We Don’t Talk About Whiteness. No, No, No.
Fighting the fog of confusion around race
In a recent essay, Laura M. Quainoo asked white people to respond to her directly about why we stay silent on the topic of race in the USA. She is genuinely curious. I took her up on her offer and tried to respond. My initial defensiveness (I am not like other white people…I talk and think about race all the time) was overcome by a recognition that I am largely silent on race (I opt in and out of talking about race, as I choose). She continues to write to white people and challenge us about understanding our own whiteness.
I commented to Laura that white people like me need to fight through a “fog of confusion” in order to find a place of solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. She asked me to elaborate.
I couldn’t.
At least not right away.
Perhaps “fog of confusion” was just a fancy phrase that I made up to seem like I know something about race. The truth is that the more I find out about race (you should see my bookshelf!) and about our country’s history and present state of systemic and interpersonal racism, the more I find I have huge gaps in my own knowledge and experience.
As much as I read, I seldom choose to put my attention on my own whiteness, and I certainly don’t feel confident talking about race.
I can choose not to think and talk about race, probably because at some level, I think that race (and racism) doesn’t affect me.
I eventually told Laura that my term “fog of confusion” is an excuse and a lame one at that. This essay is an attempt to fight through the imaginary fog.
There is no reason for me to act confused, except as a form of seeking security and comfort. We, white folks, have been offered comfort and security in return for accepting and ignoring the fact that systemic racism continues in our country. We turn a blind eye to it in a sort of unconscious bargain. It is the same bargain that we have been making since race was invented in the 1600s.
Ibram X Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates both talk about how racism is the father of race and not the other way around. Race was invented to justify the horrendous treatment of groups of people. Just ask historian Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People.
The bargain with white people was that we would believe the lie of race, and in exchange, we would be placed in the middle of the hierarchy. I say the middle because when I look at the intersection of race and class, I see there is a dark synergy. Within white people, the wealthy owning class whites invented race and offered it to the rest of us. They got to continue to exploit people (including most white people), and we got to feel ok about it because the people they are exploiting the worst are “not like us.” That way we don’t build cross-class solidarity.
This bargain is based on a lie, and it is so clearly a lie that all white people should see right through it and embrace the causes of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, AAPI, and other people. We should embrace the causes because our liberation is tied up with their liberation (Please read Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us to see why). But we don’t. We believe the lie. We see kids in cages on the border and people getting shot in El Paso or Buffalo, and we see those people as “other.” What happens to them is a tragedy, for sure, but it is not happening to us. It is not happening to our people. That is the lie that the concept of race offers white people: a comfort that comes with distance from potential suffering.
It is a false distance, and in order to continue believing in it, we need to pretend to not see what is plain as the noses on our faces. We don’t talk about Bruno, and we don’t talk about whiteness and white privilege.
Perhaps we don’t talk about Bruno/whiteness because many of us are uncomfortable being white in the first place. We don’t see ourselves as white. To white liberals in the north, “white people” live in someplace vaguely south of here and fly the Confederate flag and casually use the N-word. That isn’t us. We might even allow ourselves to get mad at “white people.”
The fog of confusion tries to tell us that racism is over, except for a few holdouts who are the bad white people who live elsewhere. Perhaps if we didn’t talk about racism at all, it would go away? Um, no.
That fog is deliberate. If we don’t talk about whiteness and we don’t think about ourselves as white, then racism becomes something that is done by someone else to the Black people and others. We can pretend to be observers rather than participants.
We hear news about racism in the USA sort of like news from a foreign country. Sure, the news from Ukraine/Yemen/Iraq/Nigeria/Brazil is awful. I’m glad that isn’t happening to us! Same with Chicago/Flint/Buffalo/Mississippi. Bad news for those people!
Since George Floyd was killed, I have had many conversations about racism and race. Yes. We do talk about racism. But somehow, most of this earnest conversation is about race as something separate from our day-to-day lives. And I/we get tired of thinking or talking about race after about five minutes (more or less). I/we have that luxury. I/we can move on and think about other topics. Have you been following the Depp/Heard trial? What is the new show that you are interested in? What about the score of the latest big game? Do you think gas prices will get any higher?
