White Regression

We live within this false idea that offering 72 hours worth of disingenuous expressions of grief is doing true anti-racism work.

Before I begin this discussion, I want it to be clear that this is something that I have experienced and been a part of myself. So when I talk about the white community, I am included in this conversation. This concept is something that I have had to challenge myself with, and it is time to address this issue within the white community as a whole.

I’ve been trying to figure out a term or something that defines the anomaly of white people returning to apathy after crimes are committed against members of the Black community. So, I came up with the idea and the term “White Regression”. This term addresses the deadly backpedaling that white people perpetrate willfully after the Black community experiences tragedy.

There are frequent and specific patterns regarding white responses to traumas experienced within the Black community. I know that sounds generic, but I will offer a few examples of these traumas, so it is clear that I am not just grasping at straws. I will then address the specific patterns of responses. This list is specific to Black men and women that were killed by police officers, ex-police officers, or their community members.

SAY THEIR NAMES:

Ahmaud Aubery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Atatiana Jefferson, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner, Michael Brown.

Weekend Warriors

My observation concerning many of these murders is that the white community will express outrage for only a few days. However, once we feel like we have met our quota for public outrage and condolences, then it is acceptable for us to return to normalcy. We try to let the Black community see that we “really care” because we posted a few words and pictures on social media. We try to make the world know that we are “not racist”. Publicly we try to prove to ourselves that we are not racist.

We live within this false idea that offering 72 hours worth of disingenuous expressions of grief is doing true anti-racism work.

Once we express all of these things, we begin to return to our intimate relationship with regression. We take off our “Not Racist Because I Said RIP” t-shirt and we place it back into the dresser of White Privilege that we were gifted at birth. We start to take small steps backward, and it ends up snowballing until we gently and safely land right back where we started.

Silence replaces trending hashtags, indifference replaces cries for reform, racist narratives about the victim and their past replaces the deep sense of a need for justice, and the voices defending and supporting police officers become the loud majority once again.

The flipside to these patterns is that a vast majority of the white community ends up expressing outrage towards the victim. This majority will vehemently defend the murderers with badges. They will do all they can to assassinate the character of the deceased to make murder more palatable for themselves. They embrace the ravenous necessity of removing blame from the police officers of whom we were taught to believe were superheroes when we were as young as toddlers. These members in the white community don’t even offer themselves the chance to regress as they continue to be grounded in the overtly racist foundation they have procured over the years.

Keep it Real

White people do not experience oppression. We do not understand what it is like to walk out into a world that replaces our first names with the term “threat”. We do not know what it is like to experience the fear of being pulled over for a tail light out and thinking it may be the last thing we experience in our lifetime. We don’t have to be worried about being permanently taken away from our loved ones for nothing more than sleeping in our apartment.

We must be intentional in combatting White Regression. We do this by rejecting our internal demands for comfortability. We do this by having conversations with and learning from people in the Black Community. We do this by admitting our complicity in perpetuating the system that props up and gives power to police officers who murder with no consequences. We do this by getting involved in changing policies in our communities or our states. We do this by making tangible changes. We change this by…doing.

Consider the fact that there are so many of us that won’t even consider going out to protest; because we think it’s unsafe or we think that it won’t accomplish anything. If we can’t even walk outside of our doors to stand, march, and vocally support the Black community, how can we tell ourselves that we are also willing to sacrifice to make real progress? Protesting is one of the most painless things the white community can do. However, even when some members of the white community do participate in a protest, they think that is enough. The truth is that protesting without finding a way to make real change, is just another example of feeding our egos and making us feel as if we truly made our mark on history.

Violent Silence

White Regression is a venomous experience that returns every time one of these tragedies occurs, and it lures us back into the casual acceptance of gross injustice. It is the direct descendant of White Supremacy. It is the expression of our belief that only White Lives Matter. Although, we do our best to let everyone else know that we believe that All Lives Matter, all the while not even being able to verbally express that Black Lives Matter because it attacks our deep-rooted white supremacy.

We do just enough to make it look like we care. We do just enough to let everyone see that we are outraged. We do just enough to pretend that we want to make real change. Yet, everyone else sees right through that, and they sit and wait for us to regress to our original state of indifference, ignorance, and apathy.

The souls of those taken too early stand next to us watching as we regress back into our white comfortability and back into the familiar house of injustice in which we reside so peacefully.

It is time to get uncomfortable at all costs. It is time to grow regardless of how gutwrenching it may be. It is time to stop lying to ourselves by saying things such as All Lives Matter when we genuinely don’t believe that. It is time to understand that regression must be replaced with progression by any means necessary.

It is time to understand that: