At the outset of the “For Racial Healing” series, it was stated that the Black-white racial problem in the United States has been and continues to be a white problem. Of course, it is, by the very nature of things, a Black problem also, not as an act of causation, but as recipient of the white racial problem.
I have previously mentioned that I grew up in a racist family in a racist section of the country. Implicit in the mores and behavior of that background, generation after generation, an expectation arose that the Black-white relationship would remain fundamentally the same with Blacks being subjected to white supremacy through Black subjugation. Changes to this age-old, anticipated behavior could only occur via a shock to the system – from the ground up. Even though a meaningful change was indeed achieved in part by Blacks during the Racial Revolution of the 1950-1970 period, many whites still have routinely failed to adjust appropriately the way they behave toward Blacks.
Adequate adjustment to racial behavior means a change in friendship composition, a change in the folks who reside next door, and a change in the race of persons with whom we work and those with whom we worship. In the absence of such a transformation, do we simply let demographics take over and hope that the requisite adjustments will occur without consequential, white opposition – a sort of invisible alteration of the landscape? Unfortunately, this blind adjustment is so slow, so subject to volatility, and so unconscious that it hardly bears describing in this discussion of white purpose and intent.
What options exist for whites to demonstrate a commitment for accelerating history’s role in Black racial freedom and the elimination of white repetition of various forms of Black subjugation? There is one such approach that deserves comment and that many whites have employed over the last generation. Simply put, it is based on the proposition that “one has to go far away to see up close”. In other words, a white person removes herself or himself from an existing racial habitat and finds a place, which allows a white person to see clearly what that person has actually experienced in Black-white relations during the past.
When I was writing Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre and A Story of Reconciliation, I had discussions with whites who had moved away from Phillips County, Arkansas, site of the Massacre, and viewed their past familial racism through a different prism and found much freedom in that altered perspective. Those who take that route can have profound effects on whites who remain in the more formalized and localized racist environment. When that white who found many racial, freeing answers by following the rubric of “one has to go far away to see up close” communicates an adjusted racial perspective in friendship to the one who stayed home, it can prove to be an effective, alchemic mixture – long-term white friendships can often help to create a more enduring racial healing process and environment back home. Of course, the one who decides to move back and promote racial healing locally can be most instrumental.
As we have already discussed and discovered, the remarkable exodus from rural America to urban areas has facilitated racially freeing results for so many whites with pluralism working its will through the urban composition. This mitigation, if not near elimination in some cases, of filiopietism will often occur easily and consequentially with these physical transfers for whites from a rural, racist environment to urban America.
But what happens to those whites who simply stay home without the direct or indirect help of the process that “one has to go far away to see up close”? They are the most challenged as white racists and subject to the “blind spot” syndrome, which consists of exaggerating the benefits of the local, racial environment, as articulated like this:
“Oh, Blacks prefer going to their own churches – there is a whole history with their traditions that they wish to express and enjoy, and we whites don’t wish to interrupt those practices. And Blacks have so many more opportunities to be employed in better paying jobs than they ever have had in the past – it is so much better for them than it ever has been. And I’m so much better in my treatment of them than I have ever been. We are very cordial to each other – they can call me by my first name if they wish without saying, “Good morning, Mr. Charlie or Ms. Sharon” to my wife. Just look at the homes where they live – a generation or two ago, they lived in sort of shacks – some still do, but a lot don’t. And those who work hard can get a new car from time to time, just like whites. While I don’t see any of them socially, they’d rather be with other Blacks anyway – in the same way that I’m more comfortable with my white friends. Blacks don’t want to hunt and fish or play golf or cards with me – they have their own social network, don’t they? They’re happy, and we’re happy, and their children are following in their footsteps just as my children are following in mine. Just look, we have a Black or two on city council. Yes, it’s a better arrangement now – so much better for them than it used to be.”
Break-throughs from such a white context are very difficult. Tell this white person that “skin is only skin deep”, and he may simply close his mind. For people like that, a change in perspective normally comes only from very personal occurrences. For instance, I had an acquaintance who was an entrenched and outspoken racist from the time I first came to know him, but when his daughter gave birth with a Black man to a little girl, my acquaintance fell in love with his granddaughter with the two of them being inseparable thereafter. Similarly, I had a relative who may have been the most visceral racist against Blacks that I knew. Later in life, it became necessary for her to adopt a grandchild whose father was also Black, and from that point forward, I never heard another racist comment from her. Personal context can make all the difference to diehard white supremacists.
My commitment to one-to-one, Black-white allyships consists, in part, no doubt, as a result of the history I have encountered when white racists become personally challenged to accept love that has become available to them, but must, in turn, foreswear the racism that they have carried as an anvil throughout their lives. Of course, as I have shown in this essay, even close, white friendships can alter positively a white racist’s views toward Black-white relationships and racial healing. Moreover, it is crucial that we also keep this personal aspect constantly and clearly in mind as we go about our work to achieve understanding, empathy, healing, love, and co-inherence between Blacks and whites.