My long-since-retired nannie—yes, I was to the manor born and with a silver spoon fed—feared that young black men from inner-city Cleveland 7 miles away were going to come to her house, and rape and murder her. She watched more television than she saw her situation: life in a house on a 2-mile, winding, dead-end road through a white suburb and atop a high, steep, heavily wooded escarpment. She was an attractive woman even in her 80s, but how young black men were going to single her out and why they would come all that way to rape and kill her she could not explain, even to me, who asked ever so gently how and why. But there it was, up front and personal: this absolutely irrational fear of people of color, especially young black men. Nothing—not her faith, her friends, or her family; no facts, no argument, no appeal—could relieve her fears.
Before war’s end, she left our service to marry, we moved into the “big house” next to a country club, and my parents replaced her with a black woman to be a nannie more for my sister than for me. They added a childless, middle-aged, black couple also as live-ins. Katherine was cook and maid; Eddie was handyman and chauffeur. They thought of me as their son, and I knew them as loving adults, a second set of parents. I spent much time in the kitchen with Katharine; at my urging, Eddie, a local Golden Gloves champion, organized a boxing club to meet only when my piano teacher could come to the house (so much for lessons). When my parents spent summer weekends golfing, they took me to their relatives in the country, where I played with their nieces and nephews. And there was John, forever my paternal grandmother’s handyman and chauffeur, and butler at my parents’ small, select dinners and great soirees. Though he always called me “Master Michael,” he did so out of an affection which was reciprocated, and we talked. As soon as I could—it was 1968—I became a life member of the NAACP to honor him.
Throughout my adult life, I have, in one or another of many ways, been involved with minorities. So it is hard for me to understand persistent bigotry. It is learned; it can be unlearned, and ignorance is no excuse. My theory is that bigots prefer either to go silent or to plead ignorance rather than to admit their reliance on prejudice to buck them up. (Appalachian Whites supported the Confederacy, less because they believed in slavery—few owned slaves—or in “states’ rights” than because they believed in the whiteness of their skin as a sign of superiority.) Whatever their facade of strength, bigots are weak people who need a belief in their superiority to others to persuade themselves than they are not inferior. But they are, and their racism proves it.
Racism takes strange guises, the more interesting ones among Whites who think themselves enlightened. In a self-examination of the suburb at the turn of the century, Cleveland Heights—a self-proclaimed “Nuclear-Free Zone” (you get the idea)—undertook a citizens’ survey in various areas of concern. I signed up for the group on diversity. A dozen people attended its first and only meeting: nine male and female whites, and three female blacks. Most of the whites discussed the need to better integrate residents; the three female blacks sat silent throughout the discussion, as I did. As the end of the hour approached, I pointed out that no black men were present and said that many were not likely to want integration; and I pointed out that no Orthodox Jews were present and said that they were uniformly opposed to integration. I said that the group on diversity needed to recognize how diversely diversity manifests itself and that some may perceive integration as a threat. After some uncomfortable stirrings in silence, the meeting broke up. The three black women quietly thanked me for saying what they were reluctant to say. As I left the building, the white woman group leader accosted me, accused me of looking like one of those western men who beat their wives, and stomped off.
Not too many years later, I attended meetings of the Outreach Committee of my wife’s church in Ashland, OR. My punishment for missing a meeting was appointment to attend a session of organization representatives to discuss racism. We sat at tables of eight participants each and watched a movie called The Color of Fear. The people in the movie represent Afro-Americans, Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Caucasian Americans—all male, as I recall. One of the white men is the “mark” of unconscious racism, and one black man is silent but increasingly agitated. Finally, he bursts out in a furious tirade at the hapless “mark,” and the movie soon ends. The people at my table, some of whom were liberal ex-pats from San Francisco, were stunned. Since some knew me, they asked for my opinion; I deferred to hear their opinions first. All expressed surprise and shock, with a dollop of fear thrown in for good measure. I asked questions: why, since they read newspapers and magazines, and saw newsreels (years ago) and television, with beatings, murders, sit-ins, marches, and riots the regular fare, did they not know that blacks were angry; how, except for denial or a lack of empathy, could they not understand why blacks were angry; and what did they think that their reaction said about their racial stance. They answered with a silence of shame or resentment.
Nearly 20 years later, the tactic of some white anti-racists is to accuse all whites of being racists because all have been raised in a culture tainted by racism. They allege that those who appeal to their friendships with blacks or to their involvement years ago—they take careful aim at people of my generation—in the civil rights movement are merely displaying credentials which prove nothing about their racial prejudice. By a perverse logic, they interpret the denial of racism as evidence of racism; by a perverse anti-factuality, they imply that white partners in interracial relationships are racists. My take on these white anti-racists is that they protest too much. A good way to deflect scrutiny and accusation from themselves is to direct scrutiny and accusation at others. Business in anti-racism is good, and Robin DiAngelo has made herself rich and famous. Yet there are many “tells” in her White Fragility which indicate that she herself is racist: no background with minorities, especially blacks; no education in the streets, as it were, only education in college; no experience with blacks except as professional colleagues; and an insulting rhetoric arousing white resistance then taken as proof of white racism.
I want to end with some words of comfort on white racism. I have no such words, only pity, for people who are racist, know themselves to be racist, and need to be racist as a necessary prejudice of self-support. But to conscientious, well-intentioned whites concerned that they may be racist or complicit unawares in racist beliefs or conduct, I say, skip the guilt. No whites can be free of some degree of taint of racism in a culture in which racism figures importantly. The Devil is in the denial. But that same culture also contains the resources to reduce that taint of racism in an on-going process of moral cleansing. I am not free of sin, but I am no sinner. Those who wish to confront racist sin can, not by prayer (only), but by courageous introspection, gritty determination, and constant vigilance educate and thereby reform themselves. Along the way, they can, as the late John Lewis said, cause “good trouble.”
No comments:
Post a Comment