White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (39 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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Immediately, I could notice the difference during my travels. Anyone who looked even remotely Arab, or just
brown,
was searched more intently than anyone else, like the family of five named Martinez, who were headed from Nashville to Guadalajara, Mexico, during the last week in September, and who were given the red alert treatment from security. I was about to say something to the officials when they finally let the family go, after contenting themselves that the infant’s diaper bag was not an incendiary device and that the Spanish they were speaking was not some form of coded Arabic.
brown,
was searched more intently than anyone else, like the family of five named Martinez, who were headed from Nashville to Guadalajara, Mexico, during the last week in September, and who were given the red alert treatment from security. I was about to say something to the officials when they finally let the family go, after contenting themselves that the infant’s diaper bag was not an incendiary device and that the Spanish they were speaking was not some form of coded Arabic.
The only thing more maddening than the calls for profiling or apocalyptic violence was the way in which whites seemed so oblivious to why anyone might have attacked the United States in the first place. “Why do they hate us?” became a commonly heard question, asked by folks when they would be interviewed by news crews across the country. But not one of the persons who I saw issue this query—and I saw it hundreds of times if I saw it once—was of color.
Not one
. Yet no one seemed to notice the monochromatic nature of the naiveté, or if they did, they didn’t think it interesting enough to remark upon.
Not one
. Yet no one seemed to notice the monochromatic nature of the naiveté, or if they did, they didn’t think it interesting enough to remark upon.
The lack of inquisitiveness on the part of folks of color as to why anyone might hate America wasn’t due to insensitivity, of course. It surely wasn’t because they were any less horrified by the slaughter of three thousand innocent people, or any less scared about future attacks. But to be black or brown is to
know
that there are reasons to feel less than giddy about the United States; it is to have a love-hate relationship with the nation. Only whites have the luxury of thinking the world sees us as we see us, and that the U.S. has been a force for unparalleled and uninterrupted good, doing nothing around the globe that could possibly explain America-hatred the likes of which we discovered on that fateful day. But people of color know that things have been a bit more complicated, that terrorism isn’t new, that innocent people have been targeted before, and by the very same empire that now seemed to believe it had been victimized in ways never before seen in human history. People of color have never had the luxury of believing the national fairy tales upon which white Americans have come to depend.
know
that there are reasons to feel less than giddy about the United States; it is to have a love-hate relationship with the nation. Only whites have the luxury of thinking the world sees us as we see us, and that the U.S. has been a force for unparalleled and uninterrupted good, doing nothing around the globe that could possibly explain America-hatred the likes of which we discovered on that fateful day. But people of color know that things have been a bit more complicated, that terrorism isn’t new, that innocent people have been targeted before, and by the very same empire that now seemed to believe it had been victimized in ways never before seen in human history. People of color have never had the luxury of believing the national fairy tales upon which white Americans have come to depend.
The events of September 11 would make quite apparent the glaring experiential divide between whites and folks of color in the United States. Over the next several months I would keep track of how many cars I saw with “United We Stand” bumper stickers, and the racial identity of the persons behind the wheels of those cars. Whereas I saw plenty of people of color driving cars with “support the troops” stickers (likely because they had a relative in the armed services, given the disproportionate number of people of color in uniform), I saw literally
zero
vehicles driven by black or brown folks that sported a sticker proclaiming national unity. I encountered over five hundred such cars driven by whites, by the time I stopped counting, but none driven by African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, or indigenous persons. People of color know that national unity is not something that we can make real by simply proclaiming it; nor are they likely to think war a sufficient basis upon which to rest a claim for togetherness. Unity requires a unity of opportunity, treatment, and experience in everyday settings: on the job, in the schools, or in the justice system. What people of color knew, but whites had the luxury of ignoring, was that being attacked by foreign forces had done nothing to bring unity in those areas. The bumper stickers, for them, would have to wait.
zero
vehicles driven by black or brown folks that sported a sticker proclaiming national unity. I encountered over five hundred such cars driven by whites, by the time I stopped counting, but none driven by African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, or indigenous persons. People of color know that national unity is not something that we can make real by simply proclaiming it; nor are they likely to think war a sufficient basis upon which to rest a claim for togetherness. Unity requires a unity of opportunity, treatment, and experience in everyday settings: on the job, in the schools, or in the justice system. What people of color knew, but whites had the luxury of ignoring, was that being attacked by foreign forces had done nothing to bring unity in those areas. The bumper stickers, for them, would have to wait.
