It’s Time for White Americans to Step Up

I am white. I live in a mostly white suburb just to the west of Philadelphia. The town I live in is mostly working class to upper middle class. As you keep going west from the city, it becomes increasingly wealthy. I work in the city, coach basketball at the University of Pennsylvania. My family and I often go into the city, for my job, but often otherwise. Many of the people who live here will comment that they cannot believe we go into Philly. Frankly, we always find it hard to believe that they don’t. As a kid, largely because of basketball and my closest friends I met through it, I would often be the only white, non-Hispanic person. Sometimes, I was in situations where I was with a group of Hispanic people, mostly of Cuban descent, but more often, I was with and around black people. During conversations through the years with a good friend who is black, I would express consternation with how many white people reacted to various events in society and he would say, “you’re different, most white people don’t have the experiences you have.” Another friend of mine who is white and married to a black woman with three sons, wrote a piece where he said white people have no excuse for not understanding. Can they not read James Baldwin or Ta-Nehisi Coates? Can they not watch any of the movies that might give them a window into the black experience in this country? I think my latter friend is right. There is no excuse. (PLEASE! watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEtyPIO6P1E)

There are two quotes that have been haunting me through this time. One is from James Baldwin:

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”

The other is Martin Luther King Jr.:

“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”

There has been a call to action for white people by people to truly help fight against systemic racism and racial inequalities at this moment that I do not remember happening at any other time in my life. One of my gravest concerns at this moment is that white people continue to react the same ways. They cling to what they know, what their truth is to remain in their privileged (although they will argue that) normal. They cling to their ignorance, shared with the majority of America, about the history of race in this country. They make their safe and toothless statements of solidarity against racism, while not knowing, not really trying to know, the truth. As King said, the country is riddled with white moderates that want to wait until a “more convenient season”. Whites who do not honor the pain of black people and do not listen to their cries. Whites who, as King said, react paternalistically. As if they know better.

Another friend of mine mentioned to me how he saw a poll where a majority of people, living in a particular part of this country, believed that enough has been done to erase the effects of the racism this country has propagated against black people. You see this argument often, as white people take issue with affirmative action (mind you they are ignorant to the affirmative action that whites have received throughout American history), they scoff at “playing the race card”, they tell us to live in the present and the future and all that was in the past. That is unfathomable to me. From forcibly removing a group of people from their countries, enslaving them, through all that has transpired until now (do you know that even if you only take the number of documented lynchings in this country, on average, this country lynched one black person per week for 100 years), they feel it is a level playing field. So, what then? How then do they explain for the disparities that remain? Black people are more likely to live in poorer communities, die sooner, work at jobs that pay less (even the same jobs as white counterparts), be incarcerated, die violently (sometimes at the hands of police, let’s not forget), suffer from particular health issues (black people have died at a higher rate of COVID-19), be suspended at school, and a host of countless other things. All of these things are, to varying levels, more likely amongst black Americans than white Americans. They all happen with significant disparities, affecting blacks at much higher degrees than whites. Why? If it is not white privilege and systemic racism, if there are not policies since the Civil War that have resulted in the zip codes where black people live having these issues at far greater rates than the zip codes whites live in (why are we still so segregated by the way?), then what is the answer. There is really only one possibility if the field has been leveled. If in fact, all is now fair, blacks would have to be inferior. White people, you hint at it often (work harder, pull yourselves up by your bootstraps like us), but are you ready to really declare this? If you feel this way, you are attributing these discrepancies to race. That makes you a RACIST.

There is nothing that white people, particularly that white moderates run from faster, argue against more vociferously than being called a racist. It’s not your fault, those of us who have been raised in this country, all have racist tendencies or inclinations. You are lying to everyone if you say you don’t. It is so ingrained in our culture, our movies and TV, our rote narratives. While we are at it, the whites who say, “I am color blind” are dishonoring and disrespecting the lives and experiences and pain of black people too.

