Son, allow me to respond to your question. Was it even a question or more likely just exasperation at the daily dose of race issues? Why does it always have to be about race? Why is it my problem when a policeman shoots an unarmed black youth? Why can’t people talk about this stuff without using words like “white privilege” and “institutional racism”? My child, give me a minute to explain why.
In the four hundred years that your ancestors were acquiring land, starting businesses, amassing wealth and obtaining education, power and influence, being groomed for even greater things, his ancestors were being collected, herded, sorted, sold and bred like cattle, stripped of any possessions they had, forced to work land they legally could not own, barred from entering businesses unattended by your ancestors, and taught to fear even the simplest education, reading and writing, by the threat of the whip, powerless, nameless and disposable. It was a fear that was so successfully and deeply ingrained that education is still shunned generations after their right to it is no longer forbidden. The fear is no longer enforced by the sharp tip of the whip, but by the sharper sting of the tongue, chastising not the back but the brain with the pain of being labeled an “uppity n-word” by your possessors or “boujie” by your peers. While your ancestors were founding and attending and sending their sons to Ivy League halls of education, theirs were in chains. To quote a black man as he wrote to his own son, “Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains—whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.” Because of this, you, me, we, have a four century head start, a four hundred year foundation upon which to build. This is a privilege.
And yes, before you raise the point, our ancestors struggled too. They fled the monarchies of Europe and the religious intolerance they imposed. Those earliest white, European, pilgrim settlers were in a strange and hostile land, unprepared and ill equipped for the unique and debilitating challenges that lay ahead. Many of them did not survive the journey, the winters, the hunger or the illnesses and those who did, did so because of the benevolence of others, strangers, the red man, the Indian, the native American. They had been here for centuries. They had a foundation and a head start and were settled and stable and secure and because of that they shared what they had and what they knew. They did not resent or reject these immigrant minorities, but shared what they had, both physical and intellectual. How did your ancestors repay this kindness? By turning around and biting the hand that fed them. But much more than just biting, mauling, tearing and ultimately devouring the hand and the whole body, leaving only the bones, which were then used to forge weapons for enslaving. Bones that became their spoils of battle, which we have made into jewelry to garnish and decorate our bodies and homes, a mocking, taunting, blasphemous homage of faux appreciation for a culture they pushed to the brink of extinction as a show of their gratitude.
Sometimes I wonder if that is why we push back so abruptly and viscerally. Perhaps we, like the philandering husband who always suspects and accuses his wife of cheating, instinctively fear that we will reap what we have sown. Do we subconsciously fear that in sharing what we have acquired and learned during these four hundred years that we will empower these dark skinned, African pilgrims with the knowledge and tools to rise up against us and over take us? Not with the rifle or small pox infected blankets our forefathers used, but with real power and influence and wealth, with businesses and property. Even if this was the case, we wouldn’t be left with nothing, just less, but what could be more shameful to the cult of caucasian capitalism than allowing our children to not have it better than we had it growing up?
So, instead of replicating the kindness of our forefathers saviors, we beat them to the punch and repeat the sins of our ancestors, not in specifics, but in substance. We too offer worthless trinkets (gold chains, designer shoes, flashy cars and the ability to “own” your own label, which in reality is just a subsidy of a larger, white owned media conglomerate) in exchange for the priceless commodity of their music, talent, physical prowess and culture. Then were turn right around and adopt, or more accurately, market (primarily to middle class white suburban teenage
boys), those same symbols in mock appreciation, therein glorifying the caricatures we created rather than the culture which we appropriate, prostitute, parody and dismiss.
We too slaughter their defenseless youth by colonizing their lands with government funded genocide deceptively packaged and labeled as “choice” or “planned” parenthood. The food they grew for us we return to them through rationed “benevolent” programs. Rather than providing blankets to escape the cold, which were infected with disease, we provide an escape from the cold realities of their lives by infecting their neighborhoods with narcotics, a much slower death no doubt, but still a disease that slowly infects and kills their lives, their souls and ultimately their communities, forcing them to rely upon us for survival, not on reservations, but in ghettoes and “projects” (such a strange choice of words don’t you think, since “project” implies building and improving, not enslaving and decaying). How does a civilized, educated, Christian society justify such oppression? By creating a false sense of danger, turning them into a threat exacerbated through the employment of code words like “savages”, or lately “thugs”, and with conscience clouding catch phrases like “they behave like animals”, a slogan that has aged well like a fine wine these past four hundred years.
Is all of this “your fault”? Does this make you a racist? Does this mean your heart is irreparably filled with hate? No it doesn’t, but if you close your eyes, plug your ears, turn away, ignore, do nothing, say nothing, feel nothing, could you reach any other conclusion if you were on the receiving end of racism and hate? You may not be the problem, but are you trying to solve it? It may not be your problem but does that mean you should ignore it? Before you allow the self defense mechanism built into your heart to answer, I urge you to go back to Sunday school. To countless Vacation Bible School’s you’ve attended where you were taught about the Good Samaritan. Don’t focus on the Good Samaritan, but the bad priest and Levite. The two, who played no role in beating and robbing the man, but also played no part in coming to his aid. Which of these three men do you identify with? Which of these three do you want to be? You don’t have to use the “n-word” to be culpable.
So yes son, there is such a thing as white privilege and institutional racism. Of course I could be wrong, I mean hey, after all, we had a black president and some of my best friends are black.
