White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (17 page)
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Authors: Tim Wise
Tags: #History, #Politics, #Sociology, #Memoir, #Race
BOOK: White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son
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The doctor explained everything to us about what had been in his system, and as he spoke I garnered a glance at my dad’s chart, hanging up on the cabinet just outside his room. When he arrived his bloodalcohol content had been 0.41, to say nothing of the pills he’d swallowed. The booze alone had been enough to kill most people. Ironically, it would be his alcoholism and the tolerance that came with it that had likely kept him alive.
Within a day my father would leave the hospital, and the truth would finally come out as to why he had attempted suicide. Turns out, Debbie had broken up with him, and distraught over the ending of his yearlong affair—and recognizing that the rest of his life wasn’t going that great either—he had opted to check out, only to chicken out in the end. So now my mother knew. It hadn’t been the way I had anticipated him telling her, but at least there were no more secrets to keep.
On the surface, this story might seem out of place in a book about race. After all, it doesn’t appear to have much to do with such a subject. And yet, as I tried to piece together an understanding of my father’s addictions—something that would take me many years, and wouldn’t fully come until well after he got clean on my birthday in 1996—I came to understand how racial identity (and for that matter male identity and even Jewish identity) had all been a part of the larger picture.
Once my dad got clean and started attending AA, we would occasionally talk about what he was learning there. For the most part he seemed satisfied with the AA language and approach—it was keeping him sober after all—but there was something about it that seemed inadequate to me. It seemed as though the operative paradigm in AA was overly individualistic, as in
the addict
is powerless in the face of the disease,
the addict
needs to make amends, and
the addict
needs to give control over to some higher power (however defined). There was very little discussion about the social determinants of addictive behavior, and the way that individuals exist not in a vacuum but in a social context, which, under certain conditions, can make addictive behavior more likely.
the addict
is powerless in the face of the disease,
the addict
needs to make amends, and
the addict
needs to give control over to some higher power (however defined). There was very little discussion about the social determinants of addictive behavior, and the way that individuals exist not in a vacuum but in a social context, which, under certain conditions, can make addictive behavior more likely.
After all, there must be a reason that the United States has so much higher a rate of drug and alcohol abuse than other nations, including other wealthy and industrialized nations. And there must be a reason that, according to the available research, white Americans have such a disproportionate rate of binge drinking and substance abuse relative to persons of color—contrary to popular perception—and why rates of suicide are also so high in the U.S. and among whites (and especially middle class and above whites), relative to people of color.
Though none of this was covered in AA, I began to see it the more I thought about my father’s situation, and what I came to understand was this: To be an American and to be white is to be told in a million different ways that the world is your oyster; it is to believe, because so many outward signs suggest it, that you can do anything and be anything your heart desires. Although people of color and folks in other countries have rarely had the luxury of believing that mythology, white Americans have. And so when one’s expectations are so high—and especially if you add to that the expectation of a Jewish man seeking to make it in a heavily-Jewish industry like comedy—and yet one’s achievement falls well short of the aspiration and expectation, what happens?
In such a situation, in which the society is telling you that your failings are
yours
, your inadequacies
yours
, that there are no socially determined issues to examine—whether institutional obstacles in the case of oppressed groups or the dangerous mentality of entitlement and expectation that comes with privilege—what
could
certainly happen is that one might well capitulate to a self-destructive rage; either that, or project one’s rage outward onto others in the form of abuse (which, on the verbal level, my father had also done). This is not to excuse the abuse, be it directed inward or outward, but it is to explain it in relation to a social context and not merely as the personal failing of millions of individuals acting in isolation. This is not to say that all addiction is the result of frustrated expectations—social pathology can have many different triggers, of which this would be only one—but it is to say that we can’t ignore the way that such a phenomenon may be part of the larger mix, about which we need, desperately, to be aware.
