How do you define yourself? A liberal? Progressive? Activist? Pacifist? Spiritual person? Agnostic? Atheist? Some combination of these, perhaps? Do you define yourself according to your race? I don't usually think of myself as a white person. Sometimes, studying history or witnessing certain white people's behavior, in fact, I have felt some shame at having to identify myself as a white person. Not many people would define themselves as flaming, reactionary racists. As Steven D's recent post reveals, even someone exhibitiing verifiable, flaming, reactionary racist behavior appears to find it easy to deny such behavior even qualifies as racist. Most people not so reality-challenged as this man would probably beg to differ. However, this is not about my own overt displays of racism, it is about my presumptuous arrogance in believing that somehow my "liberalism," or "progressivism" or however I view the source of my supposed open-mindedness teaches me anything real about what racism really means to Black Americans. Please bear with me. This is not easy.
I have sometimes thought that the fact that I have read and written papers about Ralph Elison's Invisible Man and even understood the protagonist's awakening to his exploitation under power structures somehow translated into a similarly profound awakening in myself. I frequently taught Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and felt moved and enlightened. I would use the "Letter" to explore the use of viritually every organizational strategy covered in the freshman English text, cause and effect, process analysis, definition, narration, description, etc. I marveled at my own insight and once (genuinely) wept after reading it aloud in class. At the time, I was amazed at my own reaction but what did I really understand?
In terms of race, I am "white," as much as I don't like that descriptor. My partner in this life is a Black American woman. After yesterday, I hope I dare NOT ever presume that our "mixed-race" (whatever that means) union, our discussions about race, my attempts to listen or understand, my attendance at her African American church on Sundays, my service there, actually translates into "knowing" what it is like to have been and to be Black in America. The supreme arrogance of this position is currently turning my stomach as I'm writing this. Frankly, among intellectuals (and non-intellectuals), I realize that before anyone arrives at any message I hope to convey, many people will have established opinions about our being together and what that "says" about me or her, or us, or whatever. I'm treading very carefully on the very fact of using this relationship to establish some kind of point, other than the fact that where I stand today shows me that being "in it" actually reveals very little to me about the true significance of race as an issue either to her, or me, or to America today.
But here's the deal. Often, though I am nearly 57 (and she is nearly 60), and I am oh, so "liberal and educated," I get perturbed, or distressed when she and other Black friends get together to discuss what Black people need to do to continue to address racism's impact on young people, individual and group psychology or self-image. My distress comes from not feeling "included," as though there is nothing I, as a liberal, educated white man can do or will do, blah, blah, blah. Don't they know how understanding and informed I am? Why won't they see how much I understand? Sometimes they seem angry, which despite my efforts to see racism in American history in perspective, still kicks up my white guilt reaction, and I even get resentful toward them about doing that to me, because, don't they see, I am simpatico?
My friend often allows visiting friends to stay with her. Often they are involved with various faith groups with which she's affiliated. Day before yesterday, a minister friend came in from Detroit for the Rosa Parks statue dedication in DC. He also happens to be a personal photographer for President Obama. He is often one of those speaking about race who seem angry about racism, and this has often caused me to view him as something of an insensitive person, since I am there to overhear his anger and that kicks up my white liberal guilt. I have even gone so far as to see his anger as hypocritical, since he's a minister and all.
When I came to pick her up from her place and he was still there. They were talking politics, the dedication, the celebrities, and I was already getting worked up internally because, of course, he was upset about what some white person at the Capitol had done to question his access to a certain part of the building, though he has a Senate staff pass due to his work for a certain congressman. I kept my consternation in check because I knew we were heading out soon and he is, after all, my Beloved's friend. No sense stirring up the resentment pot and ruining the evening. As we left and I started to hug him good-bye, he said, "Don't hug too tight. My back."
I asked what happened to his back and this delayed us some because he had a story to tell. Seems that in his recent travels covering the president during the elections, going through the airport in Las Vegas, he encountered a white fellow-traveler who did not take kindly to his, to his, to his what? Wearing a suit, carrying "Obama 2013," or other paraphernalia that he is always carrying around with him, maybe wearing one of his Obama caps, or maybe even BEING BLACK AND BEING IN AN AIRPORT TRAVELING? Again, though this white man might not consider himself a racist, the minister did have the foresight to record the man's behavior on his cell phone camera, so it is there for the world (and the courts) to see as this case gets settled. I guess the fact that there will be a case to get settled potentially in the minister's favor is something to cheer about, right? In the video this enraged white man is banging his suitcase-on-wheels against the minister calling him a "Nigger."
Here's where the awareness of privilege came in, and I got to it through some very intense reflection. I could wear my "Obama hat," and t-shirt, wave the banner, and even chant the mantra while walking through the airport and I guarantee you nobody would ever do that to me. I might get looks, maybe really bad looks (but probably some good ones, too), and someone might say something negative, in a political sense, but I absolutely know without a doubt that no one would bang luggage into me and call me Nigger. And, yes, this is about A BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE. See, his being there implicates all Blacks in the eyes of racist whites. They are all getting uppity, or too full of themselves, or whatever crap it is that goes through racist mental processing that ends up coming out flaming language and violence. And while their numbers might be declining, the ones that are left are no less dangerous than their bomb-setting, high-powered rifle wielding counterparts who blew up churches and shot or beat to death civil rights activists. They might be more dangerous because they operate under the cover of the mindlessly (or deceptively) conceived "post-racial" America. And I think (though I hesitate to claim) that I'm starting to understand why those conversations in which Blacks outnumber me take on a slightly ominous or at least very cautious tone when the issue of racial violence comes up, violence potentially directed at the president or his family, or any Black American who has the audacity to be celebratory over a Black president, being black, having a good job, buying a new car, getting a Ph.D., or succeeding in any way, because there is still a great respository of white hatred, only most visibly displayed through very angry white Americans who believe it is OK to look at their own sad, sorry, unambitious, unaccomplished or just unself-actualized selves and channel all that self-loathing into attacking someone else because he or she is Black. And yes, I have been arrogant to think even now that I have a clue what it must be like to have come from this historical reality, to still try to believe in and have any degree of hope for the future of this nation, and to even work toward this nation's improvement. How dare I think for a minute that any degree of education or sympathy substitutes for the actual experience, and how dare I believe I am somehow entitled to some degree of recognition because I dare to care that there is injustice where there is so obviously injustice. Shouldn't that stance simply be a given? Sorry, dannyboy1, my friend, that desire to be recognized for being on the side of what is inherently right and just is, in itself, the empitome of arrogance.