Some antiracist talk about White racism is about “White Privilege.” Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility or Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist discuss the idea. I know about White privilege but not what to do about it in my life. For instance, on several—a few, not many—occasions when I have been stopped for speeding, police officers of diverse hues have given me a warning instead of a ticket. Without saying so, they gave me a pass because I am White and, for good measure, a Vietnam veteran. I suppose that I could have asked for a ticket, but they would have asked why I wanted one. Unless I explained the reason, I might have gotten myself in serious trouble. Who lectures an officer on his or her racial biases and can expect to have a good day or do any good?
Many Whites—I would like to use the phrase “people of no color” to balance the phrase “people of color,” but I think the jest would fall flat—want to think themselves untainted by the sin of racism but, out of ignorance or inexperience, worry that they are racist despite themselves. Fear and guilt are prevalent among them. So more assertive anti-racists, Whites and Blacks—I let “Blacks” stand in for “people of color”—use fear and guilt to deal with anyone perceived as racist. Not surprisingly, antiracist Whites are often more strident or vigorous face-to-face than antiracist Blacks in using insinuations or accusations of racism to advance their views against any opponents, racist or not.
Yet Blacks have an advantage over Whites in using fear and guilt against perceived White racists. Blacks have “Black privilege” to criticize Whites. Whites have no similar White privilege allowing them to criticize Blacks and almost never do so, even, perhaps, for good reason, without risk of being accused of racism. In an amicable discussion, some of my step-son’s Black friends argued that, because of the power disparity between Blacks and Whites, Blacks could not be racist. I disagreed; my counter-argument—it won at least grudging respect as not unreasonable—was that racism is fundamentally a sense, conscious or not, by members of one race of their superiority by virtue of membership in their race over members of another race, with all that follows from it in the way of power disparity. Indeed, that sense of superiority explains a traditional though gentler racism among Blacks, that lighter skin is better than darker skin.
On plantations, that racism within the slave population marked a divide between house help and field hands—“help” and “hands” being euphemisms for the taboo word. Today, a similar division has occurred in a surprising place, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I became a Life Member in October 1968. I did not need the inducements or entitlements of membership, but I got a membership card, a lapel pin, a wall plaque, and a lifetime subscription to The Crisis. I have never had occasion to use the card or wear the pin; I hang the plaque beside by desk; I read The Crisis when I receive it. But in 1997, in financial difficulties because of mismanagement, the NAACP Executive Board voted to end lifetime subscriptions and substitute 10-year subscriptions, to go with lifetime memberships. But it did something extraordinary; it did not grandfather in the previous lifetime subscriptions; it broke its contract with thousands of lifetime, mostly Black, members since before 1997. They and I suddenly became “field hands.” I protested this treatment and noted the legal violation. Julian Bond, then the Executive Director, wrote me to request that I refrain from action and to promise that my subscription would be restored. I accepted because, without saying more, I thought that I had done enough to prompt a reconsideration of the Board’s decision—wrong. In my case, lapses, resumptions after promises to prevent them from NAACP lawyers, more lapses. Another lapse is on-going. The Board has not answered my letter, and Development has not returned my calls. National must think that, after so many years, this old white man is not going to cause trouble except to cancel a five-figure bequest.
I would like to give it to honor the Black men who inspired my membership over half a century ago. But organizations, like organisms, have a birth-to-death life-cycle. The NAACP is past its maturity and has not grown in fulfillment of its opposition to bigotry. Since its founding in 1909, with the support of a large majority of Whites, including Jews—W. E. B. Du Bois was the only African American among its first executives—, it has not only eliminated Whites and Jews from leadership positions, but also experienced a reduction in their memberships. Worse, it has sometimes acted or supported action against non-Black people of color and Jews. Black racism and antisemitism are not alien to it. Worse, the NAACP has become more a self-perpetuating organization fundraising in the name of a good cause than a progressive one effecting the advancement of “Colored People” of all colors and none at all.
Chapters are not without fault. Because the Las Cruces chapter did not meet during the pandemic, I emailed the president to ask about its police reform efforts. I began by saying that I had had trouble zooming—I had thought that I could not attend because my monitor has no camera—and got a hostile response. “It’s difficult to take your questions seriously when you lead with “for technical reasons, I am unable to zoom”. So please tell me why you are asking?” Nothing connects my inability to zoom and my interest in what the chapter was doing besides its president’s media talk on the issue. But something may associate my email picture of me sitting with my cat, indifferent to my age, race, and sex, and this response. Of all Las Cruces organizations, the local NAACP chapter should care most about police misconduct, with racial disparities in harassment, ticketing, violence, and killings. But, like most of the community, it has short-term reactions, not long-term commitments to reform. Such an organization, replicated in chapters across the country, may encourage Black pride or Black solidarity and effect local remedies in specific cases, but not strive to achieve comprehensive racial justice in America.
All of which is to say that members of all races can be racist and that race exempts no one from criticism. A question to ponder is why many people need, unconsciously or not, to presume their superiority to other people on the basis of race (likewise, gender, religion, nationality, ethnicity, etc.) After you are done pondering about others, you might wonder about yourself. The question which I ask is how inferior do you have to be to need to presume yourself superior?
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