yours
, your inadequacies
yours
, that there are no socially determined issues to examine—whether institutional obstacles in the case of oppressed groups or the dangerous mentality of entitlement and expectation that comes with privilege—what
could
certainly happen is that one might well capitulate to a self-destructive rage; either that, or project one’s rage outward onto others in the form of abuse (which, on the verbal level, my father had also done). This is not to excuse the abuse, be it directed inward or outward, but it is to explain it in relation to a social context and not merely as the personal failing of millions of individuals acting in isolation. This is not to say that all addiction is the result of frustrated expectations—social pathology can have many different triggers, of which this would be only one—but it is to say that we can’t ignore the way that such a phenomenon may be part of the larger mix, about which we need, desperately, to be aware.
It strikes me that unless we get a hold of this, unless we begin to address the way that privilege can set up those who have it for a fall—can vest them with an unrealistic set of expectations—we’ll be creating more addicts, more people who turn to self-injury, suicide, eating disorders, or other forms of self-negation, all because they failed to live up to some idealized type that they’d been told was theirs to achieve. We’ll keep creating for millions of families the pain that I’d grown up with, and the physical embodiment of that pain, which embodiment lay comatose in the bed that night, that little strip of paper at his bedside reminding us all of how close he’d come.
HIGHER LEARNING
FOR MOST OF
my senior year, I was able to breathe far more easily than I could remember ever having done. My dad had left that summer after the suicide attempt, and although he and my mom remained married, the separation gave me a respite from the insanity that had been my home environment for the previous seventeen years.
my senior year, I was able to breathe far more easily than I could remember ever having done. My dad had left that summer after the suicide attempt, and although he and my mom remained married, the separation gave me a respite from the insanity that had been my home environment for the previous seventeen years.
We had a successful year in debate, which was a good thing, since debate was likely to be my key to getting into a good college. My standardized test scores were awful, barely cracking 1000 on the old 1600-point SAT, and my grades were a rather mediocre 3.3 on a 4-point scale, so I knew I’d probably need to wrangle a debate scholarship somewhere. Initially, I had wanted to go to Emory, in Atlanta. They had a great debate team, and Atlanta, though away from home, was still close enough to get back easily for visits.
But as the year progressed, it became apparent that Emory wasn’t going to be an option. Over the summer I had fallen in love (or so I thought) with a debater from Lafayette, Louisiana. I’d met her at the American University debate camp, and she was going to be attending Louisiana State University. When she told me in no uncertain terms that I simply had to go to Tulane, in New Orleans, my emotions quickly trumped whatever previous plans I may have had. If I went to Emory, Monica explained, we would never get to see each other. It would be tough enough, she insisted, with her in Baton Rouge, and me seventyfive minutes down the road in New Orleans. But at least it would be workable. So I filled out my application to Tulane—a school about which I had never even thought once—and kept my fingers crossed, my academic and romantic future hinging on the decision to be made by their admissions officers. I wasn’t confident about getting in. Aside from my mediocre academics, Tulane didn’t have a real debate team at that time, let alone debate scholarships to give out. So my accomplishments in the activity weren’t as likely to matter as they would have at Emory.
Fortunately, it must have been a down year for applicants, and so Tulane said yes. There was only one problem remaining; namely, how to pay for it. Although its cost is far greater today, as with all colleges, in 1986, with tuition at $12,950, and all costs combined coming in at around $20,000, Tulane was far pricier than anything my folks could afford. Complicating things further, I am notorious for procrastination, and so I had screwed around and not gotten my financial aid forms in on time. Since being late with financial aid forms means that one won’t get as much assistance as might otherwise have been offered, how does one get to go to a place like Tulane? It helps—and this is surely an understatement of some significance—when one’s mother is able to go down to the bank and take out a loan for $10,000 to fill the gap between what the school was offering in assistance and the overall costs for my freshman year.
