The Undercover Introvert

Racism 101: Time is Magical!

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We’ve all heard the old cliche that time heals all wounds. But does it, though? Really?

I think we need to debunk this bullshit idea that time is somehow magical, and that if we only let enough of it pass us by, we’ll forget the wrongs done, and the consequences of those wrongs — if left unaddressed — will also magically evaporate like a stagnant puddle on a hot day.

I’ve had a variation of the following conversation on more than a dozen occasions:

Me: Systemic racism exists and the consequences of it are far reaching and multifaceted.

White Person: I’m not racist. I voted for Obama. Twice.

Me: That comment is problematic in and of itself, but I’m talking about the way our institutions were built and how they work to hold some people back and give others advantages, all based on skin color. This isn’t really about individual racists.

WP: Slavery was a long time ago. Get over it.

Me: *gets over the conversation instead* Next.

There are white folks who honestly believe that just because slavery is no longer legal in the United States that racial equality has been achieved. For them, it’s as though the years 1865 to 1965 (and beyond to the present day, if we’re being absolutely honest) just didn’t exist, and we’ve all been living in a post-racial paradise. As evidence, they like to cite the presidency of Barack Obama. How could he be elected (TWICE!!) if racism was still a problem? As though the whitelash of Donald Trump’s election didn’t rise up and smack us back to the harsh reality of what this country is and how we all play into a system of oppression and advantage based on race.

Despite the oft mentioned cliche, time does not heal all wounds. Slavery isn’t like your dog dying, y’all. Time does heal that wound, because you learn to live without Skippy or Fido, or whatever your dear sweet furbaby’s name was. Time brings peace because it separates you from whatever tragic way you lost that pet, and it eventually gives you the space to think fondly of the times you spent with Skippy, Fido, etc. You never stop missing the pet, but you do stop disintegrating into a puddle of tears every time you think about her/him.

That personal tragedy is quite different from a system of oppression, based on the color of a person’s skin, in which one group of people owned another group of people for hundreds of years. And then, after the actual ownership ended, that group of people in charge of everything — who had been able to build power and wealth for hundreds of years on the backs of members of the other group, who toiled for free as inferior human livestock — created laws and crafted institutions that would serve as roadblocks to the newly ‘freed’ group of former slaves to keep them and their descendants from ever achieving power, wealth, or true freedom. This ruling group had the advantage of education, land ownership, existing wealth, and monopoly over every governmental office.

We only have to look to history to see how everything unfolded. Even the thoroughly whitewashed versions of the American story tell most of the tale through its obtuse avoidance of the abject brutality of what occurred.

If I get to set up a contest in the exact way that suits me best, and I also get to set the conditions in which you get to challenge me (or if you get to challenge me), it makes it extremely difficult for you to succeed, especially since I’ve kept you from practicing whatever skills you’ll need to use in order to win the contest. Now imagine me and people who look like me doing this for 400+ years using varying methods, all with an aim to purposely handicap you and block your success. And the minute you say, wow, this contest is set up for me to fail, I respond with, maybe you just need to work harder. Everyone had the same opportunities. Quit bitching and just learn to compete better.

Bullshit, right?

Because, for centuries, people like me have made sure people like you are at a perpetual disadvantage. Telling you to get your shit together is worse than dismissive. It’s indicative of my refusal to understand history and how the last few centuries have helped me rise, on the backs of people like you. Maybe neither one of us were born into slavery, but because some of your ancestors were owned by people who looked like me, that leaves you a few hundred miles back in a race I’m currently ‘winning’ because I was born way ahead of you to begin with, based on the color of my skin, and perhaps on the combination of my gender, sexual preference, etc.

So, let’s talk about history, and why time isn’t really the answer to how we heal something as far reaching and insidious as systemic racism. Because this was no accident. This system was purposefully put in place by white folks to keep black folks under their bootheels. And it’s still working like gangbusters.

Let’s take a quick walk through the last few hundred years:

The first Africans arrive in colonial Virginia in chains in 1619. Welcome to what will one day become America! The land of the free, but not for y’all, of course!

