White supremacy is a lie. It may be alive and well but it is a lie. And you don’t want to live a lie, especially in the short time you have in your life.
Cornel West
Everything is made up, but not all of what is made up is good.
I’m a white male who has been watching the Masterclass.com series on Black History, Black Freedom, and Black Love, and I’m on alert. Over the course of my life, I’ve heard mention of a lot of what is being discussed in that course, but I hadn’t been exposed to all of it and definitely not in the way this is being presented, specifically from prominent members of the Black community. These presenters are educators, lawyers, activists, and journalists… the seven people they have chosen have the credentials to speak with knowledge, wisdom, passion, and objectivity. They are part of the affected demographic and their voices are specifically the ones we need to hear on this matter.
This article is intended to cast a light on some topics related to black history, to inform those who (like me) didn’t have an awareness of many of these things, to encourage all decent humans to learn the reality of this situation, and to do whatever we can do to ameliorate this cause. Maybe there is an action you can take, maybe you get to be a voice. But in all cases, we can do that which we can do.
America, We Have a Problem
This country has had and continues to have a skin color problem. This country will continue to have a skin color problem for the foreseeable future, no matter what we do right now in the present, because the systemic factors run so very deep and will take a long time to address. Some of the issues may now be near impossible to address in a satisfactory way.
Let’s start with police violence. At any given moment, injustice might be executed upon a person of any color. White people are certainly on the receiving end of police brutality at times, just as black people are, but the issue at hand here is the trend. While the number of police-beating deaths last year was almost identical for black individuals and white, the likelihood per capita is skewed beyond belief.
Depending on your resource there are four to six times as many white people in this country. Police-related deaths being even close to the same number paints a stark picture that has two very important factors. The first is that people of color are disproportionately targeted by a huge margin; it isn’t even close. The second is that historical factors have contributed to different qualities of life for those raised white in this country versus those raised black, with social implications. Looking at the systemic factors in play, the white privilege (whether white people see it or not), there’s no ‘me too’ movement opportunity for white men when race comes up; quite the opposite is borne out by the numbers.
Police violence is one issue, it’s important, but it’s only one small part of the bigger picture. Let’s take a look at some of the other issues.
Humans as Property
During America’s slave-owning days, black people were property. I’d simply say that they were viewed as property but when you look at some of the economic aspects of the time it’s clear that being “viewed as” property just doesn’t cut it.
Slaves were property, through and through. Black humans were traded like cattle. They were bought and sold at auction. Both the ownership of slaves themselves and the value of the land they worked were inherited by the descendants of their owners. The purchase of slaves qualified for something akin to a mortgage, an installment payment plan backed by the collateral of the slave themselves. Slaves that had been paid off could be refinanced as collateral for other loans.
This is the beginning of a system of inherited, generational wealth, where people who were white could own both property and slaves, and pass this ownership on to their descendants. Those who were black were themselves property and unable to start the propagation of wealth to their bloodline over time.
Housing
Housing can be an opportunity, a gateway to the best schools, the best parks, the best businesses, or it can be something that keeps you from opportunity, something that forces you into neighborhoods with lots of crime, with poor schools, with no amenities, and so housing has actually been probably the most successful tool of segregation and inequality that this country has ever created.
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Let’s talk about redlining, starting in the 1930s. Various government agencies made maps to determine which areas of cities qualified for government-backed home loans. Certain areas bore red outlines; these were areas where the government would not insure loans. These areas were black or integrated. This reality made it almost impossible for black people to get loans and those maps still align with the racial distribution we see today. This topic is addressed in extensive detail in “The Color of Law, A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” by Richard Rothstein.
As part of this process, white communities, with government support, would add covenants (clauses, terms, agreements) to deeds to not sell particular homes to black people. Entire suburbs, all-white suburbs, also enforced this via their own covenants. Segregation led to poor black neighborhoods, which led to black schools, black banks, black social groups, and black bars. The more this happened, the more the separation of neighborhoods by race naturally flowed.
I feel that the white are the oppressed.
White woman, mid 20th century, when housing integration is on the table and a black family wants to move to their neighborhood. From Masterclass course
If we showed up on some alien planet and saw this dynamic taking place, and some beings were green and some were purple, we’d feel outraged and want to change it. That it’s happening here, and some are black and some are white, and so many in power are white… that puts horrible blinders on and the cost of sacrifice reduces the system’s desire and ability to effectuate meaningful change. That this had been going on for hundreds of years makes the feeling of the need for change even more urgent.
Social Factors, and Laws
Black culture was rich, even in the face of this oppression. Communities found hope in creating beauty and music even while fighting the system. Sexuality and love became powerful ways to experience liberation, in the aftermath of slavery. As a country, we appreciate cultural contributions from black America including the food, music, and language, and yet we fail to appreciate the plight of the very demographic that brought it all to us.
The supreme court didn’t help much. One of the purposes of having laws is to protect those who don’t already have the power and certain equality laws were passed. The USA went through a period of “redemption”, where after equality laws were passed they were either struck down or had their power removed, and this hurt black people badly. It was one thing to have a legal right and quite another to claim or enforce it.
Then came a period of redeemer constitutionalism. During this time, many claimed that standing up for the rights of those that were oppressed was actually discrimination against whites. The notion of equality was something that much of white America couldn’t stomach.
The south is anything south of the Canadian border
Malcolm X
Brown v Board of Education was a huge Supreme Court case that struck down the notion that “separate but equal” was either viable or right. Separate is not equal. Education is the pinnacle of equality, growth, and splitting students into schools by race, by definition, means that resources and instructors were different. This is not equal. Still, even after this policy was struck down, implicit scholastic segregation occurred by virtue of redlining and racially-tilted neighborhoods. While integrated schools were possible, there was still prejudice, and geographic demographics still led toward schools heavily tilted one way or another by race.
