Now that I’ve spent a good five minutes laughing hysterically at this response, let’s pick it apart for what it is.
I laughed because it’s morbidly entertaining to watch the complex mental gymnastics you go through in order to attempt to elevate yourself above Tamela and I and assert that not only are we wrong about racism (*newsflash* this is not just a personal belief or knowledge only the two of us share– this is much larger than us), but that you are an authority on it. I mean, that’s just hilarious.
Let’s get this straight and out of the way: You are not special. Your assertion that we have no way of knowing why racists/white supremacists do what they do and all the systems they allow to stand is not only laughable, it agains asserts yourself as an authority on racism and more knowledgeable than Tamela and I. Since you’d like to use metaphors, here’s one for you:
As a white man, you are plugged into the white supremacy matrix that is at the core of America. It has always been there and its reach is pervasive, influencing and controlling every aspect our lives in ways that even we sometimes don’t see at first as the people who actually experience this oppression. The matrix is damn near invisible for those who are plugged into it– your reality as a white man is your reality and as Tamela said, there’s a whole section of the white population that never even questions the nature of that reality or gives a second thought to whether or not life is the same for people who do not look like them. And you apparently were no passive racist, as you’ve pointed out numerous times that you were raised to be actively and virulently racist. So your reality from the beginning was warped even further. The thing is, you think that because you married outside of your race and [insert list of things you feel prove you are not racist, but the fact you have a list to counter just proves you are] does not mean you’ve won the battle. You are not Neo, you are not our one white hope in fighting against the machine.
You are still plugged in because you are still in white skin in America. You cannot simply wash off that anti-black, misogynoir way of seeing the world– that’s an addiction in your mind that you’re currently showing all of us in how you patronize myself and Tamela. And before you can attempt to say that we don’t know or can’t know that– WE DO. Beyond all uncertainty. How? Black people don’t live in a vacuum. We are spoon fed the same anti-blackness that white people in this country are; we battle it within ourselves and the fact that proud black women like Tamela and myself exist in our skin and will not let our voices be drowned out by white men pretending they know more about our experience is a testament to the strength and commitment we possess to counter all the racism that has been put on us and fed to us since birth. If you’re capable of keeping track of the metaphor here, Morpheus, the man who pulled Neo out of the matrix and taught him about the nature of his reality and how to actively fight against it, had at one point been plugged into the matrix himself. He knows it intimately, he knows the whys and the hows, he’s spent untold time studying it, learning its history beyond what it was doing to him personally, and he began using his knowledge and his voice to wake people the hell up like he was awake.
So yes, we absolutely do know why that man murdered someone. You pretend like there isn’t actual scientific research behind this bull. There is. A lot. You act like these patterns of behavior have not been enslaving, murdering, raping, and all manner of oppressing us for centuries. They have. You seem to conveniently forget that quite a number of racists have told us in no uncertain terms why they are racist without us needing to ask them. The reasons why are complex even in their simplicity. And every white person has a different cocktail of those reasons in them, but they all have a cocktail.
None of this truth fits in with the mental gymnastics you’re contorting yourself through in order to elevate yourself higher than us while you pretend you aren’t though, does it?
An alcoholic who says he no longer drinks is not cured; that person still has an addiction that they will battle for the rest of their life as a recovering alcoholic and one stressful thing or temptation can easily send that person to breaking sobriety and having a drink. Right now, you’ve posted up at the dingiest dive bar you can find and told the bartender to bring you shots– nine to be exact; eight for each of those numbered racist comments you crafted in response to Tamela and another one of straight white supremacy in your response to me. So you’re pleasantly buzzed right about now because the function of racism and white supremacy at their core is to make white people feel safe and good about themselves through the subjugation of people like myself. If you’re not a winner, you’re a loser, right?
I digress though, because this whole tangent you went on is another hallmark in the book of black people talking to white people about racism– I responded to your diatribe point for point, even labeling it for you, but you came back with another set of topics and ignored all the ways in which I pointed out the flaws (also known as racism and fragility) in your commentary. You’ve decided to focus on the “why” of racism when that was never a point of discussion with me.
