As a nation of tens of millions of POC, gays, Muslims, immigrants and millions of other “others”, under the extreme and immediate threat of being completely overtaken by mindless, violent, reactionary and increasingly unbridled white supremacists intent on instituting full-on fascism, whites on the left cannot keep being paralyzed with the fear of having direct and sometimes painful conversations centered around the two words “white” and “racist”. After five centuries of Native American genocide, chattel slavery, Civil War, and Jim Crow (just for starters), we cannot keep pretending; deflecting the conversations away from; whistling past; and ducking and dodging the deepest and darkest aspects of both where this has collectively taken us in the past AND the insanely self-destructive places it's potentially trying blindly and desperately (primarily in the name of race-based guilt and shame) to take us in the very near future, if we don't finally and fully confront them! And very much in that vein, one of our deepest needs right now is to end the uncomfortable silence of far too many millions of people on the left. Because that guilt and shame-inspired silence itself (that has been lingering for far too long) is now a very major factor in where we do or don't go as a nation from here. Because – far too similar to 1930s Germany – that silence is being widely interpreted (and in far too many cases, rightly so) as secret and tacit agreement with the fear-mongers that the “history and traditions” of the Founding Fathers truly did intend for this to be an exclusively white nationalist society.
Yes, we've spent a great deal of time and effort over the last 60-odd years discussing what it does and doesn't mean to be individually racist, and what it means to be individual allies to POC and other so-called minorities. Along with, how to combat those individual displays of racism that we periodically see displayed around us. But to quote the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The hour is very late!” And there is a second component of racism that is clearly proving to be far bigger, far more resistant to change, and far more deadly to everyone! SYSTEMIC racism. And we need to finally start having lots of very serious conversations about the differences between those two aspects of racism...very, very soon...or else!
And it just so happens that a writer who regularly appears on this site has just written a pretty spot-on piece on some of the how’s and why’s of starting to have more of those much needed deeper and more honest conversations on what whiteness and racism are continuing to do to us as a society. His name is Chauncey DeVega. His essay is on the Salon website. And it's titled: Biden's missed opportunity in Buffalo: He needs to tell white people the truth
Here's a powerful example of what Mr DeVega is trying to convey in his essay:
As CNN's Collinson notes, Biden never identified "specific culprits" in the spread of white supremacist conspiracy theories during his Buffalo speech, but when he returned to the White House later on Tuesday, "he was coming closer to naming names":
"You have folks on television stations talking about the replacement theory – they're scaring the living hell out of people who don't have a whole lot of emotional stability, taking advantage of … the internet and other means by talking about how we're going to be overtaken," Biden said at a reception honoring Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, a group that has also faced racial hate. As seen in his Buffalo speech and throughout his presidency, Biden, like most other American leaders and mainstream public voices (Obama included), talks about racism and white supremacy in a general way, as if they were a weather system or a moral failure common to the entire society rather than a highly specific problem.
Quite simply, it's no longer the same conversation that is was in the 1960s (and at the time of the Civil Rights Movement). Where it was essentially (and yes, intentionally) framed mostly in terms of “what I'M personally doing to confront individual acts of racism directed toward POC in MY personal sphere of influence.” Because, with every passing minute now the flames of fascism are relentlessly rising higher and higher. And it's more and more becoming necessary (and most assuredly NOT just for Joe Biden) to address the truly long ignored, yet very specific, systemic component of white supremacy in America now too. (That's called going from being passively “nonracist” to actively “antiracist”.) And also, NOT just regarding the current seemingly out of control narrative on the left, of the Republican Party and their supposedly singularly over-sized role in the last 60-odd years either! It must now include what an extra 60 years (on top of 450!) of mostly unaddressed systemic racism – on BOTH the left AND the right – throughout ALL of American history has been widely inflicting in the lives of tens of millions of POC AND unwitting millions of white people (now especially!) too. And THAT is a whole new narrative, if not a whole new ballgame!!!
Uncomfortable white silence on the left (driven mostly by guilt and shame about the sins of the past) is increasingly ceasing to be a viable option...for the sake of more and more tens of millions of white people now too! Because systemic racism is becoming more and more like a giant dragon that was originally trained to hurt only POC. That has grown much bigger and now gone fully insane, and can no longer be controlled or kept on any kind of leash. And is now discovering a ravenous appetite for white people now too.
So...
Are we finally ready to go (waaaayyyyy) beyond just Reagan and Nixon??? Our future literally depends on it!