The extent to which whites and blacks have almost completely different lenses through which we see the country and the world was made glaringly apparent the night in 2002, when professor Michael Eric Dyson and I were on
Phil Donahue
. We were there to discuss comments made by Republican leader Trent Lott, in which he had praised arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond, suggesting at Thurmond’s one hundredth birthday party that the country would have been better off had we all listened to Strom back in the day. In attempting to make the point that whites and blacks remember our history differently, Mike noted, as an example, that although 9/11 had been a tragedy of great magnitude, black folks had known about terrorism for a long time. As he put it: “I know a lot of you here in New York were running for your lives on 9/11, and that was terrible, but my people have been running for four hundred years, so what else is new?”
Phil Donahue
. We were there to discuss comments made by Republican leader Trent Lott, in which he had praised arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond, suggesting at Thurmond’s one hundredth birthday party that the country would have been better off had we all listened to Strom back in the day. In attempting to make the point that whites and blacks remember our history differently, Mike noted, as an example, that although 9/11 had been a tragedy of great magnitude, black folks had known about terrorism for a long time. As he put it: “I know a lot of you here in New York were running for your lives on 9/11, and that was terrible, but my people have been running for four hundred years, so what else is new?”
Immediately, a young white woman in the third row blew up as if he had called her momma a name. Her agitation got Donahue’s attention, prompting Phil to bound over to her seat, in his trademark fashion.
“How dare you compare the experience of black America with 9/11,” she exclaimed, furious that he would have made such a comparison.
How dare
he
? “Oh no sister,” Dyson retorted, “How dare
you
compare the events of 9/11 with four hundred years of oppression. Don’t get it twisted.”
he
? “Oh no sister,” Dyson retorted, “How dare
you
compare the events of 9/11 with four hundred years of oppression. Don’t get it twisted.”
The ability of whites to deny nonwhite reality, to not even comprehend that there
is
a nonwhite reality (or several different ones), indicates how pervasive white privilege is in this society. Whiteness determines the frame through which the nation will come to view itself and the events that take place within it. It allows the dominant perspective to become
perspectivism
: the elevation of the dominant viewpoint to the status of unquestioned and unquestionable truth.
is
a nonwhite reality (or several different ones), indicates how pervasive white privilege is in this society. Whiteness determines the frame through which the nation will come to view itself and the events that take place within it. It allows the dominant perspective to become
perspectivism
: the elevation of the dominant viewpoint to the status of unquestioned and unquestionable truth.
White reaction to 9/11 reminded me of the white man in his midthirties, who I’d seen on national TV after the not-guilty verdict in the 1995 criminal trial of O. J. Simpson, who lamented, “I now realize that everything I was taught in the third grade about this nation having the most wonderful justice system imaginable was all a lie!”
Now
he realized it! He had lived several decades believing the patriotic, pep rally propaganda of his teachers, preachers, and parents, but because of O. J., he had concluded that the system might not be fair. Had he grown up around people of color, they could have set him straight on how not-so-wonderful the American system of justice was by the time he was eleven. But he had had the luxury of believing the lie and then assuming that only the O. J. case demonstrated a crack in the system. Everything in his world had been fine until O. J. walked; then, and only then, was it as if the world was about to stop spinning on its axis.
he realized it! He had lived several decades believing the patriotic, pep rally propaganda of his teachers, preachers, and parents, but because of O. J., he had concluded that the system might not be fair. Had he grown up around people of color, they could have set him straight on how not-so-wonderful the American system of justice was by the time he was eleven. But he had had the luxury of believing the lie and then assuming that only the O. J. case demonstrated a crack in the system. Everything in his world had been fine until O. J. walked; then, and only then, was it as if the world was about to stop spinning on its axis.
With the attacks of September 11, the naiveté that had begun to crack for whites because of the O.J. verdict now lay shattered among the wreckage at the foot of Manhattan. Between the two events, not to mention a string of suburban school shootings that had transpired from the mid-’90s until early 2001—which were always met by cries of disbelief that such things could happen in places like that—it had been a tough few years for white denial. The only question was whether or not we’d be capable of learning anything from the truths being revealed.
SOMETIMES, THE TRUTHS
that are revealed to us are difficult to accept, after all. Especially when they tell you something about yourself that you’d rather not face.
that are revealed to us are difficult to accept, after all. Especially when they tell you something about yourself that you’d rather not face.
In April 2003, I boarded a plane bound for St. Louis. From there I would fly to Iowa for a conference. Prior to that day, I had flown on a thousand or so individual flights in my life, but as I walked down the jet bridge that morning, I glanced into the cockpit and saw something I had never seen before, in all my years of air travel: not one, but two black pilots at the controls of the plane—a rare sight for any air traveler, considering the small percentage of commercial pilots who are African American.
Given the paucity of pilots of color in the United States, and given what I had at that point been doing professionally for thirteen years, one might think that two black men in the cockpit that morning would have been a welcome sight to me. And upon sufficient reflection it would be. But upon a mere instantaneous reflection—which is to say, no reflection at all—this had not been my initial reaction. Sadly, my first thought upon seeing who would be in charge of delivering me safely to St. Louis was more along the lines of, “Oh God, can these two really fly this plane?”
