NB
Commentary: Great article! Well written! Points well taken.
The Real
Reason White People Say ‘All Lives Matter’
07/25/2016
05:57 pm ET
Editor-at-Large
at HumanisticPaganism.com and editor of Godless Paganism: Voices of
Non-Theistic Pagans
Why “Black” Makes Us Uncomfortable
Dear
fellow white people, let’s have an honest talk about why we say “All Lives
Matter.” First of all, notice that no one was saying “All Lives Matter” before
people started saying “Black Lives Matter.” So “All Lives Matter” is a response to “Black Lives Matter.”
Apparently, something about the statement “Black Lives Matter” makes us
uncomfortable. Why is that?
Now
some white people might say that singling out Black people’s lives as mattering
somehow means that white lives don’t matter. Of course, that’s silly. If you
went to a Breast Cancer Awareness event, you wouldn’t think that they were
saying that other types of cancer don’t matter. And you’d be shocked if someone
showed up with a sign saying “Colon Cancer Matters” or chanting “All Cancer
Patients Matter.” So clearly, something else is prompting people to say “All
Lives Matter” in response to “Black Lives Matter.”
Many
of the people saying “All Lives Matter” also are fond of saying “Blue Lives
Matter.” If you find that the statement “Black Lives Matter” bothers you, but
not “Blue Lives Matter,” then the
operative word is “Black”. That should tell us something. There’s
something deeply discomfiting about the word “Black.” I think it’s because it
reminds us of our whiteness and challenges our notion that race doesn’t matter.
The Problem With “Colorblindness”
If
you’re like me, growing up, the word “Black” was always spoken of in whispers
in your family. It was like we were saying something taboo. Why was that?
Because itwas taboo. We might feel
more comfortable saying “African-American,” but not “Black.” The reason is that
we were raised to believe that “colorblindness” was the ideal for whites. We
were taught that we shouldn’t “see color.” And saying the word “Black” was an
acknowledgment of the fact that we did “see
color.”
The
problem with being “colorblind” — aside from the fact that we’re not really —
is that it is really a white privilege to be able to ignore race. White people
like me have the luxury of not paying attention to race — white or black. The
reason is because whiteness is treated as the default in our society. Whiteness
is not a problem for white people, because it blends into the cultural
background.
Black
people, on the other hand, don’t have the luxury of being “colorblind.” They
live in a culture which constantly reminds them of their Black-ness, which
tells them in a million large and small ways that they are not as important as
white people, that their lives actually do not matter as much as white lives.
Which is why saying “Black Lives Matter” is so important.
“Black Lives [Do Not] Matter”
“All
Lives Matter” is a problem because it refocuses the issue away from systemic
racism and Black lives. It distracts and diminishes the message that Black
lives matter or that they should matter more than they do. “All Lives Matter”
is really code for “White Lives Matter,” because when white people think about
“all lives,” we automatically think about “all white lives.”
We need to say “Black Lives Matter,” because we’re not
living it. No one is questioning whether white lives matter or whether police
lives matter. But the question of whether Black lives really matter is an open
question in this country. Our institutions act like Black lives do not matter.
The police act like Black lives do not matter when they shoot
unarmed Black people with their arms in the air and
whenBlacks
are shot at two and a half times the rate of whites, even
when whites are armed. The judicial system acts
like Black lives don’t matter when Blacks
are given more severe sentences than whites who commit the same crimes and are turned
into chattel in a for-profit prison-industrial complex.
And
white people act like Black lives do not matter when we fail to raise the
appropriate level of outrage at unjustified killings of Blacks or when we
respond with platitudes like “All Lives Matter.”
But we
still say it. We say it because “All Lives Matter” lets us get back to feeling
comfortable. “Black Lives Matter” makes us uncomfortable.
Why? Because it reminds us that race exists. It reminds us that our experience
as white people is very different from the experience of Black people in this
country. It reminds us that racism is alive and well in the United States of
America.
The New Face of Racism
Now, I
just said the “R” word, so you’re probably feeling defensive at this point.