50 years ago, the Kerner Commission Report was a bipartisan research report on racial segregation, and the ensuing unrest, and came with many recommendations on ways to address it. Some of these included defunding the police in favor of other resources and recognizing the government’s influence in causing most of the problems related to poor housing and education imbalance. It included an analysis of black America from slavery through to the 20th century. This report was completely ignored in its day, and to this day as well although it’s still extremely relevant. The origins of the struggles are not a mystery, nor are the solutions hidden. The only blocks to progress are the will of the powers and the people in charge do to it.
Reparations
Another difficult topic is reparations. Reparations are the act or process of making amends for a wrong. In the United States, this is usually a discussion about the government issuing a formal apology coupled with some form of meaningful financial to the black community for the laws and policies that have resulted in such an imbalance of power and prosperity.
The impacts of the policies are undeniable, and even most of those who present arguments against reparations acknowledge that the impacts they seek to address are true. Coming up with a consensus on how to execute the concept of reparations presents extreme difficulties, and with the political divide in the United States, I don’t see how the red states of this country would ever vote to allow such a measure to pass. The historical consequences are fact, but a practical path forward seems mired in a willful denial from half our country’s politicians to take any responsibility for, much less financial responsibility for, past events that have so very obviously had present and future impacts.
We aren’t merely struggling to integrate a lunch counter now, we struggling to get some money to be able to buy a hamburger or steak when we get TO the counter
Martin Luther King Jr
In the Masterclass video, I wish Nikole Hannah-Jones had given a concrete example of what reparations might look like instead of just reasons to support it. I agree with the picture she’s painted, and I support the reasons, but as I processed the reasoning behind the movement I found myself hoping to hear a specific concept of what it might look like to execute reparations.
John McWhorter argues that reparations have already taken place through affirmative action and various other programs, and that future reparations are impractical and would address events from too long ago to feel relevant. He argues it has already happened, is happening, and that no matter what happens would leave some feeling like it was never enough. His points have some validity, but most black people would not agree with his conclusions.
Here’s an article that addresses it in more detail, and it’s also discussed in part 3 of the video series I mentioned. I don’t know how this plays out but I do agree that the playing field is not level, and that wealth is both largely the cause of it and perhaps the only solution.
The Lens of the Present
In conservative educational circles right now there is a lot of pushback to the prospect of teaching critical race theory, claiming that it’s unimportant, or that it would be presented with a bias. In truth, critical race theory is actually an unbiased recounting of actual history that includes uncomfortable parts of it that usually get left out.
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw coined the phrase “critical race theory” (CRT), positioning it as a prism, a lens, to see the reality of how laws, both historical and present, and society at large are built on an infrastructure of white supremacy. Generational wealth, the growing racial prosperity gap, and family health overall are products of historical law. Existing wealth, health, and power are not just “what’s there”, but the influencing factors have been produced in a way that has vastly benefited white people.
This truth won’t go away simply by acknowledging it. Some founding fathers had slaves, even while touting human equality. Ignoring CRT leads to living with accepting the myth of a false reality, instead of acknowledging and acting on the truth of what really is.
It’s beyond the scope of this post, but an additional topic called “intersectionality” is a completely additional force to overcome, one where various factors combine to create even harsher conditions. These factors include gender, race, sexuality, and social/economic class. Power and credibility are raced and gendered, and poor, minority women got the shortest end of the shortest stick.
“Color blindness” is a phrase used by people to act in a way where skin color doesn’t matter. Even when well-intentioned, this color blindness doesn’t fly. Acting in this way fails to acknowledge that there are still relevant factors in people’s lives that are race-related. Some aspects of life can certainly be color-blind, but as a blanket policy for interacting with people of color, it’s naive. As white people, we don’t get to stop talking about the structural racism that still exists, throw our hands up, and just say that now we’re color-blind so everything is okay.
It sucks to rip off this bandaid of historical awareness. It sucks worse actively choosing to live in the matrix, having the opportunity to hear the cries of our citizens and friends, and choosing to not learn or listen.
What Can We Do?
When looking back at all these things that happened over multiple hundreds of years, I hope you understand and feel white privilege in a way that you might not have before. Even the phrase “white privilege” can fall on deaf ears when you don’t know what came before your own life. This Masterclass course has painted a picture that anyone with a brain and heart simply cannot ignore
My goal is not to tell people what to say; my goal is to urge people to ask questions. because i think the most effective teaching inspires students to ask questions themselves and find their own path
Angela Davis
All we can do is what we can do. and we can learn, we can do better than what came before. Education, progression, and activism are the only ways to alleviate that feeling. If you’re doing these things, you’re on the right path.
Examine yourself, question yourself, courage of what you believe, but also to question what you do believe, the goal is growth and to mature. There is a power in telling the truth that makes you more free.
Cornel West
Black history is uncomfortable to hear about and to learn. It’s uncomfortable for black people because this is their reality. It’s uncomfortable for white people because white people were the shameful cause of it all, and many or most of us don’t identify with the attitudes that came before us. That said, we simply don’t have the right to just choose to not hear about it, not when we have people in our lives, people on this planet, who still bear the burdens or consequences of what happened.
It’s not the responsibility of your black friend to tell you the weight or reality of black history, it’s on each of us to learn it ourselves. If you want to get clarification on something, I invite your questions. If I don’t have answers, I’ll educate myself and try to get you answers. It’s on each of us to share what we know with our white friends because it’s damn time we step up and take responsibility for something, and it starts by getting educated, and it starts by spreading what we ourselves learn.