The Sin of Not Being White
Blaming Black and Brown people for taking opportunities others think we shouldn’t have is a game that’s almost over
Many Black and Brown people who came of age in the 1960s and 70s were counseled by our communities that, white people get jobs and then figure out how to do them. Black people have to prove they can do the job before they get it, usually for more stress and less money. We were called Affirmative Action hires, no different from those being called DEI hires today.
Times were different back then though. We rode the rising tide of hope given birth by the Civil Rights Movement, President Johnson’s Great Society vision, and memories of Kennedy’s Camelot where “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” was a rallying cry. Our preparation and aspirations, no different than anyone else’s, took us to places where, to paraphrase what Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said in front of a packed 2024 Democratic National Convention, we wanted “to get promoted without being derided as an Affirmative Action (DEI) hire for the sin of being successful while not White.”
We thought the world had changed. We were wrong
Few of us felt the impact of Affirmative Action labels, much less shame. Whether our opportunities were forced by a changing culture or forged by policy, financial incentives, or societal guilt was unimportant. Naively, we felt like our opportunities had been earned by protests, generational abuse, and death. We were products of turbulent times. Times that bound many of us by “causes” rather than culture.
We came into adulthood listening to thoughts on equality, consciousness, and working towards a greater good. The words of Dr. King, Malcolm X, Ali, Huey Newton, Fannie Lou Hamer, Doctor Ben Jochannan, John Henrik Clark, Ivan Van Sertima, Angela Davis, W.E.B. DuBois, and many others became our narratives. The music of Sly and the Family Stone, Aretha, Simon and Garfunkle, Parliament, Gil Scott Heron, Marvin Gaye, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Curtis Mayfield, The Supremes, The Beatles, and others were the soundtracks that gave us a voice.
Television, a fairly new commodity to many households, made the world know that our struggle for opportunities, equity, and even just having one’s voice heard (inclusion) could end with life-altering and life-threatening consequences. The jailing of Angela Davis, police brutality, and the unjust beatings of people trying to vote became blemishes upon the nation’s self-righteous pride. The murders of Medgar Evers, Dr. King, Malcolm X, four Kent State students, two students at Jackson State, Fred Hampton, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner made it well known that even in the U.S. equality was a dream that could have deadly consequences.
Our new-found opportunities, however, were a bubble soon to burst. In just fifteen short years the Reagan administration would inaugurate a fifty-year campaign to undo much of the “prize” our elders and ancestors had fought and died for.
We’d failed to fully understand what Malcolm X had forewarned, “Chickens come home to roost.” In the 1980’s the Reagan administration led efforts to reclaim the dominant class’ way of life. Making Affirmative Action hires as much a societal pariah as DEI hires are made to feel today.
Color-coded labels signal insecurity and superiority
Affirmative Action and DEI hire are color-coded labels based on beliefs of superiority and feelings of victimhood to inflict societal abuse and shaming. Emanating from a collective ego, they define the roles and responsibilities that Black and Brown people are permitted to have and what abilities are to be expected from us. They are ongoing examples of the country’s unhealthy regard for diversity. I think spiritualist and teacher Eckhart Tolle said it best when talking about The Collective Ego, “If there’s one thing that’s more insane than the personal ego it’s the collective one.”
Superiority is one of the country’s most insatiable sources of self-worth and esteem. Both American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny, rooted in John Calvin’s beliefs in predestination, have evolved into supremacist dogma giving breadth to collective ego needs that place White people in a global caste position of socio-economic dominance. Color-coded labels and color line enforcement are needed to further White people’s superiority.
Color-coded labels also act as a kind of salve for Whites who believe they are victims within a society that no longer prioritizes them and their needs. J.D. Vance described them wonderfully well in his book Hillbilly Elegy saying, “There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites.” The rise of the Christian Coalition after school desegregation, the Tea Party’s take-over during the Obama presidency, the MAGA movement’s appropriation of the Republican Party, Evangelical’s growing political prominence, and the increase in domestic hate groups, all, have roots in discontent, anger, and pessimism.
When individual and collective egos conspire, often dire and even tragic consequences are the result. To find evidence of this fact look no further than the suffering playing itself out in Springfield, Ohio. Legal immigrants seeking to fill the manufacturing sector’s needs for workers and a small community coming to terms with unprecedented growth have both become victims of false messages proselytized, empowered, and amplified by childlike needs for self-gain. Such is the dangerous nature of an unbridled unhealthy ego.
DEI labels shout “They’re never enough!”
DEI hire labels are pejorative “dog whistles.” Their goal is to reinforce the dominant class perspective that White people’s achievements come from hard work, brains, and perseverance. And Black and Brown people are successful because of the unfair preference we’ve been given because of our skin color.
Take Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman for example. His calling Harvard University President Claudine Gay a DEI hire deserving of dismissal was a cause in search of a reason. His reason, that Gay plagiarized her writings, bolstered his claims that Harvard’s Board had gone too far in its zeal to inflict diversity upon the university. His clamor for her ousting was undermined though when the Business Insider reported Ackman’s wife had plagiarized portions of her dissertation.
Harvard student, Kyla Golding ’24 said best in the Harvard Independent (January 2024) “…it’s the blueprint of reminding everyone who she might inspire to try and achieve the same that we’re not welcome. And if we do it, they’ll find every reason to push us out or force us to feel like we shouldn’t. The rhetoric is dangerous because it doesn’t allow the roots of progress for people of color to grow.”
Al Fin: Color-coded labels are unhealthy, for everyone
After having lived outside of the U.S. for the last almost twenty years, I am moving my family back. I know color-coded labels along with other attempts to marginalize my children will come. Which will demand of them and us a high level of hypervigilance.
Color-coded labels and descriptors are about inflicting pain, demeaning people, and forcing us into submission. And let’s not be blind to the fact that such labels are used to demand humility for opportunities that we’ve been given. Too often the results bring Black and Brown people chronic ill health. Finding pathways that instruct them in the discipline of mindfulness is a priority. It’s a strength I didn’t have during much of my life.
Teaching our children that as they pursue their place in the world they don’t have to be Superman or Wonder Woman while fending off color-coded labels and criticisms will be critical to their well-being, I feel. It’s a lesson many of us missed. By helping them be honest about their feelings, fears, and needs, I hope they will not absorb, as many of us do, the stress of not being White in the U.S.
My belief, though, is that until the U.S. embraces “common good” values, my children and many others subjected to color-coded labels will need something more than sage teachings, advice, and well wishes. They will need protection from what seems to me like a train wreck beginning to happen in the U.S.! For, I think, in my heart of hearts, that if they and those other millions like them survive this wreck diversity will emerge as it always should have been — like breathing fresh air!
