Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Being White
I thought about making a post consisting entirely of "Condescending Wonka" memes, but half the time there was too much text to fit. If I had to make just one, it would be:
Top Caption: Oh, so you're an upper-middle class white person who went to college and now fights for social justice?
Bottom Caption: Please, tell me more about white privilege and racism in society.
In the words of Matt Stone (co-creator of South Park), "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals".
A short explanation of that quote is that for a sizable portion of conservatives, religion trumps all. Naturally, they expect and welcome any criticism since godless liberals are in a conspiracy with Satan to destroy Christianity and America.
Yeah.... right. But practically speaking, there are only so many jokes you can make about that, and the most of them are already overdone.
Liberals, however, with
almighty secular "science" and "reason" on their side, tend to
take an intellectually enlightened stance on social issues; they believe
they are above reproach. In Parker and Stone's view, this is exactly why
liberals need to be put in place- no one is immune to
criticism. That also is kindof the theme of this blog (if you haven't figured it out already).
I should clarify here that I do in fact identify as a liberal. I am a registered Democrat, and (for the most part) have voted as such in every election cycle since I turned 18.
So naturally, I guess I should go attend a "die-in", change my profile picture to #BlackLivesMatter on Facebook, and lecture about white privilege and how fucked up it is to anyone I come in contact with.
This is blatant "whitesplaining", a term that I hope hasn't already been coined by someone else.
whitesplain (wAHYT-spleyn)
verb
1. Portmanteau of "white" and "explain"; an unintentionally condescending (though often well-intentioned) attempt to describe issues such as racial/gender/socioeconomic inequality from a privileged perspective.
2. Anything said on social media about current events coming from a "white liberal" between the ages of 18-30.
noun, whitesplanation
Here's a little bit of history for you. A very popular literary genre in 19th century America was the "slave narrative". Two of most highly regarded works in this genre are the eponymous Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.
Side note: If you haven't read either of these, I highly recommend them. Both stories portray a graphic depiction of slavery's moral and physical brutality much better than any movie ever could.
Usually, slave narratives were serialized by Abolitionist publications and were as such written to an audience of (mostly) wealthy white New Englanders who composed the core of the Abolitionist movement. Considering the place which slavery held in public discourse prior to the Civil War, it isn't difficult to see how these stories became widely read and won many formerly apathetic individuals over to the Abolitionist cause.
One of the trademarks of the genre was that the accounts were often published with a foreword/prologue by a prominent (white) Abolitionist, usually praising the author's integrity and providing validation to the story (I've linked Douglass's piece above, check out the foreword). So maybe you can see where I'm going with this. Former slaves became figurepieces of the Abolitionist movement. After the Civil War, a lot of Abolitionists felt that it was their duty to help "the feeble Negro" fully exercise his newfound freedom. So they aren't slaves anymore... but they aren't fully people yet either since they couldn't be expected to get far without the white man's help and validation. So yes, while well-intentioned, white people trying to "guide" black people to equality is patronizing, ignorant, and an implicit societal message that black people are "less-than". I guess I should take this opportunity to point out that the most widely-read book of the nineteenth century is often lumped into the slave narrative genre even though it is fiction written by a white woman: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book had a much larger impact on society than any real slave narrative, and although it was indeed written with the most noble objectives, it is responsible for many negative stereotypes of blacks that still exist in our culture over 160 years later.
Let's get back to the present. People are outraged over the happenings in Ferguson, New York, and everywhere else where black people are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement (which is most places). People should be outraged. But this is turning into a fucking cause célèbre for a bunch of white people to tell everyone else how radically inclusive and egalitarian they are and how much they care about how fucked our society is; all of this at the expense of drowning out the voices of those who exist at a societal disadvantage.
Yes, black lives matter. But black lives are lost every day at a rate much higher than any other demographic group. In this case, the outrage was spurred mostly by the (white) media circus surrounding Ferguson. You know what message this sends? That the grievances of blacks aren't "legitimate" or "real" until white people get involved to provide the figurative supporting foreword to their frustrations.
It doesn't matter how much you care about racial inequality, how many classes about it you took in college, or how many student activist groups you were a member of, if you are white, you don't know shit about discrimination or injustice, and you need to quit pretending that you do. This isn't your fight. It is trite and patronizing for you to think that you can actually contribute anything new or meaningful to a very real struggle that you can't even begin to understand. Additionally, it devalues the experiences of black people who have dealt with adversity since birth; adversity that they didn't ask for or deserve, but became an inherent aspect of their existence only because of the color of their skin. No amount of empathy will ever amount to you "understanding" the non-white experience in America.
So as a white male, I am pleading with my white peers to shut the fuck up and listen. Not understanding is okay. You can still be supportive of the black community while simultaneously acknowledging your own whiteness (and thus, undeserved privilege) by not joining into the fury, but taking it all in and trying to learn how best you can be of service to people who are disadvantaged. Don't assume you know how to help best, or you know what the "right" thing to do is. If you really care that much, show some fucking humility and ask.
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