson's Disease that has made his body a battleground of odd movements and frozen space. He is a different man, yet he is the same man. I watched him as he lurched to the left. His hands shook and his face seemed lost, as if he was stuck inside of himself. Just as I was wondering if he still thinks the same thoughts, he put down his coffee cup and cleared his throat.

"Been noticing," he says, "that there don't seem to be any darkies here."

I had to smile, almost laugh at myself, for even wondering about his mind. Oh yes, I thought, he's different, but he's exactly the same.

"Well, Mark Twain," I said, looking closely at him as he turned to look at me, "since it is the new millennium, you know, you might want to use the term Blacks, or African Americans. But you know that, you know better than that, don't you?"

I knew that his new face was trying to crawl into a smile, and immediately I could see that smile, though it never took full form. I saw it clearly in my memory - the same smile.

"Why would they come here?" I asked him. "I wouldn't come here if I was Black."

I knew that he knows better than to use the word "darkies." I knew that, of course, he also knows that my partner is Black. Race has always been an issue between him and I, and I wondered if he was sparking conversation or just being crude. I didn't know. I love him, but I don't always like him, as has always been the case.

Times have truly changed so little; we must first admit that truth. Since the decade of the sixties, our society has found different ways to skirt the issues, to build the issues into the very skeletons of our structures, to lay down new blankets of denial. Most individuals see the political, societal world as too large for them, too complex for them to even begin to intervene. They want to leave the issues in the hands of others. Don't look at me, they want to say, I didn't do anything. Oh my, would be my reply, If you did nothing, you did the worst thing.

As White Americans we need to understand that silent goodness is not enough. If we break down the problem of racism into the increments in which we encounter it in our own lives each day, then we can create change within our own small circles, each circle connecting to create a greater whole. In the workplace, for instance, a façade of politeness, now donned for the sake of political correctness, is not proof of eradication of racism in the workplace. E-mails, telephone conversations, business meetings, and water-cooler conversations that continue racist banter still exist. Not participating in those activities is not enough; just as in the past simply not participating in the lynching was not enough. Change comes only from action, even if that action is as simple as standing up and holding one's ground, defending another's ground. If you receive a racist or sexist e-mail, confront the sender and report the misdeed. If you are within earshot of a racist joke being told, you have the right, particularly in the workplace, to stop the joke telling, to make it clear that you don't find the comment to be joke worthy.

As a White woman, I feel I can honestly share a perspective that most do not want to admit, are not willing to admit. We have created an atmosphere in which most White people know what is right, what is correct, what is deemed to be acceptable, and what they must do on the surface to project that sentiment. More often than I can count, I have seen White folks act one way, when necessary, and then do a direct turnaround as soon as possible. These are the people who tell the racist jokes only when surrounded by an all-White crowd, who will call a man a nigger and then turn around to say, Hey, man! Racists who lack the courage to openly reveal their warped beliefs are no less threatening than their blatant brothers and sisters. They might be even more threatening, displaying a false kindness that sooner or later sours and turns. Political correctness has created a monster that is scarier than the most blatant bigot - the racist who hides behind a façade of acceptance. These are the people who continue to use education, institutions, businesses, and economics to maintain the imbalance upon which this country was built.

A land in which even one person feels like a target should be a land upon which none of us desires to live. The irony is that on any given day the tables might turn, and you could be the target. Think about it. Whoever you are; just think about it. If you are the target of the day, imagine how you would fear for your children. What would you tell your son when he stands up to leave your house at night? Please, don't go. What would you tell him? If the police stop you, for any reason, for no reason at all, don't say anything, don't do anything, do exactly as they say, and wait for me, just wait for me, and pray. What would you tell him about the fairness of life? How would you teach him not to fear a world that is full of fearful things? This is not a free land if it is not free for all. That freedom is a falsity, and those who struggle so to protect it are fighting to protect the weak side of our history. Racists are the weakest link. Remember your most basic psychology classes. They are the weakest link. They are the bullies with low self-esteem and faceless egos. They are the abusers who beat as they were beaten. They are the hurt children who never grew up, who never let go.

Even as we enter a new millennium, the exercises of Jane Elliott continue to clarify our racial reality. Ms. Elliott is the ex-Iowa school teacher who created the Blue Eyes - Brown Eyes exercise and began teaching it to her third grade students after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1969. The goal of the exercise was to demonstrate how easily and quickly one can forge a racist ideology in another, how easy it is to learn to discriminate based on any given condition: eye color, language, gender. Her exercise uses eye color, though the one condition we are all familiar with is, of course, skin color. A primary point that Jane Elliott tries to make is that we do not want a melting pot - a dissolving of our differences. We want a salad. A salad respects individuation and identity.

Racism is not about laws or freedom; it is about how people treat people. Racism is about reaction, rejection, tolerance without acceptance, and judgment without cause. Look at your own skin and be honest. How many of you have felt discomfort in your skin? Can you imagine needing to defend or justify every action or move? This is about a system of continuing oppression, and the question is, What are you willing to do, on any level, to speak out against it, to act out against it? Good folks have talked about ending racism for more than 100 years now, and that has not yet happened, by any stretch of the imagination. We must walk the talk. Our behavior must change. We must refuse to accept the conditioning that is as detrimental to us as it is to those whom it serves to oppress.

More than ever, in today's age of Internet access, newspapers, and 24-hour news shows, exposure - or a lack of - is a personal choice. Having been born and raised in a small town in which diversity was rare, I believe the people in those communities have even more of an obligation to expand their horizons, to expose themselves, even if they never leave town. If a child grows up in a homogeneous White town or suburban getaway, the child needs to know that people of other colors, people of other languages and cultures, exist. Teaching tolerance is not enough. We should not simply tolerate differences; we should appreciate them. Understand the difference. Who likes to feel only tolerated? The child should be taught the ramifications of hate, the deliverance of acceptance. If a child grows up with that knowledge, that knowledge will grow up with the child. If a child has a reference point, then that child has some way to challenge the biased ideologies that the ignorant insist on generating.

Sooner or later, we must acknowledge our ways and the history of our ways. Our personal lives tell us that change can derive only from that acknowledgment. To right a wrong, one must first admit the wrong; that is the cycle of life. We must acknowledge that a society built upon the backs of others will crumble from within. If each of us adds our energy towards the change, simply, almost unnoticeably, in our daily lives - making room for a person, any person, any time, any place - the ripples of change will grow.

If Action speaks louder than words, then what about Inaction? It creates the shattering silence of perpetuation. Inaction creates an atmosphere in which ills - racism, childhood sexual abuse, violence against women, hate crimes - go unchallenged. Inaction feeds denial; denial feeds inaction: they are entwined. When good people do nothing, they perpetuate the actions of the evil doers. They become accessories to the evil.

As a society we cannot afford to wait for the big marches, the big heroes to deliver us. Too much time passes between the rise and fall of great heroes, the gathering of protests and parades. If we begin to act within our own spaces of daily living, these actions will accumulate into an effective collective. These actions will teach our children, and us, the rights and wrongs of our society. They will at least show our children that we believe certain rights and wrongs exist. If we keep stepping backwards, the only landscape within our line of vision will be our future, disappearing with each step we take, until we see only an empty horizon, and a blank sky.