My White Silence Equals Consent

White silence equals consent. Those words were part of a video I watched today, and I take it to heart. “If you see something, say something,” and I have been quiet. I did not weigh in on social media about the violence at the Capitol. I waited and watched and twice I woke up early thinking about what I might say. Still, I didn’t want to make a mistake, so I said nothing. Okay. So mistakes will be made.

I feel I must speak.

The awful truth is I feel a kind of kinship with the mostly white mob who stormed the Capitol. I get it. While I don’t agree with them at all, and I think they have been misinformed about the illegitimacy of the election, I still feel their pain and anger. I, too, am mad as hell and don’t want to take it anymore. I’m mad about different things for different reasons, but just as mad. I feel them.

I’m also mad about our electoral system and think it is rigged. I’m mad about gerrymandering. I’m furious at how money works in politics. I’m mad about voter suppression. I’m mad that citizens in the South Pacific and Puerto Rico are disenfranchised. I’m incredibly mad about the electoral college system. I boil over about how Congress is set up to favor a two party system. I’m mad about the lifetime appointment of judges to the Supreme Court. I’m mad at pork barrel politics. I’m mad that my tax dollars go to bloated government Defense spending. And I can also see how mad they are at Congress. I can see how they might think the system is so rigged that it should be burned to the ground. I don’t agree with that nor their reasons for thinking the election was rigged, but I can see it.

I am also upset about how working people have been treated in this country. Wages are stagnant and the “good jobs” are disappearing. Health care and insurance eats up much of the income of working people. Farm prices have been so low for so long that I don’t know how anybody is still farming. I am frustrated to see small businesses have to close. Small businesses are the heart of this country, and when they close, we lose a little bit of the fabric that connects us. I’m also mad about free trade. We have values that we try to uphold in this country, and completely free trade undermines those values. I am mad at the elite. I think I might define the elite as the one percent and they might define the elite as the “Hollywood” elite, but we are all mad at the elite. I can see how people would want to make America great. We need it.

I also get conservatism. I understand wanting to stop change and return to a time when things were not so distressing. For me this manifests in an urgent desire to stop climate change. It also comes out as wanting to see clean water, clean air, and wild animals and ecosystems protected. I understand wanting to protect against the erosion of the rights of Indigenous people, women’s rights, and civil rights. I am urgently concerned about those rights being taken away. I can also feel their brand of conservative concern for this nation. I don’t think it is a selfish concern. It is misguided in my opinion because I think it looks to take away rights, but it is genuine. They want to preserve something for the next generation, just like I do.

I don’t question their tactics. Of course I am upset about the loss of life and violence, and I think they are doing it for the wrong reasons. But occupying buildings has been a legitimate form of protest for a very long time. I am personally pissed at the one percent for hoarding wealth and power, and I think Occupy Wall Street was and is spot on. I agree that disruption is an acceptable form of protest. If people need to block a pipeline or stop traffic or sit in somewhere to be heard, then that is what needs to happen. Some of my early heroes were Earth First activists who went beyond letter writing and hand-wringing. The system is rigged and is killing the planet. It needs to be disrupted. I think their cause is staggeringly unworthy and I am deeply concerned by the presence of so many automatic weapons, but I do agree with the idea of disruption for a worthy cause.

All week I have heard calls for the 25th Amendment to be invoked, or impeachment, or for him to resign. I have myself amplified calls for Senator Ron Johnson and other Wisconsin Congresspeople to face consequences for stoking this fire. I have seen social media ban his Twitter and Facebook feeds and donors publicly announce that they will no longer support him or his people. People are rightfully angry that he used his place of power to challenge a free and fair election. I agree that he should face consequences. But I worry that him facing consequences will let the rest of us off the hook. We should all be on the hook.

