I‘d emphasize that most white people do not understand their level of ignorance — especially the good ones, who mean well, and that negligence is part of the problem. Many of the white people I know have no concept of the role they have, passively or actively, played in perpetuating these conditions. They have no idea how much we long to hear them speak up for us and to embrace some of the discomforts around these issues with us.
Furthermore, the good ones are oblivious to the level of overt racism that is still out there. I have been among my white friends in all the times I’ve been called n*gger by a stranger. In all these situations, my white friends seemed shocked. They had been misled to believe that situation only occurred in the past, and when reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Comfortingly, they always leaped to my defense verbally, and the savior complex within them encouraged them to seek retribution.
In one vivid case, at a bar in Cape Cod having just finished a conversation with a friend, one guy, not realizing I was still in earshot nor aware of my relationship with the friend, came over and asked, ‘You really talking to that n*gger?’ My friend was stunned but immediately came back at the guy, his anger for me visible. He then came to me boasting that he has black friends as if that should warrant him a pass. As much as each situation ruined my night, everything after went well, and I was embraced by a group of allies who wanted to fight for me when they heard that word. I had no further reason to be upset. Yet, probably only the friend who walked ahead of the group with me knows I cried my eyes out the entire walk home, unable to explain how that word garnered so much control over me.
But the problematic result of these situations of overt racism is that it leaves the good white people to feel liberated from any responsibility concerning any type of racism. It makes it difficult to accept the reality of privilege, structural racism, and implicit biases they hold that do not make them racist themselves, but they do benefit from.
This is one of the first times I have felt it was not only okay but promoted to share these things. If there is one thing every token black friend knows, it is that we are not to provoke serious discussions of racial issues among our white crowd. We should only offer an opinion on such matters when invited to do so by our white peers. But we should ensure that the opinion is in line enough with the shared opinion of our white friends, as to not make it too awkward or ostracizing. It doesn’t need to be, and shouldn’t be this way. Many of us are eager to share our stories and we have only been waiting for the invitation to do so.
I am comforted when I see white people call things out for what they are. When my friends and I rented a 16-passenger van for a New Year’s Eve trip to Montreal, we found ourselves held up at the border coming back. The older agent, surveying the passengers, asked how we all knew each other, to which we answered, ‘We all went to high school together.’ Then, he followed up by singling me out, ‘And how do you fit in here?’ What he was suggesting about my place in the group of all white guys was telling enough, and the guys I was with were quick to support me, and point it out to their parents when debriefing the trip once we arrived home. If only they knew how often I’d experienced situations like that one. They should know that conversations about little things like this instance are what we need more of because they get the ball rolling. It is not our job to heal the world, but if we can start by just getting people to question small interactions and beliefs, we can start moving towards progress.
