Still laughing.
The whole of your response can be summed up as, “I’m not racist because I said so.”
If you had any two wits about you, you would understand how that just cannot work. You cannot tell a black person or a person of color what their experience with you is or is not. You can’t erase or dismiss it as assumptions or list reasons you believe you’re not racist. This is a real issue with white people who believe they’re not racist. They’re more concerned with not being labeled (accurately) than they are with actually addressing the racism that they are being told they explicitly possess. When your opinion of yourself is more important than the people you are actively and passively harming, you’re a racist. Period.
You’re thoroughly committed in not seeing how you’ve made racist comment after patronizing comment here because that does not fit with the image of cured ex-racist that loves people of color that you have for yourself. The fact that you cannot accept what I’ve pointed out, have not found it within yourself to ask questions to help you better understand, but instead have dismissed everything as an assumption or characterized it as some twisted need I have to delude myself into believing you’re racist when “you’re really not” does not erase the veracity of my words to you and speaks volumes to the level of racism that resides unchecked in you.
At no point have I “elevated” myself above you in any way. I admitted quite a few times to both of you that there are things that you know that I can never know, experiences you’ve had that I can never have. It is only two particular points where I said that Tamela is wrong about racism (not all whites are racist, and racism is borne of fear and suspicion), and all of a sudden we get into a long, drawn-out argument. The two of you seem to believe that you cannot be wrong about anything when it comes to racism. You seem to forget that you, like me, are human…and so you will sometimes be wrong.
This is yet another example of how you have attempted to elevate yourself above us. Your assertions that we know more than you are always, always followed by the assertion that you, as a white man who experiences exactly none of this firsthand, can tell us where we are wrong about what we all experience as Black Americans. You feel you are entitled to not only having a contrary opinion on our experience and knowledge, but that you can repeatedly tell us about it as if it’s fact and then gaslit us like you’ve done nothing at all and we’re just making assumptions. You are not entitled to any of that. I said it before and I’ll say it again: You cannot tell us we’re wrong about anything involving racism as every breath you breathe is supported by the racism rooted in this country. You cannot separate yourself from it, you can only counteract it. And right now, you’re denying it even exists as I consistently and clearly point it out to you. I’m running out of spoons for you.
Now this is not to say that there are not dissenting opinions amongst Black people about the nature of racism; there are and those folks are entitled to have them. If you were Black, you’d ultimately be allowed to maintain your thoughts as your own. But you’re not Black, Glenn. You are not a person of color. You are a white man who benefits from our oppression. You are not in a position of or in possession of any knowledge or experience to say two words to us about being wrong let alone all the hundreds of words you have committed here. Have you ever asked yourself why you feel so strongly that you are right about these two, very key points about racism over us as black women with lifetimes of lived experience or all the other published authors and experts who hold the same sentiments as fact? Why are you, one white man, so very right about these things and the black people who experience them so very wrong?
Because you’ve demonstrated yourself as being incapable of answering that correctly on your own, I’ll leave it here for you: white supremacy. White supremacy, as it pervades this entire culture, has endowed you with this sense of entitlement and authority. And you’re currently still wholeheartedly embracing it.
You also accused me of patronizing you and Tamela, and that is a false accusation. Just because you personally want to believe that I’m just patronizing you doesn’t make it so. To me, patronization is an insult, and requires insincerity. Where in all my writing have I been insincere? I might be wrong about something, but I’m still sincere about it until someone proves to me that I’m wrong. I don’t do insincerity. I did not patronize. You only assumed that I did…and wrongly.
This. Is. TOXIC. Let’s replace some words so you can see exactly how disgusting this is:
“You also accused me of raping you and and Tamela, and that is a false accusation. Just because you personally want to believe that I’ve raped you doesn’t make it so. To me, rape is penetration and requires force. Where in our interaction did I use force? I may have been insistent, but I still didn’t use force. I don’t hit women. I did not rape you. You only assumed that I did…and wrongly.”
Now you’re likely sitting there torn between outrage and disbelief at your words being highlighted in this way…for what they are. You do not get to decide what impact you have or have not had after you’ve assigned your own personal definition to the matter at hand. And you definitely don’t get to gaslight the person over it. The more words you commit to this, the more layers of your toxicity you show. I’m honestly very worried for the people in your life.
You clearly don’t understand the concept of marginalization, so I would refrain from attempting to use it further if I were you.
You can be excused for not knowing all this, since it’s likely that many biracial families that you’ve seen are just as you described…but it’s unlikely that you’ve seen a family situation like mine. Maybe you have, but it’s unlikely.
And you were saying about assumptions? I don’t need to be excused for anything. Nothing you’ve said here alters or disputes anything I’ve said about your propensity (and racism therein) for reducing the people of color in your life to an anecdote about how not racist you are.
You accused me of making nine racist comments. I made none. You are nonetheless sure that I did because that’s what you want to believe. You have pigeonholed me, having made up your mind that you know all you need to know in order to judge me, and so you feel justified in claiming that I made racist comments.
