I sat in a largely white congregation listening to a Black preacher exhort whites to become more personally involved in the Black struggle to achieve equality in all aspects of American life. To emphasize his point, the preacher implored, “So, you don’t know any Blacks? Then, get to know some. So, you don’t have any Black friends? Get some.”
The frustration shown by the Black preacher mirrored my own deep concern that this nation has relied on the belief that institutional changes among public and private organizations can carry the primary responsibility for solving our country’s racial crisis. Partially out of a desire to have someone or something else address the problem or out of a desire to defer this immense issue, we whites have, as individuals, routinely acquiesced to suppose institutions would somehow do the hard work. I had a friend in the 1960s who joined a then newly created department in a major financial institution with the role, promulgated at the time, to bring racially germane perspectives to that institution’s decision-making process at every level. The institution is still around in name since that representation was made, more than sixty years ago, but the impact of the institution over the intervening period on racial healing has been consistently invisible.
In effect, most institutions have established their own discrete silos, protecting their own institutional longevity, but by doing so, have routinely extended the tentacles, in various ways, of white racial privilege and advantage. We’ve relied on institutions far too long.
Racial healing is personal; we know that. It is left up to individuals, to Black and white relationships to make good on the expectation that racism can be defeated. We will not move meaningfully and nationally to a fuller, racial healing until there is a much broader and more accepted expansion of one-to-one, Black-white friendships, relationships, and allyships, all of which derive directly from authentic passion.
Yet, there are a significant number of questions that need to be answered before many, more Americans (especially whites) can believe that one-to-one, Black to white relationships are an effective tool for racial healing. For example, what would cause whites to adopt Black-white racial healing and allyship? Pure authentic passion being a principal incentive, associated inspiration may also be the promise of and desire for something better. Why would Blacks join? I think Blacks, based on relevant conversations I have had with a meaningful number, realize that whites, more often than not, need help to get on the good and true road. But as discussed elsewhere, Black participation doesn’t come willy nilly. There would and should be conditions in most cases, and rightly so. Rather, in connection with a one-to-one, racial healing protocol, whites should be willing to acknowledge the travesties of the past, generally and specifically if they apply. In addition, whites should be willing to accept a commitment that is part of authentic passion – that is, over the course and in the context of a Black-white relationship, the white partner would take to heart an obligation to understand, empathize, reconcile, love, and co-inhere.
I found that Black folks are more inclined to participate immediately in Black-white relationships and allyships. White folks are more reluctant, fearful of various, awkward admission, and they often carry much evidence of filiopietism. We whites should have the ability to tell the truth and then move right on into one-to-one, Black-white protocol.
As part of this protocol, both Blacks and whites will be exchanging profoundly personal aspects of their lives that allow each to react with authentic passion traits. It is best for both parties to understand the underlying, individual tendencies and motivations. While group dynamics can provide considerable support in an appropriate set of conditions, such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Gamblers Anonymous, the goals are different with racial healing: broad-based racial disclosure and freedom inside a pluralistic, societal context. The two parties involved with the development of racial allyship ultimately will become a team against outside powers that foster racist behavior; a necessary and quite personal intensity will be needed to confront and overcome those pressures through a weft of very close, if not secret, even confidential, personal disclosures and resolutions. A group environment and multiple contributors tend to disperse and dissipate this requisite closeness and intensity.
Individual support by a partner is a key ingredient, and frank and personal revelations become more accessible via a one-to-one context; a two-way confessional and self-illuminating paradigm is a preferred construct for free and unencumbered dialogue between individuals engaged in Black-white relationships and allyships. I have learned that white participants in this recommended construct often discern more from the recollection of racial-freeing or earlier, racist-enhancing experiences in a one-to-one approach than these participants had previously discovered about themselves.
Whites should acknowledge the fact that authentic passion, which brings a person to this one-to-one, Black to white protocol, should cause a person, such as a white partner, to go deeper and be more fundamental than filiopietism would ever allow. This one-to-one racial healing is not an abstract act. It may seem to begin that way, but it is purely individually driven, a determined exercise to acknowledge that caring exceeds the act of postponing, deflecting, seeking more time – indeed, adoption of the protocol is recognition that the time has finally come.
Later, in this series of “For Racial Healing”, there will be installments about my own Black-white relationships with both Dr. James H. Cone, recognized father of Black Liberation Theology, and with Sheila Walker. Those installments will focus on what can go right and wrong depending on one’s attitude when highly emotional, but also, highly insightful moments happen inside a one-to-one, Black-white relationship and allyship. For one thing, whites typically do not realize how we carry automatic responses to Black lives and to the Black-white, personal dynamic, especially to the expression of direct honesty by a Black partner. These unconscious and unexpected white responses to many Black initiatives in a relationship can frequently flummox whites. I can surely speak to this realization, especially in the case of my relationship with Dr. Cone.
Indeed, whites may give themselves way too much credit in projecting “good will” reactions to Black honesty. If white, be prepared to be surprised that you may have not so subtle, but unconscious (sometimes, defensive) reactions to Black explanations and honest, direct challenges, which are, of course, enormously important in the one-to-one, Black-white dialogue concerning the Black experience in America. Moreover, this surprise is not temporary; upon reflection, whites may end up asking themselves: how did I react that way and what did I mean when those words slipped out of my mouth in defense?
We have covered numerous points related to a one-to-one, Black to white approach for racial healing. What we haven’t done and must do is to state explicitly that a monumental message of the one-to-one protocol consists of its ability to neutralize the often-repeated assumption that the racial movement and protests have to be, by and large, Black in nature and relevance. History will judge whites harshly for an assumption that Blacks alone had the incentive to gain racial healing. In fact, whether they believe it or not, whites are simply less human and less sacred if they are not intimately and individually integrated into the quest for Black liberation and racial healing more generally.
Next Time: Forgiveness