Quite frankly it feels truly insane for there to still even be a necessity to have to write such a basic thing in the year 2021. But after seeing a series of diaries with absolutely no sense of the potential harmful emotional impact that they might or might not have on POC, from supposedly sincere posters. And scores of likewise seemingly sincere comments in those same diaries that were just as oblivious to their possible negative impact on POC, fresh on the heels of the extreme upheaval for tens of millions of POC that is the Chauvin verdict, apparently there very much still is. So, off we go.
For 500 years now this nation has engaged nonstop in inconceivably brutal acts, in the name of systematizing and reinforcing white supremacy. At this stage, legitimate history books say that's pretty much a given. And for 350 of those years that violence has been “legally” institutionalized into every conceivable aspect of the lives of essentially every so-called white person on these shores. Now, here's where it almost immediately starts to get uncomfortable for some. In order for that institutional white supremacy to perpetuate itself as a governing system for centuries on end, it has also required that the extreme majority of so-called white Americans remain as oblivious as possible to the massive amounts of racialized violence that were indeed being endlessly carried out against POC, both in their names and right under their noses. And while there have literally been millions of both big and incredibly tiny supposedly “legal” mechanisms created for carrying out that foundational mission, one of the most prominent and seemingly still most invisible has been racial segregation. For two major reasons. First, it has allowed so-called minorities to be primarily kept in isolation from whites. Which enabled whites to more easily and efficiently target them for regular, premeditated, racial violence. Which incidentally is also evidence that racial violence, as practiced in America, has NEVER been either random or incidental. Never. Even now. But the second, and potentially more important reason is that segregation also allows the vast majority of white Americans to maintain a veneer of what's called plausible deniability from those endless centuries of very, very widespread racial violence. Essentially, as long as the racial violence has been happening outside their line of sight and outside their proverbial backyard, “it didn't actually happen”. And for the most part, throughout our history, as a result, it in turn didn't really matter.
Now, here's the big payoff with that. Being institutionally physically separated from other races, and the direct evidence of racism's effects on POC, has enabled the extreme majority of white Americans to also view the subject of race itself as a “far off” thing as well. Or simply an isolated and strictly intellectual and theoretical exercise (mainly for scholars). Because for all intents and purposes, it's either minimal or else not real!. “If I'm not seeing any racial incidents between blacks and whites in my almost exclusively white suburban Cul-De-Sac or town then, for all intents and purposes, racism doesn't 'really' exist.” Some form of that singular, basic psychological blind spot has been relentlessly and subconsciously reinforced into the minds of almost every white person in America for five centuries straight.
And that begins to get at the crux of all this.
When we get on a site like DKos and have what we think are frank and open discussions of race, and the politics of race (“because, after all, we're all Progressives here”), we're still unknowingly psychologically having two sets of extremely, extremely, extremely separate discussions depending on whether we're either white or so-called nonwhite. Based on that singular, massive, intentionally created, 500 year old, historical dividing line. Because of those 5 centuries of BOTH psychological and physical institutional white racial segregation, even when Progressive whites are having what they consider to be frank and honest conversations about race, they're actually not. Because quite simply, they can't. They are unknowingly presenting those strictly intellectual and theoretical ideas of what they “think” race is or isn't supposed to be...based on their mostly far-off impressions from behind those age-old racial dividing walls. That were, again, implicitly designed from the very beginning to shield white people from ever knowing the lived reality of POC in the first place!
Because racial segregation has very, very intentionally prevented them from ever truly experiencing, in anything close to any particularly real sense, what white supremacy has actually been doing 24/7/365 to every single living nonwhite person for five unbroken centuries. Even if one considers oneself to be white, and yet a lifelong committed fighter for equality, at the end of the day, this society has very, very intentionally designed itself in such a way that you can go home at night and turn off whatever madness racism is temporarily showing of itself to you. While no POC that has literally ever lived in this country has ever experienced that incredibly tiny but massively powerful luxury for even one single second. And what's more, even if you are white and you've been arrested for protesting, or beaten, or even hospitalized for standing up for what's right, you always have the option of then stopping whenever it gets to be too much, and retreating back into the “norm” of white racial segregation. No POC ever has! And it is that core right to turn the conversation off at anytime, and retreat back into what is still near-universal institutional white racial segregation that keeps such conversations so very stilted and frustrating in the year 2021.
