White People, We Can Do Better

Bird watching while black.
Coughing while Asian.
Jogging while black.

All of these have become unofficial grounds for white aggression and violence in America these days.  

Earlier this week, a black man who was bird watching in Central Park was falsely reported to the police by an angry white woman.

Politely and from an appropriate distance, he had asked her to restrain her dog to protect the delicate ecosystem of the park, pointing out that she was violating the law by keeping her cocker spaniel off the leash. She would have none of it.

“I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” were the now-infamous, icy words of Amy Cooper as she dialled her phone to report the man, Christian, to the police.

Even though she was knowingly breaking the law.
Even though she was encroaching on his physical space to the extent that he calmly asked her to back up (twice).
Even though she was behaving erratically and he was remaining calm.

A black man politely asking her to follow the rules was threatening and unacceptable to Amy. She lashed out further when Christian began filming the incident, unaware that this was something a black man must do for survival.

Christian was smart. He knew he’d need video proof for someone to believe him, having seen how racial profiling is built into our justice systems. Systems designed to benefit white people like Amy.

And Amy knew she had the shortcut to simply dial 911. She leveraged her white power and assumed the law would be on her side, even if she was the one doing something illegal. 

In one fell swoop, Amy reinforced generations of fear and hatred toward the black community, activated her white privilege, protected the system of white supremacy, and affronted the #MeToo movement by feigning victimhood.

The implicit, unchecked assumptions that white people often make about race and crime, and the impulse to connect blackness and aggression, is not only inaccurate and undignified—it can be deadly. 

One verbal altercation and one viral video later, the whole world is transported back to that early August morning in Mississippi in 1955 when Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, was abducted, beaten, and brutally murdered because a white woman accused him of making physical and verbal advances—which she later admitted wasn’t completely true.

The outcomes in these two cases may have been different, but the racially-charged assumptions were not. Sixty-five years later, have we really made any progress?

Fearing the mirror

As a white woman myself, I’m not always sure how to navigate racial hostility and violence once the fury finally settles. Righteous anger gives me the illusion of productivity—that I’m somehow making a contribution by sending my energy to the activist movement. And this week, I have plenty of anger at racial injustice—especially in the same week that George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was senselessly murdered by a white police officer.

But how I feel about racism isn’t enough.
My anger isn’t enough. 

Talking about racism, though—really, honestly, vulnerably talking about it—feels intimidating to me. I’m fearful I'll end up accidentally speaking for a group of people, use culturally misappropriating language, or take up space that isn’t mine to take.

Yet being silent when I know in my bones that white people can do better — myself included — doesn’t feel like much of an alternative. 

Complicated as it may be, perhaps a white person writing about racism is a better than white people not talking about it at all. Especially when I know that Amy is not an anomoly.

I have devoted my life to seeking justice. But if I considered the cold, naked truth, I am probably not radically different from Amy Cooper.

As much as I’d rather demonize and dismiss Amy, I know our humanity inextricably connects us. We may even have a few things in common. Leaked campaign contribution information shows that Amy likely identifies as a liberal—just like me. She may very well have voted for Obama with her mind and heart, but acted in a way counter to her values—and God knows I have had the same shaming, utterly human experience of betraying my values. 

Maybe my initial instinct to vilify Amy comes from my hunger for justice. But maybe it’s also influenced by something darker. What we hate is what we fear, and what I fear is that she is a reflection my own mistakes, ignorance, shortcomings, and brokenness. 

I would so much rather pretend that I don’t have racism in me.
I would rather believe I am a woke ally and a flawless justice seeker.
I would prefer to wrap myself in the false comfort of dichotomies: that Amy is wrong and I am right, she is bad and I am good, she needs to change but I am fine the way I am.

And that’s the other reason why talking about racism while white is uncomfortable. Because it means looking in the mirror and seeing how deeply rooted my own white privilege and biases are.
It means facing the ways I unintentionally perpetuate the very inequities that my mind and heart are fixed on ending.
It means accepting the reality that I have no more value than Amy.
That she and I are both “white progressives” entangled in racism. 

But if Christian can give Amy grace, then perhaps I can follow his noble example.
Maybe I can give myself some grace, too.