You’re instinctively thinking to yourself that you are not a racist. You may be
thinking that you have Black friends or that you don’t use the N-word or that
you would never consciously discriminate against a Black person. But most
racism today is more subtle than that. Sure, there is a lot of overt racism
that still goes on. The KKK is still active and some white people do still say
the N-word. But overt racism is really culturally unacceptable any more among
whites today. The racism that we need to face today is much more insidious than
white hoods and racial slurs. It is the racism of well-meaning people who are
not consciously or intentionally racist.
The
racism that we need to face is the racism of average white middle-class
Americans who would never think of saying the N-word and would vociferously
condemn the KKK, but nevertheless unwittingly participate in institutionalized
racism. We most often participate in racism by omission, rather than
commission. We participate in racism when we fail to see it where it exists. We
participate in racism when we continue to act like race is a problem that only
Black people have. We participate in racism when we seek comfortable responses
like “All Lives Matter.”
What We Can Do: Embrace the Discomfort
We
white people need to embrace our discomfort. Here are some things we can do:
1. Recognize that we are not “colorblind.”
We can start by recognizing that we all have an “implicit
bias” toward Blacks. Think you don’t have
it? Consider how we mentally congratulate ourselves when we treat the random
Black person the same way we treat white people. Here’s a tip, if you give
yourself brownie points for treating Black people like you do white people,
you’re not really treating Black people like white people.
Still don’t think you have unconscious bias, go to
the Harvard
implicit bias testing website and take the
tests on race and skin-tone. Even white anti-racism activists like me have
these biases. And they come out in all
kinds of subtle ways, as well as not so subtle
ways.
2. Work against unconscious bias by spending time with Black
people in Black spaces.
Next,
go out of your way to spend time with Black people in Black community settings.
Many of us live segregated lives in which we have little to no interaction with
Black people. Let’s face it, Black people make us white people uncomfortable.
It’s because we’ve been socialized by a racist system to fear Black people.
Even
if you feel comfortable around individual Black people, you most likely do not
feel comfortable in a room full of Black people. You might have Black friends,
but you probably socialize with them in white spaces. Have you ever been to a
Black space and felt uncomfortable? Maybe you felt like no one wanted you
there. Welcome to the everyday experience of Black people in white culture.
And
when you go to a Black space, go to listen rather than lead. Learn to follow.
Leading is a white privilege. Let go of it for a while and learn from those
whose experience you will never have. Listen to Black people, and if what they
are saying or how they are saying it makes you uncomfortable, so much the
better.
3. Talk to white people about institutional racism and say
“Black Lives Matter.”
It’s
no good sitting around feeling guilty about white privilege. We need to do something about it. One thing we can do is
to use our white privilege to
dismantle it.
One
white privilege we have is that other white people listen to us. We can go into
white spaces and talk to white people about implicit bias and institutional
racism. We can unapologetically proclaim that “Black Lives Matter.”
After
the Orlando shooting, I went to an interfaith vigil in my small conservative
town. Almost no one among the speakers said the words “queer,” “gay,” or
“lesbian.” This was probably unconscious, but it revealed a lingering, but
deep seated discomfort among heterosexuals with gayness and queerness, a
discomfort that the popular use of the acronym “LGBT” obscures. Similarly, we
whites are uncomfortable with Black-ness. We don’t even like like to say the
word. It feels wrong in our mouths. We hide it by using code words like “inner
city” or “urban,” terms which allow us to hide from our unconscious racism. We
need to say “Black Lives Matter” because we need to overcome our discomfort
with Blacks and face up to our unconscious bias.
Join the Second Civil Rights Movement
Dear fellow white people, we are in the middle of a
second Civil Rights Movement. Most of us white people idealize Martin Luther
King, Jr. and we like to think that we would have been on his side of things
during the Civil Rights era. But the fact is thatthe
majority of the American public did not support
the Civil Rights movement while it was happening and
only came to see King as a hero after he was killed.
The
Civil Rights movement was unpopular among most whites when it was happening. It
was unpopular because it made white people deeply uncomfortable. Today, the
Black Lives Matter movement makes us uncomfortable, too. In forty years we will
look back on this second Civil Rights movement and have to ask ourselves
whether we were on the right side of history. If we want to be on the right
side of history this time, we have to make ourselves uncomfortable. There is no
comfortable way to change. And the change can start with saying this simple but
powerful phrase: Black Lives Matter.