This country has a president and an administration that is bigoted and racist. He had proven himself to be so over and over before he was elected and continues to do so. If you think he is not, you are not paying attention to your racism and how it manifests itself. As Andrew Gillum said about another politician, I’m not saying he’s a racist, but racists think he is. That holds for our president. Not sure you’ve noticed, but there is a great propensity for the confederate flag and the maga flags showing up in the same places (and if you think the confederate flag represents anything other than slavery you should go back and read the words of the leaders of the confederacy or the maker of the flag himself, they explicitly say it is about slavery and the inferiority of black people). However, as MLK said it’s the white moderates that are the real stumbling block. As Baldwin said, it’s the people that don’t want real change, who are unable to see what the future will bring, who keep us all from higher dreams and greater privilege. So many people cling to the status quo. Change is hard. Why spoil my situation? Cue the Drew Brees comments.

There has been much focus on the murder of George Floyd (rightly so) and on the so-called violence of the ensuing protests (I wish people would look into “race riots” in this country, the perpetrators of violence in “race riots” are overwhelmingly white people). I see the focus on the looting and rioting so much from white people. It is their immediate reference. Do you condone destruction and violence, they say. In another quote by King, he said, “Urban riots are a special kind of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community…But most of all, alienated from society and knowing society cherishes property over people, they are shocking it by abusing property rights”

We so often cling to the things we feel affirm our world views, it keeps things orderly for us. As King said, most whites prefer negative peace which is the absence of tension. They prefer order to justice. They agree with the goal you seek but not the methods. They cannot summon the empathy to try to understand. They cannot place themselves in the shoes of their fellow Americans and listen to what they are saying and try to understand how they might have gotten here. Instead, they cling to the trope of black violence against whites that has been woven for 400 years (worse, they weaponize that fear like Amy Cooper and Carolyn Donham). It is a distraction. It is a distraction from the true message: for far too long in this country BLACK LIVES HAVE NOT MATTERED to WHITE AMERICANS (please watch Michael Che’s Netflix special where he talks about the absurdity of people’s issue with Black Lives Matter).

One of my greatest fears is that a younger generation will give up, that they will come to the conclusion that the system isn’t changing, ever. There is no hope that white moderates (or white liberals for that point: Bill Clinton passed the Crime Bill in 1994, Hillary talked of super-predators who needed to be brought to heel) will ever care enough about black lives to really do anything. A friend of mine who is white and is married to a black woman with two daughters, lives in a predominantly black section of Philadelphia. He lives less than a mile from me. The rowhouses in his neighborhood have a much lower appraisal than the houses in my neighborhood. The median income is much less. The schools in his neighborhood receive many less dollars per student than those in mine, with lower performances in standardized testing. He lives near a shopping area: a few restaurants, a shoe store, a liquor store, a Ross. After the murder of George Floyd, he went out to stand with his neighbors and protest. He watched as some young kids from the neighborhood broke into the stores and began to loot. He said at one point, he briefly wondered if things might get violent. They didn’t. However, he said he didn’t feel any real tension or unbridled anger. He said it felt more as if these kids knew that the social contract was never meant to include them, so they nonchalantly (the police never came) helped themselves. That’s heartbreaking to me. The thought, that we may have arrived at the generation where disadvantaged kids may have finally given up on this country and collectively, white people, because the country and the people have proven over and over to not listen and to not care.

When the riots of the late 60s were happening, President Lyndon Johnson formed a commission to provide a report on why so much rioting was happening. The findings were too controversial to release and proved that the unrest was a result of more complicated factors than either liberals or conservatives attributed them to. The Kerner Commission’s findings condemned racism from whites, called for billions of dollars to be spent in American cities, said that a tougher law and order approach only made matters worse rather than diffuse them, and there was a common theme of police brutality in communities of color. Most notably, the Commission said that America was “moving toward two societies, one black and one white — separate and unequal.” It begs the question, has this ever not been the case in this country? More shockingly, we have not addressed any of the findings. White racism is still rampant. There needs to be an influx of billions of dollars into our American cities to help their inhabitants (we’d rather up the budget for the military every year than spend on other people’s children). We are still having to deal with tougher law and order policies like stop and frisk. And finally, police brutality continues in communities of color. The only way this time can be different is if white people will stand up, be uncomfortable, stop clinging to convenience, recognize and call out the ongoing racial inequalities, break free of moderation, and passionately push for higher dreams and greater privilege of their fellow, black Americans.