Much of the current backlash against CRT and “wokeness” is from people who feel like we have been talking too much about race. They/we want to “change the channel.” They/we are are tired of Black people seeing racism everywhere and then needing to talk about it. We don’t see it, so it doesn’t exist, so please stop showing it to us.
I never really thought of myself as white, even though I know I am white. I live in a sea of whiteness, so I think I didn’t identify with that part of me. I think of myself as Midwestern, of German heritage, college-educated, a teacher, a liberal, a farmer, and so on. Sure, I’m white, but so is almost everybody I interact with. So what?
In the Plantation era, the poor white people were placed in the middle between the plantation owners and enslaved Black people. The white identity was created for those people in the middle, and to some extent, we are still living on that same plantation. Owners exploit all people, white or otherwise, but we white people in the middle are given relative comfort in exchange for ignoring what is being done to others. All that is asked of us is to not talk about being white (or Bruno).
Even though we don’t talk about whiteness, on some level we appreciate the advantages of being white. Being white means we get to participate in and believe in the meritocracy. Being white means we get to inherit wealth from people who received systematic advantages in the USA. Being white means we get to feel “at home” in most spaces, and certainly most spaces of power, in the USA. Being white means we get to complain about “our tax dollars” going to any place that serves other people. Being white means we can remember a time when “America was great,” and we know exactly what is being referred to when certain people want to make it great “again.”
There is a purpose to the fog of confusion around being white. That fog allows us to continue to function and ignore the mayhem around us. But there is something unsettling about it. We know something is off. There is an underlying subconscious knowledge of all the things we consciously ignore. That sub-level knowledge makes us hyper-defensive when anyone mentions racism.
Our conscious ignorance of our own whiteness makes us unreliable allies. We can’t or won’t see systemic racism, so when our Black friends and co-workers point it out, we either see it as an isolated incident or we argue with them about it even happening.
Kate Bracy wrote a piece this week dissecting Garrison Keillor’s interview on CBS, and I think she touches on the usefulness of the “fog” defense to bullies:
Cluelessness in the oldwhiteboy narrative is not a bug, it’s a feature. It has a purpose. It lets a bully tell himself that because he meant no harm he is innocent.
The fog of confusion is not neutral. It serves a purpose, which is deniability.
It is ironic that in order to clean up the racism inherent in the way whiteness operates in the USA, we (liberal whites) will need to claim “white” as an identity and see ourselves as white. It is ironic because that is exactly what white supremacists have been doing all along. White supremacists, like the Buffalo shooter, are trying (in a twisted and sick way) to get white people excited about standing up for themselves as white people.
What should we do about whiteness? It seems that white people need to interrupt the systemic advantages of whiteness. But to do that, we need to be able to see how whiteness operates in the world. And to do that we need to fight through the fog of confusion.
My goal in claiming “white” as an identity is to be able to see how that identity works in the world and then to consciously opt out of any systemic advantages given to me as a white person. Beyond that, by “seeing white” I can work to remove those advantages from the institutions and organizations I work within.
What would it be like to be white without any systemic advantages? I would love to see that. White people could celebrate white culture as just one of many cultures in the USA. It would be like cheering for your favorite sports team when there is parity within the league.
We are not anywhere near that point of parity. So for now, I want to see whiteness, without celebrating it. As an adult, I can appreciate the nuance, but this is an odd place for our white young people. It might be odd, but it is necessary. We need to talk with kids about race and point out where racism exists. We need to talk about Bruno.
I think if I were a kid today, I would want the truth. I could take it.
But then if I were a kid learning about race, I would want to do something about systemic racism. But then if I did something about systemic racism, I would need to address inequality and injustice in general. And if I addressed inequality and injustice in general, I would be in solidarity with many people against the 1%. That is what the owning class is afraid of, and why they don’t want anyone to talk about race (or Bruno) with white kids. No, No, No.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Let’s talk about Bruno (and whiteness).
© Andrew Gaertner, 2022
