Racism

From a black man, why he can't talk about race with Whites.. Given as a sermon to a white congregation:

by John MettaI, Racist

What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and a wonderful from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s *Americanah*.

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Luke 10:25-37New International Version (NIV)

The Parable of the Good Samaritan
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

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“The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.”


― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
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A couple weeks ago, I was debating what I was going to talk about in this
sermon. I told Pastor Kelly Ryan I had great reservations talking about the
one topic that I think about every single day.
Then, a terrorist massacred nine innocent people in a church that I went
to, in a city that I still think of as home. At that point, I knew that
despite any misgivings, I needed to talk about race.
You see, I don’t talk about race with White people. To illustrate why, I’ll
tell a story:
It was probably about 15 years ago when a conversation took place between
my aunt, who is White and lives in New York State, and my sister, who is
Black and lives in North Carolina. This conversation can be distilled to a
single sentence, said by my Black sister:
“The only difference between people in The North and people in The South is
that down here, at least people are honest about being racist.”
There was a lot more to that conversation, obviously, but I suggest that it
can be distilled into that one sentence because it has been, by my White
aunt. Over a decade later, this sentence is still what she talks about. It
has become the single most important aspect of my aunt’s relationship with
my Black family. She is still hurt by the suggestion that people in New
York, that she, a northerner, a liberal, a good person who has Black family
members, is a racist.
This perfectly illustrates why I don’t talk about race with White people.
Even– or rather, especially– my own family.
I love my aunt. She’s actually my favorite aunt, and believe me, I have *a
lot*of awesome aunts to choose from. But the facts are actually quite in my
sister’s favor on this one.
New York State is one of the most segregated states in the country.
Buffalo, New York where my aunt lives is one of the 10 most segregated
school systems in the country. The racial inequality of the area she
inhabits is so bad that it has been the subject of reports by the Civil
Rights Action Network and the NAACP.
Those, however, are facts that my aunt does not need to know. She does not
need to live with the racial segregation and oppression of her home. As a
white person with upward mobility, she has continued to improve her
situation. She moved out of the area I grew up in– she moved to an area
with better schools. She doesn’t have to experience racism, and so it is
not real to her.
Nor does it dawn on her that the very fact that she moved away from an
increasingly Black neighborhood to live in a White suburb might itself be a
aspect of racism. She doesn’t need to realize that “better schools”
exclusively means “whiter schools.”
I don’t talk about race with White people because I have so often seen it
go nowhere. When I was younger, I thought it was because all white people
are racist. Recently, I’ve begun to understand that it’s more nuanced than
that.
To understand, you have to know that Black people think in terms of *Black
people*. We don’t see a shooting of an innocent Black child in another
state as something separate from us because we know viscerally that it
could be our child, our parent, or us, that is shot.
The shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston resonated with me because
Walter Scott was portrayed in the media as a deadbeat and a criminal– but
when you look at the facts about the actual man, he was nearly
indistinguishable from my own father.
Racism affects us directly because the fact that it happened at a
geographically remote location or to another Black person is only a
coincidence, an accident. It could just as easily happen to us- right here,
right now.
Black people think in terms of *we* because we live in a society where the
social and political structures interact with us *as Black people.*
White people do not think in terms of *we. *White people have the privilege
to interact with the social and political structures of our society *as
individuals*. You are “you,” I am “one of them.” Whites are often not
directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what
does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally
or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in
terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly
unaffected by it.
What they are affected by are attacks on their own character. To my aunt,
the suggestion that “people in The North are racist” is an attack on her *as
a racist*. She is unable to differentiate her participation *within* a
racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to
White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is *a
racist*. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in
general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point
out that it doesn’t exist because they don’t see it.
The result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black
person says “Racism still exists. It is real,” and a white person argues
“You’re wrong, I’m not racist at all. I don’t even see any racism.” My
aunt’s immediate response is not “that is wrong, we should do better.” No,
her response is self-protection: “That’s not my fault, I didn’t do
anything. You are wrong.”
Racism is not slavery. As President Obama said, it’s not avoiding the use
of the word Nigger. Racism is not white water fountains and the back of the
bus. Martin Luther King did not end racism. Racism is a cop severing the
spine of an innocent man. It is a 12 year old child being shot for playing
with a toy gun in a state where it is legal to openly carry firearms.
But racism is even more subtle than that. It’s more nuanced. Racism is the
fact that “White” means “normal” and that anything else is different.
Racism is our acceptance of an all white Lord of the Rings cast because of
“historical accuracy,” ignoring the fact that this is a world with an *entirely
fictionalized history*.
Even when we make shit up, we want it to be white.
And racism is the fact that we all *accept* that it *is* white. Benedict
Cumberbatch playing Khan in Star Trek. Khan, who is from India. Is there
anyone Whiter than Benedict fucking Cumberbatch? What? They needed a “less
racial” cast because they already had the Black Uhura character?
That is racism. Once you let yourself see it, it’s there all the time.
Black children learn this when their parents give them “The Talk.” When
they are sat down at the age of 5 or so and told that their best friend’s
father is not sick, and not in a bad mood– he just doesn’t want his son
playing with you. Black children grow up early to life in The Matrix. We’re
not given a choice of the red or blue pill. Most white people, like my
aunt, never have to choose. The system was made for White people, so White