I think we might be in a turning point for racism and xenophobia in this country. I think it might be forced back underground. And maybe that is not a good thing. I look at history and I remember my visit to Birmingham Alabama and the 16th St Baptist Church. As I learned about the Civil Rights movement there, I saw how the violent response by Bull Connor to the peaceful protests was part of what galvanized support for Civil Rights across the nation. The photos coming out of Birmingham gave us a literal picture of racism. It was attack dogs and water cannons pointed at Black children. Racism was bad, and to be called a racist was a bad thing.

Even today, to call someone racist is a way to try to hurt someone. People begin statements with “I’m not a racist, but…” and then go on to say something racist anyway. Accusing someone of racism stops conversation, because now they have to defend themselves or explain how they are not racist. They also now hate you. This is because we have a definition of racist that is a narrow caricature. Racists wear hoods and point water cannons at Black children. I don’t do either of those things, ergo, I cannot be a racist. This makes it impossible to talk about racism in a real way.

After those images from Birmingham and years of disruptive protests called attention to racism, legislators were forced to outlaw the most overt forms of racism. We saw the end of legal segregation and voting rights were affirmed. But a sort of bargain was made by making racists into “the other” and then banishing them. The bargain was that the rest of white society would not look at systemic racism and the pervasive culture of white supremacy. Racism was out there, not me.

Now we have new images of overt racism. Confederate flags were brought into the Capitol along with anti-Semitic fascist symbols. Racism and fascism have been brought into our living rooms again. When we look at those people who forced their way into Congress, and we call for the removal of the President, are we having another Bull Connor moment? Have we identified the overt racists and now our righteous indignation allows us to stand on the moral high ground and scold him and his people, just like people in the North scolded South from their (our) dubious moral high ground?

So he has been banished from Twitter. He may become something of a martyr to his people. People are accusing him of all the things he is actually guilty of, and yet by proclaiming his innocence and acting hurt he may somehow come out looking like the victim. If by banishing and demonizing him and his people, we seek to end racism, I am afraid we will, at best, just send it underground. They will put away the regular whistle and get the dog whistle back out. It won’t deal with racism that is out there, and it certainly won’t deal with racism in everyday society.

This is why I say that I feel a kinship with those people who stormed the Capitol. I’m white and I live in a society that has been set up to advantage white people like myself. I live in a world where white supremacy culture is the dominant culture, and I am ashamed to say that I am most comfortable when I am at home within the norms of white supremacy culture. If I am honest, I still at least partially believe in the inherently racist idea of meritocracy. If a Black person is killed by the police, my outrage is increased if there is a video and it shows he or she didn’t do anything to “deserve” to be killed. I live in a society where the air that I breathe is infused with advantage for white people. I am starting to see it and challenge it in myself and the organizations I am part of. But this is a process.

If we are allowed to locate the source of racism outside of ourselves (again) by demonizing him and the people who support him, then we as a society cannot do the work we need to do to really end racism, both in our personal lives and our systems.

I have been thinking about how the right keeps accusing the left of things that they themselves are doing. When they call ANTIFA fascist. When they whine about “court-packing.” When they complain about “thugs.” When they wail about tampering with elections. When they complain about censorship. The list goes on. I don’t think that they are being disingenuous. I think they actually believe it. They are projecting all of the things that they don’t want to see in themselves out into the world, and it scares them. This concept of projection is exactly what creates monsters that chase us in our dreams. We don’t own the wholeness of who we are, so the unaccepted parts of ourselves are put outside, and hated. Only they don’t go away. We see them everywhere. Of course, both the left and the right are projecting all of their fears onto the other. The irony is that when a person projects the scary stuff out into the world they are unable to see it in themselves. When they are unable to see the scary stuff in themselves, then they become scary to others. The more they deny a part of themselves, the more it comes out sideways. This is why white people are so scary to Black people. We are in complete denial. And the more we are in denial, the scarier we are.

So when I look out at the people who stormed the Capitol, I see them on a spectrum that includes me. They are more active and obvious, but I am not so far away.

I am working on becoming an anti-racist.