Well… not 100% colonizer but close enough.
And, I can’t give up on white people. There’s a simple reason, really. I’m white. Also, I know and I love white people.
But there’s more to why. As a racialized group we have a terrible past and a pretty horrible present – building wealth and power through the purchase, sale, and forced labor of fellow human beings, establishing and legislating racial hierarchy, taking land and resources that don’t belong to us, tricking other white people into believing that acceptance into whiteness is better than equality and freedom for everyone – just to name a few truths about us. Still, I can’t give up on white people.
Doing so would be embracing the lie I was told about how white people are not a part of the problem of racial inequity and thus not responsible to remedy it. Giving up on white people would not remove the lasting effects of racial hate, violence, superiority, and theft that’s imprinted on my DNA. Letting go of the white people in my life does not remove my struggles with whiteness and what I learned about race. Disconnecting from white people – who have been my family and my community, those whom I love – does not free me of pain and anguish. It would simply supply, a different sort of hurt.
As I’m trying to figure out what to do with whiteness, my racialized identity, and racism, I’m no expert. I’m fumbling around trying to make sense of it all. But, not giving up on white people, I’m sure of that.
Admittedly, I have wanted to give up. I’ve wanted to walk away, keep distance, and shield my mixed race family from as much white toxicity as possible. I’ve seen how whiteness takes over white people and relationships – how it can bulldoze our best intentions to love each other. Separating myself would make it easier to not get drawn into the same old white ways of relating, being, and perceiving that I’m trying so hard to break free of. Sometimes giving up is the best option. In my case, however, it’s not.
Still, it’s an attractive idea – the image of being free of it. Of ending attempts to activate and work with other white people to do anything about whiteness and racism. At times, it feels easier to stop fighting for troublesome relationships with other white people and grow my own way. Searching for ways to contemplate, communicate, and connect with racial identity and inequity, as a white person with other white people, is difficult. I’m spent and often unsure of how to move forward.
Sometimes, when stuck in a way of being, thinking, and doing, removing oneself from those who perpetuate what you’re looking to escape, helps you get unstuck. Maybe if I surround myself with new ways of being with and perceiving race, I’ll not be so influenced by whiteness. Perhaps, I’ll activate synapses in my brain that have me responding differently to racism – ways that don’t reflect what whiteness taught me about how to maintain white dominance.
But giving up on white people – that’s not the answer. And I can’t do it.
The people in our lives, who we spend our time with and listen to, shape what we see as normal, influence how we view ourselves, and how we perceive others. I spent the majority of my formative years surrounded by white people. Whiteness was my normal. It was a normal where the people around me did not talk about being white – none of us seemed to consider race as influential in our lives. My journey of looking at whiteness and unlearning white superiority hasn’t been painless. I know that what I’m calling us white people into isn’t simple.
White people are among those that I deeply love. It’s exasperating and heart breaking that we struggle so intensely to have worthwhile conversations about our shared experience of being white; what it means for us, and what our whiteness could mean to others – how our whiteness could have different meaning to those we love who are not white. We know how to fight, yell, accuse, deflect, deny – we can employ a wide array of unproductive tactics – but meaningful discussions about whiteness is unfamiliar and hard. Our attempts to discuss the truth of our common social identity and position in the racial hierarchy too often turns into an idle feud. I’m vexed.
And, I can’t give up on white people.
My white skin is something about myself that I cannot change – none of us can truly divorce ourselves from how our skin color is racialized. There’s power in recognizing and accepting the truth of how we’re seen, how we’ve been, how we’re influenced to be in the world, the historical, and day-to-day impact this has on us. And whiteness taught me, and seemingly most all the white people I know, to resist paying attention to any of this.
What I learned from whiteness is that white people think about and deal with race as individuals. I’ve not seen us collectively take responsibility for racial inequity. We don’t seem to know how to come together around race, racism, or being white in a way that doesn’t support racial imbalance. As far as I can tell, our racial togetherness is about maintaining and upholding whiteness as supreme. I long for us to learn new ways to be together around race, for us to not separate ourselves off from each other and the problem of racism. I want us to unlearn how we’re taught and how we teach one another to uphold whiteness. We need a new normal.
I won’t give up on white people because identities and ways of being are not fixed – we are not forever fated to be one way or another.
Being white does not mean that we have to be and do whiteness – the culture, expectations, and norms of being white. We can change, unlearn the ways we police ourselves and others in the name of the racial status quo, and fix racial inequity. If I separate myself from other white people, I disconnect myself from my people and it’s harder for me to see where I come from and the things – good and bad – that make me who I am. Not engaging with other white people about race and racism allows whiteness to go unchecked and the racial hierarchy unopposed.
I won’t turn my back on white people because becoming antiracist does not mean being anti white people. Whether our group was conditioned to be perpetuator or forced into being the target of oppression, we are all profoundly impacted by dehumanization and injustice. Choosing antiracism is choosing justice and communal healing. Recognizing the complexity of big social problems like racism is an important part of fixing the mess we’re in. It’s not as easy as simply becoming anti whatever – the inversion of white dominance to white dehumanization and oppression isn’t what antiracism is about. It’s about genuine transformation, real structural change, and setting us all free.
I can’t and I won’t give up on white people.
I believe in and have witnessed the beauty of shared humanity. Racism steals the opportunity to be fully human and whole from all of us. Withstanding the essentialism of whiteness – which attributes superior goodness to white – means that I cannot count white people as wholly good. The flip side of resisting essentialism, is that I also can’t say we’re completely unredeemable. I’ve seen how our dysfunctional, socially constructed power structures wear at our common humanity. How we are persuaded that good is defined as this or that, rather than the core of who we are when we collectively care for one another. I believe in and have witnessed redemption, so I can’t give up on us.
I can’t because that would mean giving up on myself.
I have hope in white people because I’m unwilling to allow whiteness to be the most powerful or potent part of who I am or who we white people are. I have to keep hope because I seek my own wholeness and the wholeness for those that I love. I am white, I love many white people. I have to keep believing in white people because tearing apart whiteness is our work and it is critical to creating the equality I dream of.
It’s easier to criticize and point blame for a problem than it is to find a solution to it. I’m convinced that white people have a part to play in the problem of racism. One way that I’m trying to upend racial inequity is learning to work beside other white people to change the ways we’ve learned to uphold it. I’m attempting to create antiracist togetherness as white people. Cultivating ways of being together that don’t perpetuate racial imbalance and uphold white superiority.
So, here I am putting my all towards not giving up, on myself or other people, and closing the distance between whiteness and racial oppression. All the while making sure to not minimize oppression and responsibly address harm. Sounds simple enough, right?
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