What we did not learn about was the system of white oppression. We did not learn about how the structural inequalities were built into our system of government and continue to affect Black people today. We did not learn about redlining, or if we did, it didn't leave an impression on my young white self. The horrible things that happened back then were committed by evil people like the KKK. White people back then were either ignorant racist mobs under the lynching trees and in the courtrooms, or they were saviors who fought for freedom and equality.
In our history books and in our pop culture, white people are re-writing Black history, just as they have been ever since they first stole people from Africa. Take for example the movie The Help. It is not really a movie about the help, but about a young white woman who helps those poor black maids stand up for themselves against the mean, racist white women who treat them poorly. This type of whiteness-centering and caricature of racism is so embedded in American society that most of the time we don't even know it's there.
When Trayvon Martin died, I was pretty angry, so I wrote an angry piece about how racism is often a subtle and unconscious reaction based on stereotypes and bias, and we all need to do better. While true, it is not the truest truth. It was an attempt to dispel the myth that racism is racist people intentionally committing racist acts, but supported a myth of its own by emphasizing racism as individuals behaving poorly to each other instead of as the system of oppression built into our institutions, as prejudice + power.
I didn't really get institutional racism until I read The Case for Reparations. As I said when I posted it,
I learned a lot, but I can't see a way to post this without it looking like I want credit for having read the whole thing. Because it was long and difficult. It made me sad and upset and angry.Angry at the injustices, at how difficult it will be to change anything - and as cases of police killings of Black Americans continue to happen, over and over again, while police districts suppress evidence and the judicial system turns a blind eye, angry at ignorance. I, now enlightened, wondered how anyone could presume to have an opinion about these things without knowing the history? How could I have ever thought to have justified opinions on race before?
Black history is really American history. Coupled with the systematic genocide of the Native Americans, it is the slavery that made our fledgling nation an economic power in the world, the Jim Crow and segregation that helped white America build their identity as individualistic entrepreneurs and reject social welfare programs, the modern doctrines of colorblindness and multiculturality that ease any remaining white guilt while we wash our hands of our ugly past.
Though I do believe that education is the key to making things better, it is not enough. It only addresses individuals and not systems. I didn't understand institutional racism for so long because as a white person, I don't have to. And when the knowledge appeared in my lap, I was eager to absorb it in part because I'm an academic. Plus, I really love to appear smart. Now when I'm having drinks with people I get to say "race is a social construct" or explain redlining and feel superior.
Pessimism aside, I encourage everybody, especially the people who will probably never read this in the first place, to do some real Learning this Black History month. Heck, maybe I will even dust off something on my reading list - The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander perhaps. But never stop learning, and never assume that Knowing Things will make everything better. The structure of white supremacy will stand until we can tear it down.
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