Power and privilege are not the (only) reasons why a white person has prejudices and biases, but they are the only elements that give that white person the ability to negatively inflict those prejudices and biases onto another race, on a mass scale (also known as oppression). Without power and without privilege, you do not have the volatile cocktail that is racism. So while you tried to pretend like you were teaching us something, you had either misunderstood or were just really desperate to condescend to us so you ignored that part. But in the end you still screwed it up with that example of the homeless man.
Presuming this homeless man is white, he still holds power and privilege. The fact that you don’t understand that telegraphs your inability to understand racism as a social structure and not purely as personal prejudice. Until you can grasp that, anything we say to you is going to be beyond your comprehension level, but I’m going to continue anyway. Whiteness has been constructed as power and privilege and the white homeless man can no more change the color of his skin than I can. Circumstances of his life are such that he is without a home (a transient state), but he is never without his whiteness. As incomprehensible as it may be to you, that whiteness protects him in ways that black people never are and shapes peoples’ opinions of him in ways that black people are not afforded. And he can still harness that whiteness to oppress black people from what would be considered a lower rank in society. While capitalism is the cousin of racism and economic and financial power is unquestionably plays a key role in oppression, we’re talking about social power and privilege in your proffered case of the homeless man. And you might attempt to counter with the fact that all poor people are looked down upon in this country and I would in turn point out that they looked down upon to different degrees dependent upon their race.
We can absolutely tell you the why and the how of racism in great detail. Your inability to receive that information from us because of imaginary roadblocks you’ve created in your lack of knowledge is mark of your own racism. Like I said before: you are not special. You fit into greater patterns of behavior that we have seen, experienced, identified, and studied resulting in an understanding far deeper than you’ll ever have. You seem to think that racism is a conversation of two sides where your input is valid, more so than ours, when in reality it’s nothing like that at all. You do not have the authority to declare what is and is not racist from your position as a white man. That’s like allowing a criminal to simply say he didn’t commit a crime and believing that testimony as fact without ever hearing any evidence to the contrary. But here you are treating racism like it’s open for debate. It’s not. We know you better than you know yourself because we have to– it’s the only way we survive.
I mean, honestly, I just really love how you state that Tamela and I know more than you and then immediately attempt to say that in your state of knowing less than us, you can still declare that you know something we don’t and that something invalidates all that we’ve said…even though we know more than you. The gymnastics, man. I’m still laughing.
To your counter about your grandchildren– honestly, I’m worried for your kids and your future grandchildren over their exposure to you as a racist in denial. There is no twisting necessary on my part as racism is often very illogical. As I told you, the fact that you would and did willingly utilize your procreation outside of your race as a signifier that you are not racist underscores your racism. People who are just simply okay with something do not point it as proof of their character; it doesn’t occur to them to do so because they’re not thinking about it in that manner. I’m honestly surprised you haven’t listed off how many black friends you have as a reason you’re not racist yet. Using your kids, other family, and/or friends as shining badges of just how not racist you are is a gross diminishing of their humanity into trophies you’ve collected to celebrate yourself. Also, your declaration that no racist would ever want his or her children to even be partially of another race is a blatant lie which ignores the reality that racists spawn children of other races all the damn time. Both from rape and consensual sex with human beings they despise but are intensely attracted to and/or have fetishized. That’s an entirely different conversation in the spectrum of racism, but suffice it say that black children of racists exist. This also, again, telegraphs your inability to understand that there’s levels to racism and while not everyone is at the cross-burning level, they are still racist.
You’re entitled to the story of your own experience as a racist, but you are not entitled to further weaponize that story in an effort to appoint yourself as an authority on the overall social construct of racism and how it works or tell any black person that they are wrong about it and you are right. Full stop.
If you’re actually interested in sitting down and learning a thing or two about racism, here’s a pro-tip: it doesn’t involve you making bulleted lists or writing swaths of text telling black women what they don’t know and where their problem is. Close your mouth and open your ears.