Weed It Out
My name is Nicholas...and I am a racist.
My best friend within city limits is black.
I'm still a racist.
My brother-in-law and nieces are black, and I love them dearly.
I'm still a racist.
My neighbors are black, and we get along fine.
I'm still a racist.
I grew up in a parish with a higher percentage of black folks than white ones.
I'm still a racist.
I absolutely love black people, and I feel uncomfortable when I'm in a region where I'm only around white people for a prolonged period of time.
I'm still a racist.
I love art created by black people, and it has deeply influenced my life.
I'm still a racist.
It's always jarring when a prominent white person gets caught having worn blackface, or having said the N-word, or having flown a confederate flag only for them to respond with the phrase "I am not a racist." Every American-born Caucasian owns some inborn level of racism. It's inherent, our original national sin.
Maybe that last sentence angered you. Maybe you had an immediate, knee-jerk Not me! reaction. If so, I urge you to question, Why? Why is it more important to defend yourself from incorporeal guilt than to acknowledge another's corporeal pain?
We can hope for positive legislation to be born from current events. We can hope for more national awareness. But at the end of the day, change, positive national change, can only come from the transformation of individuals. Regardless of your feelings toward your white parents, elders, teachers, or leaders, all had some level of inherent racism that they have passed on to you. Maybe they locked the car door every time they turned down a certain street. Maybe their body language subtly changed around certain individuals. Maybe they used language that implied that your family earned their 2000 square-foot home in a mostly white suburb by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps while others in less comfortable surroundings or situations did not.
Our country was built on the land of people we drove out and nearly exterminated, by the hands of people we kidnapped and presumed to own. America is built on theft and slavery. Your parents didn't own slaves. They didn't drive Native Americans off of the lot upon which they built or bought their suburban home. But...they would not have been able to give you the life you have lived without the white American generations who came before them stealing land from Native Americans and utilizing the free labor of slaves. Any Caucasian family that came to America after colonization and after slavery has still benefited from that colonization and that slavery. They have still benefited in job interviews because they were white. They have still benefited on loan applications because they were white. They were still able to walk on any public property they chose, with little fear of the police because they were white.
You can be as woke as you want, of any standing, but if you're a white American, you've profited from the pain of other groups of people...and there is nothing you can do to change that.
Simple white guilt won't change the past. Many white folks protesting and rioting are doing so from a deep place of conviction. However, one thing holds true: eventually the protests and riots will end, and life will return to a sense of what we consider normalcy. Maybe there will be new, improved laws that better prevent racial violence by the hands of our police force. Maybe the police themselves will enact new, improved regulations.
At the end of the day, though, true generational change will only come from individual change. We often hear the phrase "be the change" and hope we can perform some major act that will create "the change," so that "the change" will be full and definitively done. When you are sitting on top of generations of racial inequality, that simply is not possible.
The only hope for consistent, lasting change involves awareness of your own racism. It is monitoring your own knee-jerk reactions, coming to terms with your own inherent biases. It's being conscious of what you say and do in front of younger generations. Derek Chauvin wasn't born in a vacuum. He is a creation of the society around him--one which, at the end of the day, values a white person's life above that of a black person. Our nation's Declaration of Independence may state, "all men are created equal," but we have to come to terms with the fact that many of the men who signed that document did not consider black people to be "men" at all. We have to come to terms with the fact that there is a space in all our white-skin-protected American hearts where we feel the same. Only then can we begin to clean out that space. Only then can we create lasting change.
My name is Nicholas...and I am a racist...and I am working on it.
My best friend within city limits is black.
I'm still a racist.
My brother-in-law and nieces are black, and I love them dearly.
I'm still a racist.
My neighbors are black, and we get along fine.
I'm still a racist.
I grew up in a parish with a higher percentage of black folks than white ones.
I'm still a racist.
I absolutely love black people, and I feel uncomfortable when I'm in a region where I'm only around white people for a prolonged period of time.
I'm still a racist.
I love art created by black people, and it has deeply influenced my life.
I'm still a racist.
It's always jarring when a prominent white person gets caught having worn blackface, or having said the N-word, or having flown a confederate flag only for them to respond with the phrase "I am not a racist." Every American-born Caucasian owns some inborn level of racism. It's inherent, our original national sin.
Maybe that last sentence angered you. Maybe you had an immediate, knee-jerk Not me! reaction. If so, I urge you to question, Why? Why is it more important to defend yourself from incorporeal guilt than to acknowledge another's corporeal pain?
We can hope for positive legislation to be born from current events. We can hope for more national awareness. But at the end of the day, change, positive national change, can only come from the transformation of individuals. Regardless of your feelings toward your white parents, elders, teachers, or leaders, all had some level of inherent racism that they have passed on to you. Maybe they locked the car door every time they turned down a certain street. Maybe their body language subtly changed around certain individuals. Maybe they used language that implied that your family earned their 2000 square-foot home in a mostly white suburb by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps while others in less comfortable surroundings or situations did not.
Our country was built on the land of people we drove out and nearly exterminated, by the hands of people we kidnapped and presumed to own. America is built on theft and slavery. Your parents didn't own slaves. They didn't drive Native Americans off of the lot upon which they built or bought their suburban home. But...they would not have been able to give you the life you have lived without the white American generations who came before them stealing land from Native Americans and utilizing the free labor of slaves. Any Caucasian family that came to America after colonization and after slavery has still benefited from that colonization and that slavery. They have still benefited in job interviews because they were white. They have still benefited on loan applications because they were white. They were still able to walk on any public property they chose, with little fear of the police because they were white.
You can be as woke as you want, of any standing, but if you're a white American, you've profited from the pain of other groups of people...and there is nothing you can do to change that.
Simple white guilt won't change the past. Many white folks protesting and rioting are doing so from a deep place of conviction. However, one thing holds true: eventually the protests and riots will end, and life will return to a sense of what we consider normalcy. Maybe there will be new, improved laws that better prevent racial violence by the hands of our police force. Maybe the police themselves will enact new, improved regulations.
At the end of the day, though, true generational change will only come from individual change. We often hear the phrase "be the change" and hope we can perform some major act that will create "the change," so that "the change" will be full and definitively done. When you are sitting on top of generations of racial inequality, that simply is not possible.
The only hope for consistent, lasting change involves awareness of your own racism. It is monitoring your own knee-jerk reactions, coming to terms with your own inherent biases. It's being conscious of what you say and do in front of younger generations. Derek Chauvin wasn't born in a vacuum. He is a creation of the society around him--one which, at the end of the day, values a white person's life above that of a black person. Our nation's Declaration of Independence may state, "all men are created equal," but we have to come to terms with the fact that many of the men who signed that document did not consider black people to be "men" at all. We have to come to terms with the fact that there is a space in all our white-skin-protected American hearts where we feel the same. Only then can we begin to clean out that space. Only then can we create lasting change.
My name is Nicholas...and I am a racist...and I am working on it.
Comments