If you were paying attention, I’ve actually noted more than nine, but for the purpose of the imagery I was providing you, I specifically counted each number on your list and the whole of your previous response to me as nine. You made none and I am only sure you did because that’s what I want to believe? See above for exactly how wrong that assertion is. Furthermore, in what world do Black people imagine or want to believe we’re oppressed when we’re not??? This literally ends in our murders and all manner of premature death due to the stress of getting through a day in this skin surrounded by people like you and worse. It would be so much easier to believe and be otherwise, but that’s not reality. That’s a fantasy you wish to believe so you can shirk really looking at yourself and your responsibility in all this.
But it was not unusual for those girls to refuse to “service” black men. This was racism.
Wrong again. This was not racism. This was anti-black prejudice. Also, your lens is further skewed. Has it ever occurred to you that these prostitutes were more afraid of upsetting you as white men occupying their space than they were of black men and that they felt like they could assert their agency by not serving the black men but had no choice but to service you? Man, white supremacy is one hell of a drug.
As I said, power and privilege are enablers. The root of all racism (and all other forms of prejudice), however, is fear and suspicion of the “other”.
Wrong again. As we’ve said, racism does not exist without the intersection of power and privilege. Outside of power and privilege, you have prejudice and bias. Those prejudices and biases can be born of fear, hate, ignorance, or a combination therein. (Note: it’s extremely interesting that you have consistently left out the whole hatred part. Too ugly in its truth for you?) But you do not have racism until you lend those prejudices and biases the power and the privilege being white has been constructed to have maintain a brutally firm grip on. People of color who express their prejudices and biases against Black people are not racist, they are anti-black. They ultimately do not possess the power or privilege of whiteness which means they cannot directly oppress us. They can be terrible human beings to us in their attempts to view themselves and have white people view them as better than us, but their actions and thoughts have no where near the ramifications of white people doing and thinking those same things. I don’t understand what about this country being built to consistently and systemically hand you all and only you the power and privilege to inflict your prejudices on whole populations by personal choice and by default is so hard for you to grasp. Stop trying to make it so white people are not the only ones guilty of racism. As much as you don’t want to be singled out as guilty, you are the only ones. There are whole books written on this– go read.
In my first article on Medium, I pointed out that one of my great lessons after leaving the Delta was that after allowing for cultural and religious mores, people really are the same all over the world. Do you agree with that statement? And if you do, then does that not mean that racism is found in many people everywhere as well?
You would have to define “same.” Same genetically, same metaphorically? Same how? I don’t actually expect an answer to these questions because the underlying concept here is colorblindness and that, pardon my language, is bullshit. We’re all human. There is no question about that. We all have the same basic bodily functions, organs, and systems that make define us as human. But culture is a key defining element of everything else. How you are socialized based on the color of your skin has massive impacts on both micro and macro levels. Just because we are all human does not erase the fundamentally different ways in which we move throughout the world by design. Prejudice and bias can be found in many people everywhere. Anti-blackness can be found in people of color AND Black people themselves. Still doesn’t make them racist for the reasons we have handed to you in multiple different kinds of palatable ways.
This country was birthed in racism and white supremacy to the most brutal degree. It was included in every nook and cranny in every social construct and system we have. It is pervasive in ways you have yet to imagine. America is fundamentally racist. That racism is constructed to directly and indirectly benefit one race– white people. That racism only exists within the power and privilege afforded to white people by brutally efficient design. As you cannot be born into a society without internalizing its social constructs and systems from birth, you have no say in whether or not you learn racism as your default. (Note: we’re talking about all people right now, regardless of race.) Even if you learn or come to realize in some point in your life that you’re swimming in sewage water, it has still left insidious traces throughout you. And those traces inform how you interact and how you view the world. In the case of white people, they have the power and privilege no one else has and benefit from racism in a way that no one else does that there is no other state but racist. You can be in recovery and constantly work for the rest of your life to listen and learn from the people your privilege and power oppresses, while working to find the traces of racism within yourself and keeping them suppressed…but you’re a recovering racist at that point. Still racist. Not because we believe you to be, but because you simply are. These are the circumstances we live in and you can’t just deny they exist; you’re only deluding yourself.
As a parting note (because I have no desire to talk to a harmful brick wall any further and I’m not getting paid to waste my time and energy) I leave you with this– Have you ever considered how detrimental to myself, Tamela, and Black people in general it would be if we were only willingly delusional in believing that white people are racist as you have maintained that we are? Where you had a deliberate choice to surround yourself with people of color instead of the default whiteness, we are literally surrounded by white people and whiteness all the time without ever having a choice in the matter. What sense would it make for us to need to believe that all these people in our lives, some of whom we still love dearly, are harmful to us?
You would rather believe that we apart of a mass delusion that simply wants to believe every white person, including our loved ones and friends, has a hand in oppressing us for some incomprehensible and illogical reason or listening to and trusting in the truth we have so graciously laid out plainly for your understanding.
Believe what every you want, but we all see you as the dangerous, racist white man that you are.