Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America(20)

The way of the racial revisionist, when it comes to black life and history, is, simply, to rewrite it. Their motto is, “It didn’t happen that way.” There is a flood of writing that tells us that the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery but about the effort to defend states’ rights. But, my friends, you’ve got to put yourself in our place and see the absurdity of such a claim. Defend the right of the state to do what? To enslave blacks. But even here the irresistible logic of whiteness, that is, irresistible to whites themselves—and to all of us who are subject to white whim—springs into full action. White American history is so powerful that even when it loses it wins, at least in skirmishes within whiteness itself. From the right wing there is the belief that the Civil War was fought over the ability of individual states to beat back a federal government out to impose its will. From the left wing there’s the belief that the Civil War was a conflict between the planter class and the proletariat. In each case, race as the main reason for the war is skillfully rewritten, or, really, written out.

Slavery is rewritten too. Some white Christian apologists contended that black folk needed slavery to save their souls, or to rescue their cultures. A contemporary twist on this argument radiates in thinkers like Dinesh D’Souza, who claims that American blacks brought here through slavery are now doing far better than their African kin. Some white critics argue that since blacks sold other blacks into slavery, bondage was a black man’s problem, not a white man’s burden. But revisionists would much rather describe the dehumanization of black folk as little more than a commercial transaction. It’s another way of washing their hands of racial responsibility.

The effort to rewrite history surfaces in how Malcolm X is treated in the mainstream. It hardly seems likely that the culture he fought with all his heart could be depended on to grasp his true meaning. Malcolm is often read as an apostle of violence, as a frightful figure consumed by destructive rage. Yet the truth is far more complex; and Malcolm was far more complicated. But isn’t The Autobiography of Malcolm X so enduringly appealing because it shows Malcolm X giving up on hatred as a means to racial justice? Malcolm X believed in the liberation of black folk from the mental and psychological chains of white supremacy. He was not committed to nonviolence as a way of life or a method of social strategy. He believed that such a commitment prevents the full realization of black emancipation. Yet he was not personally violent. As Ossie Davis said in his eulogy, responding to the claim that Malcolm preached hate and was a fanatic and a racist: “Did you even talk to Brother Malcolm? . . . Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance?” The rage that flowed in Malcolm’s veins was the rage against a force of whiteness that aimed to wash its black kin from the face of the earth.

The urge to rewrite black history occasionally gives way to the final stage of white racial grief, which is, simply, when it comes to race, to dilute it. That is, to argue that bad stuff doesn’t just plague black folk. To summarize: “Bad stuff happens to everyone.” This argument surfaced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The storm certainly hit black folk, but it hit white folk too. This is the sordid version of reverse American exceptionalism.

It is the same “me too” impulse that flares in the bitter battle against affirmative action. Beloved, I can’t help but notice that affirmative action is the bee in so many of your bonnets. You look around in your classrooms and you think every black person is there because they got an unfair shake from the system. You look at your job and you think that your black coworker got an unjust nod of approval from the powers that be.

You never stop to think how the history of whiteness in America is one long scroll of affirmative action. You never stop to think that Babe Ruth never had to play the greatest players of his generation—just the greatest white players. You never stop to think that most of our presidents never rose to the top because they bested the competition—just the white competition. White privilege is a self-selecting tool that keeps you from having to compete with the best. The history of white folk gaining access to Harvard, Princeton, or Yale is the history of white folk deciding ahead of the game that you were superior. You argue that slots in school should be reserved for your kin, because, after all, they are smarter, more disciplined, better suited, and more deserving than inferior blacks.

That’s like concluding that the Cleveland Cavaliers can’t possibly win the NBA championship because they are down three-games-to-one to the Golden State Warriors. Throw in the towel and call it a series. But they must play the series to determine the winner. Whiteness is having all the advantages on your side—the referees blowing the whistle for you, the arena packed with only your fans. In fact, whiteness means you never even have to play the game at all, at least not in head-to-head matchups with the talent and skill of black folk.

You’ve been handed a history where you got most of the land, made most of the money, got most of the presumptions of goodness, and innocence, and intelligence, and thrift, and genius—and just about everything that is edifying and white. So it’s hard to stomach your gripes about the few concessions—surely not advantages—to black folk and other folk of color that are suggested in affirmative action. And the irony is that, in aggregate, when we add in white women and other abled folk, it is white folk who are the overwhelming beneficiaries of affirmative action.

That makes it sound like malarkey when so many of you complain that you aren’t being treated fairly, either. You say that our demand for justice causes you unjust suffering. You think you miss out on jobs that go to less-qualified blacks. That may be one of the greatest claims to collective self-pity known to mankind, and yet you, with straight faces, keep telling black folk and others that we’re the ones throwing self-pity parties around the country.