Jamie Utt explains how racism robs us of our ability to feel and to empathize in the face of injustice.
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White people, we face a choice.
We can choose to continue to invest in White supremacy and in doing so, surrender our humanity.
Or we can choose to divest from Whiteness.
You see, Whiteness is not our skin color. Whiteness is not “stuff White people like.” Whiteness is not our families or our culture. Whiteness is a system that was created by people who look like us for the sole purpose of consolidating power in the hands of a few.
Whiteness is the system that has, for hundreds of years, instilled in us the ideology of White supremacy to keep our people from investing in common struggle with people of Color.
Whiteness and White supremacy are at the same time not real, total social constructions, and completely real, as they inspire us to take up for a system that dehumanizes everyone.
Whiteness is the system that ensures when a White man guns down an unarmed Black teen in the street, there won’t even be a trial, and we will defend it behind keyboards and white sheets.
Whiteness and White supremacy dehumanize everyone.
Of course, Whiteness and White supremacy do not dehumanize me in the ways that they dehumanize people of Color. That is a dehumanization we can never understand.
But as I look at the vile racism and White supremacy splashed across my social media feeds tonight, I hurt out of empathy for the parents of every Black child in this country. But my hurt is also more than that. I hurt because I also see what racism does to us, what it does to me and those White people I love.
Racism robs us of our ability to feel, to empathize, to hurt in the face of injustice.
Without those things, are we still human?
Whiteness dehumanizes us as it demands that we give up that part of ourselves that should have said, “This is wrong” when the “no indictment” verdict came back.
I posted a tweet last night that made a lot of White people mad:
But it’s true. This is not hyperbole. Maybe you don’t consider yourself a White supremacist. Maybe you even believe you’re “colorblind” (excuse the too-common, ableist term).
But in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, “A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.”
So when you defend this system and its decision that so blatantly devalues Black life and protects the interests of Whiteness, you defend White supremacy. And in doing so, you sacrifice part of your humanity.
We face a choice: continue to invest in that which dehumanizes everyone or stand on the side of justice, and in doing so, risk regaining our humanity.
What are you willing to give? What are you willing to give up?
When I was in Ferguson and St. Louis last month, the refrain about White people’s role in this movement was clear.
One Black elder put it this way, “It’s great that you’re in the streets and all. There are a lot of White people here at this march. But at the end of the day, what are you saying to engage the person wearing the ‘I am Darren Wilson’ t-shirt? What are you doing to engage White people who would never come out here? That’s what we need you to do.”
This sentiment was expressed by nearly every person of Color I talked to: White people, get your people.
In by far the most powerful of these conversations that I had while in Ferguson, my friend Arielle from the brilliant Black Millennial Musings stressed that White people have to be willing to sacrifice by divesting from Whiteness and by calling in our own people if we are going to ever truly act in solidarity.
In short, we have to ask ourselves this: What am I willing to give? What am I willing to give up?
Are we willing to give of our energy, our time, our heartfelt passion to engage other White people in ending White supremacy?
Are we willing to give up our silence that so protects us and shields us and showers on us the privileges of Whiteness? Are we willing to stop paying the wages of Whiteness and regain our humanity?
What are we willing to give? What are we willing to give up?
It’s Time to Choose
The movement in Ferguson stands as but one iteration of a movement, one that is not going away. This movement is led by young Black, Brown, Asian, Arab, and Indigenous youth from Palestine to Tibet to Paris, New York, and Ferguson. This movement is led by the youth that our economy and its “recovery” were never built for.
This movement is led by young cisgender and Transgender men and women and gender non-conforming people. This movement is led by Queer youth, and it’s led by youth with every ability and disability in this human experience.
And this movement demands that we as White people choose.
We are no longer offered the choice of silence. In fact, we never were. Silence is consent in a system of White supremacy. We simply fooled ourselves into thinking our silence protected us from complicity.
We can choose to continue investing in the systems of Whiteness and White supremacy.
Or we can choose to divest from Whiteness and its poisonous ideology.
But we have to choose.
4 Ways We Can Choose to Divest from Whiteness and White Supremacy
1. We choose to divest from White supremacy when we lend our support, financial or otherwise, to those leading this movement. Do it right now. Send a paypal donation in whatever amount you can afford to MillennialAU@gmail.com, or donate to Lost Voices through their website.
