My first memory of racial differences was when I was five or six years old. I was watching “To Kill a Mockingbird” on TV with my family and the scene in the movie where the old man comes walking up to Atticus Finch’s car shouting “N****R Lover” over and over came on. I was terrified by this image as it was brilliantly filmed to convey the image of hate and violence it represented.
I turned to my father and asked ‘What is he saying?’ I didn’t know what that word meant, never having heard it before. My father told me and explained “N” was a word racists used to describe black people. I didn’t really understand what a racist was and I couldn’t understand what was so wrong about loving black people. I had been taught to love everyone as I loved myself and to treat all people with respect. The race of the people in question was never mentioned.
I was too young to remember the civil rights marches, but I do remember when the pendulum swung back and whites began rioting over the attempts to create a more just and balanced society. The anti-bussing riots in Boston, the growth of neo-Nazi and Klan groups in the United States and Canada, the coded language of racism during U.S. elections, especially from one Ronald W. Reagan.
I grew up watching ‘All in the Family’ and would laugh when “racist” Archie shouted “Coon, Coon, Coon”. I agreed silently with the audience that “bleeding-heart liberal” Mike Stivic was as wrong in many of his opinions as Archie was. Other ‘liberal’ shows of the 70’s told me the same narrative over and over; Yes, “blacks” had it tough back in the bad old days, but thanks to the efforts of whites, they had “won” the right to vote, to live in “white” communities, to attend “white” schools, to marry “white” men and women. But despite all these “gains”, there were many who were still racists (George Jefferson, Archie Bunker) and that there were many blacks who were “just as bad” as whites when it came to questions of race.
By the 80’s I was a pure white liberal; absolutely confident in my own ability to ‘judge a man by his character and not the colour of his skin.’ I admired Martin Luther King Jr., but condemned Malcolm X as a racist. I listened to speeches by Jesse Jackson, but rolled my eyes in disgust at Al Sharpton. I was so convinced in my own colour-blindness that I felt I could comment without the stain of racism on any question of race. It never once occurred to me that I was not “racially colour-blind” but was in fact “racially apathetic”. There was racism all around me, I just chose not to acknowledge or see it.
For you see, like millions of other whites, I was convinced that the battle had been won. Blacks and Whites were equal now; free to live where they wanted, vote for whoever they wanted, be educated where they wished and work at the job of their choice. If blacks were still poor in greater numbers than whites, if they were jailed more often than whites, if they died in greater numbers than whites; well that had to be their own fault, didn’t it?
In the 1990’s, racism and questions of race began to become more prominent. I remember a popular saying among young blacks at the time “It’s a Black thing, you wouldn’t understand”. I recall the outraged newspaper column this saying generated from a right wing columnist, condemning this sentiment as racist. How dare they claim whites were incapable of understanding something that was “black”; how dare they segregate knowledge.
I remember when the term “African-American” was being popularized and the criticism this engendered. I remember the white speaker who said “first we called you Negro, then that was racist, it should be coloured. Then coloured was racist and it should be black. Now black is racist and it has to be African-American. I want you to just tell me once and for all what you want to be called and stop changing it every 20 years.” I remember the laughter and nodding heads to that outburst.
I remember when a white woman asked Chris Rock why black rappers were “allowed” to say the “N” word but whites were not. I recall Rock’s reply that when the rapper uses it, he is speaking the language of shared suffering, whereas, when whites use it, they are speaking the language of hate. The woman did not understand and neither did I.
Apparently, there were a few things that were “black things” and as such escaped white comprehension.
I recall in the early 2000’s, white cops in my city starting killing unarmed black men and women in increasing numbers. Every time, the police would say they thought the person was armed, they didn’t follow their commands, they argued or became violent. The police officer had to defend themselves they’d say, confident that answered all questions. I recall thinking when I read these reports that the victim must have “provoked” the police. ‘Just do as you are told’ I thought. ‘This is Canada, not the Deep South, what are you afraid of?’
The shootings continued until the Provincial Government started prosecuting the officers involved and set up a tribunal to investigate policing in the province. They stopped very soon after that without any sort of fanfare or notice. Just a coincidence I’m sure.
I look back at my life as a white man in a white country and I realize if I had to describe my own attitude and the attitude of white’s in general with a single word, it would be Arrogance.
Incredible, outrageous, inexplicable arrogance.
The definition of arrogance is a word picture of white attitude. The offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride; “White Pride” could more correctly be called “White Arrogance.”
It is in race relations that white arrogance is on its finest display and where I was schooled in its language and practice. For it is in questions of race that it becomes so easy for whites; liberal and conservative; to fall into that feeling of superiority and pride. In all those years of my youth, it never once occurred to me to wonder just who the Hell were we to tell black citizens about their experiences living in a white nation? Who were we to feel something was “accomplished” a journey had been made, “progress had been achieved” that some citizens – who had the exact same legal protections, rights and responsibilities as any other citizen – could now exercise some of their legal rights?
That was not progress; it was an acknowledgement of guilt. To even call it progress should have filled every decent white person with shame. We are just too arrogant to feel shame for anything we have done.
Someone once said, to look back at the past and feel regret, indicates bad choices. To look back at the past and feel shame indicates bad behaviour. What do you call a people who look back at centuries of atrocities and feels only pride?
What can you call a people who when confronted by examples of what their racial apathy has wrought, instead of saying sorry, provide a lecture on racial relations. What word is there to describe a people who school blacks in what they are doing wrong and what they must do to avoid being beaten, jailed or killed by whites (hired and paid by the whites giving the lesson)?
What else can you call it when whites object to not being allowed to use a racist name that African-Americans use amongst themselves? What else can you call it when whites somehow feel we have a right to agree or disagree on what is an acceptable name for African-Americans? Negro, Coloured, Black or African-American; where do we have the right to offer any opinion on what is acceptable and what isn’t?
White arrogance has been on public display in a way not seen in a long time lately. The response to the epidemic of murders of young black males by the police reeks of arrogant self-importance. All the usual white suspects have appeared to condemn, lecture, explain and counsel African-Americans on how to live in America in a way that doesn’t put their lives at risk from white police officers.
The counsel of the oppressor to the oppressed; “Shut up and do what we say and nobody will get hurt”. What do you call those offering such counsels and yet are mystified that it is resented and rejected?
Chris Rock was only half right. White people aren’t just crazy; we are the living, breathing definition of the word; Arrogant.