Friday, September 25, 2009

Working for Racial Fairness as a White Man

Our responsibility is to clean our own house rather than tell people of color how to keep their own.

White people approach racial injustice from different angles. Some of us have an easy time accepting that U.S. society treats different races inequitably while others take a very long time and struggle to come to that realization (if in fact we ever do).

But if and when we decide we are going to do something about it (because part of being a member of the dominant group means you can decide whether or not you want to deal with racial injustice) we very often take a single tack. We try to work with not-Whites to help them in their struggle for equality. It’s easy to understand why. I come to the realization that I need to stand up against racial injustice, find the people who are being targeted by it, and stand with them. It’s an admirable undertaking. But it can also be a problem and here’s why: most of us are socialized in a society that imposes unfair racial stereotypes on us. Our early environments often teach us inaccurate things about non-Whites that become embedded in our view of the world. When we begin to work towards racial justice we often, without realizing it, take an approach of assimilation toward non-Whites. We unwittingly work toward helping them be “more like Whites” rather than to build a society that is inclusive at a level where non-Whites are full partners as well as fully themselves. Non-White activists say over and over that this is the case.

What, then, are we to do? Here are a few suggestions:

Get to know ourselves. In the book “Overcoming Our Racism” author Dr. Derald Wing Sue discusses the need to accept that we have been socialized to engage in racial stereotyping and to learn to manage that tendency. I use the word “manage” here purposefully because I firmly believe that most of us will never be completely free of stereotyping, just like we are never completely free of any other socialization from early childhood. If we convince ourselves that we don’t have some stereotypes in our thinking we only drive them further from our awareness and make it more likely that we’ll act on them without knowing it. We can know that none of us wanted to be socialized like that, learn to be aware of when we’re thinking in stereotypes, and then NOT act on them. We can also get to know the impact that being White has on our lives (see the next suggestion).

Get to know Whiteness. Whiteness didn’t always exist. It has a genesis, a history, an evolution, and a purpose. Once we understand these things we are better able to discern how Whites and Whiteness act to affect the distribution of wealth and power in the U.S. Here are a few sources that I’ve found that have helped me.

Books:

  • Howard Zinn’s “People History of the United States”
  • James W. Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me”
  • Winthrop D. Jordan’s “White Man’s Burden” and the much more detailed “White Over Black”

Films:

  • “Blue Eyed,” a film by Jane Elliot
  • “The Color of Fear,” a film by David Lee

There are others, of course.

Get to know others. We can find like-minded Whites and share our processes among ourselves. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. When we start stepping outside of the normal racial understanding in our society, we can come into conflict with some people. It’s also a very emotionally complex thing for Whites to do this work and when we come together to do it we can come into conflict with our fellow Whites in process. We can also take stock of our relationships and ask ourselves how many people we are friends with who are not White. If we honestly ask ourselves how many non-White people are close to us and find ourselves lacking, what can we do? Should we run out and ask a Black person to be our friend? Should we start getting close to the Latin people in our office? I don’t know how good an idea that is. One thing I’ve done and offer as a suggestion, is to try to attend art and cultural events that I can attend that are “owned” by non-Whites. Try a Latina poetry reading, or an American Indian art exhibition. And just go to listen and witness. We don’t have to be experts and we don’t have to prove we’re “the good guys.” We can, however, respect the fact that what we are experiencing is likely generated from an experience that is different from ours, that is a nuanced and necessary expression of the identities of at least some of the people involved, and is just as 100% worthy of our respect as a more "traditional" or "mainstream" event, even as we are honest about whether or not it suits our own tastes.

As a White man, my goal is to work with other Whites to co-create a new racial reality among us. When we can see how we benefit from a system that is skewed in our favor, learn to respect other perspectives as no less valid than our own, and learn to redefine our identities in ways that do not deprecate others’, we're working for racial fairness.