“How it was possible that I was both a ‘good person’ and utterly clueless.”
It’s possible because being “good” does not mean “also smart” or “also educated” or even “also aware.” I’m good. I do good things. I have good intentions. Even when I was actively participating in conservative politics that were leading to the destruction of the oppressed, I was good because I had good thoughts and good intentions. Being good isn’t anything unless it’s coupled with intelligent action, and intelligent action isn’t good if it sets a priority upon intention rather than impact.
Hand to God, I am ashamed and embarrassed by my words and actions to people who are now my best friends. Utterly cringeworthy words fell from my lips even as I thought I was bringing a “new slant” into a conversation. I don’t understand how these people stayed around to let me evolve from a grunting mess into someone perhaps more capable of empathy. Maybe they just expect people like me to be this way, and they’ve learned to shrug it off.
“Nell Irvin Painter uses the term ‘cultural fantasy’ to characterize the system of racism that’s evolved around skin color interpretations.”
This is a good description of how people like me (6F) make up a world to match our expectations. If I’m good and kind and I don’t have actual thoughts of ill will towards black people, then of course there is no racism. And, of course, I am not participating it in, whether by assent or by assertion.
Not me. Not me. Not me!
“I couldn’t shake the feeling there must be more I didn’t know.”
This is me, still, after ten years of hard work to educate myself, investigate myself, try to change my actions and words, try to feel and see as my brothers and sisters do. I still do not know much, but I know that the feelings of not knowing has better tools and resources to combat it. The feeling of unease was informing me.
“Every fiber of my being had once believed that the rule makers and system operators in America were good people, leaders who looked out for everyone, who would never make selfish decisions.”
Boy howdy is this wrong. I was inculcated from childhood on to revere the Flag, the Founders, and the Faith. I believed. I believed the words of the Pledge. I believed in the inherent goodness of America, the champion of liberty and justice around the world. I majored in history in college and I still believed this. (I did not complete the degree, just so you know, but I was pretty resistant to facts.)
Honest, it took hearing people tell me their stories of their experience in the American Dream to help me understand just how much that dream is only for people like me. A lot of my casual asides about wasteful government programs to assist the poor and needy (and oppressed, although I wouldn’t give them that recognition or dignity) were seen as offensive to the people I called “friends” because they had survived by the dint of such government programs. They were here, living, as my friends, because of programs I disparaged.
I saw the leaders as selfless and concerned with America. I did not, for decades, see them as desiring my white support by catering to my white values and my white success.
“Learning about how racism works didn’t challenge me just because it was new information. It was completely contradictory information, a 180-degree paradigm reversal, flying in the face of everything I’d been taught as a child and had believed up to this moment.”
I know this sounds self-indulgent to agree with this, but yeah, this is damned hard to unwind the decades of embedded racism that’s entwined around my soul. I could not grasp the fullness of it, and initially tried to simply learn how to act better, as if shaving off the more offensive racist parts would be enough. It could not be possible that it was I who was wrong. I’m a good man! I pay my tithes regularly! I go to church! I share Jesus! I read my Bible and I pray. Such a man as myself could not possibly be led astray.
“Discovering I’d been complicit in perpetuating a system that was so very terribly bad flew in the face of all I’d understood about myself.”
I don’t think that everyone who’s experiencing an awakening is doing so in the same way as myself, but this is my experience. I can’t express how profoundly unsettling it is to discover that I am wrong. My persona is one of confidence, that I’ve figured things out and that I’m right. My picture was entirely fictive, as made up as a character in Shakespeare, and just as substantive in reality.
“I felt disappointed in my old pal, but very proud of my parents for drawing the line. We associated only with good people.”
Here Irving talks about how her parents removed a friend from their circle of friends because he had done something wrong and unmentioned. The standard was, “we hang around with good people.” What it really means is “who are good in the ways we acknowledge that are good.”
I don’t know if it’s something I should be aware of for myself in that I also hold this as a value, even now, and I don’t hang around with people who are not “good” like me. That is, certain people who remain locked in ignorance (ignorance by my limited understanding of reality and my limited knowledge of information!) are no longer welcomed into my circle of trust. I trust different people now than I trusted ten years ago.
But I think my trust is based upon better truths and deeper understanding. I’m not “better” now. I’m simply learning what my “good” values mean in reality, and I’m trying to live a life that’s more informed and honest. I am always a “good” person, but I’ve let myself be fooled into behaving in ways and speaking in ways that are opposed to my deep understanding of “goodness.”
“[W]hen I learned about the discriminatory policies and practices in lending, housing, and higher education during the GI Bill era, [I realized that] they did not align with my view of leadership.”
It’s so overt it’s breath-taking, that the American government, my American government, good and kind and just and true, literally shut out black people from wealth in order to reward white people. This was true in the 1860s-1880s with the Homestead Act, and this was true with the GI Bill and the FHA system of mortgages. Not a deep, secret conspiracy. But out in the open, and everyone knew it, and white people generally went along with it because it benefited them. Some white people, of course, were for these programs precisely because they didn’t help black people or the indigenous. I’d hazard that most white people just didn’t think about it, or if they were slightly troubled, consoled themselves with the Puritan’s judgment of “God helps the man who helps himself,” and obvious the poor and oppressed weren’t even trying.
This didn’t happen by accident or by omission. This happened by a series of deliberate, mostly public choices, done with the assent of the white people who received the unearned largesse.
We poisoned the land of the oppressed and then judged them when their crops failed as not knowing how to farm.
“I came across Edmund Burke’s quote ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’ That’s me, I thought. I’ve been doing nothing. I hadn’t been doing nothing because I didn’t care or lacked the courage. I did nothing, at least nothing with any real impact, because I didn’t understand how racism worked. If you can’t see a problem for what it is, how can you step in and be a part of its solution, no matter how good a person you are?”
Indeed, the whole raison d’être of racism demands not ignorance, but indifference. I’m fairly sure that from an early age I heard the words about justice and fairness, of godliness and equality, but it never flowed into an examination of the society around me—I trusted the leaders, and I was incurious and indifferent to the stories I heard that indicated that my knowledge was shallow and my trust entirely misplaced. If you think you’re generally good, then you don’t need to examine your general actions, because—well, you’re good, and good people don’t do bad things.
“I understood then that it was possible to be both a good person and complicit in a corrupt system.”
This is simply true. Tens of millions of us white Americans perpetuate racism and white supremacy and go to church, telling God that we have a clean conscience and a holy soul, even as we participate in maintaining and extending racism. We believe that we are just too good to be caught up in doing anything bad.
“I was passing along what I’d been taught, teaching them to be benevolent do-gooders, not critical social thinkers and problem solvers.”
Yikes, this arrow strikes home. I can say, though, that my own family is on this journey towards equity and anti-racism, but my efforts to help this along started only recently.
Questions
How would you complete this sentence?
“I never thought I could perpetuate racism because I am____________________, and I believe_________________________.”
I never thought I could perpetuate racism because I am a good, kind Christian man with decades of solid, Biblical teaching about holiness and righteousness, and I believe that it is enough to have good intentions about one’s life and one’s actions—a good soul is enough to guide me into good behaviors.
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-17/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/
I don’t think it’s “Self-indulgent” to recognize and acknowledge the biases you were raised with. It’s *hard to question the essence of your world. It’s also not necessarily a bad thing.