Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race

If there’s a place for tolerance in racial healing, perhaps it has to do with tolerating my own feelings of discomfort that arise when a person, of any color, expresses emotion not welcome in the culture of niceness. It also has to do with tolerating my own feelings of shame, humiliation, regret, anger, and fear so I can engage, not run. For me, tolerance is not about others, it’s about accepting my own uncomfortable emotions as I adjust to a changing view of myself as imperfect and vulnerable. As human.

The story emerging for me, however, tells a tale of black and brown people being held down so long that white folks have come to believe they got there on their own. The removal of legal barriers that once separated the races has done little to change the distorted belief system that lives on in the hearts and minds of millions of individuals. At this point, the only thing needed for racism to continue is for good people to do nothing.

I’ve learned that when it comes to race, there’s no such thing as neutral: either I’m intentionally and strategically working against it, or I’m aiding and abetting the system.

I now understand that acting like a white American wasn’t just a “When in Rome do as the Romans do” cultural sensibility, but a matter of survival. In policy after policy, act after act, the United States has reaffirmed its commitment to being a melting-pot society adhering to Anglo-Saxon standards, as opposed to a mosaic nation built on the diversity of multiple cultures.

The sooner you can become comfortable with seeking what you don’t know, as opposed to proving what you do, the more you will learn and the more effective you’ll become as a racial justice advocate.

Whiteness, it turns out, is but a pigment of the imagination.

racism is, and always has been, the way America has sorted and ranked its people in a bitterly divisive, humanity-robbing system.

About this time I came across Edmund Burke’s quote “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” That’s me, I thought. I’ve been doing nothing. I hadn’t been doing nothing because I didn’t care or lacked the courage. I did nothing, at least nothing with any real impact, because I didn’t understand how racism worked. If you can’t see a problem for what it is, how can you step in and be a part of its solution, no matter how good a person you are?

White people must learn how to listen to the experiences of people of color for racial healing and justice to happen.

We keep people down by lowering our expectations of them and then forcing them to live down to them.

I can tell you how exceptionally easy it is to be ignorant of the racial forces that have shaped my life and views, and how effortless it was not to make the connection that much of my comfort has been built on the backs of enslaved Africans, Chinese railroad workers, and other people of color, who, for much of history, were brought here or allowed here to work their tails off fueling America’s growth yet not be considered full Americans.

Whenever a transition is called for, view it as your soul knocking at the door of your life, bearing more gifts for you to bring to the world. Change is a call from your soul to grow. —Sonia Choquette

When I got honest with myself, I had to own up to the fact that I’d bought into the myth of white superiority, silently and privately, explaining to myself the pattern of white dominance I observed as a natural outgrowth of biologically wired superior

As a white person, I don’t have to do anything to have skin color advantages conferred on me without my permission, without my awareness. I can choose to write and speak against it, but at the end of the day, as long as our racial system is intact, there’s nothing I can do to give away my privilege. I’ve got it, whether I want it or not. The question is what will I do with it.

Trying to protect children by providing a worry-free childhood is a privilege of the dominant class—a white privilege. Many parents of color teach their

Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know. —Daniel J. Boorstin

Equality’ means giving every student exactly the same thing to meet the same expectation. ‘Equity’ means both holding people of differing needs to a single expectation and giving them what they need to achieve it.” In other words, it’s a way to level the playing field.

An element of class you’ll notice in my story is the persistent sense of needing to “help” and “fix.” These characteristics are considered by many to be trademarks of the dominant class.

My glorification of independence and individualism made me and easy target for the myth of meritocracy, and overshadowed what in my heart I knew to be true: the deep interconnectedness I longed for with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers is core to human survival. Interdependence is our lifeblood.

Sharing the burden of social discomfort is not simply a matter of helping someone else feel good. It's about leveling the playing field in pursuit of nurturing individual and collective potential.

Racism demands an artificial and divisive construction of humanity, in terms of how I make sense of others and also how I envision myself.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva comments: “[The] melting pot never included people of color. Blacks, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, et cetera, could not melt into the pot. They could be used as wood to produce the fire for the pot, but they could not be used as material to be melted into the pot.

Understanding whiteness, regardless of class, is key to understanding racism.

WHY DO I ALWAYS END UP WITH WHITE PEOPLE?

The story of race has become a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating prophecy as the story creates the ideas, which then reinforce the story.

Choosing to engage in the effort to dismantle racism promises to bring with it discomfort, yet how can I compare my discomfort to what people of color endure?

The story of how the idea of race was invented speaks volumes about how human beings struggle to make sense of the world around them, and the way those in power are the ones whose interpretations get broadcast to the culture at large. Be it scientific conclusions, business practices, government policy, popular literature, or art, the folks at the top are the ones whose ideas get heard and valued. This is not a history book, so I’ll keep it short, but history buffs, if you haven’t delved into the history of race, whiteness, and racism, this is a fascinating area of study.

To really get racism, a white person must get both pieces. It’s not enough to feel empathy toward people on the downside; white people must also see themselves on the upside to understand that discrimination results from privilege. You can’t have one without the other. Like a seesaw, the upside and downside are joined together.

The more I understand the privilege side of the equation, the more I understand the discrimination side, and vice versa. Until I have a clear idea of what racial discrimination looks and feels like, I can’t imagine how the lack of it affects my life. Discrimination and privilege are flip sides of the same coin.