From now until Juneteenth 2020, I will share resources that have deeply challenged my thinking and guided my activism for racial justice. I will share my learning and my story, too.
Without understanding whiteness, we cannot understand the current social and political uprising led by Black Americans today and over the past 400 years. Without understanding whiteness, we cannot understand the active role that we play in upholding a criminal justice system that has led to the mass incarceration of Black Americans, and the countless murder of Black Americans by law enforcement. Without understanding whiteness, we cannot understand the active role that we play in upholding a healthcare system in which the mortality rate of Black infants is more than twice that of white infants. Without understanding whiteness, we cannot understand why black NYC residents are dying from COVID-19 at more than 2x the rate of white residents. Without understanding whiteness, we cannot understand why black students are being suspended at twice the rate of white students.
Black cannot exist without white. The concept of “black” exists so that white can say, explicitly and implicitly, knowingly and unknowingly, that white lives are 2x more valuable in the face of COVID-19, and 3x more valuable in the hands of police than Black lives.
America’s “forefathers” constructed “white” and “black” to justify that “black” was subhuman; to control the narrative; to protect white power for the many generations that followed; to say “all lives matter” in the face of a Black-led uprising.
Race has no biological roots. I already knew this prior to listening to “Seeing White” podcast (season 2 of Scene on Radio), but John Biewen and Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika helped me un-learn and fight the remnants of the eugenics I was taught in school, even by my Black science teachers. As a “master” science teacher in New York City, I, too, realized how much more work I had to do in my curricula to actively fight against the racist history of science. Seeing White helped me to learn how to teach others about whiteness through the context of biology and the vulnerability of science.
If we truly understand that race is not biological, then all of a sudden, we understand that the vast disparities in health, education, and income across race are a consequence of design. Racial disparities are a consequence of systems that not only serve to protect and enrich white people, but to teach all Americans that white is superior to Black; that even within communities of color, lighter shades of brown are superior to darker shades of brown.
Whiteness has been made invisible to white people because whiteness has caused so much terror, violence, and death. White people have shielded generations of white people from the pain by making whiteness invisible; whiteness is the default, so it need not be acknowledged. But of course, that doesn’t shield BIPOC from whiteness. Behind closed doors, non-white people have always, and will always, talk about whiteness. I’ll also add that many of us non-white people are not distinguishing between different European ethnicities, as the the construct of “white” has historically protected and enriched even the most oppressed peoples of European decent.
As a non-white person, I am very aware when the main character of a book is white, and if the author is white, because the way that character or writer sees the world, will very quickly make me roll my eyes. Sometimes that white main character, inspired by the white writer, will even make me want to burn that book. Don’t get me started with Catcher in the Rye. Don’t get me started with Wes Anderson films.
White is still the main character. White is still what every system in this country was designed for. White is what wrote history. White is what continues to hoard and protect the generational wealth that has its roots in the oppression of Black and Indigenous people. For this reason, without studying whiteness, white will remain invisible.
For my entire K-12 education and beyond, actually, especially beyond (= college + my first 2 years in the workforce prior to entering public education), I could not be the main character in my own life, no matter how hard I tried. I was incredibly lonely, and I knew that my school and workplace were not designed for me. The exceptions were when I was safe at home with my Korean American & immigrant family, or when I was with my closest friends, who were often BIPOC. No child should ever go to school not feeling like the main character in his/her/their education. More on that on a future post.
Will you do the work to see and understand whiteness in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter?
Listen and learn here:
