Recently, I was teaching an adult Zoom course entitled “Let’s Talk: Reckoning with Racism.” Within a few minutes into the first class, a Zoom bomber hacked it and displayed a man eating potato chips while the n-word repeated loudly in the background. We all quickly left the meeting and got back in on another platform. But some participants did not return, others were crying. All of us were shocked or traumatized by this intrusion. We felt targeted. Fortunately, a retired psychologist in the course helped us talk about what just happened. I saw it not only as a teachable moment, but also as an act of racism — as well as a hate crime.
Racism is not new to this country — it has been around since at least the time of the enslavement of Africans in 1619. Although Native Americans were almost unimaginably killed and oppressed first, my focus here is on African Americans. Racism has festered and grown, despite efforts to the contrary, like the 13th Amendment of 1865, granting freedom to all slaves, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In 2020 racism took center stage with the killing of George Floyd and the protest marches that followed. Some still continue.
But what do we mean when we say something or someone is racist? Here is my definition, which some scholars agree upon: racism equals prejudice plus race plus power. Without the power element, it is not racism. That means that white people are the racists in the US because they have most of the power. Many African Americans hold some power, but they typically don’t have the ultimate power. There is always some white person with power above them. So that means that here in America there can’t be “reverse racism,” even though many Blacks understandably feel prejudice towards white people. But prejudice alone is not racism. The truth is we, white people, are all racist, to the extent that we have grown up in a racist culture. Black people grew up in the same culture, but racism impacted them differently and devastatingly.
White people in this country need to figure out how to end racism, personally as well as institutionally. On the personal front, we first need to come to terms with who we are. That means we need to understand our White Privilege. This term was coined in the 1980s by a Wellesley College professor named Peggy McIntosh. She realized that those of us who are white don’t realize how this entitles us. For example, we are never followed in stores, we can always expect that any gathering we attend will be mostly white, and we don’t anticipate that we will be pulled over while driving and possibly killed.
White Privilege is only about privilege that comes because of the color of our skin — not something that we earned. It is not about economics. Poor white people still have White Privilege, even if they don’t believe they do. If an unrecognizable Black celebrity and a poor white person walk down the street, the celebrity may be subject to racist slurs or actions, but not the poor white person. Consider the white police officer who confronted Henry Louis Gates, Harvard professor of African American Studies, when he tried to get into his own Cambridge, Massachusetts home.
White Privilege asks us to think about our position in American society as someone who benefits from the color of our skin. Because enslaved Africans were “black,” it became necessary to name those with power as white. So, back in the 1700s, if you were white in the South, you were probably a slave trader, a plantation owner, or perhaps a slave patrol officer. If you were Black you were probably enslaved. Without the naming of Black it would have never been necessary to name white. But, if we are white, we need to own our whiteness and its history.
Next, let’s consider the term White Superiority, related to racism. This refers to the fact that most white people think whites are superior to Blacks, deep down inside. It is likely unconscious, certainly not spoken about. Many whites feel they are superior to Blacks because of where they went to college, what job they have, where they live, and because of their wealth. They also feel superior because of the color of their skin. White Superiority then can become the foundation for White Supremacy.
I always thought that a White Supremacist was basically a domestic terrorist, like the Proud Boys, the Klu Klux Klan, or the Nazis, etc. Instead, it really refers to the belief that whites believe they must be dominant, must be in control in most every situation or organization. Again, this may be beneath awareness. But, in truth, when push comes to shove, most white people do not want to lose their status. This is very important to acknowledge since population dynamics in our country have been changing for decades. Soon whites will be in the minority, surpassed in numbers by people of color. We need to be prepared to relinquish some of our power. We need to think about sharing our White Privilege.
This brings me to my last point. We will never get rid of racism or be a country of equal opportunity unless we fully address the equity issue. Equality and equity are not the same thing. Our Declaration of Independence states that all people are equal, meaning they have access to the same opportunities. Blacks are often unable to take full advantage of equality. That is because there is no real equity, no level playing field. Blacks aren’t beginning the race at the same starting point. Despite exceptions, for the most part Blacks don’t have the same access to a good education, to a house in a neighborhood they can afford (unofficial redlining still exists), or the job they may be qualified for. Some employers look at resumes to help them learn whether a person is Black or white, just by the person’s name, their school or college, even the state or town they’re from.
This is all racism. Those of us who identify as white should start by taking a good look at ourselves. Then we must own our collective history. Even though we had nothing personally to do with slavery, we are all benefitting from it today.
Susan Bowditch is on the faculty of Midcoast Senior College where she teaches about the issues around racism in the context of African American history.
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