“I couldn’t shake the duped feeling—duped and infuriated to have inherited a legacy that contaminated me with injustice.”
This chapter just slays. It nails the center of gravity in American white racism—Economics. Money. Power. Fear. Greed. Exclusion. Hatred. Willful ignorance and blind indifference. These are all here, but it boils down to economics. The earliest Africans brought here in August of 1619 were brought here as economically advantageous assets to white landowners, white entrepreneurs, white households. Chattel slavery was economics—how could you grow tobacco and cotton for the world market at competitive products at a profit if you had to pay your workers? Jim Crow was a de facto extension of ghosted chattel slavery. (See Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon.) Modern white economics assumes and enforces the idea of a permanent underclass of inferior workers. Pure capitalism can’t survive unless their are workers and consumers who have little power but to work and consume.
“Between 1934 and 1962 the federal government underwrote $120 billion in new housing, less than 2 percent of which went to people of color…I thought of how hypocritical my belief in small government was, now that I understood how well big government had served me through programs and policies such as those entwined in the GI Bill.”
This is simply a gift to white people.
It is certain that the government, at all levels—federal, state, county/parish, city—and businesses—realtors, builders, suppliers, lenders—worked together to interlock white privilege into an unassailable castle, fit only for white people. We white people are the result of deliberate government policies and deliberate business objectives to put us first, elevate us, treat us better, solely and strictly because we are white. We who are white & who participate in this system—which is, to be blunt, all of us—have done nothing to earn this except to be the subject of largess by our system which seeks our support and approval, and that does so know that the oppressed minorities have no power and no voice.
The topic of the GI Bill is fascinating in the way a gruesome accident is fascinating. You can’t tear your eyes away, even though you want to see it. But no, it is too horrible—did they know what was going happen? Did the catastrophe make them suffer? Did they deserve to die that way?
The GI Bill simply handed over the treasures of power and riches with near-complete focused, deliberate discrimination. How many servicemen who were white and returning from World War II came home to honor and pathways to success? Answer: any of them could take up the proffered benefits, and many did, without much thought. They fought for America, and now America was paying them back. How many black American servicemen could participate? In theory, any, but in reality, with built-in blockages such as redlining (keeping black Americans from FHA-based loans and from “whites only” enclaves) and with substandard housing, low-paying jobs, jobs that were way beneath their skills and talents, the GI Bill was a honey trap for Americans. Were you a white family—success was yours. Free or nearly free education. The best quality, new construction at the absolute lowest mortgage rates. The quick building of assets so that by the end of your life you had a paid-off house worth many times more than what you paid for it. This wasn’t just a slight benefit. This was an astonishing leap into prosperity that was purposefully denied to black Americans.
When we talk about white privilege, we talk about it to mean “white people don’t work harder or suffer worse because they’re white. But we must add to this the fact that white privilege means that we are granted extra benefits unavailable to our fellow black Americans, and there is nothing we did to earn these benefits except for looking white and acting white.
Debby Irving expresses her shock and numbness when she discovers this because it feels like a secret that no one wants to talk about, and a secret that taints everything about her life. Her lifestyle at home, her education, her job opportunities, her adult home—all are based upon the “easy” path to success granted by white supremacy in action through the GI Bill.
How many lawyers, teachers, doctors, scientists, administrators, educators, entrepreneurs, land-owners, contractors, inventors, and so on did we shut out of discovering their talents and living out their full lives in contentment and satisfaction because they were black? Black Americans are not ontologically disqualified from participating in every aspect of success and accomplishment. We white people have made it so—it is an invented thing.
Questions
Have you ever uncovered a family secret or piece of information about a person or place that countered your previous perception?
Yes. Because this is a public post, I won’t say what it is, whether it is a family secret or not, or what the information is.
But I did learn something in the last five years that surprised me to no end, that broke a life-long judgment I had, and that made me mad not to know. My judgment and my anger are both mine to own. Judging without knowledge typically brings about terrible results, and my judgment was no exception.
One of the things I most appreciate about my journey through a recovery program (“12-Step Program” to most) is that the past is released and can no longer harm me. Everything I’ve experienced, good or bad, has been to shape me. If it’s good, the great. If it’s scars, then let me look at it and consider how I can manage it without letting those scars define or control me. (I tell people “My mess is my message.” Because what else do I have to offer that is not who I am, as I am?) I won’t look away. I won’t attempt to slide by. I’ll grapple, because the past can’t hurt me.
The past, however, can instruct me, and bring me to repentance and grief and mourning and lament, and it can lead me to changed actions and restoration. That’s the path I’m on.
The idea that there are things we cannot know frustrates me precisely because with knowledge I can understand and have empathy with others. That’s totally on me, and I understand that a lot of people do not have safety to share. Still, it frustrates me.
Once you learned the new information, were you able to look back and see clues that had been there all along but that you didn’t recognize as evidence of a narrative you didn’t yet know about?
Regarding this situation, yes. The clues were there but they didn’t make sense, didn’t hold together without that center that was the secret. Once I found out, things snapped into place, and I can see how life-long estrangements developed but were never discussed as to why.
With regards to this chapter—I must also deal with the enormous privilege of growing up in the 50s, with the benefits of a working father who used the GI Bill to get his degrees, find a good-paying, long term job with a pension, live in a lily-white neighborhood with a brand-new school, safely walk anywhere I wanted to, and trust that the system was out to protect me: the police, the schools, the church were my friends and would take care of me. I wanted to please them because they were good to me.
I’m still working out the issues involving these things (and others), and I make no judgment as to whether my trust was entirely misplaced or simply in error due to lack of information.
But I have to deal with it, because now I know.
- For context on this series, see my kick-off post here:
To follow along with the others, see also:
Di Brown “Nixie” at https://dianabrown.net/blog-challenge-waking-up-white/
This chapter: https://dianabrown.net/waking-up-white-chapter-7/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/
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