Last weekend I pointed out a racist Jim Crow-era artifact being sold in a local store, and was met with a long explanation by the seller of how she is not racist because her family has never been racist for hundreds of years. I had not accused her of anything, but she reacted as though I had.
Many of my interactions with white people about racial issues get a very typical response: nervousness, followed by unsolicited assurance that they are not racist. They pull out well-worn credentials that “prove” that they are not racist: I have a Black friend. My family has always treated Black people nicely. I am married to a Black person. I have Black children. I’m the least racist person I know.
The goal of these conversations for white people is to ease their own discomfort with the topic and to restore their internal equilibrium and good feelings about themselves.
They are usually so busy trying to reclaim their sense of comfort that they are completely oblivious to my discomfort.
The topic that triggers this cascade of rationalizations is often about some evidence of systemic racism that by definition means it impacts me personally, probably on a daily basis, and also means that the systemic racism being discussed probably determined something vital in my life, like where I grew up and where I went to school (redlining), or the struggles of trying to buy a home (generational wealth not owned by most Black people due to legal systemic barriers), etc.
To watch a white person turn a conversation about the impact some facet of systemic racism has on me, into a conversation demanding that I soothe their guilty feelings by agreeing that they are not personally racist, is maddening. So many white people, including some whom I know on a more personal level, require my absolution to free them from their own feelings as a person who also exists within and benefits from the systems that are in place.
Every current backlash, or moral panic, regarding race in America is fueled by white Americans who are uncomfortable at the idea that they might inadvertently benefit from a system that is designed to keep Blacks from prospering, and who are angry at even the uneasiness they feel knowing that. Imagine having such societal privilege that merely having hurt feelings is enough to propel white people to actively vote to deliberately embrace racist ideologies and practices in order not to feel discomfort!
The red herring uproar regarding critical race theory, the fury over Black Lives Matter verbiage, the aggressive resistance to using accurate words like “victim” to describe enslaved Sally Hemming’s experience with Thomas Jefferson, rather than the more comfy “relationship” — these reactions are all steeped in deep discomfort by white Americans at the disconcerting idea that white history is anything other than noble and reverence-worthy.
Driving this discomfort is the underlying fear that Black people might be after what white people have always fought for: dominance and the right to define history, because their current self-serving lens positions them as correct and moral and good, with no room for seeing the tarnish up close.
Interestingly, this means that white people do fundamentally understand that this system created by whites is designed to elevate and empower whites, not Blacks, or else there would not be a wave of disquieting emotions with which they grapple. In the minds of so many white Americans, only one group can succeed. Only one group can flourish. Only one group can win. Many whites see American life as a zero-sum game, as explained by Heather McGhee in ”The Sum of Us,” where one can only advance by stepping on the necks of others.
This is why many whites fight so vigorously to maintain what seems to me like obviously problematic practices such as venerating statues of people who fought against our country’s stated ideals of all men being created equal. Their fear is that they will end up in chains, that they will be mistreated, cheated, mocked or ruined. Their fear is that truth will lead to payback.
The thing is that Black people generally do not think this way. To Black Americans this is not chess, where one color wins and one color loses. Black Americans, despite being at the losing end of the country’s zero-sum game foundations, believe that everyone can prosper if we remove glaring systemic inequities.
During the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s murder, I watched a video clip where a Black woman named Kimberly Jones spoke and said, powerfully, “you are lucky that we are only seeking equality, and not revenge.” The angry white people in the comments section under some copies of the video, demonstrate that many white people believe that Black people seeking equality is synonymous with Black people seeking revenge, because they can’t imagine a system where that is not true. But that is not what most Black people think or want.
White Americans throughout history have operated under an us/them, win/lose mindset. And they hate when Black people point out that very us/them system to demand that it be dismantled.
The fear that one might be perceived as racist is more powerful in many whites than any fear that they might be racist, and far greater than any thought they consider of what a Black person’s discomfort might be at being made to bear the burden of living in a racist society and then having to soothe the discomfort of white people who are merely noticing this fact.
Why is the goal of so many white Americans to maintain their own comfort, regardless of what that comfort costs their Black and brown neighbors?
“We are only as blind as we want to be.” — Maya Angelou
Tolley M. Jones lives in Easthampton.