5 minute read
As a student of history, I see that the definition of “not racist” for white Americans is continuing to evolve.
“Not racist” for white people used to mean that you didn’t beat or rape your slaves. It was a low bar, indeed, during the days of colonies and early nationhood. Just treat ’em almost as well as your horse and you were good-to-go.
Later on, “not racist” meant that you didn’t enslave black people at all and, if you were super enlightened, maybe even allowed them to be literate. Gee, thanks. This was the 19th century Antebellum Period prior to the Civil War of the 1860s–a period that many white Southerners to this day recall as an almost utopian golden era.
During the American Civil War, “not racist” meant that you were gracious enough to let inferior black men serve as soldiers. They were allowed to fight and die for a country that not only refused to give them anywhere near equal pay for their combat service, but wouldn’t even let Lincoln abolish the enslavement of their family members within Union states. Check out the fine print within the Emancipation Proclamation some time. That little tidbit is often missed within our grade school history textbooks.
For a while there, “not racist” meant that you didn’t terrorize black people by riding around in white hoods, baptizing hatred in the language of Christendom, burning down their churches, schools, and homes, lynching or shooting them, or raping and pillaging their communities just for the joy of getting off scot-free from an all-white jury of your peers. This was the delightful era of Jim Crow.
A bit later down the road “not racist” meant that you didn’t cling on to separate institutions, didn’t impede black suffrage, and overall didn’t treat African Americans as second-class citizens. They even let an athletically superior black man named Jackie Robinson play baseball with the whites as long as he shut his mouth and played nice while suffering constant dehumanizing hatred.
Then Dr. King shared his dream with us. He was murdered for it, but the upside is “not racist” meant that you didn’t judge people by the color of their skin, didn’t have any opposition to interracial romantic relationships, and didn’t use racial slurs. That societal norm started during the Civil Right Movement and crystallized by around the mid-’80s when I was born.
Nowadays “not racist” is evolving again. Unlike when I was a kid, it’s starting to mean that one must vocally stand in opposition to both personal acts of racism and systemic institutional racism while actively exuding compassion and empathy toward those who’ve experienced any kind of racial discrimination. In this emerging era, passivity and apathy are unacceptable.
As a 35-year-old white man who tends to be a moderate, it is my solemn hope that I am ally of the ongoing movement toward racial reconciliation and not one of the white moderates who Dr. King lamented in his “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”:
First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
Take this for what it’s worth from my perspective, but it seems to me that the trouble we’re facing is there are too many white moderates who are now using an outdated definition of “not racist.” Their definition was tolerable 20-odd years after the Civil Rights Movement. But it’s now 2020. Another 30+ years have passed. That level of “not racist” is no longer socially acceptable.
Using that dated language from the post-Civil Rights era, a lot of well-intentioned white people today happily announce they’re “not racist” because they’re color blind. They report just seeing people, not different ethnicities. The thing is, that outlook is now so far behind the times that it no longer qualifies as “not racist” much as treating black people like a horse is no longer “not racist.” For the times they are a-changin’.
This is difficult for many people to grasp, but color blindness is no longer perceived as a cultural virtue. Just like in real life, the inability to see color is a disability. The goal is no longer to ignore our ethnic and cultural differences, or to pretend that we simply don’t see them. The goal is, rather, to openly acknowledge our differences and celebrate our diversity as good and beautiful. In policy and in empathy, we must welcome and honor one another.
I believe that’s what this present outcry is truly about. More than 50 years after Dr. King’s assassination, it’s well past time for the next phase of racial healing in this country. It’s true that ending police brutality and the fundamental inequality of the criminal justice system is the present focal point, but the groundswell beneath it is a cultural movement to finally heal America’s original sin.
The Declaration of Independence declares, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yet we’re still living in the troubling legacy that the future president who wrote those words was himself a racist slave owner. The insidious subtlety of that systemic racism infects us into the present.
The American ideal of true equality under the law still is no where close to the lived reality throughout the land. As I see it, that’s what’s really going on. I perceive the lingering inequality the Black Lives Matters movement is trying to fix is this: they’re trying to usher us into a world in which the United States government finally practices what it preaches in that all people are not only created equal but are, at long last, treated equal.
For the sake of intellectual honesty I must confess that, no, I don’t agree with all the ideology, rhetoric, and methods coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement. But you know what? Having read Dr. King’s “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”, I’ll be damned if I speak and behave like yet another generation of paternalistic, white moderate who tells Black people how they should and shouldn’t be going about the cause of racial reconciliation.
Growing up, we didn’t talk a whole lot about our national history of racism or its present-day influence. As an adult, however, I’ve learned a lot from going on a Civil Rights Tour of the American South, reading books like W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk, and listening to podcasts like Larry Wilmore’s “Black on the Air.” I’m trying to become educated about a world I knew nothing about.
Speaking for no one but myself, it seems like this is an ideal time for people with my pigment to be slow to speak, quick to listen, and fast to read. I doubt there are any quick and easy answers to the societal upheaval we’re going through, but I’m holding firm to my conviction that more of us intentionally cultivating knowledge and empathy can do nothing but help. To my mind, that’s the best, healthiest, and perhaps only productive way forward.
