Eliminating the Hurts of White Racism

Racism is one of the key issues in our world today. The economic and cultural domination of people of Caucasian descent over people of color has infected cultures the world over. People of color of varying races and backgrounds must contend, in general, with fewer resources and more limited access to power over their environments than white people. They also must do battle with disrespectful and limiting stereotypes about them that are passed down from generation to generation.

We parents have an opportunity to preserve our children's interest and delight in people, regardless of their skin color or culture. To make the best of this opportunity, we can begin by widening our view of who is hurt by racism.

In this article, I'm not going to talk about the deep damage racism does to people of color. There are numerous excellent books and resources on this subject. This article is a quick introduction to the perspective that racism hurts white people, too.

White people worldwide have been hurt by white racism, a conditioning that limits their lives and locks them into the oppressor role vis-à-vis people of color. No white person ever volunteered to become a racist. These patterns of hurt and fear are set in place when we are quite young, after we have been intimidated by adults many times to teach us "our place" as children.

Children know instinctively that each person deserves respect. But when they see the people they love acting out patterns of white racism, they are generally unable to speak up or change the situation. They must collude with it in order to keep their parents' favor. The racist actions of adults stick in the child's mind, and become patterns of behavior which they themselves fall into when they are upset or afraid.

Each white person gets hurt by white racism in a unique way, through unique incidents. But all of us play a role in the larger societal pattern, which has as its backbone the economic oppression of people of color. Racism prevents white people from getting accurate information about other people, and makes 
white people afraid of great numbers of people. White people are also severely isolated by racism. It corrals them into a very narrow world, the boundaries of which are enforced by an automatic, unthinking "we are better than" or "we don't go near" attitude that flares any time a white person is afraid.

White people can help each other get free of racist patterns and habits of thinking. Listening and decision are the keys to the cell door. The listener's main job is to lift feelings of guilt around racism, so that the isolation and fear that keeps racist behavior in place can drain. Every white person feels guilty about times he or she has failed to interrupt racist behavior. That guilt prevents people from being able to simply cry about the hurtful things that have happened, or express outrage about the mistreatment they have witnessed. The decision to act outside racist isolation is also vital to getting free, so goals need to be set in listening sessions, to help the person chart a less confined life.

Here are some of the things we encourage white people to talk about in listening partnerships and groups, where they can get good listening and begin the process of building richer lives for themselves and their families, and a more just world for us all.

• What is great, and what feels difficult about your own heritage?
• What can you take pride in?
• What are your earliest experiences with people of color? Tell all the details you remember.
• When you think back to any early incidents during which you were a witness to racism, what did you want to be able to do or say? How would you have acted, had you not been afraid?
• Talk about the times you've interrupted white racism, or wanted to.
• Talk about the details of making friends and building good relationships with people of color in your present life. What's great about your friendships? What are you afraid of? Embarrassed about? Worried about?
• What will you do to act outside the confines of white racism?

For further information, we recommend the book Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel, New Society Press.