Now don’t get me wrong, almost as quickly as the thought came into my head, I was able to defeat it. I knew instantly that such a thing was absurd; after all, given the history of racism, I had every reason to think that these two men were probably among the very best pilots that the airline had—had they not been, they would never have made it this far. They would have been required to show not only that they could fly, but that they could do so over and above the prejudices and stereotypes that black folks have had to overcome in any job they do.
I also knew that in the months before this flight, several white pilots had been hauled off of planes because they had been too drunk to fly them, or because, in the case of two pilots for Southwest, they had decided to strip down to their underwear and invite the flight attendants into the cockpit as a practical joke: the kind of stupid human trick that no person of color would have imagined he or she could get away with. So, from a purely rational standpoint, I suppose I should have been glad to see anyone
but
a white pilot on my plane that day. But we don’t always react to things on the basis of intellect, or on the basis of what we know to be true; rather, we sometimes operate from a place of long-term conditioning, which, having penetrated our subconscious, waits for just the right moment to be triggered, and invariably manages to find it.
but
a white pilot on my plane that day. But we don’t always react to things on the basis of intellect, or on the basis of what we know to be true; rather, we sometimes operate from a place of long-term conditioning, which, having penetrated our subconscious, waits for just the right moment to be triggered, and invariably manages to find it.
In this case, no matter what I knew, I had been conditioned no less than anyone else to see people of color and immediately wonder if they’re really qualified for the job—to automatically assume they aren’t as good as a white person. The fact that I’d been working on my conditioning, and therefore was able to get a grip on my racist reaction is nice, but rather beside the point. All that really matters is that it happened, and could happen again. Maybe it wouldn’t happen every time, and maybe it wouldn’t happen to you (though don’t be so sure; until it happened to me, I might have doubted it too), but the fact is it could. All it takes is a situation that calls forth the conditioning, prompts the stereotype, and cues the response.
When I first told this story publicly, about a year after it happened, other white folks and even people of color responded by sharing their own stories of internalized racial supremacy or internalized oppression—stories in which they too had reacted to people of color in leadership positions skeptically or nervously, despite their own conscious commitments to equity and fairness. The lesson was clear: advertising works, and not just for toothpaste, tennis shoes, and toilet paper, but also for the transmission of racial stereotypes.
As I had sat in my seat on the airplane that day, I found myself shaking, not so much because of what I’d learned about myself, as for what I’d learned, yet again, about the way society can distort us. And with Kristy expecting our second daughter in just three months, the realization was fraught with even more emotion than it might otherwise have carried. No matter what Kristy and I would teach our girls, no matter how we would raise them, Ashton, and very shortly, Rachel, would be exposed to the culture’s presumptions and prejudices; and once exposed, they too would always be vulnerable, at risk for having those presumptions and prejudices transform them.
CHOCOLATE PAIN, VANILLA INDIGNATION
ON AUGUST 29,
2005, the city I loved and had called home for ten years ceased to exist. Though there is still, today, something called New Orleans, whatever it is cannot compare to what once was. Its zombified transformation to a place neither truly dead nor really alive was accomplished not because of that thing to which we so often refer as “mother nature,” not because of an act of God, however defined, and not directly because of the Hurricane known as Katrina. New Orleans as we knew it was destroyed by the acts of men: first and foremost, the men who constructed faulty levees for the Corps of Engineers, so that when Katrina came ashore in late August, though it did very little damage to the city itself, the storm surge overtopped and collapsed levee walls in dozens of places, leading to the inundation of roughly 80 percent of the town.
2005, the city I loved and had called home for ten years ceased to exist. Though there is still, today, something called New Orleans, whatever it is cannot compare to what once was. Its zombified transformation to a place neither truly dead nor really alive was accomplished not because of that thing to which we so often refer as “mother nature,” not because of an act of God, however defined, and not directly because of the Hurricane known as Katrina. New Orleans as we knew it was destroyed by the acts of men: first and foremost, the men who constructed faulty levees for the Corps of Engineers, so that when Katrina came ashore in late August, though it did very little damage to the city itself, the storm surge overtopped and collapsed levee walls in dozens of places, leading to the inundation of roughly 80 percent of the town.
As the news began to filter out that the waters were rising, and as over fifty thousand people crowded into the Superdome and Convention Center, which were being used as evacuation facilities of last resort for those who hadn’t fled the city (or couldn’t, as there were one hundred thousand people in New Orleans without access to cars), I sat glued to my television, unable to look away. Most of my friends had been able to get out in the days leading up to the storm making landfall. But others had not been so lucky. And I knew that those persons with whom I’d worked in public housing were likely trapped.
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