people don’t have to think about living in it.
But we can’t point this out.
Living every single day with institutionalized racism and then having to
argue its very existence, is tiring, and saddening, and angering. Yet if we
express any emotion while talking about it, we’re tone policed, told we’re
being angry. In fact, a key element in any racial argument in America is
the Angry Black person, and racial discussions shut down when that person
speaks. The Angry Black person invalidates any arguments about racism
because they are “just being overly sensitive,” or “too emotional,” or–
playing the race card. Or even worse, we’re told that *we* are being racist
(Does any intelligent person actually believe a systematically oppressed
demographic has the ability to oppress those in power?)
But here is the irony, here’s the thing that all the angry Black people
know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: *The entire
discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White
feelings.*
Ask any Black person and they’ll tell you the same thing. The reality of
thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically
disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single White
person might be complicit in a racist system.
This is the country we live in. Millions of Black lives are valued less
than a single White person’s hurt feelings.
White people and Black people are not having a discussion about race. Black
people, thinking as a group, are talking about *living in a racist system*.
White people, thinking as individuals, refuse to talk about “I, racist” and
instead protect their own individual and personal goodness. In doing so,
they reject the existence of racism.
But arguing about personal non-racism is missing the point.
Despite what the Charleston Massacre makes things look like, people are
dying not because individuals are racist, but because individuals are
helping support a racist system by wanting to protect their own non-racist
self beliefs.
People are dying because we are supporting a racist system that justifies
White people killing Black people.
We see this in the way that one Muslim killer is a sign of Islamic terror;
in the way one Mexican thief is a pointer to the importance of border
security; in one innocent, unarmed Black man is shot in the back by a cop,
then sullied in the media as a thug and criminal.
And in the way a white racist in a state that still flies the confederate
flag is seen as “troubling” and “unnerving.” In the way people “can’t
understand why he would do such a thing.”
A white person smoking pot is a “Hippie” and a Black person doing it is a
“criminal.” It’s evident in the school to prison pipeline and the fact that
there are close to 20 people of color in prison for every white person.
There’s a headline from The Independent that sums this up quite nicely:
“Charleston shooting: Black and Muslim killers are ‘terrorists’ and
‘thugs’. Why are white shooters called ‘mentally ill’?”
I’m gonna read that again: “Black and Muslim killers are ‘terrorists’ and
‘thugs’. Why are white shooters called ‘mentally ill’?”
Did you catch that? It’s beautifully subtle. This is an article talking
specifically about the different way we treat people of color in this
nation and even in this article’s headline, the white people are “shooters”
and the Black and Muslim people are “killers.”
Even when we’re talking about racism, we’re using racist language to make
people of color look dangerous and make White people come out as not so bad.
Just let that sink in for a minute, then ask yourself why Black people are
angry when they talk about race.
The reality of America is that White people are fundamentally good, and so
when a white person commits a crime, it is a sign that they, *as an
individual*, are bad. Their actions as a person are not indicative of any
broader social construct. Even the fact that America has a growing number
of violent hate groups, populated mostly by white men, and that nearly
*all* serial killers are white men can not shadow the fundamental truth of
white male goodness. In fact, we like White serial killers so much, we make
mini-series about them.
White people are good as a whole, and only act badly as individuals.
People of color, especially Black people (but boy we can talk about “The
Mexicans” in this community) are seen as fundamentally bad. There might be
a good one– and we are always quick to point them out to our friends, show
them off as our Academy Award for “Best Non-Racist in a White Role”– but
when we see a bad one, it’s just proof that the rest are, as a rule, bad.
This, all of this, expectation, treatment, thought, the underlying social
system that puts White in the position of Normal and good, and Black in the
position of “other” and “bad,” all of this, is racism.
And White people, every single one of you, are complicit in this racism
because *you benefit directly from it.*
This is why I don’t like the story of the good samaritan. Everyone likes to
think of themselves as the person who sees someone beaten and bloodied and
helps him out.
That’s too easy.
If I could re-write that story, I’d rewrite it from the perspective of
Black America. What if the person wasn’t beaten and bloody? What if it
wasn’t so obvious? What if they were just systematically challenged in a
thousand small ways *that actually made it easier for you to succeed in
life*?
Would you be so quick to help then, or would you, like most White people,
stay silent and let it happen.
Here’s what I want to say to you: Racism is so deeply embedded in this
country not because of the racist right-wing radicals who practice it
openly, it exists because of the silence and hurt feelings of liberal
America.
That’s what I want to say, but really, I can’t. I can’t say that because
I’ve spent my life not talking about race to White people. In a big way,
it’s my fault. Racism exists because I, as a Black person, don’t challenge
you to look at it.
Racism exists because I, not you, am silent.
But I’m caught in the perfect Catch 22, because when I start pointing out
racism, I become the Angry Black Person, and the discussion shuts down
again. So I’m stuck.
All the Black voices in the world speaking about racism all the time do not
move White people to think about it– but one White John Stewart talking
about Charleston has a whole lot of White people talking about it. That’s
the world we live in. Black people can’t change it while White people are
silent and deaf to our words.From a black man, why he can't talk about race with Whites.. Given as a
White people are in a position of power in this country *because of racism*.
The question is: Are they brave enough to use that power to speak against
the system that gave it to them?
So I’m asking you to help me. Notice this. Speak up. Don’t let it slide.
Don’t stand watching in silence. Help build a world where it never gets to
the point where the Samaritan has to see someone bloodied and broken.
As for me, I will no longer be silent. I’m going to *try* to speak kindly,
and softly, but that’s gonna be hard. Because it’s getting harder and
harder for me to think about the protection of White people’s feelings when
White people don’t seem to care at all about the loss of so many Black
lives.