2. We choose to divest from Whiteness when we show up. As a dear friend Lex recently pointed out, if we show up to the tune of 10,000 for an internet cat video festival, we surely can show up in the streets for justice. Lex put it this way this morning on social media:
“If you don’t usually go to rallies or protests, and your body is able to, I invite you to call up some courage today and join a beautiful crowd of people calling for justice. Being in the streets together is powerful, it’s healing, and it’s what we have to do in response to racism, injustice and violence.”
3. We choose to divest from White Supremacy when we act, when we engage in systems change that holds police accountable for racist violence. For those of us with access (as a result of wealth or connections), there is a need to press mayors, city council members, alderman, police chiefs, public prosecutors, and other local power holders for change. When they ignore you (and they likely will), keep contacting them. Set up meetings, and email them regularly.
When you reach out, here are a few specific, measurable things you can call for:
- Demand Police Body Cameras – We live in an age that allows incredible surveillance of police behavior for accountability purposes, but only a small minority of police forces prioritize the technology for this accountability. Body cameras, a simple and inexpensive addition to the police uniform, have been found to reduce incidents of excessive police force by as much as 50% where used. Costing as little as $199 per officer (plus hosting and transmission costs), this not only can reduce the violence committed and protect citizens from violence, but it can protect police who are doing their jobs legitimately. Plus, limiting police brutality also ensures that cities don’t need to pay out millions in settlements in civil suits, so if you’re talking to someone who values tax savings over considerations of human life (yes, they exist), you can show how cameras actually save tax payers money.
- Demand Accountable Civilian Review – Having cameras and accountability procedures is ineffective unless there is a legitimate and empowered civilian review authority with actual teeth to hold police accountable. After all, when footage from body cameras or dash cameras is held and stored by police, it’s far too easy for footage to conveniently disappear (“Oh, that camera was malfunctioning that day”) when there’s an incident of police violence. Thus, if your city doesn’t have a civilian review authority with actual teeth, demand one. The local police union will fight to ensure it is ineffective, but civilian review from members of the community most affected is a powerful tool for change.
- Demand Independent Police Liability Insurance – Currently city governments are on the hook financially when their police officers brutalize citizens, yet police unions are powerful enough that local politicians rarely hold police accountable. However, insurance companies that care about their bottom line would have no problem holding police accountable when they abuse their authority. Thus, a simple thing to demand in your municipality is for police to be required to pay for their own liability insurance as a condition of employment in the police department. If they brutalize citizens and end up losing a suit, the insurance companies will make it quite expensive to hold insurance or will drop the officer completely, thus ensuring that the person can no longer be employed as a police officer in your city. Simply put, hit them in the pocket book to hold police accountable. Learn about the movement in Minneapolis to require police to purchase their own insurance.
4. Lastly, we choose to divest from Whiteness when we break the cycle of socialization that passes White supremacy down throughout our generations. When you gather for a meal, call your family in to discuss the ways we are complicit in racism. And engage them in talking about what we can do about it.
This means that we can’t just act like we’re the “best White person” and callously call out those White folks in our families who say racist stuff (no matter how good that may feel). We have to choose the “less disposable way of holding each other accountable” by calling one another in to realize change.
Whatever it looks like, we have to choose to divest.
For if we don’t, we risk further distancing ourselves from our own humanity in order to gain the simple privileges of this system that benefits us in so many other ways.
what an insecure man – imagine thinking your whiteness is a bad thing – the poor guy – must have been toilet trained and gunpoint.
Absolutely the opposite, white people were too humane , thwey have to become cruel, strict and separate themselves from others in order to survive. Never again white man`s humanity will be abused by other races. They beg white man for evertything and when they see white man in the street they attack, no more foolishness. Whit man time to stand up for yourself.
Spot on response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7MAO7McNKE
Utt comes very close to explaining white supremacy/white racism…but he does not go far enough. Dr. Frances Cress Welsing is a prominent black psychiatrist with offices in Washington, Dee Cee. For decades, Welsing has written and argued that yes, monopolization of power is a major component of white supremacy; but its most basic and fundamental raison d’ etre and dogged continuing existence is grounded in “white” folks’ existential fear of genetic annihilation should “people of color” the world over ever become truly “equal.” It is, she says, a matter of simple survival. The gene for color is dominant, while the… Read more »
That’s rather simplistic. If it were just about breeding rights, then there’d be no need for most of the other bits of racism. Having black men and women proportionally represented in politics and boardrrooms wouldn’t be a particular issue.
What’s more, it would be trivial to avoid such a problem, by either keeping it within the race or by having more children. The latter being a far bigger problem in terms of keeping white folks around than the former.
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing is a black supremacist, homophobe, and all-around loony tunes character that no scientist takes seriously. There isn’t a “gene for color”; presumably you’re writing about melanin. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of genetics knows that most traits, including skin color, do not follow simple Mendelian inheritance. This is why recessive traits are not lost through time. For example, the sickle cell allele continues to be passed down from one generation of African Americans to another even though it offers no selective advantage in North America. Black folks might find solace in ideas like Welsing’s “melanin… Read more »
Tim you are obviously a learned man – you nailed it bro.
wow incredible that someone believes this
A lot of these problems could be solved if people of color voted in their local elections. It’s crazy that in a majority Black town, most of the people running the town are white. That happens because hardly anyone is paying attention to local government except the white people. It’s a democracy. Vote for some councilmembers who will set different policies.
Er, yes it is, chap.
How does it make any more sense to hold white people as a whole responsible for the killing of Michael Brown than it does to hold black people as a whole responsible for his shoplifting?
I think you’re seriously misguided Jamie. White supremacy and you automatically assume justice wasn’t done? So all the testimony was a lie, white folk just being powerful white folk? Have you seen the Administration’s make up? Almost all black? I don’t care of course, just pointing out that this collective feel good happens among all people. If black people suddenly took power you my friend would most likely out of a job becaus3 you’re not like them. No matter what you say or do, unless they could use you as a tool. This is how people are Jamie
Mark — Bullshit on your last comment starting with: “If black people suddenly took power…”
No, it is not just how people are. It’s how people who are severely deficient in empathy are.
Dismantling white supremacy ideology would simply have white people come to view themselves as regular human beings, not deserving of special privileges because of the color of their skin.
It is about shared power. Not one group being able to do harm without accountability.
Justice wasn’t done, if the prosecutor had wanted an indictment he would have gotten an indictment. And indictment isn’t exactly hard to get, it just means that there’s sufficient evidence to warrant a trial. The fact that the prosecutor himself failed to mention the fact that the deceased didn’t have a weapon is rather telling of how serious the prosecutor was taking it. The fact that there was no weapon is something that the grandjury should have been able to take into consideration when evaluating the course of action that the officer took. It’s just more of the same Southern… Read more »
I appreciate the sentiment, but rhetorically you are going too far, Jamie. Claiming that you and me are not really human beings is a slur. What are we then? Animals? Subhuman? Illuminati lizard people?
Feminism, as we know, is the radical notion that women are people. That includes white women too. Please extend the same courtesy to white men, to black men, to everybody.
You may call out anybody as behaving in a shitty way, or even as being a shitty human being. But we are all human, we are all in it together.
so police should be harmless at the mercy often drug dealers and thugs who often have powerful weapons. and all of this because of a just verdict based on evidence and not what the mob of “protestors” feel. I just don’t understand how so called adults can look at the evidence and testimony of most of the witnesses and still want Officer Darren Wilson indicted. Would this be true if he was a black officer, would any of this hysteria be happening if he did not fit into the left’s racial politics narrative.
If it was a black officer I would feel exactly the same. People are looking at race, rather than the uniform and badge. My father served in the Army in WWII and told me that ,”If you ever want to see the worst side of someone, give them a uniform and authority.”
Here’s a better idea: Divest police departments of all full-auto military weapons. And body armor, Nazi helmets and facemasks. Also military vehicles and aircraft including drones. They have become a “Kevlar class” unto themselves that sees “civilians” as potential enemies. How far do you think the Nazis would have gotten if every Jew they came after was armed? Or if police in the fifties and sixties faced armed minorities?