I think about actively opting out as refusing to play the "white game."

Some of my friends' kids have chosen not to go to college and instead protest pipelines alongside Indigenous folks. One young man got arrested and is facing felony charges. It would take a lot for me to give up my job, healthcare, 401K and join a protest where I could get arrested.

Other folks actively opt out in less financially threatening ways. I think about people at my mostly white workplace. If I were to call out racism one time, I would get accolades from my co-workers. But if I did it all the time (it IS there all the time!) then I would risk people ignoring me or thinking I am an angry unreasonable person. I have one of my peers who is always calling out racism, and people have sort of stopped listening to her. Sometimes she will ask me to to use my privilege as a white male to speak up, which I do, but not as often as I could.

I think the same thing happens on Facebook. I will occasionally repost anti-racism stories, but I don't want my posts to be anti-racism all the time, because that would make people (my white friends and family) uncomfortable or make them stop following me because I am the broken record. I am mad every day about climate change and racism and injustice, but I moderate how much I show in order to not seem like I have opted out of the invisible contract that all the other white people have signed to not make that much trouble.

I live near Minneapolis, and in the wake of George Floyd's killing, many white people took to the streets. The police didn't care what race people were when they were firing rubber bullets, flash bang grenades, and tear gas. I think some of them probably thought of the white kids in the streets as race traitors. I did not go to the protests, although I did visit the memorial and write on Medium a little.

Actively opting out of whiteness can mean deliberately putting oneself in an unsafe situation (get arrested, get physically harmed, lose a job). Of course, in an unsafe situation like that, having white skin and family connections means the situation is not as unsafe as it might be for a person who is not white.

When my friend's kid was living in a camp protesting a pipeline in sub-zero weather, my wife and I sent them some money for a hotel room. I was concerned for their comfort (I suppose this is a very middle class white thing to worry about). They chose to give that money to the camp collective and stay in the camp with the other people. They had opted out of comfort and security.

I live in a rural area, where in the twenty minute drive to the nearest town, today I saw three "F**k Biden" flags flying in people's yards. Each place had the American flag flying above the FB flag. I think if I walked around my town wearing a "Black Lives Matter" t-shirt, I would step outside of the safety of blending in with all the other white people.

In each case of actively opting out, the white person doesn't have to do anything to opt back into whiteness. Whiteness and security is the default, as long as I play by the rules.

One more thing to note is that the definition of who can feel safe in the white-dominated society can changed the instant the people at the top feel threatened. As soon as that happens, Jewish people are in danger, as are white-looking hispanic folks and anyone who is visibly not straight. This scapegoating keeps the rest of us in line in much the same way that the way we collectively treat people having a mental health crisis keeps all of us from showing any parts of ourselves that anyone might view as "crazy."

I think a whole lot of this goes back to two places: (1) in the pre-civil war south, poor whites were kept in a "middle management" role as overseers or slave patrols. This gave them a sense of security because the owners needed them. But if they ever couldn't fulfill their role, they lost their protection. (2) In the industrial north, white immigrants were offered whiteness in exchange for not joining with Black folks to ask for higher wages and better working conditions. As soon as a white person expressed solidarity with a person or group who was not white, then they lost security and safety.