In 1808, the slave trade officially ends, but black folks are still property of their white masters, and there are thousands upon thousands of them in chains.

In 1865, the Civil War ends, the 13th Amendment becomes a thing, and black folks are essentially free after more than 200 years of enslavement in North America. Hello Reconstruction! Oh, and also hello Black Codes! These are laws passed by southern states to restrict the rights of newly freed black slaves and to make sure they are still providing cheap or unpaid labor. Black Codes are mostly crushed by federal troops during Reconstruction, but, like a bad racist penny, they turn up again…

In 1877, Reconstruction ends (meaning federal troops hightail it out of the south, leaving black folks to fend for themselves in the not-too-happy-and-even-less-friendly south), and the Black Codes are back with a vengeance, this time wearing the visage of Jim Crow. Enter codified segregation, obstacles to black folks voting (oftentimes deadly), and laws that make certain activities illegal for blacks in order to put them back under lock and key or working on farms and chain gangs as free labor reminiscent of the antebellum south. Jim Crow laws stay in place for nearly a century, y’all. And defying these laws means beatings and death for black Americans.

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act passes, putting a legal end to the Jim Crow Era, meaning segregation on the basis of race is technically no longer allowed, but, of course, we all know that simply passing a law doesn’t change the culture. Because redlining exists. Targeting of black communities by law enforcement, both in the south and north, although southern law enforcement also has wide scale entwinement with the KKK. The rise of the Law and Order Era (thanks, Nixon!) that eventually leads to the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, which has resulted in more black folks being under lock and key than were ever slaves.

But let’s pretend that everything has been hunky dory since the Emancipation Proclamation, y’all. Let’s act like black folks and other POCs are on equal footing with white folks, who have been running shit since the 1600s when black people arrived in chains via an involuntary transatlantic cruise from hell.

Do you see? Can you understand that time can’t heal anything when there has been a centuries’ long plan in place to keep one race from achieving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all to benefit members of the ruling race?

Let’s stop pretending that time is magical, and that if enough of it passes, everything will come out okay in the end and we’ll be absolved of doing any of the hard work to dismantle widespread systems of oppression. Time belongs to whoever wields power. It’s a tool, same as the narrative we’ve gotten into the habit of calling our history, same as everything else that matters.

Before you tell a black person that slavery was a long time ago, educate yourself on the full dirty, terrifying, and ugly thing that is the history of this country. Slavery is one part of a story that is still being written today. And that inequality was hardwired into the plot by authors we pretend had everyone’s best interests at heart. That inequality takes a hit and rises again, stronger than ever. From slavery, to black codes, to Jim Crow, to the prison industrial complex.

It. Just. Keeps. Coming.

And its greatest trick lies in our collective refusal to admit that it exists. We play nice and pretend that some of us aren’t being purposely crushed in a wheel of oppression that has been turning since the 1600s.

I get it. This is some heavy shit. There are times I hang my head and want to lie flat on the ground from the weight of the knowledge that everything about this country was constructed so folks who are my color and gender would not succeed. America was not built for me, though it was built by people who looked like me. I was never meant to enjoy the fruits of this nation, and yet I’m here. Time won’t heal this shit. Only action will.

Don’t tell me to get over slavery. Don’t tell me we’re on equal footing. There are people who toiled, bled, wept, and died to get me where I am today. There are still people toiling, bleeding, weeping, and dying. I act to honor them, to lift them up. My skin color doesn’t give me a choice.

And if you’re ashamed of history, of what people who looked like you did, then get in this fight. Act. Do something besides pretending that everything is fine. Nothing changes by staying willfully ignorant. Wake up. Stand up. Goddamn it, do something.

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Democrats: We Can Do Better

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I know the official Black History Month celebration is drawing to a close in a few days, but I make a point to revel in black excellence and black achievement 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There’s so much out there that we weren’t taught in schools. Immerse yourselves, y’all.

