7 Ground Rules for White People and Discussions on Racism

Acknowledgment

Disclaimer: This article is written specifically for white people and especially for conservative white people who don’t believe that systemic racism exists in America. It does not attempt to prove the existence of systemic oppression but sets the ground rules for discussion. I am a white person from a traditionally conservative background and speak to this topic from this unique place of heritage.

If the title of this article makes your hair stand on end a bit, then these next paragraphs may be written for you.

It is a well-known principle of life that if you desire honesty about yourself, you should not seek your friend’s opinions — those of an enemy are better suited to give you accurate feedback. Friends are motivated to soft-pedal, grant mercy where it is not due, and generally paint a rosier picture than the truth demands — because they are your friends.

In order to understand whether you are part of the system of racism that is being outed across America today, you’ll need to get close to and actually hear black Americans who believe differently than you do. A kind word or pass-card from one of your few black friends or the local black conservative will do you no good.

If you are serious about racial self-discovery, here are the ground rules.

Get comfortable with terms like Black and White.

White people looking to exempt themselves from racist perspectives like to say things like “I don’t see color”. This is patently false. If you don’t, you might need a new pair of glasses. Of course, we see color, just like we notice whether someone is a man or a woman. And it makes a difference. It makes a difference in our posture, our sense of confidence, what we say or don’t say, and how we approach topics. Scientific studies even confirm that it makes a difference in our brain patterns and comes out in underlying perceptions and assumptions. Admitting the very real differences in our experiences and realities is a starting point and ignoring them is to be complicit as a racist.

Recognize that self-justification is incrimination.

If we are explaining, we are losing. As white people, we want to hear that, while racism may exist, we, individually, are not part of the problem. We want a pass — to feel good about our roles in society. Systemic racism isn’t about some personal vendetta that we as white people are assumed to have — the majority of black individuals don’t believe that at all. It’s about our tacit participation in a system that is rigged in our favor — a system that we do little or nothing to decry, stop, alter, or dismantle. We, as white people, don’t see the system because we are part of it. An outsider (like a black American) can see the system we exist in and is actually qualified to tell us what it looks and feels like to them.

Develop some thick skin.

If we think we deserve to have a black (or any other) person approach us with sensitivity and respect on this topic it betrays our belief in our own superiority. Let me illustrate. In almost every relationship in life, interactions between a superior and a subordinate assume the following: The superior may speak down to, rudely to, or even angrily to the subordinate, but the subordinate may not reciprocate the same. In relationships between equals, hard language may be exchanged and considered fair play.

In 25+ years of observing and participating in interactions between white and black individuals, I have almost never observed a situation in which a black individual was able to thoroughly and emotionally reprove a white individual where the white individual did not resort to a sense of injustice, hurt, or indignation. In contrast, the black individual in the exchange is almost always expected to be understanding and accommodating to the white individual’s outburst. This reveals a fundamental assumption of superiority in the relationship.

If we, as white people, are serious about discovering who we really are in the context of racism, we must learn to sit down, shut up, listen, ask questions, and stop explaining ourselves or showing how much we have been hurt or affected by the exchange. For goodness sake, for 250 years many black men and women in this country were beaten or put to death for showing any contrary emotion to their white masters. Let’s grow a pair and show that we can take a dressing down or two without a meltdown.

Lose the logical fallacies.

Statement: George Floyd’s death was unjust and an abuse of police power. Logical fallacy: “Did you know that George Floyd had a criminal history?”. This is a red herring — it redirects the argument away from the point and onto a point that really doesn’t address the problem at all. Given the facts of the situation, whether he had a past or not has no bearing on the behavior of the officers involved.

Statement: Black Lives Matter advocates for equal justice and opportunity for black people in the United States. Logical Fallacy: Did you know that the founders of BLM are Marxists? This is an ad hominem attack and refocuses the conversation on an unrelated and supposed character or belief flaw to try to invalidate the argument. We should all want equal justice and opportunity for black people and who says it really isn’t the point. Jesus addressed this tendency in his disciples when he instructed them to do as the religious leaders said and not as they did (Matthew 23:3) (i.e. truth is not invalidated by the person speaking it).

I could go on with the logical fallacies I hear white people use when trying to avoid the issue of racism. We need to get used to examining truth claims and actually looking at the data (more about that later). We commit logical fallacies only when we don’t know how to address the actual issue at hand.

Get intimate with different.

I can’t tell you the times I have had a white friend justify their racial complicity by noting that they have a black friend or friends, went to an integrated school, or know a black person who doesn’t think systemic racism exists. Ultimately, I have yet to have one situation where it turned out that this individual had intimate and significant ongoing relationships with anyone of the opposite perspective and experience. Sure — there is the occasional black individual who claims that they believe systemic racism does not exist, although many of these have privately confided in me that they have experienced it and know it exists, they just “don’t think it is fruitful to admit it because it is not going to change and black people just need to get over it and find a way around it to succeed” (direct quote).

This is what I mean by different.