Progress starts with being 

I don’t want to have racism in me.
I don’t like that I was born into unearned privilege in an unjust world that has conditioned me and ingrained ways of thinking that I didn’t ask for. 
I resent that racism is so deeply entrenched in our society that I don’t always notice it within myself or the people I love.
I don’t want to be part of the problem.

I certainly don’t have all the answers, nor do I have a fix-all solution to something as ancient and complex and insidious as racism. But I do have a couple of suggestions for where white people can start—things that, as much as I don’t want to admit it, I need to work on, too. 

I think we need to start with Being. 
Really, truly Being.

Once my righteous anger dissipates, that’s when the hard work begins.
When I get still and dig deep, that’s when change is possible. 
That’s where I create the space to truly examine myself.
That’s where I confront and challenge my unwanted societal conditioning, my underlying biases, my unconscious assumptions.
That’s Being.

Being is not passive.
Being is doing the active, continuous, and often painful work within ourselves so that we can root out our own judgment and fear, racism and hatred. 
Being is the powerful choice to sit with the discomfort of racism, instead of opting for the easier way out: ignoring it, running from it, pretending to not have a part in it.
Being requires humility, and humility requires courage, and all of that takes time and energy.
Being asks us to respect and celebrate our differences while also being able to move beyond white and black and brown to seeing our shared humanity with all people, to seeing and respecting and loving souls. Not “colourblindness” but togetherness.

Being is what prepares us to show up as allies. It means paying attention to how minorities are being treated and confessing that we likely wouldn’t want the same treatment for ourselves—which means we have the responsibility to do some work.

We work on Being so that we can be better.
So that we can Become.
And when we Become, we can progress.

Within ourselves, we contain the floor plans for how we build relationships with other people. As change agent Sonya Renee Taylor puts it, “How we value and honor our own bodies impacts how we value and honour the bodies of others.” 

When I work on my own hurt and let go of judging myself, I don’t need to hurt or judge others.
When I learn to love myself, then I can learn to love others—all others.
When I accept my whole self—both the good and the bad—then I can learn to fully accept others.
When I find peace with myself, I can create peace in the world.

When white people start looking within ourselves and confront our racism, we can start to change the world.
We can become people who are willing to set aside our white fragility to have hard conversations instead of building literal and figurative walls.
We become people who are willing to check our own privilege.
We can acknowledge the usefulness of racism for the control and benefit of white people.
We can reflect on the fact that white supremacists are largely responsible for domestic extremism and deadly attacks.
We can dare to identify our complicity. 

Our self-examination builds a bridge to reconciliation and creates a platform for dialogue.
And that requires us to be people who are willing to let the voices that have been marginalized and silenced have the floor.

We need to be people who see the exhausting daily rituals that people of colour must execute to mitigate their chances of being wrongfully pegged as criminals or threats to society.
Who stop calling out race when it’s not relevant and to stop ignoring race when it is relevant but feels inconvenient or uncomfortable for us.
Who are willing to unlearn the social scripts we’ve been taught from a white, heteronormative, ableist, patriarchal narrative.
Who seek out diverse perspectives to learn more about the complex history that brought us here. 

From the being comes the doing.
Because being is doing.
Being is progress.

We can do better

“Being” is the foundation on which the “doing” of activism and advocacy is laid.

When we do our own inner work alongside engaging in advocacy and activism, we are unstoppable.

We ask hard questions.
We know the power of language and labels, and use those carefully and mindfully.
We stop the cycle and break our conditioned belief systems that automatically link race with fear. 
We challenge the ideologies upholding white supremacy.
We not only declare that Black Lives Matter, but we live that out.
We vote for justice and equity at the polls and with our purchasing power.
We refuse to be passive bystanders to the microagressions we see in our families and friends, at work and in our neighbourhoods. 
We demand more from the decision-making powers within our country.
We dismantle the systems that give advantages and shortcuts for whiteness. 
We spread a peace that knows no hierarchy of human worth.

And the beautiful truth is that we can all get there. 
We all can create that world.

Yes, even Amy Cooper can get there.
And not only because she has more spare time to focus on Being now that she’s been fired.
But because we all have the ability to look inward, if only we so choose to spend the time and energy.

Behind racism is fear. 
Behind the fear is a human. 
Beneath the human is a soul. 
And a soul is a powerful thing.