2019 marks 400 years since black folks arrived on the North American continent in chains. And though the month of February is often used to lightly touch on a few of our most famous black citizens, I’m not writing this with an aim to play along and sugarcoat things with inspiring tales of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

This Black History Month has been a little rough for us, fellow Democrats. I can’t think of a time when blackface was more of a thing than when blackface was actually a thing. But, as with all trying times, this absolute dumpster fire of a crisis presents us with the space to take our own inventory, as well as with an opportunity to grow as a party.

Last year about this time, I spoke to my local Democratic Party about the need to enthusiastically celebrate black folks outside of the 28 day confines of the month of February because we’re your base voters. We turn out. We don’t vote against our own interests or let a single issue derail our ability to see the bigger electoral picture. We have a deep understanding of the historical disadvantages of our skin color and how our only path forward involves the tag team of mindful legislation and judicial intervention. For us, voting is survival. Going backwards could cost us our lives, and standing still isn’t an option. So, we hitch our wagons to the Democratic Party and keep on trucking in the direction of the Promised Land.

Yet, racism within the Democratic Party still thrives, and we don’t deal openly with it. Most of the time, we don’t even admit that it exists. We’re happy to take a detailed inventory of the Republican Party, manufacturing outrage, enthusiastically pointing fingers, and calling for swift action whenever a member of the GOP marches into racist territory. But I’m less concerned with the bigotry festering within the opposing team than I am dismayed and frustrated by the racism going unchecked and unacknowledged in my own.

What I’m suggesting we do as a party is take a long, hard, critical look in the mirror. Because the racist actions and rhetoric that we see on the other side of the aisle exist in our ranks as well, and it’s more prevalent than we care to admit.

Fixing a problem means first admitting that there is a problem.

This trouble goes deeper than black people holding pitifully few positions of substantive leadership within the Party. It goes beyond not placing issues that disproportionately affect people of color at the center of our collective efforts. This problem is the stubborn refusal to see the Party for what it is and, further, to see how we each uphold systems of oppression in word, deed, and intention.

Slavery is America’s original sin, and it has tainted everything from the 1600s to the present day, like an insidious soundtrack underscoring every aspect of our day to day lives. This music goes mostly unheard, but we march along to that rhythm nonetheless.

If you want to see the evidence of institutional racism, you only have to choose to really look:

The ongoing environmental crisis in Flint, Michigan.

The massive disenfranchisement of black voters in Georgia during the 2018 elections.

The radically different approaches to the crack epidemic in inner city ghettos versus the opioid crisis in rural, white America.

The fact that it took the State of Florida this long to finally shed the last enduring vestige of the Jim Crow era by voting down the lifetime disenfranchisement of former felons.

I’ve been told many times by fellow Democrats that issues directly impacting people of color need to be set aside so we can focus on more ‘important’ matters. When bringing up issues surrounding the intersection of race and gender, I’ve repeatedly heard that so-called ‘identity politics’ is a cancer that makes meaningful political discourse impossible. I’ve spoken with Democrats who proudly fly, wear, and display the confederate flag, and these conversations have not gone well once I pointed out their symbol’s inherent racism.

It’s heritage, they argue. It’s history.

On that point, we agree.

It’s a reminder of a time when people who looked like you owned people who looked like me. To pretend otherwise is to attempt to rewrite history, much as was done during the Jim Crow Era when so many statues honoring confederate soldiers were erected in public spaces to remind black folks that the chains that once dehumanized them haven’t disappeared. They’ve merely transformed from literal to figurative.

The 35 car pile up that’s currently ongoing in Virginia is a national embarrassment for our party, and for us as Americans. But it speaks to a deeper problem. This kind of racism is everywhere. Governor Northam isn’t an outlier. Nor is Attorney General Herring. They are simply visible reminders of what normally remains invisible.

Black people stand before white judges who hold racist beliefs.

They see white doctors who hold racist beliefs.

They get stopped by police officers with itchy trigger fingers who hold racist beliefs.

They send their little black children to school to be taught by white teachers who hold racist beliefs.

They join progressive causes and organizations that refuse to prioritize issues directly affecting their communities, all in the name of unity.

