Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(28)
I asked about her early conceptions of racism as she navigated the world as a white child. Being white, Jenny would have probably gone to a school where she was among other white children. And although children always find something to bully each other about, being white, Jenny won’t have experienced racism in the playground. ‘Originally,’ she says, ‘I just thought you shouldn’t use certain words. Colour-blindness was something that was definitely taught to us in school.
‘Growing up, I would have told you that racism is about calling people slurs. Or that racism was about laws about segregation. Or that racism was a two-way street, that anyone can be racist. I probably would have said that words like the N word were worse than someone calling somebody a cracker, for example, but I would have said that cracker is still racist. Now, that sounds ridiculous to me, but that was my very simplistic understanding. That racism was individuals, and I would not have seen systemic things.’
Jenny grew up in the town of Fort Worth in the state of Texas. I asked her about when she became peripherally aware of race in her life. ‘Race was something I was always aware of, just not in relation to myself,’ she said. ‘I thought race was something that applied to other people. Other people who were not white, basically.’ Texas, she says, ‘has always been a racially charged environment . . . there’s always been racial divides between English and non-English speaking people, Latinos. Fort Worth is a very divided city, not only in terms of geography but also life outcomes for people.’
Everything about her heavily monoracial upbringing was comfortably calculated, Jenny explained. ‘I lived a really deliberately sheltered existence on a lot of fronts. Not only living, I guess deliberately, around other white people and white communities – my school that I went to was majority white – it was also a fairly middle-class school. The neighbourhoods around the school at the time were fairly affluent. There were all these different factors that led to me being in a very specific environment. I don’t think any of that was accidental. My parents buying a house – you look at the neighbourhoods and you look at the schools, and you make decisions based on your own criteria, some of which may be overtly racist, or classist. “I want my kid to have a good school.” What does a good school mean?’
Given her background, I wondered how her stance on race could so drastically change from then to now. In my experience, a white person who has had an almost all-white upbringing brings with them an insularity, as well as a reflexive urge to defend whiteness when it is criticised. At what point in her life did she first realise she was white? ‘[I had a lecturer whose] class was unbelievably challenging for me, because he talked about race. He talked about race, he talked about imperialism . . . That was my first exposure, not just to the facts of it, but to politically challenging historical viewpoints on it. At the time I was really resistant to it. Thinking back to what I said now, and I just fucking cringe at it. But that really planted the seeds of change for me.’
At first, she was defensive. ‘I think what made me feel defensive is that I was embarrassed that there was a chance that someone knew something that I didn’t. On some level, maybe I could sense that accepting whatever that person was saying would open a can of worms. It was a combination of embarrassment and panic. I can’t put my finger on exactly what I was trying to protect or defend. I think it was an indignation.
‘I’ve lost a lot of sensitivity about being told I’m wrong. That’s a massive gain, on a personal level. I haven’t lost my white privilege. It hasn’t reduced because I suddenly understand what it is.’
I was curious to learn how Jenny’s anti-racist politics affected the rest of her life. ‘I discuss [racism] with family, with friends, in a work context, although those discussions can be really difficult,’ she says. ‘In the last three or four years, I’ve definitely had a few mega-fails where that is concerned, where I’ve either picked the wrong discussion to have or passed up the chance to have a discussion that was essential.
‘I’m trying to do more things in my ordinary day-to-day life that aren’t in activist spaces, to bring issues up when they’re relevant at that time. Because I don’t know what the other people in the room are thinking, but if I’m thinking about that and no one else is saying it, then it’s on me to say something. Being accountable for that, really only to myself. Doing things when there’s nobody there to see it, because it’s not really about somebody witnessing it or patting me on the back for it.’
It is unusual that Jenny is willing to do the heavy work of dismantling racism. Frankly, it’s unusual because she is white. So many white people think that racism is not their problem. But white privilege is instrumental to racism. When I write about white people in this book, I don’t mean every individual white person. I mean whiteness as a political ideology. A school of thought that favours whiteness at the expense of those who aren’t. To me, it is like yin and yang. Racism’s legacy does not exist without purpose. It brings with it not just a disempowerment for those affected by it, but an empowerment for those who are not. That is white privilege. Racism bolsters white people’s life chances. It affords an unearned power; it is designed to maintain a quiet dominance. Why don’t white people think they have a racial identity?
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FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET