George Floyd’s family buried him June
9 after
services in Minneapolis, North Carolina, and Houston. The trauma his
murder caused his family, African Americans generally, and many whites continues.
Since we can’t discuss all the things that surfaced from the Floyd case, we’ve
picked one we think urgent and interesting: talk between African Americans and
whites about race.
The three of us see value in African Americans engaging whites
on race. Some African Americans think that’s a waste of time, offering some
version of, “Educating white people about race isn’t our responsibility. They should
figure it out for themselves.” Those arguing that note it’s been tried for
years with disappointing results. We understand the underlying frustration, but
we hold a different view.
Drew Brees: Tone Deaf
Brees apologized, saying he was “sick about the way my comments were perceived,” and
that his
“insensitive” statements “completely missed the mark on the issues we are
facing now as a country.” San Francisco Chronicle
columnist Ann Killion wrote that his apology “felt
late…Four years late.”
It Is About Race
The Brees story illustrates how even well-intentioned white
people convert discussions
of racial animus into discussions about something
else. “This isn’t about race” we’ve heard often. As sociologist Robin DiAngelo writes in White Fragility: Why
It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, “Most white people have limited
information about what racism is and how it works. For many white people, an
isolated course taken in college or required … in their workplace is the only
time they may
encounter a direct and sustained challenge to their racial
reality.” That reality includes the fact that, according to a Public Religion Research Institute study, 75 % of white Americans have
entirely white social networks. If Drew Brees, who plays in a league that’s about
70% black, has trouble understanding why kneeling concerned brutality and
inequality, not the flag and the military, what about those in the 75%?
We believe the Floyd case and the
angst it produced are about race. The protests are
about the disparity in
police treatment of African Americans and whites. The Floyd case and the
protests are about the fact every African American faces a greater risk of
being the victim of police assault than does a white person, regardless of
education, socioeconomic standing, or zip code. It is about race.
Class Assignments
White people often ask what they should do to better understand racism. We believe
Still, the responsibility for whites
learning about the effects of racism doesn’t fall solely on African Americans. Recently on his church’s call-in forum,
Woodson noted the importance of studying the history of this problem. That’s
part of anti-racism work. With this topic, ignorance is
not bliss. Woodson suggested our three favorite books on race –
Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other
Suns, The Color of Law by Richard
Rothstein, and Edward Baptist’s The Half
Has Never Been Told. Henry adds Ralph Ellison’s great novel, Invisible Man. We understand the tough
sledding these books sometimes require,
so we also offer works that present the issue in more digestible form:
·Racing Across the Lines: Changing Race Relations Through Friendship by Deborah Plummer;
·Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a
Good Ancestor by
Layla F. Saad;
·So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo; and
·How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.
At least one of us has read all these titles and
believes each teaches something about how African Americans and whites can talk
concerning race and about white intra-race talk, something we see as valuable.
None pull
punches. Some readers may find parts of them disturbing. We
think that’s necessary, seeing virtue in the old saw about comforting the
afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. What we've been doing certainly hasn’t
worked.
