I have to admit: I have no idea why a certain group of White people, particularly White males, really want to believe things that aren’t true. I also have to admit how something a commenter on the Indignant White Male blog inspired me to write this post. Another admission is that I likely misunderstood him when I responded to his statement:
Why is black on white crime never considered hate-crime?
I confused it with standard rants about hate crimes. But no matter. The commenters question is even more absurd. Not only are most/all crimes intraracial in nature (meaning that most people are victimized by offenders of their own race/group) but, for some reason, people who want to stretch the concept of “hate” crimes beyond all recognition hardly ever ask, “why aren’t all crimes committed by whites considered hate-crime?”
Clearly the purpose is to take something, “hate crimes”, which Whites commit more often than other groups and turn it into something to hold against Blacks/African-Americans. In either case, whether its the imagined idea that “only whites get charged/convicted of hate crimes” or the intellectually disingenuous, equivocating idea of suggesting that all crimes [Blacks commit, against whites at least] are “hate crimes”, we’re dealing with people who have fragile psyches who feel it is important to believe that White people are “victims.” Victims of, in this case, being seen as the “only” people who commit hate crimes when other people do it too — a fact that they often ignore when making hyperbolic statements like the one that serves as the title for this thread.
The irony of it all is: a lot of the times these are the very people who regurgitate the idea that Black people have a “victim” mentality. But, in a society that privileges White anger/resentment, being White and “playing the victim” apparently isn’t a bad thing.
PS: The “why is black on white crime never considered hate-crime?” argument is, apparently, an attempt to to recast the “only whites get convicted of hate crimes” argument which never could make Whites the kind of “victims” some people need them to be.
The other day on one of my favorite Sirius talk radio shows, a White pro-Obama caller commented on how Obama’s “color doesn’t matter.” You know, the “I don’t see color” kind of color-doesn’t-matter (CDM). The host, Mark Thompson (of “Make It Plain”), had to just let it go for the sake of diverging into a topic that deserved its own show. Of course, he asked the caller to explain what he meant and why CDM but the point Thompson was trying to make was loss on him.
The CDM idea was, apparently, something the caller hadn’t really thought about. Obviously he felt CDM was/is a good concept and in his life’s practice it may well be. But what does it really say?
I explained the problem with this concept once on Stuff White People Do in a thread that looked at a popular expression where the CDM concept comes into play. The thread reflected on the times when someone White says of African-American(s), “I don’t think of them as Black.”
Now maybe you can see the problem.
As I noted on SWPD at the time, the CDM idea, by definition, says that there is something wrong with being Black or any “color” except for White, it seems. Just like the picture on the cover of the children’s book above, Whites are at the center; viewed as the norm. That’s pretty clear to see. And when there are other CDM expressions like, “I’m a Man Who Happens To Be Black,” it’s clear how the idea of being “Black” is viewed as a negative, so much so that other aspects of a person’s being are used to subjugate it - to make it seem like being “Black” is an accident or something that’s wrong to emphasize and, worse, wrong to recognize.
Such is the history.
Indeed, the very historical moment that seems to have inspired White Americans (and others) to adopt the CDM attitude was one where Whites and Blacks, alike, had to deal with the history of seeing “blackness” as a bad thing. So it’s easy to see how saying “color doesn’t matter” or “color shouldn’t matter” is a rational response to that history. The only problem is: the color-doesn’t-matter attitude actually perpetuates the idea that being something other than White, and especially being Black, is a bad thing. But let’s think about that historical moment.
Perhaps no other idea has propelled the CDM concept and cemented it into the national consciousness as Dr. King’s famous (and most abused) lines from his “I Have A Dream” speech:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Nothing else screams out “I don’t think of them as Black” as loud as that. That is, when a person takes a literalist-reductionist view of things. The literalist says, “I can’t judge you based on the color of your skin.” That logically leads to CDM. The reductionist says, “that’s what MLK all wanted us to do,” but that, quite frankly, does a disservice to MLK. The literalist-reductionist strips the idea from the historical moment and climate is was made in and ignores volumes of other things MLK said. It also ignores other developments during that historical moment.
On SWPD, I explained how, historically, “White Americans had associated Black with all sorts of bad things.” So it made rational sense for Whites to say, “I don’t see you as Black” — i.e. “I don’t see you as bad.” But that reveals a serious problem and explains why the colorblindness the nation embarked on as a response to the civil rights era is seen as a form of racism itself. Just look at the two expressions: Black and “bad” remain synonymous, mere substitutes for one another which suggests how colorblindness doesn’t fully constitutes a fundamental change from America’s more troubling racial past.
Now, I would be negligent if I didn’t mention how “Black=bad” was/is a concept that the Black community had to deal with and still has to deal with. However, at that same historical moment, at the same time when Dr. King espoused what has been treated as “colorblindness”, Dr. King and the Black community at large engaged in a campaign to break the nefarious link between Black and “bad” by exalting the idea that BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL:
Unfortunately, expressions like, “I don’t see you as Black” and “I’m a man who happens to be Black”, miss that very important point of decoupling Black with “bad.” If color really didn’t matter then there would be no reason not to see an African-American as “Black” and, likewise, no reason to marginalize someone’s Blackness by trying to highlight something people are more inclined to view more positively (e.g. a person’s “humanness”) even when those people includes your own self.
And in the same way that white people assume non-whites don’t have access to the English-language Internet, non-whites assume that whites don’t have access to the English-language internet. (sarcasm)
you and your other two partners (jw and Nquest) are bullies who need macon d, or a white boy like him, to gang up on, [...]
I don’t know if redcatbiker is white, but it is typical for white people to think that POC are being mean to white people and targetting white people specifically because of their race.
I still don’t know what to think of redcatbiker’s additional complaints that our posts are:
“boring”
“academically written”
full of bitterness and hatred (?)
full of statistics (!)
Wow, redcatbiker thinks that if she’s not interested in it, it’s not important; that discussions about racism should not be complex; that we are bitter and hateful because we are still complaining about racism even when Macon D writes an antiracist blog; and that we should not talk about statistics.
“Guides” how to talk about racism almost always include that somebody should remain calm.
Online discussions lack the possibility to watch somebody else’s body language and a certain ‘group-dynamic’ seems almost always impossible to avoid: some or many other internet users will support the racist or problematic points of view and the person behind
.
Almost always those who rise the issue of race and racism are perceived as trouble-makers, those who are allegedly wrong, insulting, aggressive and so on. Style or the use of ‘wrong’ words (like white supremacy) are blamed that nobody is listening.
In many cases the moderator or blog-owner finally uses the power to delete - first just threads, later the account.
America is more progressive in comparison to Germany in regard of talking about white privilege, the number of blogs about racism, white supremacy and white privilege. But with real-life discussions with white Germans I realized that acknowledging white privilege isn’t the real problem. White Germany as a collective is not yet prepared to challenge this new arising topic like white Americans; white America already ‘armed’ itself with denial and founding a “new anti-racism”.
Many white German anti-racists and ar-organizations are still in their baby-steps when it comes to admit that racism is not only a right-wing thing mostly in East-Germany perpetrated against immigrants, but a problem of society, also on an institutional level. Day-to-day discrimination of PoC cannot be shown via statistics like in America. Racial profiling, housing and job discrimination are all a reality in Germany but without statistics it becomes even more difficult to talk about it and to show that these are not just individual incidents but institutional racism.
The real problem with acknowledging white privilege is that white people immediately realize that not all of their actions and successes are a product of their own hard work. Therefore the reality of white privilege itself is denied.
White people aren’t so stupid not to know that they are ‘white’ when they created a ‘black’ other and they are also not so stupid not to know which group they belong to. White privilege and ‘racial belonging’ is both crystal clear to whites.
Molly Secours compared racism to addiction. I wouldn’t call it addiction but whites as a collective are definitely used to their entitlement.
I work as a sales assistant in the same area where I live, so also the customers are quite diverse. I don’t know if there are studies how different races act as customers, both the way they act in general in a shop as well as towards staff, so I can only rely on my experiences as well as on the experiences of some co-workers. People who can be found in areas where customers aren’t allowed - signalized with signs like ‘No Entry’ - people who come into a shop just looking for people they can vent their frustration, people interrupting dialogues, coming too close or even touching or hugging out of the blue employees, and the list of some disrespectful ‘the world belongs to me’ behavior - these people are always white. Studies about this would be interesting.
Being used to this entitlement “I am always the most important” is difficult to let go because of lack of insight. White customers lack the insight that they have to leave areas prohibited to them, that they have to wait and can’t interrupt an ongoing dialogue etc. But this doesn’t mean that they don’t know what they are doing. But they feel entitled to it. And challenging their entitlement makes them in many cases defensive and aggressive.
I think the same is true when it comes to racism and white privilege. And this is where I think that some or many ‘anti-racists’ are stuck. They cannot longer just point with the finger towards somebody else but have to look into the mirror first and some won’t be so happy what they will find there. They cannot disconnect themselves from society and have to realize that they will be a part of it, if they like it or not. White supremacy is like a chameleon and so are white people in their attempt to remain in power. They adapt to new situations and take advantage of it.
And all this makes it difficult to discuss issues of race and racism in a productive manner with many white people.
And this brings me back to style and the lack of my insight why anybody should be concerned about the feelings of somebody in denial who uses all strategies to remain in the dominant position and in denial.
They demand a civil discussion while their “calm” way is sometimes full of subtle aggression and attempts to degrade and far from being “civil”. It is not style which makes people not listening, it is the message they don’t want to hear. And in this case it is similar to the situation of a person addicted to alcohol: Taking away the bottle of whiskey will always be painful for them, regardless which way.
There are many untold issues within white society and also among white ‘anti-racists’ when it comes to the system of white supremacy and why it remains so powerful.
White supremacy has many ways to dominate and has many different ways to remain in control, to keep this system alive and to make sure or try to make sure that dissidents are silenced.
It grants or promises benefits to those who are conform. It benefits from a worldview where hypocrisy is more valued than true being. A society, where money is more important than human life. A society where children are considered to be noisy or disturbing when they play, stubborn when they don’t do all what adults want them to do. A society where old people have to live in nursery homes because their families ‘don’t have the time’ or the patience or whatever.
Conformists of the system work as effective control-system, be it the neighbor, schools or physicians, to name only a few.
“Regarding your brief description of your own past, I must say, you are incredible! To think that a person could somehow resist, right from the start, all of that which I’ve just said I’m still trying to wake up to. Your description of your past reminds me of a friend of mine, who used to swear that he clearly remembers his own birth. Both descriptions of such preternatural childhood abilities seem incredible to me, but then, stranger things have probably happened, somewhere.”
Declaring somebody ‘insane’, directly or indirectly, to get rid of somebody is part of European tradition:
[...] written between 1840 and 1945 by women confined in asylums are a testament to human endurance. In the patriarchal society of 19th-and early 20th-century America, it was easy to get women out of the way by having them declared “insane.” Women of the Asylum
People are locked up in asylums who are totally sane. Disfranchisement, human rights violations, confining, 24 hours surveillance in the name of “help” which is in reality in many cases just another way to keep this system alive. Those in power make the definitions.
Also a sentiment of white people who don’t want to deal with their own history. Telling Black people in America to “get over it” or telling Jews in Germany “to get over it”.
And yes, I also know some white people who will say that they “can’t watch such pictures”. But for real people this was and still is in different ways their reality they have to cope with. The shooting of Sean Bell or the possible execution of Troy Davis, to name only two.
And while white people tell PoC to get over it they celebrate Columbus Day, July 4 and there is no voice like “don’t dwell in the past”.
We whites shouldn’t get over it and we should face the crimes against humanity we are able to commit as a collective. Denial won’t help us to escape our own reality, it won’t break the silence many of us whites feel so comfortable with.
Many whites want to escape responsibility by calling whites back in history as a “product of the time” and that slavery was legal.
Would you as a white feel comfortable living among other whites who are able to have a “party”, taking “souvenirs”, pictures for postcards, and those people weren’t “real racists” and all members of the Klan. Ordinary people. This is what white supremacy makes out of ordinary people. A killing mob, capable of committing crimes with a coldness and brutality which goes beyond the lost of empathy or whatever some white people may claim.
Running away from this white reality won’t give white people the necessary tools to resist “peer-pressure” or to speak up when it is “uncomfortable” for white people.
White privileged people sometimes ask why I do this to me or that this would be “self-hate”. But this, watching pictures and movies with honest documentary was the way we were taught about the Holocaust at school, at least at the time I was at school.
It was not just “Jews” who were murdered but human beings and the same is true when it comes to any other people who came ‘into contact’ with us Europeans. Understanding and dealing with white history also includes not to lose the ability to cry. Not “only” for all the victims but also for us.
And those who want to be “allies” to PoC and want to “help”, I think, we are the ones who need help to find our humanity as a collective. The end of white supremacy is the only ‘help’ we can offer other people.