These racists tendencies are latent. They don’t reveal themselves draped in white Klan hoods. They don’t march down the street, proudly announcing their presence. These tendencies are sneaky, and they work by infecting our interactions, our thoughts, our institutions.

As Democrats, we need to do the hard work to understand this. We need to center the voices of marginalized groups in order to begin the hard work of dismantling systems of oppression.

We are the big tent party. We are the ones demanding equality for all, but we can’t even come close to achieving that goal until we deal with the skeletons in our own walk in closets.

This isn’t just work for Black History Month. This is an undertaking to which we must commit the remainder of our lives.

First, look within, and only then move to hold your neighbor accountable.

True change is intentional. It’s labor intensive. And it means spending less time pointing fingers at others and more time reflecting on ways that you can make things better for everyone. Black people are telling you what’s wrong. You just have to listen.

**This is adapted from a speech I gave to my local Democratic Party

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What About White History Month?

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Every time Black History Month rolls around, I hear some foolishness muttered from various disgruntled melanin challenged folks about the monumental unfairness of there being no White History Month. Without fail, there are accusations of reverse racism and intense rants that wander into tangents that decry the lack of a white counterpart to Ebony magazine and BET.

After listening to several years of this, I just had to formally address those tortured souls who are angry about black folks ‘stealing’ the shortest month on the calendar.

Number one, y’all have the rest of the year. And, before Negro History Week started in 1926, y’all had the entire month of February too.

And let’s not forget that white people have traditionally had the bulk of recorded history on their side as well. From the unassailable bravery of the early settlers, to the riveting, definitely not problematic in any way founding of the country, to the steadfast belief in manifest destiny, the history of the United States is chocked full of the courageous exploits of (mostly) white men. If we think of history as a narrative with a starting point that extends backwards as far as collective memory allows and continues to the present day, then the authors of that narrative get to choose the stories that are included, the word choice, the chapter headings, the heroes, the villains, and the exclusion of the nameless rabble that are judged unsuitable to even make appearances as supporting cast members.

If we just narrow our conversation to the United States (and that in itself is problematic considering that, in the grand scheme of history, we’re relative newcomers), the authors of our American narrative are indisputably wealthy white men. Upon the birth of the nation, they were the sole group able to vote, to have a voice in the creation of our government, and to serve in office. Women were excluded. Black people were property. Free people of color (inclusive of Native Americans) were less than an afterthought that held zero political power within white society.

In the constraints of that carefully constructed tale of white male bravery, ingenuity, and perseverance in the face of adversity, where is the room for the contributions of people of color? Of women? Where is the counterbalance that’s only possible when other voices are brought to the table to share their perspectives?

In history classes from elementary to high school, we are taught that white men ‘discovered’ this continent. That they stood up to a tyrannical monarch and forged a democratic republic that would change the course of human history. That, through the divine edict of manifest destiny, the country metastasized from sea to shining sea, spreading the gifts of freedom and democracy across formerly uninhabited land.

But what of the Native Americans who were already living here when Europeans turned up? What about the black folks who toiled, unpaid and in chains, as property from the 1600’s until the Civil War granted them tentative freedom? What about women who passed from the possession of their fathers to the possession of their husbands? Where are those voices? Did these people truly contribute nothing to this country?

If the narrative we’re fed as children is to be believed, then, as a whole, no, these other people didn’t contribute much of value. There are exceptions, of course, but those merely prove the rule: white men are the focal point of history. Their deeds alone are honorable, courageous, and worthy of celebration.

Suffice to say, there’s no real need for White History Month, because we’ve basically been celebrating the illustrious history of white men 7 days a week, 365 days a year, from the time they set foot on the continent until the present day.

Things like Black History Month should be viewed as an attempt to balance scales that have been seriously out of whack for centuries. POCs and women aren’t simply supporting characters in the riveting production of white male excellence. We aren’t nameless, faceless extras in the background of a narrative about how fantastic white men have unilaterally judged themselves to be. History is more complex than that. Even within the significant constraints society placed on POCs, women, and Native Americans, they still made massive contributions to this country. And we’re finally adding their diverse voices to the narrative, enriching our overall understanding of history.

