WHITE PRIVILEGE AND OUR MORAL OBLIGATION TO RACIAL EQUALITY
You & I are not the slave owners, and you & I are not the lynchers. We are not the people who whitewashed and purified the story of our country, who rewrote American history from the singular view of wealthy white men. Most of us were taught an incomplete version of history: a beautiful and magnanimous story of America that more closely resembles the ideals our country was built on, than how it was built. We are not to blame for that, or for the past, any more than we are to blame for the circumstances of our childhood, but we ARE responsible for learning the truth, we ARE responsible for whether or not we continue to live ignorantly. We ARE to blame if we don’t work to correct the injustices of the past that still contaminate the present.
We are alive in, what I hope will be, the greatest time in the history of our country since its formation. A time when we can connect with each other so easily, when we can investigate the truth so easily, when we have everything we need in order to do exactly what the Framers intended. Let us now “form a more perfect union”. We the PEOPLE, are in charge of our own destiny, of our own freedoms, of preserving what is right and true in our country. Not our elected officials, not our spiritual leaders, not the bankers or the corporations or our parents or our children, or or or….WE are the ones.
In the first American Civil Rights Movement, James Baldwin was the preeminent author of issues surrounding race. What strikes me most about Mr. Baldwin is his grace, and his opinion that bigotry in America takes a greater toll on the white racists than on black Americans who suffer at their hands. His assertion was that it is much worse to be the white man who brands a black woman than it is to be the black woman who is burned and branded, because no human could be capable of that kind of cruelty unless their soul was contaminated. Unless they were immoral, unfeeling, and lacking love for themselves. White mothers who spit on black children, while holding their own white infants, certainly lacked the integrity I believe the majority of us in America are capable of today. And, amidst all of this, Mr. Baldwin was a patriot and loved America very much. Here is an excerpt from his book “The Fire Next Time”, which opens with a letter to his young, black, nephew.
There is no reason for you to try to become like white people. And there is no basis whatever, for their impertinent assumption that THEY must accept YOU. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that YOU must accept THEM. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them, and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand. And until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They’ve had to believe, for many years and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but as you will discover – people find it very difficult to act on what they know.
…and, if the word integration means anything, this is what it means. That we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are. To cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it. Great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.
…We cannot be free, until they are free.”
And, in the spirit of OUR freedom, freedom for our white selves, and our white children, equally as for people of all races, I challenge you to be willing to see America as it is, and for us to decide together what it will be next. The Framers did that, the great leaders in our country since them have done that, it is now OUR turn to do that.
Amidst great adversity and bigotry, James Baldwin was able to teach his namesake nephew to love white people. Shame on us all, if we do not work to find that great love of others within ourselves. If we refuse to learn the truth of our country, we will perpetuate the white supremacy that has covertly dominated it since emancipation. And then we WILL be the slave owners, we WILL be the lynchers, and I know that’s never been my heart. I don’t believe it’s your heart either.
Let’s be brave, and choose to find the truth together. We cannot be free, until they are free.
