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Dear Black People. #BlackAsianWithLove
Dear Black People:
Remember, whiteness has been largely invisible to MANY folks for MANY generations. While one Corona-filled year can make a dent in it, these changes will hurt and will take time. For example, imagine waking up one day, seeing another Black body drop on the streets at the hands of the police, and you see the American president making mockery of it. Stereotypical “rednecks” are breaking open cans of (cheap) beer to celebrate the deaths and you suddenly realize that this – none of this – would NEVER happen to you because of the color of your skin, because your skin is white. That’s got a be an earth-shattering realization.
Dear Black people, can you remember learning something that totally shattered your world view? That’s what’s happening to the wider, whiter world right now. Like any humans, some embrace change, others retreat in defeat and plot retaliation, for Mr. Backlash is NEVER EVER late.
Dear Black people, take a deep breath. Step back and look at the arch of history. It’s a sheer miracle that you’re even here, that your ancestors survived (I’ll spare you the litany of atrocities). History shows you that these flaring moments are fleeting, that in fact, it gets better. So, keep your head to the sky! Strap up your boots, march for justice, speak up, fight for peace, raise your voices in solidarity with peace-loving people everywhere of every shape, size and color. Do these things at your own pace, in your own way, and in your own space, for every contribution towards world peace is needed. Be the change.
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They RNC didn’t address me.
On the 2020 Republican National Convention (RNC)
They talked at length about their “God-given rights to bear arms,” yet were silent about what guns do to people like me. They have little to say about religious diversity, and are silent about the bountifully plenty o’ white-American churches rooted – deeply – in racism. Equally, and clearly by the very same measure, they’ve never stood for the legal rights of Blacks to defend ourselves from tyranny. The second amendment, they suggest by their consistent omissions, is for them – only! This is how they addressed me. Give them liberty or give them (my) death…as it were. They ignore the data confirming that their own kids are more likely to shoot them than any dangers posed by my kids.
At the 2020 RNC, they talked at length about protecting their suburbs from thugs and rioters, yet fell well short of acknowledging the terror people like me have learned to live with. They talk like nobody that looks like me lives in the suburbs, and I know all too well that eerie ‘Get Out’ feeling when cruising through virtually any suburb in America. Do I belong here? Their glares and stares, and random checks let me know, #Karen and her klan don’t believe we belong together. The RNC didn’t address people like me who believe in my own state’s motto inscribed right there on both our seal and flag – “United we stand. Divided we fall.”* All I could hear from the RNC were warnings towards people like me: STFU, we got guns. Their gun cult was the only sort of solidarity served up, and so all the speakers touted that singular party line.
My party’s lines are numerous, as we’ve been casting a wider and wider net of those disenfranchised by the conservatives. Dems are ‘the others’. This year’s DNC motto seems to be this oft repeated moniker, ‘strength in diversity, unity in solidarity’. Both in rhetoric and actions they are more open to accountability for and by these so-called others. We can think, talk, walk and chew gum at the same time. The RNC didn’t address these Others, but they certainly portrayed ‘us others as a clear and present threat to their (suburban) way of life. For them, I am pariah.
Urban life.
As for cities, this year’s RNC speakers talked about rioters, but never ever spoke about what the riots were about. They touted a very uncomplicated view of rioting, and even had the nerve to claim the oppressed are crying victimhood (you know that, ‘shut up while I press my hoof on your neck’ sort of way). These conservative folks need a reading from both Sigmund Freud and the House of Labeija. Despite knowing what I know, I am still shocked at their void of empathy and disinterest in empathetic communication. They never addressed the peaceful protests, not least of which the #TakeAKnee campaign for which their leaders black-balled those peaceful protestors. You saw how the monster of that party responded to several prominent sports figures’ form of non-violent protest. I walked away from watching the RNC feeling shame for them, for I know their hearts couldn’t possibly be that cold. What comes around goes around.
*Yes, I know my state seal shows two white men shaking hands over the destinies of entire populations of Black and brown people, which we’ll save for another discussion. Rest assured, the RNC klan would say I’m using political correctness to silence them.
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Whiteness Walks into a Bar
When we think about race: the narratives, stories and experiences of people of colour are raised. And to be “of colour,” is essentially tied to anything from Black to Polynesian, Middle Eastern and Asian, including mixed-race. The perception of whiteness is the absence of blackness / brownness, that makes people that look like me up to nine times more likely to be stop and searched by police in Northamptonshire than a White person. But white is a colour too, is it not? When it comes to talks about “whiteness,” not a peep is to be heard from the people it impacts most, White European-looking people. Shocked? Not really! It can’t just be up to people of colour to talk to about whiteness. White people need to be talking about whiteness!
