Dear White People,

Dear White People,

We haven’t talked in a while. I think it’s time. I know we are all still digesting the “White People 101” stuff, so I won’t say this is “White People 102” yet, but there are a few more items we need to add to the list so here goes:

1. Just in case anyone on the planet is still wondering, and apparently some are, no you don’t get to put on a wig and black face and call it “trans-racial.” Trans-racial is a thing, but it has to do with people of one race who are adopted by people of another race. In other words, it is a genuine lived experience not a form of masquerade. The fact that white people CAN masquerade is a symptom of white privilege, not an answer to it. That is all I am going to say about that because…
2. Just because the story I am referring to in #1 is more likely to be turned into a “reality show” does not mean it is more important. Just days before we were all up in it, black children were attacked by white civilians and police at a pool party in McKinney, Texas. If we want to know about the “black experience” we need to put down the spray tan and pay attention to that because that is the real reality of race in this country.
3. When a nearby country (like the Dominican Republic) decides to disenfranchise and deport its own citizens because they don’t like what color they are we need to speak up about it.
4. When it comes to racist, domestic terrorism like the mass murder of black people in their own church, we need to call it what it is the same way we would call it what it is if the perpetrator was Muslim or black or anything else besides a white American. We also don’t get to play the “I don’t know how this could happen” game because if we have been paying any attention to American history, white attacks on black churches in the form of shooting, bombing, fires etc. is not new and, if we honestly don’t know how it happens, we had better figure it out really fast.
5. Whether it is police abusing black kids at a pool party or racist terrorists killing black people in their churches or any other manifestation of racism in our nation, let’s stop playing the “few bad apples” game. Yes, there are bad cops, there are good cops who have bad days, there are white people with psychiatric conditions who kill people and who need our prayers. But there are also longstanding patterns to this violence and we don’t get to ignore those obvious patterns just because we can see the humanity of the perpetrators. In fact, if we find ourselves noticing the humanity of white perpetrators in ways in which we do not notice the humanity of black perpetrators of other crimes we really need to check ourselves out on that.
6. As always, dear fellow white people, let’s love ourselves, not with the kind of “love” that needs to hoard privilege and hold onto systems of supremacy, but with a real love of ourselves as fragile, vulnerable humans united with other fragile, vulnerable humans who know we are all ultimately connected, who want to move beyond oppressor and oppressed in a common humanity and who know that we can do better.

June 18, 2015 | Categories: Racial Justice | 4 Comments