I try not to write when I'm angry. If I do, I tend to make statements that I don't really mean or that I later regret.
So, it has been the case that I have waited weeks and weeks before making this post. I first wanted to address the issue of the system of structural white supremacy when family members of an African-American student were arrested for cheering as their loved one graduated high school. Before I could write that post, there was the incident in McKinney, Texas where an out of control white police officer manhandled a young black girl wearing a bathing suit, and drew a gun on other young African-Americans, all because some white members of a gated community were upset that black kids were swimming in their pool.
My anger had subsided almost enough to write about the issues that I saw through all of these incidents as well as the all too regular killing of unarmed African-Americans by police usually without consequence when nine members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC were murdered by a 21 year-old admitted white supremacist claiming that "you rape our women and are taking over everything," before shooting them during a Bible study.
I can't wait anymore.
This is not about Dylann Roof. This is not about a few bad apples in law enforcement. This is not about any individual incident or official. This is about a system that is built upon and for the purpose of perpetuating white supremacy in our country.
I am speaking today to my fellow white people. We are the ones in the wrong. We are the ones with the problem. Whether as active participants or as silent bystanders we benefit from this system and our failure to abolish it allows it to continue.
The shootings in Charleston are an obvious display of white supremacy. Nobody, except the most outrageously overt racist, would not condemn this unspeakable act of violence and hate. However, due to its outrageous nature, we allow ourselves to separate from the incident itself. We tell ourselves, that's not me. I would never do that. We see it as the outlier rather than the ultimate outcome of the societal norm.
In all of the examples I have set forth above, each and every one of them results from systemic white supremacy. In arresting the family of the graduating teenager, the system was saying "We allowed you to get a diploma, why do you insist on loudly celebrating this? Let us remind you where you belong as we place these cuffs on you."
In the incident at the pool in McKinney, Texas, the kids swimming were invited by a resident of the gated community, their African-American classmate, and were being supervised by her mother. But even though they were invited there and were legally attending as a guest of a resident, several white residents objected and called police, who happily obliged, ignoring white attendees and detaining, assaulting, and subjugating the black attendees. In essence, what was being said was "Aren't you satisfied that we let you live in our community? You have to invite your friends, too?" The police officer in question, who later resigned and will no doubt go on to police elsewhere, after flipping the 14 year-old girl and dragging her by her hair, proceeded to kneel on her back while yelling "On your face!" repeatedly as he assaulted her. For swimming in a pool. In 2015. In the United States of America.
Following the murders of the members of Mother Emanuel, there are calls for changes to be made. There are real issues that are being discussed. But what worries me is that superficial symbolic changes are made without really making the systemic changes that are needed. It is fine and noble (and 150 years overdue) to call for the removal of the Confederate Flag from the state house grounds in Columbia, South Carolina. But this will have no meaning unless we destroy the system of white supremacy which considers a flag representing the fight to defend a system of selling human beings into servitude to be heritage.
We are a nation which passes laws today which intentionally disenfranchise African-Americans because those in power see their participation in the system to be a threat to the status quo. We are a nation which passes laws which we know will disproportionately impact the African-American community imprisoning them at rates unequaled anywhere in the industrialized world. We are a nation which decries the destruction of property in response to immense injustice while shrugging our shoulders at the injustice itself.
It needs to end. Now.
The first thing to do when addressing a problem is to admit it exists and to give it a name. The name is white supremacy. It is a problem that is pervasive throughout our society. It is a system which intentionally harasses, discriminates against, imprisons, assaults, and murders people of color and does so systematically, continuously, and with impunity. It is a system by which we, white people, especially white males, benefit.
After we have admitted and named the problem, we must educate ourselves and our white brothers and sisters about the its causes and pervasiveness. Read about it. Listen to your black brothers and sisters without comment. Recognize the existence in large and small occurrences in your everyday life. Call it out when you see it. Make others recognize it and fight against it.
When we are educated, then we must fight to eradicate the philosophy of white supremacy from our society. Papering over it by taking down a flag, or eliminating one or two organizations, will not accomplish a thing. We will have a nicer looking system of injustice and evil. We must dismantle the system which feeds the idea that the white race is by its nature superior and entitled to more than any other, and that unequal treatment in our society justified by this belief. This is not easy, and this will cause great discomfort. But we will truly perish as a society if we do not put every fiber of our beings into this cause.
The time is now. Do not delay.