We're still having almost completely separate (and far too often, fruitless) conversations about race (while nonetheless believing we're doing great where POC are concerned) because white racial segregation still has us experiencing what we each think race is, yet from what are still explicitly two almost completely separate universes. And because of that continued segregation, whites are still quite unknowingly discussing what they THINK race is from behind the walls of 5 centuries of intentionally conditioned physical and psychological segregation. While nonetheless, absolutely certain with all their hearts that despite those centuries of intentionally placed systemic barriers to their understanding, nonetheless, they “get it”!!! While in extreme, extreme contrast, POC are discussing what they eat, sleep, breath, and die KNOWING, 24/7/365...from DIRECT PERSONAL EXPERIENCE what race is, from literal toddler-hood. And again, not one second of it is optional. And to also emphasize that contrast even more, all of it is also either directly or indirectly absolutely life or death for every one of them at all times.
Which now brings us to one very fateful (and historically, utterly unacceptable) conclusion...
And sadly, it is also the point in our show when, virtually without exception, the vast majority of our audience typically hurls things at the screen, and files quickly out of the theater demanding to have every f'ing penny of their money refunded, in anger and disgust. LOL
For 5 unbroken centuries, white racial segregation has first and foremost served to both physically and psychologically separate white Americans from all others. But it has also served a much more subtle, but just as far reaching, second purpose. It has also institutionally worked nonstop for 5 centuries to psychologically convince every white person that has ever lived in this nation that they have a “God-given” right to sit in a position of preeminence in ALL matters. (With no remote hint of an “opt-out” clause.) Fundamentally because of the very long-held belief that “this was, is and will always be designed to be a 'white' nation.” That is the essence of what's commonly referred to as “white privilege”. But what almost no one white has ever had even a minimal reason to question up to now, is that they've even been conditioned to believe that default position of preeminence even extends into when POC are discussing their own vast and immeasurable experiences with racism in their intentionally segregated lives away from whites. Again, lives that the extreme majority of whites have been intentionally segregated from since virtual day one of this nation. Which means white Americans have been relentlessly trained for 5 centuries to believe that they have every “God-given” right to even sit in positions of that unquestioned preeminence, even on what racism does or doesn't mean to the millions of POC actually experiencing the racism firsthand, 24/7. And which, again, they are segregated from. And THAT is the core root of where the seemingly endless frustration and fruitlessness when talking about race fundamentally comes from. So, despite having intentionally been both physically and psychologically segregated from both seeing and experiencing institutional racism for more than 500 years, white Americans, because of their God-given white privilege, still remain almost universally convinced that they have every right (typically under the guise of “free speech) to join right in at a moment's notice and tell POC what is right or wrong with their own interpretations of what they have or haven't been experiencing in their own lives, 24/7, for the last 5 centuries, pertaining to race.
Now here's the part where the sirens start going off and the bombs start falling.
There is no amount of studying, observing (from that 500 year old segregated distance I've mentioned), listening, or reading, over an entire lifetime, that will even remotely enable a single white person in America to truly understand even one-one millionth of what a single, random teen of color has already dealt with and learned firsthand about race. Because studying it (from a distance) – no matter how earnestly – and living it will always remain two completely different things. They were intentionally designed to be! Therefore, the best that the single most learned white person, EVER in American history, can even minimally hope to achieve is a very limited sense of how to genuinely respect what they (at best) suspect, but every single POC KNOWS from firsthand experience. The problem then is that 5 centuries of that unchallenged white preeminence I mentioned earlier renders that a totally unacceptable conclusion for the extreme majority of white people (and yes, that's true even on the Left).
So even in the year 2021, those two most core and deeply entrenched mechanisms of white racial segregation are still silently and relentlessly undermining white America's attempts to do better.
And most important of all, because of it, we're still speaking two almost completely separate languages about race, while seemingly using the same key catchwords and phrases. In other words, what we think is happening because of race if we're still existing in almost exclusively white spaces. Versus what we emphatically know race is doing outside of those white spaces if we're nonwhite.
So where does that leave us???