by Daniel Andrade
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
For over 400 years, since before the United States gained its independence, this country has suffered from a toxic disease that it has never been able to cure itself of. It may not be the same type of poison that it started off as, but it has evolved and persisted and continues to be just as dangerous today. America has a problem, and that problem is racism and the white privilege that has allowed this racism to persist as long as it has. What has made this problem much more glaring recently is the tragic death of George Floyd under the knee of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin.
While there have unfortunately been too many similar incidents involving police officers or other white men either brutally attacking or killing black men, many of which have also been recorded on camera, this incident was particularly grievous. Many are familiar with the appalling stories of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, or Breonna Taylor (just to name a few), but this time was different. Maybe it was the brutal video showing a man being slowly killed while calling out for his mom and repeatedly saying he couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was the other officers that stood by and allowed this travesty to happen. Maybe it was the fact that this was happening in the middle of a pandemic. Maybe it was the ability for this video to be spread far and wide quickly, and the power of the internet to call out for action. Whatever the reason, or perhaps a combination of many or all of these reasons, this incident struck a nerve that ignited a ticking time bomb that had been building up to explode for decades. Since that harrowing incident, protests have sprung up all over the country. Although a majority of people understood the reasoning behind the protests, others tried to deflect the conversation and focus on other aspects that tried to drown out the call for action. It’s these responses that I feel warrant some attention.
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash
There are a few common types of responses that you may encounter when it comes to events like this. The first is people trying to twist the “Black Lives Matter” movement on its head by saying “All Lives Matter.” This infers that “Black Lives Matter” is followed by an implied only; that by saying black lives matter we are implicitly saying they matter more than or above the lives of everyone else. This couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything is being implied, it is too, which is to say black lives matter just as much as white lives do. Why does this statement even need to be said, you might ask? Because it has been made apparent that in a lot of situations black people’s lives don’t matter, and can be taken away due to fear, hatred, anger, and power. When most white people commit the same crimes or sometimes even worse ones, they are not savagely beaten or killed. When black people protest they are called delinquents or thugs, not very fine people or patriots. This is why many families of color have to have difficult conversations with their kids. Whether it’s a Black family telling their child how to deal with a police officer, a Latino family explaining to their sons or daughters how to handle I.C.E. or the Border Patrol, or an Asian family explaining to their kids why people have been so hateful towards them and blaming them for COVID-19, these experiences have proven that white lives matter more than theirs do. White people have been allowed to get away with more and break the rules without suffering the consequences as severely as black people have.
This same sentiment applies to another response that has been seen a lot more lately, which is those who focus on the rioting and more violent aspects of the protest. First of all, it’s important to recognize that in many documented instances, it is not the black protestors who are destroying buildings and antagonizing authorities or hurting people, but white extremists who commit their crimes and then run away or hide behind the protestors. These people take advantage of these moments of grief and anger and use them as an opportunity to cause trouble that they know they will not get blamed for, and purposefully wreck things or steal items at what would otherwise be a peaceful protest. Secondly, by focusing on the damaged property or the value of the businesses affected (most of which can and will recover, and are already being funded and helped by the community), this shows that goods, services, and property are valued above a black man’s life. What should be prioritized more? What can be replaced?
This response is often followed by something along the lines of “I wish they would protest more peacefully.” This is especially frustrating to hear when there have been countless times that the black community has tried to protest peacefully, and it has either been ignored or seen as out of line. Consider Colin Kaepernick or other black athletes taking a knee during the national anthem, or black celebrities speaking out against injustice during acceptance speeches or through their social media accounts, or the numerous other non-violent marches or sit-ins that have been seen as obstructive or unnecessary. Time and time again the black community has tried to bring up these issues in the most peaceful ways they could, and yet black people continued to die and continued to suffer from police brutality. There is only so much patience and tolerance a community can accept before they have to resort to more drastic measures. These protests may seem more extreme, but it is important to realize that this is a last resort after numerous, more peaceful attempts failed to draw attention to the problem at hand.
Photo by History in HD on Unsplash
What do these responses to this situation have in common? They come from a place of white privilege. In order to understand more fully what that means, let’s analyze a helpful metaphor that breaks it down. Back in 1988, Peggy McIntosh (associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women) wrote an insightful essay on the topic entitled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In her essay, McIntosh compares white privilege to “an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks” that she can always rely on, whether she realizes it or not. She goes on to provide an extensive list of some of the daily privileges she gets to enjoy as a white person that her black friends cannot. These include: going shopping alone without fear of being followed or harassed, seeing people of her race being widely represented in the media, going to a hairdresser’s shop and easily finding someone who can cut her hair, not having to educate her children of systemic racism for their protection, doing well in a challenging situation without it being a called a credit to her race, never being asked to speak for all the people of her racial group, and many more. As you can see from even this brief list, being privileged doesn’t discount factors that may have made your life difficult, like your income level or even your gender. It simply means you have more resources provided to you that you can use to help you overcome those obstacles than people of color do. From the foundation of this country, whiteness has been established as the normal. Whiteness means you are entitled to all of the things that were promised to us in the Constitution: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Conversely, being non-white thus means you are unnatural, and not entitled to those same benefits. This is why white protestors are seen as heroes defending liberty, while black protestors are seen as criminals and delinquents. Because of this deeply entrenched white privilege, black people are seen as disrupting the normal, as being sacrilegious to the commonly held beliefs that society has built up, even though this normalcy and these beliefs only apply to white people.
So what can we do? What is the cure to this seemingly unstoppable disease? For starters, we need to listen, really listen, to our communities of color. We can no longer ignore the calls to action that have been screaming out at us for centuries. We can also educate ourselves further on the history of racism in America and around the world by reading books and listening to lectures and speeches from black professors and speakers. And as for our white friends and allies, we should encourage them to take action in whatever way they can, whether it’s speaking out when they see a person of color being harassed or threatened, donating funds toward charities devoted to helping out communities of color, calling up and writing to your local and state representatives, or even watching more TV shows or movies that star more people of color and focus on their stories and experiences. Click here for a more thorough list of things you can do to help.
I want to end on a positive note, because I know this article has not been easy for me to write and I’m sure it hasn’t been easy to read either. In the aftermath of the tragic loss of George Floyd, I have seen my social media filled with people speaking up and taking action in a way I’ve never seen before. I have seen people from many different walks of life uniting against something like this ever happening again. It is certainly not going to be an easy or clean process, and we still have a long way to go, but I have hope that we are pushing in the right direction and trying to build a better future.
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