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A Letter to a White Male Cousin

Aaron Brashear
Aug 31, 2018 · 10 min read

Sometimes you just have to respond.

let me first just apologize for a few things. first, all the redactions. it’s important to me to protect folks in my family, so the redactions are necessary. second, i generally don’t use standard capitalization when writing anything that’s not for professional use, and this letter qualifies since it was written on a social media platform. i have chosen to take a somewhat loose approach to capitalization and often punctuation because i like to think that when i do choose to use these things, it means more and lands more meaningfully. i think of it sort of like people that gesticulate when talking, versus people that don’t. we are both speaking the same language, but it seems like the person using their hands to illustrate and emphasize certain moments is somehow communicating more. maybe it’s just me.

anyway, on to the letter. the letter’s origins are in an online interaction between my sister-in-law, my wife, and their cousin. my sister-in-law (who i just call my sister) posted a meme that just highlighted the fact that most mass shootings are carried out by white males. the cousin responded with the predictable “not all whites” and “not all men” variety of rebuttal, but with a healthy dose of condescension, smugness, poorly sourced supporting data, all bookended with the kind of conservative talking points that we have all grown accustomed to hearing and reading daily from the insulated right-wing ideological bubble; comments who’s only set of intended results are to absolve white america from their complicity in systemic oppression, and fan the flames of white anxiety. this letter is my response. i had not thought of posting it here, but it has been a while since i posted anything, and my social network friends encouraged me to do so. so here it is.

— — —

hello (white male cousin) — this is (me) commenting from (my wife’s) account since i don’t use (social media platform). i usually stay out of the way of these kinds of family discussions since i am an in-law and don’t feel it’s my place, but because your comments in response to my sister’s post are both profoundly misleading and disturbingly inaccurate, i feel it’s my duty as an justice advocate and community organizer to step in. although beginning your response to (sister’s name) with the phrase “you are better than this” in this context is incredibly disrespectful and has no rational purpose in the argument outside of belittling her, this tactic is so rampant among congenital misogynists in online discussions, and (sister’s name)’s intellectual prowess is so impressive and verifiable, that i really don’t feel the need to address it directly. aside from that fact, it’s also her right as a woman to take that fight on ahead of me, and stepping in front of her is another form of marginalization that i choose not to contribute to. so, you probably already know where this is going and are now deciding whether or not to continue reading. it would be painfully predictable if you decide to stop here, but at the risk of wasting 15 minutes of my time writing this, i will continue out of my love for my sister and wife, and of marginalized demographics en masse.

your comments regarding race, however, are my concern and i will not ignore them, as they are very consistent with those of the new conservative cultural agenda. while your claim that what our country needs is “unity, positivity, love, and understanding” is a heartwarming one, it is decidedly at odds with your understanding of “systemic racism.” so let’s unpack. first, let’s talk about the system. the system is The State and it was designed primarily by the “founding fathers,” who also all happened to be white, land-owning, men. many of them (John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, etc.) also owned slaves. and if you think that point is inconsequential, you’d be wrong. i’ll explain. the founding documents they penned were and are fundamentally flawed and racist. you might think that that statement sounds like part of a liberal agenda, but again you’d be wrong. the Declaration of Independence states that “All Men Are Created Equal,” but thirty lines below that proclamation it also calls Native people “merciless indian savages.” consequentially Native people weren’t considered people, and their subsequent genocide by the european colonialists was proof of that. don’t think it was genocide? pre-colonial numbers of Native peoples on this continent were over 12 million. post-colonial numbers were less than 300,000. this illustrates the fact that these documents had an impact. the Constitution starts with “We the People,” but who exactly are “the people?” the Constitution makes no mention of women or Native people, and claims that slaves were 3/5ths of human beings. the result is a “system” that allowed indigenous people to be exterminated, people of the African diaspora to be monetized and categorized as sub-human, and women to be deprived of political power, physically subjugated, and sexually abused. so it should be apparent to you at this point that the “system” which became the State was specifically designed to benefit a very specific “We the People.” those people are white, land-owning, men. so when people like my sister and wife call you privileged, is is a shorthand reference to what i have just explained.

now on to the racist portion of your “systemic racism” claim. contrary to the beliefs of the alt-right, conservative media, white nationalists, neo-nazis, and xenophobes, there is no such thing as systemic racism as it applies to white culture, and to claim such is only an incremental ideological step away from “it’s okay to be white”, “white genocide,” and other white supremacist talking points. it is inextricably linked to the trendy conservative strategy of suggesting white people suffer from a sort of “reverse racism” in an attempt to absolve them from the sins of their fathers, and it has recent ideological origins in Steve Bannon’s xenophobic monocultural rhetoric. to imply as you have, that speaking the truth about America’s racist and imperialist past and attributing it correctly and demonstrably to light-skinned people of european decent is somehow equivalent to the gruesome stories of those people and cultures that fell victim to it…well, it is unimaginably reprehensible. It is nothing short of erasure. it lays the groundwork for discrimination. it opens the door to things like Jim Crow laws, voter suppression, segregation, employment discrimination, the denial of military benefits, redlining, medical malpractice, rape, police brutality, academic exclusion, and political underrepresentation. racism is tied to the expression of power. people of color on this continent have not had access to social, political, or economic power, therefore they cannot exert racism upon the dominant class. and again, contrary to popular conservative dictum, one Black president and lots of wealthy Black entertainers do not refute that historical fact. but since i suspect you still don’t accept my assertions, let me illustrate it as plainly as i can. my Ancestors were slaves. i know their names. i know what they looked like. i sat and talked with their children; children that remember the sound of a bullwhip. my Ancestors wore cast metal helmets while working in the fields so they wouldn’t steal any of the crops and eat them. the helmets got so hot in the sun that they would burn the skin on their necks. what color were the people that wielded those whips? what color were the people that made those helmets? what color were the people that put them in that field? now what if one of my Ancestors uttered the words, “i hate white people.” would that be racist to you? please think long and hard about your answer.

no (white male cousin), what (sister’s name) posted does not even have notes of systemic racism. not even close. but it does have notes of some inconvenient truths; the sorts that make people that have benefitted from the system very uncomfortable. and the extent to which those uncomfortable people are willing to wrestle and resolve that discomfort by embarking on a solemn journey of restorative measures instead of gaslighting the victims of trauma, we will begin to see evidence of the “unity, positivity, love, and understanding” you describe. until then, we will be relentless in our indictment of this system. and because i know you are a military man that almost certainly identifies as a patriot, i will say this. it is possible to be both intensely critical of the system AND aware of the advantages of living in this country. the united states has afforded its citizenry a level of freedom and mobility unrivaled by most of the “developed” world. however, it is an indisputable fact that the application of those freedoms has not been and is not being equally distributed amongst its populace, and to debate this fact is to turn a blind eye to our collective history and to invalidate the accounts of my Ancestors. self described patriots like to say things like, “America is the best country in the world,” or “the West is the best,” and i don’t doubt that they hold those convictions dear, but to blindly adhere to the doctrine of American exceptionalism without questioning the unjust origins of our socio-economic prosperity is to succumb to a whitewashed version of our current realities. and if you still don’t believe me, maybe you will believe the findings of the United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. that is, provided your opinion of the U.N. and The Washington Post aren’t the same as our president’s.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/u-s-owes-black-people-re…/…

And finally to your point about mass shootings. we can agree that the media sensationalizes violence and that there are bipartisan journalistic biases in their approach. and it is true that the majority of shootings that result in multiple victims happen in impoverished neighborhoods, often perpetuated by Black and Brown people. but what you are neglecting to mention, assuming that you already knew this, is that those shootings are often gang or crime related, and that there are volumes upon volumes of evidence that concludes that the horrifying state of our inner-cities and ghettos are a direct consequence of the past and on-going socioeconomic and environmental segregation of our country by our government. i would direct you to the book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein if you have any interest in digging deeper into the implications of generations of calculated efforts by the State to separate our country by race. these efforts continue today. and although psychologists and cultural anthropologists almost universally agree that crime is a product of societal pressures and not race, white nationalists and patriots alike regurgitate these statistics as proof that Black and Brown people are more violent or prone to crime than whites. outside of the domain of these economically-based instances of gun-violence within the Black and Brown community, white men FAR outpace any other demographic when it comes to mass shootings (63% are white men and the remaining 37% split up among all other demographics), which are defined as “an incident in which the motive appeared to be indiscriminate killing and a lone gunman took the lives of at least three people.” in fact, almost all of the worst mass shootings in the last 3 decades were carried out by white men. (https://www.statista.com/…/…/worst-mass-shootings-in-the-us/). no matter how you parse the data, this is just verifiably true. so unless you are willing to completely ignore systemic oppression, and the State-sanctioned violence and trauma exacted on generation after generation of Black and Brown people in this country, your equivalencies are just ostensibly false.

so, (white male cousin) i would invite you to do some real soul-searching in regards to your statements on this thread. i don’t doubt that there are some white people that have been ostracized socially because they are white. i don’t doubt that there are men that have been excluded from things because they are men. but these are anecdotal tales at best, and at worst they are fodder for the further marginalization of at-risk demographics. and as a white man, to complain about being misrepresented in a meme shows an almost mind-blowing obliviousness of your place in western society, as well as a supposition that you are somehow entitled to a consistently accurate and positive representation of your identity. imagine being a woman and almost NEVER being accurately represented or respected by default. imagine being Black and having your default representation be as lazy, or a thug, or drug dealer, or dancing buffoon. now multiply that by hundreds of years. now put yourself in my shoes. live in that your entire life and think about what your response would be to hearing a member of the most rewarded and unconstrained ethnic demographic in the history of this continent make claims that he is being discriminated against. it’s ludicrous (white male cousin). an online meme that correctly indicts white men for their transgressions, even if slightly numerically inaccurate, does not come anywhere close to systemic racism or even gender-based oppression. it is simply an imperfect expression of the frustrations of millions of people as they try to live their lives and achieve their dreams while being demonized, sexualized, and gaslit by a society that refuses to truly validate them.

here is another article i would recommend. i hope you spend the time between now and the next time we meet lowering your defenses and opening yourself up to the truths of the people you share this country with, and your culpability in their struggles.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/why-some-white-americans…/…

oh, and thank you for your service. it is a sacrifice too many of us take for granted.

Aaron Brashear

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Anti-Racist. Intersectional. Feminist. Words.

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