1. Read books by individuals of the opposite political and experiential persuasion. If you want to challenge yourself — stop reading books by the choir proclaiming the superiority of the American system or lauding conservatism and start exploring the other side. You may be surprised to find thinking humans that have a different and even compelling perspective that is much different than what you assumed it was.
2. Deliberately join a church or civic organization populated by people that you are more likely to argue with than agree with (think — black liberals). Most of our perspectives and arguments only work in a homogenous environment and that is why we hang out with, watch news produced by, read, and generally spend our lives in, contexts that are reflections of our own views. I have watched white individuals who thought they had an absolutely logically dominant perspective gape and flounder like a fish out of water when they actually got surrounded by well-educated minds of an opposite persuasion. Try it. It can only hurt the ego.
3. Learn to appreciate black art and culture. I used to think that rap was all about being a gangster and glorifying sex and money. Wow — was I wrong. Childish Gambino, Tupac, Kanye, Nas, Jay Z, just to name a few, all have philosophical gambits worthy of a Jefferson, Kant, or a variety of other dead white men. If you haven’t seen profundity in explicitly black art and culture it is because you aren’t looking.
4. Watch shows that detail the black experience (and I don’t mean “make your white behind feel good” shows like The Blindside). You can start HERE with this list of films directed by black directors, but even better, you should ask your new black friends at the new groups you just joined what shows they would recommend.
5. Go on a 90 day fast from looking in the mirror. Turn off your favorite talk show host, your current news station, your Facebook feed, and all other reflective media (media set up to reflect your own image and belief back to you) and go swim in the deep end by watching, listening to, and soaking in other perspectives. If your current belief system is actually true you’ll survive the 90 days and be none the worse for wear. We live in a world that self-reinforces our own assumptions and sometimes the only way to know the truth of what we believe is to stop looking in that mirror and let someone else show us their mirror. My recommendation is that you do this at least until you develop the sort of empathetic understanding for the black perspective that black people themselves tell you that you get it. BTW — you don’t have to agree to “get it” and if you think you do and are a married individual — your marriage may also be in trouble.

Follow the data — all of the data.

White racists (and I include myself as a participant in that category — I am often racist in my actions or perspectives and have to be corrected by my patient black companions) love to talk about how America is a land where we get what we deserve and where hard work and character are equally rewarded.

Let’s examine this for a moment.

First — it assumes that if you have any modicum of success then that success is your reward for good behavior. Actually, the opposite is often true. Books like the 48 Laws of Power (and predecessors like Machiavelli’s, The Prince, and Sun Tzu’s Art of War) make it abundantly clear that, more often than not, duplicity and manipulation are rewarded far more than honesty and hard work. If I am truthful, I am more a product of mercy than justice. Getting what we deserve is not what any of us really wants if we truly know ourselves.

Second — it also assumes the opposite. If you do not rise to my success level or above, there must be something you did or didn’t do to deserve your unsuccessful life. None of us really believe that, and if you do, try using it to comfort your friend who just lost a job, a spouse, a child, etc.

Sure — there are stories of individuals who seemingly overcame adversity to access great opportunity, but the real story behind their success is often less about what they deserved and more about things like mercy, luck, and systemic prejudice or opportunity (read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers for an exploration of this topic).

Here is what I have learned about data — if it is unnaturally skewed in a given direction, it is usually because of systemic problems and not because of the worthiness of the individuals in the data-set. Let me illustrate personally.

I did some growing up in Flint, Michigan, and the surrounding counties and cities. One piece of data suggested that drug-related criminality in the urban and traditionally black Flint schools (Northern, Northwestern) exceeded the criminality in the white suburban schools (Grand Blanc) by a factor of at least 3. However, anyone on the ground knew that more drugs and harder drugs passed through the halls of wealthy Grand Blanc than any other school in the region — the financial data showed that and so did white addiction rates. On the surface the story was this — Black young people were three times more likely to traffic in drugs than white young people, however, the opposite was closer to the truth.

The real facts went like this. Black young people did not have the benefit of advocacy or wealth and were the focus of the “war on drugs” — being pulled over, arrested, and criminalized for minor possessions and amounts of easy and cheap drugs like marijuana. White young people from Grand Blanc had doctors and lawyers for parents and were the beneficiaries of wealth and advocacy. When a white kid was caught with heroin or meth, his behavior was trivialized. He was “just being young”, “kicking his heels up” or “feeling his oats” and was really a good kid who would figure it out in the end. A black young man with marijuana, on the other hand, had a “criminal mindset” or was a “bad apple” and needed severe correction and an extended sentence to set him on the straight and narrow.

Most data points I have researched that seem to point out a black propensity for criminality, poverty, divorce, or social dysfunction follows a similar course to the scenario above. Typically, a lack of access of some sort allows black failure to rise to the surface and be reprimanded while white failures are often able to be suppressed or underrepresented in the data sets.

If you really believe black people are inferior in action and thought, then you are not only racist, but you are probably a white supremacist, but to hold to a view that says there is no systemic racism AND people are equally rewarded or punished for their behavior in Americal is to fundamentally agree with the white supremacist on their basic assumption of black inferiority. By this standard, if there is no systemic racism and black people are just getting what they deserve, then they are obviously inferior to white individuals.

This is just not true. All of us who have experienced success can point to many opportunities, chances to network, and other success making scenarios that had nothing to do with our own ingenuity or character and everything to do with who our daddy was, the community in which we lived, or the schools we were privileged to have attended.

We can also point to times when, as the outsider, we were not given a fair shake or were passed over because of inside baseball. In a white person’s experience, this tends to be incidental and occasional, but for most black people it is systemic and expected.

To wrap this treatise up, I would like to encourage my readers to pick up the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. If you are the reactive type who is hyper-sensitive and can’t read anything by someone other than an avowed lover of American-style capitalism, then don’t pick up this book, because you’ll dismiss Robin’s excellent treatise on white racism because of other views you may imagine her to possess (go back and read the point on logical fallacies).

However, if you are even a bit courageous and curious about your role in addressing racial inequality, you need to start with this book. Robin does an end-around and addresses the heart of the issue showing how our own uniquely white demand for understanding and respect shuts down the real conversation that needs to happen in America. If you can hang with her to the end, you will be on your way to becoming part of the solution.