Instead of bemoaning the lack (ha!) of a White History Month, how about you question the lack of diverse voices in the history we were all taught as children? I’m furious when I learn about additional contributions made by POCs and women that were conveniently absent from the first twelve years of my education. Here’s one glaring example: I went to high school on Florida’s Space Coast, and yet the critical work of the women featured in the movie Hidden Figures was news to me.

Think about how many contributions of which we’re ignorant, about the lives and legacies we don’t bother to learn because no one bothered to teach them. It’s close to criminal.

We can do better.

Let’s change the narrative by consciously inviting a variety of perspectives, not just when viewing history, but when viewing the present day. Your point of view is limited to your education and beliefs. Do you actually want to learn, or do you want to keep ruminating on the same stale information you were force fed as a child? Diversity of perspective, of ideas, of storytellers should be encouraged, not feared. Only by including these formerly undervalued points of view will we gain the ability to comprehend the true richness of our shared history. Otherwise, it’s just he said-he said.

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The Whitewashing of Dr. King

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Over the past few years, I’ve been thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a great deal. Not just his legacy, though that’s part of it, but how that legacy has been received, how it’s been manipulated to fit a rapidly reconfiguring status quo.

We all have an idea of the kind of man Dr. King was, reinforced by the slow parade of teachers - from elementary to high school - discussing the salient points of his most widely known public address in which he talks about his dream for the nation and its black citizens. These formative years ultimately develop the lens through which we reflect critically on history. The old cliche is true, in that those with the power to write our history also have the power to shape how it will be packaged for future generations. Words are so powerful, even more so than memory, because once memory fades, words are all that remain to make sense of our communal past.

I’d submit that the view we have of Martin Luther King, Jr. is largely framed through glasses that have been whitewashed by those wielding the words through which history is passed down. We aren’t encouraged to see him as a revolutionary, as the radical catalyst of social change, as an end in and of himself. Instead, this formidable man is neutered and made safe by the way we’ve learned to view him today. He has become a means to society’s wider, and less noble ends. Even his words are dulled to suit purposes that are antithetical to the spirit of the movement he championed.

We never speak of Dr. King’s radicalism, which underpinned everything he did. We only speak of his civil disobedience, and only in a way in which that benign turn the other cheek mentality is indicative of his inherent humble nature. To accept violence without responding with violence is a heightened form of self control, a heightened form of obedience to the law, we’re told, from the time we first learn to read until the time we begin to formulate our own arguments, and society values an obedient negro above all else. A negro who knows his place. In this way, Dr. King’s words - sharp enough to cut through the complacency of his era when he uttered them - lose their meaning, and with it, their power.

A funny thing happens then. The microscope of history tightens its focus, eliminating the more troublesome aspects of Dr. King’s persona, and zeros in on what is most palatable to the wider - i.e. whiter - audience: a man who dreams of brotherhood, togetherness, and a world in which his little black children can hold hands with little white children. A world in which his very color can be whitewashed out of existence.

In retrospect, Dr. King is conceived as a benevolent figure, one behind whom every like minded white person would have proudly rallied. But this is disingenuous at best, straight up lies at worst. We only have to look towards the Black Lives Matter movement to see how the bulk of white folks would have responded to a throng of black people demanding freedom. We only have to look at the way Colin Kaepernick’s nonviolent actions are received by the general (white) public. These are protests that fully embody Dr. King’s call for nonviolent direct action, the kind of action that cannot be ignored. The kind of action that forces society as a whole to fully face the existence of systemic racism festering in all facets of American life. In this way, nonviolent action feels like a slap to the face. But Dr. King understood that this tension was necessary to create change, that waiting for equal rights to eventually arrive was a fool’s errand. Complete disruption of the status quo was essential because “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Change is born through upheaval. It isn’t comfortable, and it doesn’t fit the timeline of the oppressor. The March on Washington culminated with Dr. King’s most famous speech, and if I had a dollar for every time a white person told me that black people today should take what they mistakenly believe was Dr. King’s advice in the I Have a Dream speech, I would have enough to open a money market account with a competitive interest rate. These are the people who seem to forget that Dr. King’s protests often led to arrests. They forget that his protests were often met with brutal violence from the police. They forget that the boycotts for which Dr. King advocated brought entire cities to their knees. The man didn’t just have a dream, he had a plan, and white America hated him for it.

