In preceding sections, I discuss the need for whites to participate more actively and earnestly in Black liberation and Black-white racial healing engagements. One aspect of that greater role involves more articulation and exhortation for white participation in those areas. Toward that end, we do know the recent landscape of white books, particularly dedicated to the injustice, inequity, and subjugation perpetrated against Blacks by American whites, pales in comparison to the number of volumes by Black writers covering the same general subjects. Whites should be equally as interested and inspirited to produce consequential viewpoints on these matters; after all, whites are the necessary other half of Black-white racial engagement, and yet we readers have not seen similar energy for writing on these topics from whites that we have seen from Black writers. Of course, part of the answer may lie in editorial discretion and preference among publishing houses, but I also believe that white writers have often and generally demurred from these subject areas, including related truth-telling. Rather, the more consequential at this time is the other course of Black-white engagement and authentic passion for white involvement and white voices in pursuit of relevant ideas that bear on Black-white relations, allyships, and the future – thus, the “For Racial Healing” series.
In the past and over time, there have been several noteworthy and relevant books written by American white writers that have impacted meaningfully on the subjects of racism, Black liberation, and Black-white engagement. Such earlier works would not be limited to, but include, for example, Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith; Mississippi: A Closed Society by John Silver; The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward; and The Legacy of the Civil War by Robert Penn Warren. This overview should not exclude past fiction narratives, such as William Faulkner’s Intruder in The Dust, or quasi-fiction narratives, such as The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron. More recent books on the subjects by white writers include Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon; White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo; my own Damaged Heritage; and books of David Roediger. We need more white writers helping to set a strong tone for Black-white engagement. I hope Blacks and whites conclude that the “For Racial Healing” series conveys and establishes an aggressive, white perspective toward Black liberation and Black-white racial healing.
From my earliest memories, racial matters were of a crucial nature that could not escape my consciousness or compass. From being reared in a racist family in a racist region, which severely curtailed the duration of my friendships with Black children, to cities with sizable Black populations, such as Boston, Buffalo, Camden (NJ), Detroit, Newark (NJ), New York City, Philadelphia, among others, which, over the years, I advised on various capital finance and debt management matters; or from my writing, for the National Day of Repentance, “Litany of Offense and Apology”, when The Episcopal Church formally apologized for its role in slavery and related evils, to my writings on the Elaine (Arkansas) Race Massacre of 1919 and about a related, personal, racial reckoning and healing with a Black descendant from that murderous, racist onslaught; or from the time I taught, before integration of local educational systems, in an all-Black public school along the Mississippi River Delta, to my poems and other prose pieces dealing with Black liberation and Black-white engagement, I constantly seemed destined, during the course of my life, to be inexorably bound to aspects of the struggle. So, here I am, in the twilight of my years, captured by this series, proposing a realistic approach, leading to the attainment of greater goals for racial healing.
Judged from a particular viewpoint, it was predictable and logical that this series would have been written. It seems only natural that this moment has arrived to add other ideas and convictions to the mixture of opinions and propositions that help drive the discussions and actuality of Black liberation and Black-white racial healing.
There has been a reluctance by many whites to talk openly about race, and there has also been a tendency to have Blacks be the preponderant, public spokespersons on racial matters between Blacks and whites. The former has been predictable for ages, and the latter, I think, is counterproductive, for in many ways, the latter is simply another form of separation and segregation – even another form of racism. Whites should be equally committed to relevant and salvific viewpoints on these matters. The more we can have presentations by both Black and white speakers delivering similar messages alongside each other, as Sheila Walker and I did, the more effective is the outcome; for one thing, in my experience, it would put more pressure on whites to do something greater in support of racial healing.
Without various and even competing, white public views and voices, how will most citizens quantify white ideas and inclinations around racial topics, conducive to a proposed program. For example, do we really know what the prevailing white attitude would be about Black-white, one-to-one engagement, as expressed in “For Racial Healing”? A more open representation combining perspectives from an array of Blacks and whites is a positive goal of a one-to-one, Black-white protocol that is a basis for a racial healing program. In the absence of varied and open Black-white engagement in public forums where allyship can also reside and persuade, we may more easily fall back into increased separation. Moreover, I can certainly argue that the greater the Black-white interplay is accomplished publicly, the more advancement can happen.
It is understandable that certain whites may show a reluctance to describe their views on race without impugning past white, bad behavior. This hesitation is often a direct result of the undeniable power and impact of white filiopietism that must oppose unbridled conversation on an issue of race that runs counter to excessive veneration of the past and ancestors. But why the pervasive reticence of so many whites who have now realized for years, if not generations, the dangers and culpability from the continuance of a mythology that has surrounded white conduct toward Blacks? In certain respects, I suppose that open discussion by whites may feel like a form of betrayal of tradition and history, for a large number of whites prefer silence on the subject as a way of forgiving the past without overtly saying so. Indeed, silence may simply follow the course of circumlocution, which has proven more acceptable to many whites, even in the early part of the 21st century.
At the same time, it should be rather easily recognized that there is a conversation that multiple whites will acknowledge would occur anyway, even without their presence and participation, and they do not wish to be associated with it. They think that hopefully the conversation will have happened without their being forced to know of it, sort of like a dream, or rather, a nightmare from which they will finally awake, and all the bad segments will have been revealed and completed while they slept. Many more whites have this necessary desire than is generally realized or disclosed in open discourse.
Notwithstanding these warnings, we must also accept the fact that the reluctance of many whites to come forth and discuss racial issues, such as full Black liberation or accelerated Black-white racial healing, reflects the accusatory environment in which we currently live. For instance, multiple whites, including those who might consider themselves undeclared friends or allies of white segregationists, have yet to reach a point where unencumbered discussion about race is acceptable or even tolerated (while I may not agree with their positions at all, I cannot be intolerant toward the presentation of those views or, in turn, become fundamentally accusatory, which could immediately lead to becoming personally accusatory). So many individuals, who raise uncomfortable subjects or contribute to gatherings about them, will often incur the ire and fury of those who favor such topics not being raised or commented on at all.
Fear of retribution has always added to the adoption of silence though it is detrimental to a constructive society. When silence becomes acceptable group behavior in opposition to the public good, then the practitioners of silence have become allies to the perpetrators who adhere to history’s lesser moments.
Next Time: “This Is How It Starts”