Are we white Americans listening?
For the last week, social media has consisted almost entirely of the fallout from the horrific murder of George Floyd. When the need to talk about racial relations in America becomes glaringly evident, I’m never really sure what to say. Not because I don’t abhor racism and white supremacy in all its forms, but because it seems to me so obvious that to say so would be akin to pontificating about the evils of genocide and murder. It seems that it goes without saying.
However, I instinctively think this way because I don’t personally see racism’s effects. I grew up in a town that is 97 percent white. I had one black classmate prior to the fifth grade. I can’t recall ever seeing in person a black person openly mistreated due to their skin color. But I have an extremely small sample size. And that’s part of the point. I have the luxury of never having to experience that. People of color don’t.
Most readers of this small-time blog are white Americans like myself. Among our demographic, there is a tendency to think that a lot of the talk about racism in our country is the result of the media and politicians fanning the flames of isolated incidents for ratings and politics. Some of us will indeed tweet the trendy hashtags, post a black square, and call it a day. But we white Americans—especially white American conservatives—usually don’t have much of substance to say about racism. Instead, we have plenty to say about why people are responding to it the wrong way. Many will call attention to the destruction and death that the nationwide riots have caused. But how many of us talked about the root causes that kindled so much anger? How many talk about racism when a black person hasn’t just been the victim of police brutality? I know I didn’t.
Most of this piece is addressed to white people by a white person, though of course the words of Scripture and the concepts of Christian theology are universally applicable. I’m not writing because I have some epiphanic insight on racism that no other white person has. I’m writing because I think our fundamental approach to how we talk and think about racism is inevitably counterproductive. (And by “we” from here on out, I refer to white Americans like myself.) I’m not going to say anything you don’t already know. But I don’t think we white Americans are always good at putting all this information together to understand why our efforts at racial reconciliation have fallen so far short.
Racism is not a new or American phenomenon
Racism is one of the many ways we look down on people who are “other.” It’s also one of the most dangerous ones, as demonstrated by the unfathomable damage systematic racism has wrought on the world over the last 500 years.
Racism didn’t begin with America. It didn’t begin in 1619 or 1492. The roots of racism have been embedded in our human nature since the Fall. Ever since Satan promised Eve in the Garden that she could “be like God,” we have all sought supremacy for ourselves and the subjugation of others. We are constantly seeking ways to justify our selfishness and pride. We are constantly trying to find reasons to treat others as though they are worth less, as though they matter less. We seek ways to dehumanize others in order to exalt ourselves. That has always been the case, and many races and ethnicities have done it to one another throughout history. But here, in the United States, in 2020, we were born into a country that had racial subjugation and white supremacy embedded in its culture from the very beginning.
White fragility?
Hearing that said about America repulses many of us, not just because it’s shocking, but because many of us hear an agenda behind it. White conservative Americans especially may be inclined to hear the message that America is evil to the core, that every American value has to be dismantled and thrown away, and a new (authoritarian, as we imagine it) system raised up in its place. Ben Shapiro, perhaps the most popular young conservative in America, often interprets anti-racist activism this way.
It also doesn’t help that the people who speak loudest about American racism are so often upper-class white liberal politicians, celebrities, journalists, and academics with ulterior motives. They may appropriate the crisis of racial relations to promote their platform, vilify their ideological opponents, and broadcast an air of moral superiority. They also live comfortable lives and profit immensely off the same system they condemn. For white American conservatives, especially, many of them are not exactly the most credible messengers. Because of their hypocrisy, we might be inclined to dismiss everything they say as insincere and badly motivated.
Not only that, but much of the modern terminology sounds like offensive personal attacks. People speak of “white privilege,” the idea that because you’re white you enjoy unearned benefits and advantages that black people don’t. There is “white complicity,” the idea that all white people bear responsibility for upholding a system that oppresses black people. And when white people are offended at being accused of such things, those kinds of reactions are ridiculed as “white fragility” (a term coined, of course, by a white academic).
But…are they wrong? Are white Americans indeed fragile? I mean, we work hard and earn what we get. We despise racism and white supremacy, I hope. It’s offensive, from our point of view, to hear much of this stuff. But maybe that’s the problem: We’re only seeing things from our point of view. Not just “our” in the individual sense, but “our” point of view as white Americans. That point of view carries with it a whole perception of history, tradition, and value that colors—and sometimes distorts—the way we see everything.
So now that all that’s out of the way, here’s an attempt to put aside our point of view and get outside of our own experience. Although we can never understand the perspective of a person of color, we can at least be more actively conscious of the magnitude of the difference. So we must try, despite our inevitable failure, to see things from a point of view that is offensive to our sensibilities. It will be offensive, because the history of racial relations in America is offensive.
Racism as part of our story’s foundation
What do white Americans view as the foundational event of our “people”? The Mayflower, right? November 1620. The pilgrims came to America in search of freedom from English persecution. We celebrate it at Thanksgiving every year and see that as the beginning of our story as a nation. Many of us, like myself, are descendants of one of those pilgrims. Even those of us who aren’t genealogically descended from them take their story as the foundation of our national identity. Though we will all acknowledge that our history includes some horrible atrocities, we see them as black marks on a record that is, overall, something to be proud of.
But what about for black Americans? Their seminal event within the bounds of modern America took place at about the same time, in August 1619. That was when a slave ship carrying 20-30 slaves arrived in the English colony of Virginia. These were not the first black people to set foot on the American continent (just as the pilgrims were not the first white people here), but this event set the tone for relations between white Americans and black Americans for centuries to come. For over 200 years, black Americans were those who were mostly dragged to the continent by force, treated as subhuman property, degraded and abused, sold and bought, raped and murdered. Then, once the government finally realized the evils of slavery, African-Americans were allowed into society, only to still be treated as subhuman. Every black American today, if they have not experienced it themselves, has recent ancestors were openly discriminated against, abused, and subjected to atrocities that most people still don’t know about today. Although there were certainly a substantial number of white people who treated them as equals, the prevailing culture was one that deemed them unworthy of rights—or, at best, to be kept at arm’s length.
Many of us white Americans see the movements of abolition, the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement as triumphs of American values and Christian morality. We are happy that today we properly acknowledge our black brothers and sisters as equals. And yet for black Americans, it took about 350 years just for that—the bare minimum of respect they were owed in the letter of the law.
White Americans get to look back and perceive a history of liberty and progress. Black Americans look back upon an experience of slavery and oppression. For those who claim that this is all ancient history and that today black Americans as a whole are treated equal to white Americans: Are we really naive enough to think that 50 years or so of merely acknowledging black Americans’ humanity is going to erase 350 years of the prevalence of the most evil ideology in the world?
So when we see things like the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, and more…when we see the disproportionate rates of poverty and crime among black Americans…the lack of educational and vocational opportunities…are we really going to pretend this cannot be directly traced back to the way black Americans were treated in this country for about 90 percent of its history? Are we really going to say that we’ve extricated—or mostly extricated—350 years’ worth of systematic “anti-blackness” from our culture? There’s no way. It’s not that easy, nor is what we’ve done sufficient.
We can’t possibly understand the lens through which a black person perceives modern cultures where white people are the majority. We can, however, know that it’s nothing like ours. Maybe before we get into arguments, we need to hear more about it.
Are white people today responsible?
Another thing we don’t like to hear is that we, today, bear some responsibility for the sins of our predecessors. How does this make any sense? We didn’t ask to be born white. How can we be responsible for things that people who have nothing in common with us except skin color did generations ago?
As much as it may gnaw at our individualistic minds, there is such a thing as collective responsibility. Clearly, God does not hold people morally guilty for what their ancestors or descendants have done. He tells Ezekiel, “The soul who sins is the one who will die. A son will not bear the iniquity of his father, and a father will not bear the iniquity of his son” (Ezekiel 18:20). But God also says, “I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me” (Exodus 20:5). He attributes collective responsibility to families, clans, and peoples.