There are those who say Colin Kaepernick should just shut up and play. There are those who look disdainfully at Black Lives Matter activists, writing them off as criminals, thugs, ingrates. There are those who scoff whenever a person of color points out the network of systemic racism snaking up from the very foundation of this country to infect every institution, every social interaction. There are also those who see the injustices with clarity, but are content to remain silent as long as they are not directly affected. Many of these people hold Dr. King in high regard. Because he’s safe to venerate through those whitewashed glasses. He’s no longer a threat to the current social order. He has been fully assimilated into white American culture. His radicalism has been erased from our collective memory, leaving only the palatable parts of his legacy behind.

And, yet, Dr. King’s words in another, less widely quoted piece of writing still resonate, as though he wrote them only moments ago:

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I have paraphrased the above sentiment in many a conversation with all kinds of white folks, telling them that I was less concerned with the outwardly racist and more concerned with those who can’t understand the urgency of the current situation because they themselves are not at risk. Why stand with Black Lives Matter activists when you don’t have to worry about your black son, husband, or father being stopped by police and beaten or shot without cause? Why be uncomfortable for the seconds it takes a black NFL player to drop to one knee during the Star Spangled Banner when you can simply continue to exist within a cushy, disaffected bubble?

I have had white people tell me there are more important causes for which to fight. That racial justice can wait while we figure out these other, more vital matters. They seem willfully resistant to Dr. King’s ‘fierce urgency of now’. Because for those of us struggling beneath the heavy burden of systemic racism, there is no better time than right now to act, to fight, to demand the rights promised to all men and women in this country’s founding documents.

How can you read Dr. King’s words and not see his disappointment in the apathy of so-called white allies? In their unwillingness to truly invest in the struggle for freedom and equality for all? I feel that disappointment every day, and I worry it will turn into frustrated hostility, though Dr. King warns against that too, bidding us to never “satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”

Dr. King kept from sinking into that pit of listless despair through his abiding faith that change would come, that people of color would be delivered to the Promised Land, though he might not live to see it himself. He advised: “oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.” But this doesn’t come without struggle, without people willing to fight, even if it means losing their jobs, their freedom, their lives.
And the struggle continues to this day.

We don’t live in a post-racial society. The very idea is absurd, despite so many claims to the contrary. And a post-racial society is not what Dr. King was dreaming of in his famous speech. His dream was a country in which his blackness was no longer a liability, a barrier to access, a reason for him to be mistreated, jailed, beaten, or killed.

Those in charge of the present are also in charge of history, and they bend it however they like, weaving a narrative that suits the needs of the current era. In the here and now, the safe, whitewashed version of Dr. King is celebrated and oft-quoted. He receives his own day on the calendar filled with marches, breakfasts, and sermons in houses of worship.

Memory fades, and carefully curated words move in to fill the gaps.

Unless we decide to never allow ourselves to forget who this man really was. A member of the resistance. A revolutionary. An enemy of the status quo, creating such tension and discomfort that white America had no choice but to act.

And he paid with his life.

Honor Martin Luther King, Jr. by seeing him for what he truly was. And then see this country for what it truly is. A work in progress. A place where racism still runs rampant, though it wears many clever disguises. And accept that the fight for equality is ongoing, the torch passed from Dr. King to activists rallying under the Black Lives Matter banner, to those fighting for criminal justice reform, to those demanding to be seen and heard.

You can stand in the way of progress, or you can join the fight.

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Racism 101: White Tears

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Ever notice the way the temperature drops whenever a person of color brings up the issue of racism around a group of white folks? Things can be going great, the conversation rolling along, but then someone says something racially insensitive, and a POC holds them accountable, throwing open the gates and inviting all hell to break loose. White tears start flowing, washing the POC’s original point away in a turbulent, exhausting current of sympathy-seeking bullshit.

