Teaching While Racist? A Clarification

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to clarify an issue that’s been brought up as a result of my having written Teaching While White.

The issue is #5, which states: “If you’re white, assume you’re racist.” I want to say, upfront, that it was #1 in my list until a colleague and friend told me that might keep people from reading the rest, and I thought she was right.Now I think it sometimes enables people to discount the rest of what I wrote.

So let me clarify: in feminism, as in critical race theory, we see systems. We see individuals living in, negotiating, confronting or going along with those systems. And the system in question is racism, or white supremacy, or whatever you want to call the state of affairs in the US that allows the kind of racism that Coates and a million others — Dr. King and Malcolm X, the Black Lives Matter activists, etc. — have documented. I don’t need or want to talk about that here.
That said, if you see that racism is still a pervasive part of American life, I’d agree with you.

What it isn’t, usually, is the kind of straight-up bigotry we’re used to identifying as racism.

It is a system which benefits white people. Period.

What’s in your heart toward black culture and black people – which are, mind you, two very different things, and white people generally find it easier to embrace the former than the latter – doesn’t really have anything to do with it. (A quick thank you to a colleague who objected to my piece politely by mentioning what was in his heart, here, as I would have never realized what needed clarification without him.) White people do need to examine what’s in their hearts when it comes to race, what’s in our minds. Only recently in reading a criticism of Coates’ portrayal of black masculinity did I think: not one black man I have ever known has ever fit that stereotype. Not even a little. That’s the kind of thing that’s there, the ideas we’ve all imbibed from media, from portrayals of blacks in movies, on the news, in literature. We have imbibed them because we don’t have much of a choice – the same way that we imbibe sexism, rape culture, and patriarchy. Unlike a lot of white people, I’ve known a lot of black men (and laugh all you want, but some of them are old and dear friends, ha).

So when I say, “if you’re white, you’re racist” I mean only to say that you have been raised to believe you are better or, at the very least, different than black people. I do. I know it. I own it. I try to work against it as much and as often as I can. As a white working class person, I became aware that the only difference between me and other working class people who are brown was my race, and that has benefitted me in insane ways that embarrass and humble me.

It’s just that. Not any kind of personal indictment, nothing of the kind. It’s only meant to let people know that unless you’re actively fighting against the system, you’re part of it, you’re upholding it and even enforcing it because that’s how it works. Johnson, who theorizes patriarchy, talks about it as a “path of least resistance” — and when it comes to white supremacy, that path of least resistance is being racist. It’s seeing weapons after looking at a black child’s face. It’s assuming black people can sustain more pain than whites. And even if you don’t believe these things actively, they change the way you are in the world and the way you deal with black and brown people. If you don’t want it to, then you have to do anti racist work – which all anti racists do in their own individual ways. And *even then* it’s still going to catch you out when you’re not paying attention.

So if you’re white and you’re not actively doing anti racist work, you’re racist. Not because you’re an asshole. Often it’s because of white privilege, which guards us from having to think about race at all. And honestly, it should piss you off that the system you live in encourages you to be a shitty human being without realizing it, that pulls the wool over your eyes for you, so much so that you can’t even recognize it for what it is.