Photo Credit: Foyles
In the conversations about unconscious bias, as far as race is concerned, too often the focus is on the prejudice and discrimination that’s inherently built into the system. That’s fine and all, but unconscious bias also impacts White people. Whilst it’s a tool of institutional violence to working-class people, irrespective of race, bias also favours those born into the hue of lighter skin.
Look at drugs, for example; Black people are routinely stereotyped as drug dealers. However, going to private schools for twelve years in my youth showed me that the worst consumers and dealers of drugs were middle-class White people. The ones whose parents were lawyers and judges or rich landowners with reputations to uphold. And when you watch shows like The Wire or Toy Boy, which shows Black people a certain way, you begin to see how these racial stereotypes have taken root in people’s minds.
Whilst working-class White people will struggle, their struggles won’t be because they are White.
How whiteness is peddled can be both positive and negative. There are examples of White people using their privilege for great good, and great evil: from the White clergy that marched at Selma, to groups like Extinction Rebellion, slammed for being a White middle-class movement that glamourises arrest. Arrest is racialised and a White encounter with the police is not the same for a person who is not White, loaded with history: from Brixton to Emmett Till, lynchings and slave plantations. Call it stop and search, call it police brutality; call it the Southampton Insurrection, same symbols, different uniform, be it with blue sirens or burning crosses.
Looking at XR, Brock Turner and the Selma peace march, here lies a spectrum of White privilege: from the freedom to protest (without thinking of the consequence of arrest) – all the way up to rape and sexual assault on university campuses, with The People v. Turner.
White Privilege is existing in society without the consequences of racism, as discussed by Reni Eddo-Lodge in Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Whiteness is living in a postcolonial world, disregarding the impact colonialism has in how race (historically), and the racial neo-politic continues to permeate society: from racism on university campuses to the legacy of colonialism, stop and search and the ongoing Windrush crisis.
Whiteness is cultural appropriation and the loots in the V&A / the British Museum. It’s White British academics having more authority on racism than academics of colour, even when it’s their lived experience. Stories lodged in their throats. It’s teaching children that Christopher Columbus was an explorer, finder – not invader, rapist, coloniser, thief, slaver.
What can White (British) academics tell you about racism other than what’s in theories and articles? Whilst White British people can experience prejudice, I believe racism is about power, and when you look at who holds the social power in society (in this country), it’s Whites, British or otherwise.
And you can bet that employer is second guessing the CVs with names like Muhammad or Asante, not Smith and Jones or even Lowell or Roberts (though those last ones could just as well be a Black person too). The legacy of colonialism in our names. The legacy of whiteness is in Tré Ventour, from the slaves of the Fontenoy Estate in St. George, Grenada. And if you want to get that loan, or that promotion, “Debroah, you should be less confrontational.” Why do Black people have to censor their mannerisms for their White colleagues? Laugh quieter. Walk slower. Breathe lighter.
I write this blog in a language I didn’t get to choose. It was given to my ancestors at the end of the sword, along with the songs of Solomon, bibles and this name that I carry. White Privilege is the freedom to choose – your language, beliefs, name, your essence of being. But you call us stupid.
Whiteness walks into a bar like he owns it. The bar is any institution. Any industry. Any topic of discussion. Brexit. Black History Month. Diwali. Whiteness is an authority because whiteness built the bar for himself.
Whiteness asks:
“Where did you learn to speak English so well?”
Whiteness asks:
“Do you hate White people? Why do you talk about slavery? It’s long lost, in the past
Whiteness asks:
Explain to me how I can be a better person
Critical Race Pedagogy (Theory) tells us that it’s deeper than the individual racist. It’s the system. How do you fight an abstraction? How do you get more Black and brown people into policing? Into academia or education?
However, if you don’t address the violence already in those spaces, what you’re doing is sending people of colour (unarmed) into a conflict, POWs with no hope of escape.
Works of Interest
Legacies of British slave-ownership – LBS, University College London.
Top Boy (2011 – 2013) – Channel 4 (Netflix)
People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner
People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson (O. J Simpson)
The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016) – FX (Netflix)
‘The True Legacy of Christopher Columbus’ – George Monbiot (YouTube)
‘Whiteness Walks into a Bar’ – by Franny Choi (Button Poetry, YouTube)
‘White Privilege’ – by Kyla Jenée Lacey (WAN Poetry, YouTube)
The Wire (2002 – 2008) – HBO
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
Thoughts from the criminology team 