Dear Black People

A. C. Frohnhoefer
Aug 28, 2017 · 4 min read

Thank you for taking the time to write us and for using every creative means available to relay your messages. As you surely know I cannot speak for my entire race. But I will speak about what I have observed some members of my race do, most likely without realizing it. I will start with a seemingly unrelated anecdote and then drive home my point, ending with a new phrase that I hope becomes a sort of lingua franca.

Anecdote

When I was in the Army, way back in the 1990s, there was an awful lot of hurrying up to wait. During one particular training exercise our platoon was again stuck in a slow-moving weigh-in line. Sitting in the 5-ton, the driver and myself got into a conversation about the word groovy and how ridiculous it was. Then we started listing all kinds of out-dated slang: dip, fresh, mint, cool, tight, etc.

The line did not move. So we started listing them chronologically, trying to see how one bled into the other. Groovy to sweet? Cool to hot? Fresh to def?

The guy I was talking to was (and probably still is) Black. That’s not the point of the anecdote.

The Point of This Anecdote

Words matter. Words move. Words evolve. Words transform. And white people have a way with words. We have a code. We’ve had codes for a long time. Our codes are so good and so coded that many of us don’t even know we are speaking in code. Like when I told my students that I grew up in an urban area. (I really did grow up in Queens, New York.) And some of the students’ jaws dropped. I later realized what “urban” meant.

And when there are words that make us uncomfortable we co-opt them. That’s what we do. We’ve done it so much we don’t even know we do it. Dig?

Something is afoot with the term “white privilege.” I send you this message from the inside. Here’s what’s going on.

White Privilege

We now like to tell each other about how we know we are privileged. Like that somehow means it is okay to live in a rent-controlled apartment even though we have an ample trust fund. Or that we know we were privileged to attend a prestigious university but that won’t prevent us from hiring our friends who went to similar institutions. Do you see what’s happening? White privilege has now become a code for “I feel guilty. Sigh. How terrible that other people have not been born into these things.”

White privilege has become the new “color blind.”

Now, I am someone who used to say that I was color blind. Not recently, but I have said it in my youth. It meant, as you know, “I am not racist.”

Some members of the far-right are still outraged about how anyone could think they are privileged. Outraged. But give it a few years. Some guy in a trucker hat is going to lower his voice one day and tell you, “Look. I know I am privileged but……”

So white guilt has gone to color blind has gone to white privilege. We took it and we made ourselves comfortable, too comfortable with it.

Lost Cause?

Not all of us are lost. But a whole lot of us (myself included)are pretty certain we are found. And we are so proud of it. Acknowledging our privilege left and right. To anyone who will listen. We tell it to those who are certain to get angry but we also use it to up our liberal status to those who nod in knowing approval. It’s code.

New Word

Recently I got a bit snippy with one of the “I know I am privileged but….” kind of people. Then I did a horribly white thing. I told a woman of color about it. You know, for validation. (I cringe. But at the time I felt so righteous.)

She told me that she is noticing more and more that people are not at the place she would like them to be but they are at least trying. I told her I’d have to chew on that.

It took watching this video about privilege to perspective to power that helped me swallow the hard truth that growing out of racism is a process. So I have to be kinder. I have to employ the “hypothesis of generosity” and I have to quit being embarrassed by my fellow white people who are struggling. I have to recognize my own place in this process somewhere.

But that’s just backstory for this new word that I intend to use whenever our process falters and we fail ourselves and you.

Caucasoid.

As in, “Yes, you are privileged. Now stop being a Caucasoid and listen.”

I recently read this great piece by Jennifer Hope Choi and it must have filtered somewhere through my subconscious and inspired this term.

I had a different ending to this letter but when I proofread this, I crumpled inside.

I made a somewhat deft move. I avoided saying I was privileged. I avoided it by coming up with a new word. One with which I am comfortable. Shit. Then I told you what to call me.

Thank you, Black people. I will keep reading your letters as long as you keep sending them.

Sincerely,

Annemarie

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A. C. Frohnhoefer

Written by

I made this account a few years back, forgot about it and made another one. If you want to read what I am writing now, then go over to Nihilistic A.F. It’s me!

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