Continuing the Conversation on White Privilege, Part Two

Click here to read Part One

A veteran activist, wizened and white, recently gave me this advice:

I used to think I needed to understand how black people suffer from racism. I thought, if it’s really that bad, then explain it to me — when it happens, how it works. But then someone asked why it matters what I understand… the truth is, it doesn’t. Feeling that we’re entitled to an explanation is a facet of white privilege. When black people talk about racism, you just need to believe them!

The Separate Obligations of Belief and Understanding

Among my various privileges is a college education, and I was raised a skeptic. I am trained to question, challenge, and demand proof. While excessive police violence, mass incarceration, and similarly overt outlets of racism make ready talking points, its more daily and permeating elements can be less obvious for a white person to identify and describe. Such a comprehensive experience must be anecdotal; by nature it is “just a story.”

But among the few requirements of Humanism is faith in humanity. To be an Ethical Culturist, I must believe that an entire demographic is not lying. To fight everyday racism, I must fight the instinct that I am owed incontestable proof of its existence.

Of course, educating ourselves on those less obvious aspects is just as necessary as trusting our fellow humans, and understanding any societal problem is a vital step to solving it. To that end, and although there is no dearth of good literature on this vast issue, I offer two engaging, accessible books in particular: Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collins and The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America, by Jacob Levenson, both published in 2005.

The Tools of Racism and Two Short Book Reviews

[swm_image src=”https://ethicalfocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/41TWHV3NMDL._SX331_BO1204203200_.jpg” align=”right” link=”http://www.amazon.com/Black-Sexual-Politics-African-Americans/dp/041595150X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1451174519&sr=8-3&keywords=the+new+racism” alt=”Black Sexual Politics” title=”Black Sexual Politics, by Patricia Hill Collins“]Black Sexual Politics takes us through American racism through the lens of sexism. Collins uses as a premise the idea that contemporary racism will always be inscrutable, even to its victims, until our society recognizes that we are lumping together two separate paradigms: racism against black men and racism against black women.

Since few people experience both paradigms and also wield a public voice, the dramatic difference between them has gone largely undiscussed for centuries. When it is acknowledged, it is often confused with general, mainstream (i.e. white) sexism, which is again different. Collins uses accessible and mostly familiar examples in a cursory overview of racism against Black Americans from this intersectional perspective. It is an enlightening read, and tackles questions that are rarely asked in the public forum, such as how the different gender roles in black and white American cultures cyclically reinforce the segregation between those two cultures, and why the massive differences between the stereotypes and expectations of  “ladies” and “Black ladies” are both fundamental and infrequently voiced.

[swm_image src=”https://ethicalfocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/41pTJ0QRhqL._SX326_BO1204203200_-197×300.jpg” align=”left” link=”http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Epidemic-Story-Black-America/dp/0385722346/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451182913&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=hidden+epidemic+aids+black+america” alt=”The Secret Epidemic” title=”The Secret Epidemic, by Jacob Levenson“]The Secret Epidemic is more journalistic than academic. In a curriculum of anti-racism, this book can be used not only for the story it tells, but as an example of how marginalization writes legislation and history. When AIDS decimated America, black people seemed to simply disappear. Their story was not told. Middle-class, educated, white, gay men made headlines, and had the resources to fight for and win government funding for their disease research and public health endeavors. But black Americans died quietly, typically uncounted, but at least by the tens of thousands.

This silencing is marginalization, and it is exactly the point. When stories are told in America, about Americans, Black Americans are rarely the protagonists. I’ve heard it commented that “racism is all over the news” lately. But we still don’t hear about it enough, at enough times or from enough perspectives. Racism is not a separate topic from medicine, sexism, or anything else, but a systematic, foundational erasing of people and their voices and stories. The problem is far from simple, but solving it must begin with seeking out and hearing other people’s stories.