Non-POC readers, y’all might be tightening your alabaster brows right now, wondering what in the hell white tears are. The way I use and understand the term, it represents any situation in which a white person responds less than gracefully to a real or perceived accusation of casual or overt racism.

Still not picking up what I’m putting down? Let’s use an example to shed some clarity, shall we?

White person: You must be really happy that Amendment 4 passed. Now so many black people will be able to vote again!

Person of color: Actually, most of the former felons who are getting their voting rights back are white.

WP: I just figured you’d be excited about this since most of the people in jail are black.

POC: Wow, that’s a really racist statement. It’s also untrue.

WP: Oh my god! I can’t believe you just called me racist! I collected so many petitions for Amendment 4, and I voted for it! It’s so messed up that you would think that I could even be a little bit racist!

POC: *bangs head against wall until the white tears stop*

See? White tears don’t have to be literal tears, but they are akin to the shrill wailing of a security system that begins whenever a POC has triggered a white person’s inherent brittleness when it comes to conversations about race. Even a little pressure, applied during a conversation like the one above, can cause a white person to snap, thus soaking the POCs around them with angry, wounded, or self righteous white tears.

Think of these tears as a gentle way of reasserting the silent power of white supremacy, which underpins every institution in American society and poisons every social interaction. When you resort to sobbing white tears, the narrative undergoes an immediate shift. The old narrative involved you saying something racist. But the new narrative is this: I’m attacking you, unprovoked, with my mean words about racism, which is unfair for whatever reasons you will present, rapid fire, to everyone around us — you have friends who are black, you voted for Obama, Oprah is your favorite celebrity, etcetera.

White tears are a pretty handy tool to have in one’s arsenal if the goal is to avoid any kind of conversation about a subject as touchy as racism. You get to upset the narrative, recentering the conversation on you, your feelings, and what a terrible person I am for attacking you so unnecessarily. It’s a good trick, and it has withstood the test of time.

I can’t count the amount of times in the last year that I’ve reversed the hell out of a conversation I thought might actually reap real results because of that kind of recentering. It’s a bit like feeling the earth rearrange underneath your feet, leaving you in unsteady, sometimes dangerous territory. And because black people — and especially black women — are so often typecast as angry, we have to be doubly careful to remain calm, no matter what kind of bullshit gets slung our way. For a POC, the best response to white tears is to disengage immediately, which leaves the racist fuckery untouched to fester with time, instead of being dealt with, which was the original intention behind calling it out. This is yet another example of how racism continues to thrive in our society.

Look, racism is a heavy subject, maybe even the heaviest subject to take on in this country. Our history is filled with examples of brutal oppression, and though things have improved, we are a long way from the kind of equality the founding fathers wrote about when they were envisioning breaking free of their own, more privileged form of bondage.

To talk about systemic racism and white supremacy is to accept the discomfort that goes along with it. There will be emotions like anger, shame, and guilt. Let them come. Marinate in that discomfort until you find some internal clarity. Don’t take the easy way out by turning on the literal or figurative waterworks. If you really want things to change in this country, if you truly desire for the promise of American to match its brute reality, then it starts with being willing to see your biases for what they are. Own them, and then own the process of changing them with daily, deliberate self-reflection and action. And, mostly importantly, receive the words of the POCs around you with openness and grace instead of hostility and tragic martyrdom.

POCs don’t have a choice when it comes to facing the harsh realities of institutional racism. It affects us every day in ways that cannot be ignored. But what’s even more demoralizing is when a so-called ally can’t bear the weight of a single conversation about racism in which we imply that she could do better. If you truly want to stand with us, that means accepting criticism without lashing out and ‘putting us back in our place’ for the sake of your own emotional comfort. The world changes when we first change ourselves. It’s the only form of creation that we possess. You have the power to create change or to create a barrier keeping a better world from being realized. Choose wisely.

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