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White People: Here’s How to Understand Your Racism
Without making people of color do the work
Spoiler: It’s about self-examination.
Why do white people keep asking people of color to explain and define racism? Isn’t that just as bizarre as a bank robber asking a bank teller for tips on how to rob a bank? Racism is part of a system of oppression that white people created. White people should be able to figure it out.
Few of us white people have been in any hurry to understand our own racism. As Ijeoma Oluo wrote in an article for The Establishment, “The dominant culture does not have to see itself to survive because culture will shift to fit its needs.” To understand racism, white people must see ourselves clearly and distinguish between understanding what racism is, and understanding how racism makes its victims feel.
If you’re white, think back to your early observations and understandings of racial, ethnic, religious and language differences. I’ll share a few anecdotes of my own to show you what I mean.
Early childhood
I grew up white, in a white adoptive home in a white neighborhood where the significant ethnic difference was between Jews and Gentiles. My home was the epitome of that difference — one parent an Italian Catholic, the other a…
