“Waking Up to Whiteness”
“You can’t legislate people’s hearts,” I heard the speaker on the radio program say, and my heart sang that there was yet another person acknowledging this truth.
Today we see how easily we can go from the appearance of equality among the races to blatant overt racism, causing us to have to assert clearly that “Black Lives Matter” in a world in which police continue to kill innocent and unarmed black men and women without serious consequences. We see it in the brutal treatment of tribal nations in their resolve to protect the environment and their water source. We see it in a the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions. In 2016 to 2017, 90 percent of Congress is white; 96 percent of Governors are white; top military advisers are 100 perecent white, the nation’s top leadership positions, President and Vice President, are 100 percent white; the current Presidential cabinet is 91 perecent white. The people who decide which TV shows we see are 93 perecent white. The people who decide which books we read are 90 percent white. The people who decide our news coverage are 85 percent white, while the people who decide which music is produced are 95 perecent white. The teachers in the U.S. are 83 percent white, while full-time college professors are 84 percent white. And finally, owners of men’s pro-football teams are 97 percent white.
Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” That is why we must continue to confront the evil of supremacy and racism that was embedded into the very Constitution of this nation. The freedom expressed in that document was never meant for people of African descent nor tribal nations, and therefore, any laws established against racism simply drive the problem underground, creating a shadow that casts its darkness over the country repeatedly, whenever the intended purveyors feel threatened. That is the systemic nature of an ideology that promotes the rights of one group over all others.
Psychologist, Carl Jung, wrote “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” Racism is America’s shadow, and just like the shadows of individuals, America’s shadow must be made conscious before it can be managed effectively. Every time we create a law to address racism in our society, in our world, without exposing all of the insidious ways it throws shade over our universe, we simply cast that shadow deeper into systems. Thus, awareness is key. It is not a soft solution. It requires resolve and the willingness to confront parts of oneself — both good and bad — that have not been allowed to dwell in your consciousness.
White race scholar Robyn DiAngelo wrote the following about white supremacy in an article entitled “No, I Won’t Stop Saying “White Supremacy”” in Yes!Magazine on June 30, 2017:
…[W]hen race scholars use the term white supremacy, we do not use it the same way as mainstream culture does. Nor, do we use it to indicate majority-versus-minority relations. Power is not dependent on numbers but on position. We use the term to refer to a socio-political economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefit those defined and perceived as white. This system rests on the historical and current accumulation of structural power that privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group.
These numbers are not a matter of “good people” versus “bad people.” They are a matter of power, control, and dominance by a racial group with a particular self-image, worldview, and set of interests in the position to disseminate that image and worldview and protect those interests across the entire society.
The second annual Racial Awareness and Mindfulness 2017: A Mini-Festival of the Arts, Awareness, and Healing, scheduled for Saturday, October 21, 2017, at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Southwest Washington, DC, is specifically for this purpose: To uncover the systems of white supremacy, to acknowledge our culpability and complicity in it, to find safe space for dialog and healing, and to find a way forward.
You can register on Eventbrite: www.racialawareness2017.eventbrite.com
This is not a sprint or a marathon. It is a relay race that involves the human condition. Therefore, it will probably take many lifetimes for humans to evolve into the interdependence we are supposed to be. Our hope is that, though not at a pace we may desire, evolution and reformation are indeed in motion.
I end with this quote from Reinhold Niebuhr in his book The Irony of American History:
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.