But how does one’s mother get such a loan? Especially when, as was true for mine, she had never owned a piece of property? When you’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, driving cars until they stopped running, taking few if any vacations because you just couldn’t afford them? It helps (again with the understatement) if one’s mother’s mother can co-sign for the loan. While banks don’t typically lend money to folks without collateral, like my mom, they are very willing to lend the same money to someone with it, like my grandmother, who was able to use her house as a guarantee against the loan.
The house, in which she lived until her death in December 2009 (and in which my mother still resides), was the fourth home she and my grandfather had owned. Although they had been of middle-class income—my grandfather having been in the military and then civil service for his entire adult life—they nonetheless were able to afford several nice homes in “good” neighborhoods, all of which had been entirely white, and as with the apartment complex where I’d grown up, not by accident. Although the Supreme Court, in 1948, had outlawed restrictive covenants barring blacks from these neighborhoods, it had remained legal to discriminate in other ways until the late sixties. Even then, there was little real enforcement of the Fair Housing Act until teeth were added to the law in 1988, and even now, studies suggest there are at least two million cases of race-based housing discrimination against people of color every year.
So in a very real sense, my grandmother’s house, without which I could not have gone to Tulane, or to any selective (and thus, expensive) college, was there to be used as collateral because we were white. Not only did we have a house to use for this purpose, but it was a house in a desirable neighborhood, which would continue to appreciate each year. In other words, we’d likely make good on the loan, but if we defaulted, so what? The bank would have a nice piece of property, worth more than the money they were giving my mom. They couldn’t lose, and neither could I. Whiteness, institutionalized and intergenerational, had opened the door for me. After nearly eighteen years of dysfunction and chaos, I was ready and willing to walk through it.
MY MOTHER, HOWEVER,
was not nearly as ready for me to do so. Like many parents who have kids about to go off to school, she was sliding into a deep depression. For her, the notion of an empty nest was of no small concern. Now that my father was also gone, she would truly be on her own.
was not nearly as ready for me to do so. Like many parents who have kids about to go off to school, she was sliding into a deep depression. For her, the notion of an empty nest was of no small concern. Now that my father was also gone, she would truly be on her own.
One day in the summer of 1986, while I was preparing for my move to New Orleans, Albert called and suggested we go to the Nashville Peace Fair, an annual festival with music, crafts, and dozens of information booths set up by various non-profit organizations from throughout the region. Given my increasing politicization, I was excited to go, and Al clearly needed the progressive inoculation that the Peace Fair would provide; after all, he was about to head off to the University of Mississippi, where he’d be unlikely to see so much as a Democrat in four years (at least among white folks), let alone anyone truly to the left of the political spectrum.
Upon returning to the apartment in late afternoon, I found my mother drinking. Actually, I found her completely in the can, and this was alarming because although my mother occasionally drank too much, it was rare for her to get started in the daytime. Even though I wanted to tell her about the Peace Fair, once I realized she was in no condition to talk, I decided to wait. It just didn’t seem like the right time.
Unfortunately, my mother felt otherwise. Not only did she want to discuss the Peace Fair, and politics more broadly, she was itching to pick a fight, which is something she had never done before. It started slowly, with her asking me about the event, and though I tried to brush it off, she seemed genuinely interested. I began to tell her about some of the information I had picked up about U.S. foreign policy in Central America, and about apartheid in South Africa and how American corporations were helping to prop up the racist regime there.
I am not exactly sure how the discussion descended into the mess it would become. The whole episode was so bizarre, I think I was too shocked to take it all in. What I recall is that at some point we got on the subject of welfare and welfare recipients. And when one speaks of welfare in this country, whether or not one wishes to acknowledge it, one is almost always speaking of black people, not because black people are the only folks receiving state aid (indeed more whites receive benefits from the myriad social programs than do blacks), but because that is the image we have been encouraged to have when we hear the term. It’s an image that has become implanted in the minds of Americans, especially whites, to such an extent that it’s almost automatic, and it allows politicians to criticize “welfare” and its recipients without mentioning race, knowing that their constituents will get the message.
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