“The purpose of racism is to control the behavior of white people, not Black people. For Blacks, guns and tanks are sufficient.”
Dr. Otis Madison
There are a few mentors in my life right now, men and women I both respect and admire. They teach me from their wisdom, from their experience, from their souls, and I attempt to listen, process, and adapt my own self to the new information I discover.
One of my mentors, Andre Henry, posted this quote, which intrigued me immediately. I’ve been chewing on it for a day or so now, and musing about “what it means.” (Sometimes we do this even if it’s obvious, but in this case I am attempting to dig into this statement, to see what this means to me, and to learn something about my mentor in the process as I seek to understand his vision and thinking.)
Then someone less politic than I directly asked him “What does this mean?”
As I’m the person who rushes in where angels fear to tread, I started to answer, but before I posted, I believe the hand of God stopped me, because—well, it was not me who was asked to answer on that post. (Hey, I belong everywhere and I have an opinion on everything!)
And as a person who hates to throw words away, I saved my draft, which I’ll post here. I still give credit to Andre for his thought-provoking question, but I don’t want to clutter his timeline with my thoughts.
Here’s how I responded….
This question — the purpose and meaning of racism — is something I think about as I consider what “whiteness” is. (And yeah, I’m also reading Kendi’s latest book, How to Be Antiracist, which is provoking me to dig deeper. But for now, I use “white” to mean in general “those who participate in, and are identified with, the racial power of the system that drives areas colonized by Northern Europeans.”)
The Purpose of Racism
The first part here is key: “The purpose of racism is to control the behavior of white people.”
I’m white; I’ve been working on seeing whiteness—especially my whiteness. One part of that observation is how much we white people act similar to other white people. There is some super, overarching character that is formed in us, mostly without our knowledge or even consent. We become white because we pick up behaviors and attitudes that are impressed into us until we take up the shape of whiteness, like a blade affects the object spinning on the lathe. We can talk later about the commonalities, but there are observable behaviors and expressed attitudes that are common to people who are living in whiteness.
Racism is pushed into us white people as a form, sure, but racism also determines how we can act and move. When someone who lives in whiteness and who is white tries to break away suffers the attention and correction of the boundary-checkers, then that is racism, deciding what are the acceptable ways for us to act. Leaving whiteness is opposed by those who are in it: we’re threatened with the loss of prestige and friends and career opportunities if we question the current situation; the more we push to change the default system (which is whiteness), the more opposition we receive because we’re not acting “white.” White racism acts as a governor, keeping us from going too far or too long. But more importantly, whiteness shapes us so strongly that we maintain whiteness even in the methods and tools we use to attempt to escape it, and we are bound to whiteness in how we measure the success of our leaving. (“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” ~ Audre Lorde)
For those of us living in whiteness & who are white, it is difficult to see our state, because to us it is normal and standard, the default; it is what is comfortable and easy to live in. It is just us, the unhyphenated people. We don’t see that whiteness is a distinct culture with distinct behaviors, centering on a presumed place of privilege .
Racism is formed to benefit us, sure—white privileges are awesome—but racism also exists to keep us in the system to perpetuate and extend it.
Anyway, that’s how I’d interpret the first part. I am no scholar; there are others with more training and education who can correct me.
Command and Control
I think the second part “not [to control] Black people” is the naked truth that isn’t seen.
Racism causes white people to be actors that impress their own power upon others, which then affects Black people. Racism is not something that exists by itself like fruit on a tree that randomly gets picked, eaten, digested, and absorbed. (And it’s not a fruit desired by anyone but white people.) Racism lies behind the willful actions of people who think that their own place of power and privilege is normal and distinct, so they “naturally” move to modify the behavior of others who are not in their own system. There is great benefit to white people in racism; there is no benefit (and of course, actual harm) in racism directed at Black people and others.
Efficient Distribution of Power
“For Blacks, guns and tanks are sufficient”—I take this to mean that Black people have no natural interest in participating in racism.
There is no benefit for them. It is pure harm to them in every way possible: physically, emotionally, spiritually, economically, politically, ethically, morally, and so on. There is no need to impress the nature of racism upon them because they cannot participate in any of the benefits of racism; rather, they are targets, sometimes incidentally, sometimes purposefully, of the cruelty and exclusion of racism. To keep Black people from rejecting racism entirely does not require character formation but simply physical abuse and actions: make it hard to reject racism because we hold the power of abuse and death, and we’ll get grudging accommodation and continuous resistance and sabotage.
Anyway, that’s how I’m parsing it. I’m sure you can come up with other ideas.