God regularly called entire nations—not least Israel itself—to account for not only their present sins, but also the sins of their ancestors. God punished the entire nation of Israel for the sin of King David (2 Samuel 24). The prophet Daniel offered a prayer of repentance on behalf of the sins of his nation, both past and present (Daniel 9:5-19). The people made a similar plea under the leadership of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 9:5-38). God regularly pronounced judgments on other nations collectively as well. And, of course, we all bear the consequences of Adam’s sin that brought the curse upon us all (Romans 5:12). None of this is contrary to God’s justice.
I see no reason to think it’s any different with us. The white-American/black-American dichotomy was drawn by our ancestors centuries ago, and like it or not, we white Americans are part of the people group that once enslaved black Americans. So there is a measure of responsibility white people bear for what our predecessors did. Whites in 2020 are not guilty of the actions of whites in 1820 or 1920. But we do reap the benefits of the system that normalized them and was even built off of them. Every white American has benefited from the effects of the immense, uncompensated contribution of black slaves and victims of racism to the American economy and society.
As servants of God, then, we have an obligation to repent. Just as Daniel and Nehemiah repented for the sins of their ancestors, we too should repent for the sins of our ancestors. This doesn’t mean we are supposed to wallow in self-deprecating guilt. Repentance means changing the way we think, which leads to a change in the way we live. Repentance-driven change should not be gradual change based on our comfort level, either. Black people have put up with centuries’ worth of gradual change to the degree that the majority of Americans have felt comfortable with.
Are all white people racists?
Another reason we may hesitate getting into discussions about racism is because they don’t always make sense to us. The word “racist” itself has been defined and redefined over the last few decades. Twenty years ago, when someone talked about racism, we knew exactly what they meant: the belief that one race is inherently inferior to another. But today, many say that all white people are inherently racist, and even go so far as to say that black people can’t be racist. So we white Americans instinctively bristle when we’re told we’re guilty of racism, because we know we don’t believe black people are inferior.
If you are a consumer of American media, you know that today the definition of racism is much less concrete. Unsurprisingly, few people can agree on how to define racism. In the linked article, scholar Ibram X. Kendi says that racism is “a policy…if it ‘produces or sustains racial inequity,’ and a person…if he or she supports such a policy.” (Based on that definition, he characterizes Barack Obama as having once been a racist.) The same article characterizes white scholar Robin DiAngelo’s definition of racism as being “whatever any person of color thinks it is.” Still another definition offered by British professor Peter Wade is that racism is “an ideology and a practice that produces a society in which some people systematically have less access to resources, power, security, and well-being than others.”
With such widely varying and fluid definitions, we are reluctant to get involved in that discussion. But maybe that’s just it. We want to discuss racism on our terms, from a perspective that’s agreeable to us. Maybe if we listen and try to understand what people mean rather than assuming we’re being maliciously attacked personally, we can actually get somewhere. Black Americans deserve that. And as for the oft-repeated claim that black people can’t be racist, we must at least acknowledge this: Because of the tremendously heavy spectre of historical oppression, there is a substantial, inherent difference between white prejudice against blacks and black prejudice against whites. That’s not because having light skin magically makes you a worse person, but because of the indelible history behind prejudice of either kind.
Before rushing to defend ourselves, we must listen to the way black Americans experience the world. We have to acquire a more holistic view of our demographic’s role in history, seeing it from the point of view of the victimized and oppressed. We need to listen to and read things that offend our sensibilities on this matter, because the history of white people’s treatment of black people is extremely offensive. When we view social issues like poverty, crime, education, and law in light of that, I think it will dramatically change our perspective and open our minds.
I don’t understand. It’s impossible for me to understand. It’s impossible for any of us white Americans to understand. But it’s time to be, as James says, “slow to speak and quick to listen.”
